The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

February 23, 2022/ This week's issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Desmond Tutu/The Week

Theory: A Guide to Action that Makes a Lasting Difference

Conquests and wars — the machinations of kings and presidents as well as the revolutions and uprisings of common people — litter the pages of our human history. But these physical actions, the Center for Global Justice in San Miguel de Allende reminds us in this week’s issue, only create lasting change when harnessed with mental action that points us to the root causes of our problems and helps us construct theories of change.

We sometimes read in the news stories about a disgruntled employee who has simply had enough of daily workplace abuse and angrily shoots his supervisor. That sort of retaliation does nothing to change abusive workplaces. What does? One example: Employees rising up together to replace a corrupt union leader who lines his own pockets at member expense.

Workers at the Tridonex auto parts plant in Matamoros, inspired by the auto workers at GM Silao who’ve just thrown out their own corrupt union, are soon going to have a chance to do just that, as the fine Labor Notes article we highlight in this week’s Clicks explains.

But labor mobilizations along the lines of what we’re now seeing in Matamoros, the Center for Global Justice helps us understand, don’t guarantee success. If the only model of how to hold union office happens to be what has existed, a new democratically elected official may well wander down that well-worn path to personal enrichment and power.

We need new thinking, in short, to help us see alternatives, and today, all around the globe, growing inequality has more and more people understanding that our capitalist world order operates much like a medieval torture device. Like the rack, this world order stretches haves and have-nots ever farther apart — until society breaks apart altogether.

Everyone, of course, wants the restraints that bind us loosened. But real transformation  only comes when we test out and apply new ideas, principles, and policies on a local scale. The late South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu once put the matter clearly: “I don’t want our chains made lighter. I want our chains removed.” No lashing out blindly in despair. No settling for lighter chains. Invent real alternatives. Liberate our minds, liberate ourselves!

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Alternatives for Justice Begin at Home

Liz Mestres, a graphic designer and longtime Latin American solidarity activist, works on Center for Global Justice projects oriented toward a solidarity economy. She also serves on the editorial board of the journal Socialism and Democracy.

Cliff, you grew up in North Dakota. How did your early experience shape your interest in México and global politics?

Cliff DuRand: I grew up in the Third World of North Dakota! Its people are agrarian. It exports agricultural goods and imports finished consumer goods. We were dependent on external forces like milling, the railroads, and banking interests. As a young adult, I learned that socialist organizers had succeeded in re-writing the state constitution, establishing some socialist institutions like a state bank, state mill, and state grain elevator and gaining North Dakota some control over its own economy. This helped me relate to anti-imperialist revolutions such as Cuba’s — and to México’s current efforts to control its own energy sector.

In the 1960s, I was teaching mostly Black students in Baltimore, as the Civil Rights movement was heating up. Growing up in North Dakota, I couldn’t see the importance of Blacks “sitting-in” at white-only restaurants. But when I saw segregation in Baltimore, I joined the protests, and my outrage became visceral and personal when police threw all of us protesters out. I learned the power of activism, respect for those who struggle against what harms them, and how standing — or sitting! — with those oppressed makes their struggle your own.

Liz, you’re from Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C.?

Liz Mestres: Yes, I was surrounded by monuments to the United States. But many of my classmates had lived in other parts of the world, and so we were generally more open than our parents to other cultures.

I once had a grade-school classmate refuse to say the pledge of allegiance, and I thought, “Oh, so you don’t have to do what they say!” But it was the anti-Vietnam War movement that radicalized me by showing that it was actually possible to challenge U.S. imperialism.

Cliff, you and Bob Stone, co-founders of the Center for Global Justice, both taught as philosophy professors, and you call CGJ a “thinking organization.” What’s philosophy got to do with achieving justice?

CD: C. Wright Mills, back in the mid-20th century, theorized that private troubles will always be more than just personal problems. People become change agents when they take these private troubles public through collective direct action. In the 19th century, Marx exposed the structural reasons for exclusion and poverty, rooting these both in a class society based on who owns versus who works. And the 21st-century participatory socialism of Hugo Chavez grew on ideas like these. It’s one thing to rebel, he understood, but revolution won’t succeed unless the revolutionaries have an analysis that guides them to a new way of organizing society. Thought and action make up two poles of the same continuum.

LM: Expats who moved to México from the US or Canada account for roughly a tenth of the 100,000 people of San Miguel. They founded the Center, and so it made sense for the Center to organize English-language programs for expats and tourists. We expose them to a radical critique of US and Mexican society and alternative social visions.

CD: We also have organized educational travel to rural areas like Chiapas and to Cuba. People-to-people direct contact — the sort of contact I first experienced myself at the Baltimore lunch counters — effectively opens eyes to common concerns. Our trips showcase alternative ways of organizing society to address those concerns.      

Besides the English language educational programs, Liz, you work on support for a solidarity economy, right?

LM: Mexicans make up about half of our multinational Center for Global Justice activists. Our Center staffers Yolanda Millan and Roberto Robles head up the Center's work in this area. We’re working toward building up a resilient, self-reliant, and sustainable “solidarity economy” right here in San Miguel. We believe that people themselves can achieve much of this solidarity by establishing, for example, cooperatives, credit unions, and community gardens.

LM: If we multiply local initiatives, informed by an analysis of global capitalism, inspired by a vision of 21st century socialism and supported by the state, we can achieve global justice. We see the spirit of the local initiative as the spirit of our time.

The Latest Ruling Class Narrative to Undermine AMLO

The Mexican opposition operates under self-delusion. The opposing forces see Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s overwhelming 2018 electoral victory as a fluke. Rather than try to understand why they were trounced and correct course, they’ve engaged in a campaign of distortion and outright lies against the president.

The latest attack has come in the form of a “investigative” report insinuating that the president is running a corrupt administration. This report lacks any journalistic merit, not surprisingly given its origins: Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad — a USAID-funded outfit founded by Claudio X. González, a businessman who has dedicated himself to uniting Mexico’s traditional parties in an effort to reclaim political power — along with Latinus, an outlet tied to numerous opposition figures and led by Carlos Loret de Mola, an entertainer known for participating in various journalistic hoaxes.

The report claims that Baker Hughes, an oil-field supplier with contracts with the state-owned PEMEX oil firm, had received preferential status. The “proof?” An executive from the oil firm had once rented a house to José Ramón López Beltrán, the president’s son. The facts: López Beltrán does not live in Mexico, does not have a political post in the country, and the executive in question said he was not aware that his tenant happened to be AMLO’s son, since he had publicly marketed his home through a licensed broker.

These facts didn’t stop private media outlets and opposition politicians from spreading the story far and wide. Their goal? To discredit AMLO. That scheme became clear when media outlets like Reforma and the Economist ran pieces suggesting the alleged scandal could harm AMLO politically, the latter calling it “potentially game-changing,” since voters chose AMLO in part thanks to his pledge to combat corruption. The story, by suggesting AMLO rates as just as corrupt as his predecessors, could hardly be more obviously hoping to undermine his public support.

This effort doesn’t figure to succeed — AMLO consistently enjoys approval ratings above 60 percent — but don’t expect the lies against him to stop. US politicians such as Senator Ted Cruz are already jumping into the debate, disingenuously tying AMLO’s criticism of Loret with the very real issue of violence against journalists in Mexico.

Rightists will no doubt continue to use false information to destabilize the Mexican government. As one leading opposition strategist recently confessed: “This campaign is won with propaganda, the more lies about MORENA, the better for you.”

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

Luis Feliz Leon, A New Union, At Last? Mexican Auto Parts Workers Get to Vote, Three Years After Strike Wave, Labor Notes. Following the example of the GM workers in Silao, Tridonex workers are looking to oust an employer-friendly union affiliated to the Confederation of Mexican Workers.

Nick Corbishley, México Tries and Fails to Get Michoacan’s ‘Green Gold’ (Avocados) Back on the Market, Naked Capitalism. Why did the U.S., three days before the Super Bowl, block all imports of avocados from the Mexican state of Michoacan? The official rationale doesn’t hold up.

Nathan Newman, A Union Vote in México Promises a New Direction in Trade Policy, Nation. Workers at the General Motors assembly plant in the city of Silao have voted for a new independent union, presaging a new era of labor collaboration across borders.

John Ackerman, Carlos Martínez Assad: Historia y cultura bajo la lupa. Decimos México como si México fuera uno solo, y no un lugar de gran heterogeneidad.

El ocaso del PRI: sólo conservan 4 gubernaturas y cada vez menos votos, Polemón. El PRI celebró 92 años, con un sabor muy amargo. De ser el partido político más poderoso del país, se ha vuelto uno de los más pequeñitos, gobernando tan solo cuatro estados.

Sidney Fussell, Dystopian robot dogs are the latest in a long history of US-México border surveillance, Guardian. The border has long been a testing ground for a range of emerging surveillance and policing technologies that make the space even more dangerous to migrants.

Peter Olney, Organizing the Unorganized and Union Transformation: An Interview with Jeff Hermanson, Stansbury Forum. Insights from the veteran labor activist now working as the Solidarity Center’s organizing director in México.

‘Me llena de orgullo’ que Ted Cruz se lance en contra del gobierno que represento: AMLO, El Financiero. El senador republicano Ted Cruz acusó a AMLO de intimidar a periodistas y pidió a Joe Biden tomar medidas para frenar ‘esta tendencia mortal’.

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, Courtney Childs, Victoria Hamlin, Agatha Hinman. To give feedback or get involved, email us!

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