The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

January 13, 2021/ This week's issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Tending the Garden of Democracy

Democracy may be a beautiful thing, but democracies, like flowers, require constant and careful cultivation. We can’t take blossoms — or democratic social orders — for granted.

The events of last week have exposed an uncomfortable truth. Democracy US-style rests on a shaky, battered, fragile foundation. Lies and tantrums, people all around the world have now seen, can lead to an armed attack on elected representatives fulfilling their most basic of duties: certifying the elections results for the nation’s top office.

But the disease in our democracy goes deeper than a physical storming of the Capitol. Continuing attempts at limiting voting rights — especially of Black people — have undermined “one person, one vote” and poisoned the soil of democracy. This virus of racism has surfaced, spread, and gone shockingly untreated.

In our Voices interview this issue, we look at the reactions last week’s assault has evoked among Latin@s and Mexican@s — and what they see as the path ahead. Our Reflections, meanwhile, sets out some principles for continuing the struggle against the "ethnic cleansing" that Donald Trump has so relentlessly promoted.

Diseased plants, all good gardeners understand, don’t recover all on their own. Gardeners need to act to save them, either by treating or pruning away the pestilence. With our democracy withering, we need to act, too, and give tending our garden our full attention.

Bill Gallegos: From the earliest days of his presidential campaign in 2015, Donald Trump has been characterizing Mexicans who migrate to the US as “murderers” and “rapists.” He already has terrorized our communities. By closing the border, Trump forced migrants to cross the desert, where many have died. He expanded the Border Patrol and ICE to make them the largest federal police force. Refugees and asylum seekers from México, Central America, and the Global South found themselves snatched from their homes, work, and even hospitals and put in concentration camps. Latinas have endured forced sterilizations, and only minimal measures have been taken to safeguard detainees from Covid-19.

So we Mexicanos/Chicanos knew those white terrorists invading the US Capitol took satisfaction from the violence and cruelty Trump had unleashed on us. We also recognized that we’re sitting in the same boat as our African American sisters and brothers. “Black lives don’t matter” to Trump and his base.

Do you think that, at this moment, we can put Trump and his enablers on the defensive? What role can Latino communities play?

Latinos have a major role to play in stamping out this dangerous virus Trump has loosed upon us. In the recent elections, Latinos turned out to be a major reason for Trump’s defeat in key states and cities. We number nearly 40 million people in the US, a fast-growing and young population situated in critical economic and political centers. We can use our electoral power to get rid of elected officials who supported Trump on the state and local levels. We can play a key role, for example, in forcing Ted Cruz to resign and in holding his Latino donors accountable.

So, yes, Latinos must seize the moment to join with our allies, particularly with the Black Liberation Movement, to drive the Neo-Confederates into the trash bin of history!

Do people in México have a role in protecting Mexicans in the US?

We see the people of México as important allies for Chicano and Latino struggles in the US. We both remain victims of US colonialism and imperialism. The United States didn’t just rob México of its northern territories. The US has made an oppressed nation of the more than 32 million Chicano-Mexicanos who reside in those territories. We are linked together by history, culture, and language, by our common enemy — and by our families!

Now’s the time to build even stronger ties between the social movements in México and the Chicano and Latino movements aqui in El Norte: between our labor movement and theirs, between our young leaders and theirs, between our movements for women’s equality and the dynamic feminist movement in Mexico, between the environmental justice movement here and the climate justice movement in Mexico, and especially between our vibrant movement of cultural warriors here and the incredible cadre of cultural activists in Mexico.  

Trump’s defeat and the current chaos within the Republican Party provide us with a political opening we would be irresponsible to ignore.

Donald Trump will shortly be exiting the White House, but the struggle to end his vicious immigration policies continues. How can we best blunt the anti-Latin@ offensive that Trump has so inflamed over the course of his political career? Veteran activist Bill Gallegos explores that question in a discussion that appears at the Liberation Road site online. We've adapted an extract from that contribution here.

Ethnic Cleansing and the War on Immigrants: A Program of Resistance

The Trump Administration made the demonization of migrants, particularly those from México and Latin America, its main political rallying point, and ramped up an ethnic cleansing campaign aimed at the forced removal of more than 11 million undocumented workers from the US.

To gain public support for his policies, Trump has fomented fear of the “other,” painting immigrants as criminals, terrorists, rapists — sub-humans looking to harm “real” Americans. Trump also aimed to prevent new migrants from entering as a way to “make America white again.” He even ripped thousands of children from their parents to “punish” those asylum seekers who have the audacity to think that the US might grant them safe haven.

What principles should guide our resistance to this ethnic cleansing? We can start here.

1.   Practice internationalism. Chican@/Mexican@ organizations and activists and the Left must build ties with social movements in México as a key element of strategy for freedom and self-determination for Chican@s/Mexican@s in the US, as well as to support the movement for genuine independence and social change in Mexico.

2.   Workers (of the world) Unite! Ethnic cleansing is a workers’ issue. The labor movement can — indeed it has to — play an active and aggressive role, not just because unions have significant numbers of Latin@ members, but because strengthening worker rights abroad stops the global race to the bottom.

3.   Build Black-Brown unity. Together, the Black and Brown populations in the US represent more than 80 million people in the South and the Southwest. A “Sunbelt Strategy” that unites our two social movements could anchor a united front of all oppressed people of color and a significant minority of white working people. A common campaign against the mass incarceration of Black people and the ethnic cleansing of Latin@s could be a major launching point for melding these forces into the foundation, the beating heart, of the United Front that can lead the working class out of capitalist barbarism.

4.   Build unity on the Left. The current moral outrage should motivate left organizations to meet, to talk, to strategize, and to collaboratively support the growing and massive resistance movement that has developed around these issues.

Recent news reports and commentaries, from progressive and mainstream media,
on life and struggles on both sides of the US-México border

Maria Verza, Mexico's president reaches the people with morning show, Associated Press. Millions are watching the daily marathon morning press conference that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has given every weekday since he took office in December 2018. 

Frederick Mills, Alina Duarte, and Patricio Zamorano, México Offers Asylum to Assange: A Step Forward for Government Accountability and Press Freedom, Council on Hemispheric Affairs. México has a proud tradition of granting asylum to the persecuted.

Amy Stillman and Max De Haldevang, Mexico pouring money into Pemex, at the environment’s expense, Bloomberg. AMLO has staked his political capital on returning debt-laden Pemex to its 1970s role as a major driver of the Mexican economy.

John Pint, Pioneering archaeologist made waves studying Mexico’s prehistory on foot, México News Daily. The Guadalajara-born Otto George Schöndube Baumbach spent his career defending “the ancient cultures of west Mexico even though they don’t present us with grandiose monuments like those of the Mayans and Teotihuacanos.”

Mexican president thanks Cuba for sending doctors to fight pandemic, Reuters. Hundreds of Cuban doctors will soon arrive in Mexico’s capital, part of a larger plan to help hospitals swamped by Covid.

Hannah Seo, Arsenic Contamination in US Public Water Is More Likely in Latinx Communities, Environmental Health News. Arsenic remains the most significant chemical contaminant in drinking water globally.

Stephanie Demirdjian, El año de los retrocesos: la pandemia profundizó en 2020 las desigualdades que ya vivían las mujeres en América Latina, La Diaria Feminismos. La crisis desatada por el coronavirus supuso un aumento de la violencia de género, más pobreza y nuevas barreras en el acceso a la salud sexual y reproductiva.

A ‘bad sign’: World leaders and officials blast Twitter Trump ban, Aljazeera. AMLO has blasted the decision to ban Trump from social media sites as a move that gives private companies the authority to censor opinions.

10,000 vaccination brigades to inoculate 12 million seniors by end of March, México News Daily. The 12-person teams will give Covid shots to 300 people a week, as Morena calls health care a right, not a privilege.

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice who see the 2018 election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of México as a watershed moment. AMLO and his progressive Morena party aim to end generations of corruption, impoverishment, and subservience to US interests. Our Project supports not just Morena, but all Mexicans struggling for basic rights, and opposes US efforts to undermine organizing and México’s national sovereignty. 

Editorial committee: Meizhu Lui, Bruce Hobson, Bill Gallegos, Sam Pizzigati. We welcome your suggestions and feedback. Interested in getting involved? Drop us an email!

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