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May 21, 2025

Laughing All the Way to the Barricades

Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Nick Anderson

ICE agents grabbed a kid out of an elementary school classroom and dragged him off in my rural community, on an island far from any border, in the deep blue state of Hawaii. Horrifying.

This is no laughing matter, right? But as cartoonist par excellence Rafael Barajas, better known as El Fisgón, tells us, laughter is a natural response, a way of dealing with pain, of breaking it down into bite-sized pieces. The cartoon above asks us: would you ever have imagined that the mention of frozen water would scare the bejesus out of us? Isn’t it stupid that a 10-year-old school kid could be arrested as a criminal? Are tough guys like Trump and his ICE agents scared of a child? It’s ridiculous! And “ridiculous” means that it’s laughable.

Laughter is a therapy. When we laugh, our burden feels lighter, and the impossible seems possible. Recently, a friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer. I didn’t send her thoughts and prayers. I sent her a joke a day.

But there’s more. Laughter is a wonderful virus — it’s contagious. When someone near you laughs, you can’t help laughing too. Political cartoonists are revolutionaries, using humor to purposely incite resistance. When we laugh together, laughter becomes excitement; it makes us brave; it propels us to action.

On to the barricades! Hahaha!

A Mexican Marriage: Humor and Revolution

Rafael Barajas Durán, better known as El Fisgón, is a Mexican cartoonist and illustrator. He has co-directed satirical magazines such as El Chahuistle and El Chamuco y los hijos del Averno and is a regular contributor to La Jornada. He also heads Morena’s National Institute of Political Formation.

El Fisgón, Self-Portrait

What is the role of humor in politics?

El Fisgón, The archbishop and president Felipe Calderón

Freud once said people have three responses to extreme situations: violence, sex — and humor. And John Lennon remarked that the people who are most oppressed have the best sense of humor. That makes Mexico a superpower of humor! Humor is a very sophisticated response to oppression. It's a tool of resistance.

Mexico has a long tradition of political humor expressed, among other means, through drawing and cartoon magazines.

Louis-Philippe as Gargantua, Honoré Daumier, 1832. Public domain image

It first arrived in Mexico from a French magazine of caricatures in the mid-19th century, but we developed it uniquely here.

In the 19^th century, cartoon magazines were central to Mexican political debate. They were the vanguard of the liberals' debate against conservatives, a bastion of resistance during the French Intervention and a vital forum for political debate during the restored Republic.

The main defense of radical liberals and socialists during the long dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz was the cartoon magazine El Hijo de Ahuizotl, or, in English, The Son of Ahuizote. The ahuizotl is a mythical people-eating creature from Aztec times, said to have lured humans to their deaths. It can be argued that this magazine was a significant element in preparing the ground for the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century. As a strategy of resistance, Díaz's opponents used mockery and satire — caricaturing terrifying oppressors made them less all-powerful and invincible.

Images allow us to move from abstract to concrete thought, so cartoons are a useful teaching tool. At Chamuco TV — chamuco is someone devilish, mischievous — graphics are important. I don’t just talk, I draw.

José Luis Posada, El Ahuizote, 1901

We have a saying in English: "It only hurts when I laugh!" That describes your humor. "Haha! Ouch!" But humor can range from lighthearted to cruel. What's the line you can't cross?

I bet most of the jokes you know are based on painful situations. See if you can think of ones that aren’t. In Mexico City, after the 1995 earthquake, two things sprouted. Solidarity — and jokes! One circulating joke — some children were playing hide-and-seek in a collapsed area, and one said, “1, 2, 3! I spy my cousin who’s under that pillar!”

Cartoonists at Chamuco TV

Laughing at misfortune gives us relief, but cartooning is an ethical activity. We must show respect for the people. When making cartoons, we mock the oppressor, but not the oppressed. We mock the corrupt, but not their victims.

The powerful don't like being mocked. Throughout our lives, cartoonists at El Chamuco have received threats, and currently, at Chamuco TV, we’ve been sued more than once by the National Action Party (PAN) and others from the right wing. You know you’ve hit a nerve when they try to shut you up!

AMLO was a master at using humor. Claudia has a very different style, doesn't she?

AMLO frequently used humor to confront his opponents and dismantle the multiple smear campaigns mounted against him. The big issue for him during the neoliberal era was government corruption. All of Mexico remembers a 2018 presidential debate, when the right-wing PAN candidate, Ricardo Anaya, took the microphone and approached AMLO in a threatening manner. AMLO stepped back, crossed his arms over his chest in a protective gesture, and said, "Oh, I'd better watch my wallet!"

Sheinbaum says the US should be called "Mexican America" Photo: Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images

His morning press conferences were political theater, and one element was humor. Claudia is calmer, but her sense of humor is sharp. Trump capriciously decided to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. The next day, instead of being indignant, Claudia showed an ancient map on which, above what is now the United States, was written: “América Mexicana,” and she proposed that, for historical reasons, North America be renamed Mexican America. “That sounds nice, no?” She made Trump look ridiculous.

Humor is a mechanism of resistance, both personal and social. And when used extensively, it becomes a culture. Authoritarian leaders instill fear. The task of resistance, then, is to overcome fear. El Hijo del Ahuizotl taught us that the first step to overthrowing a tyranny is to belittle the tyrants.

You say cartoons are an educational tool. So, is political education your personal goal? Is that why you head Morena's National Institute for Political Training?

Tell them not to worry, say that THE TRUTH IS IRRELEVANT.

The 4th transformation wouldn’t have happened without political education. In fact, that’s the origin of any political transformation. Preceding the American, French, Mexican and Haitian revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries — which replaced monarchies with republican forms of government — were critical debates. They first took place in Freemasonry circles.

Great discussions also preceded the liberal revolutions occurring between 1830 and 1848. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Marxists and anarchists transformed people's consciousness primarily through study circles. Every process of transformation must first achieve the "massification" of a new consciousness, a revolution of consciousness. This massification always begins in small groups and spreads unevenly until it becomes unstoppable.

In Morena we have a saying, “Sin formación, no hay transformación.” “Without education, there is no transformation.” It sounds better in Spanish!

El Fisgón: How to survive neoliberalism and still be Mexican

In the new political context of Trump acting like Tyrannosaurus Rex —the tyrant king! — what can US progressives do to defend the 4th Transformation and Mexican sovereignty?

So far, Claudia has defended Mexico with great poise against Trump's attacks. However, the threat’s not over, and we need two things from our US comrades. One is solidarity. The slogan of the French revolution was liberté, égalité, fraternité, freedom, equality — and fraternity — between peoples. When ICE comes for our brothers and sisters, what will we do but defend them? Across the globe, capital creates economic ties between companies, but we, the people, organize ourselves by building bonds of trust. Migrants must know their allies support them.

Mexico has always been a land of asylum. During the McCarthy era of anti-communist hysteria in the US, many Americans on police lists or blacklists came to Mexico, where they found protection, friendship and work. That is the kind of solidarity that Mexican migrants working in the United States today require.

Second, we need massive protests within the United States against Trump, and we’ve already seen many. We see a lot of humor in these demonstrations. That means the resistance is moving forward!

A. Hunter, Mexican Standoff: Washington Times

The Trump Doctrine

Mexico City-based freelance writer and photojournalist José Luis Granados Ceja is a staff writer with Venezuelanalysis and co-hosts the podcast Soberanía and current affairs program Sin Muros. Follow him on X @granadosceja.

President Donald Trump has dramatically reshaped how the United States (US) exercises its soft power, which is Washington’s ability to influence other nations through persuasion rather than coercion or force.

With cuts to foreign aid programs and withdrawals from international agreements, he appears to be shifting away from the traditional diplomacy and global engagement practiced by previous Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

But it would be incorrect to assume that just because of Trump’s nationalist tendencies, he’s shifting to a retreat from US involvement in global affairs. Rather, he’s merely changing his strategy, intending to maintain US hegemony and imperialist dominance by other means.

His strategic shift forms a part of the Trump Doctrine that includes skepticism about multilateral institutions, wielding economic leverage like tariffs to achieve foreign policy goals and a transactional approach to diplomacy, driven by an “America First” perspective that places US interests above all.

The trouble with Trump and his transactional diplomacy for countries around the world is that the US president brazenly lies.

Drop Site News recently reported how the US pulled a fast one on the Palestinian people. The Trump administration envoy Steve Witkoff promised Hamas that in exchange for releasing US-Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, the US would compel Israel to lift the Gaza blockade and initiate a ceasefire.

According to Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, the US immediately broke the deal following Alexander's release. Instead, on May 18, Israel commenced airstrikes and its largest ground offensive in Gaza since March.

This is only the latest example of Trump brazenly lying as part of his so-called transnational diplomacy efforts.

In early 2025, US envoy Richard Grenell negotiated an agreement with Venezuela to resume deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants from the US to Venezuela. The deal also called for releasing six imprisoned US nationals.

However, this agreement unraveled when the Trump administration revoked Chevron’s (the oil and gas company) license to operate in Venezuela. This new economic sanction prompted the Maduro government to halt the deportation flights in protest.

Trump is able to get away with false promises because the US government has a bipartisan imperialist consensus: any demonized government or organization, like Venezuela or Hamas, does not deserve honest and good faith negotiations.

Worse still, despite their distrust of Trump, negotiators from other countries find themselves forced back to the table. Palestinians and their political representatives will surely find themselves negotiating again with the US when they seek some reprieve from the Zionist entity’s genocidal campaign.

In the case of Venezuela, the Maduro government has already reestablished deportation flights with the US.

This is the Trump Doctrine: send envoys, promise anything to get a deal, and break the deal as soon as he gets his way. The US has never been a trustworthy partner, but Trump’s shameless penchant for dishonesty descends to a new low — every country should take nothing his representatives say across the table as reliable.

It’s vital for the Mexican government to understand the central role of this dishonesty in Trump’s approach to foreign policy. Perhaps no other country, save Canada, is as exposed by Trump’s lies as is Mexico, given its proximity and reliance on commerce with the US.

President Claudia Sheinbaum has delivered a master class in managing Trump thus far. She negotiated her way out of tariffs on Mexican goods on several occasions. But with 2026 USMCA negotiations right around the corner, she may need to deploy the Plan B she undoubtedly has in her pocket, given that Trump is capricious, willful, and untrustworthy.

Hawks inside the Trump administration are champing at the bit to engage in unilateral military action inside Mexico. Trump’s use of “soft power” has the threat of “hard power” behind it, kept on a short leash. More than ever, Mexico should orient its foreign policy away from the unreliable US and look instead to the Global South.

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For a deeper dive into current news and analysis in English,

check out our media website and the podcast ¡Soberanía! (Sovereignty) with José Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth.

New episodes will now arrive weekly on Wednesdays, not Tuesdays.

Sin Muros from José Luis and Kurt is a weekly Spanish language Mexican TV show on Canal Once that analyzes Mexico-US relations. It's also on YouTube, with English subtitles.

And those of you with mad skills and/or interests we want to hear from you! Get in touch to find ways to plug in to the work. Drop a line to meizhului@gmail.com.

Recent news reports and commentaries, from progressive and mainstream media,
on life and struggles on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Compiled by Jay Watts.

The Remittance Tax is Highly Discriminatory: President Sheinbaum Telesur. The proposed 5% tax would also violate the U.S.-Mexico Double Taxation Treaty in effect since 1994.

Detienen a exjueza acusada de participar en desaparición de 43 normalistas de Ayotzinapa Telesur. Abogados de las madres y familiares de los estudiantes, presentaron hace varios años una acusación contra la exmagistrada Lambertina Galeana, por ocultar los vídeos.

Mexican security chief confirms cartel family members entered US in a deal with Trump administration Associated Press. He said that none of the family members were being pursued by Mexican authorities and that the government of U.S. President Donald Trump “has to share information” with Mexican prosecutors, something it has not yet done.

Jorge Ricardo, Rechaza CNTE aumento; emplaza a Sheinbaum a reunión Reforma. La CNTE rechazó el aumento del 9 por ciento y una semana más de vacaciones anunciado por la Presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum para el magisterio y exigió una reunión para insistir en su demanda de la derogación de la reforma a la Ley del ISSSTE de 2007 y recuperar sus jubilaciones con el 100 por ciento de su sueldo.

Salvador Rivera, 15 factories in Tijuana ‘trying out’ 40-hour work week WJTV. Mexicans work some of the longest hours in the world, Sheinbaum has announced a gradual (too long) reduction to 40 hours (still too long) by 2030.

Zósimo Camacho, ¿Por qué México no contrademanda a EU por el maíz transgénico? Luces Del Siglo. Mientras Washington ejerce presión comercial sin miramientos, México parece actuar con una diplomacia excesivamente cautelosa, incluso cuando tiene herramientas legales para exigir indemnizaciones por posibles violaciones al T-MEC.

Sheinbaum announces 10% pay increase for teachers as unions march in Mexico City MND.

“We have no option but to strike, because seven years of talks with this administration and the previous one have failed to satisfy our concerns about our pension plan,” Yenny Pérez, leader of the CNTE union in Oaxaca, said.

Viri Ríos, ¿Por qué el empresario está entusiasta? Milenio. El entusiasmo empresarial no es ingenuo. Es realista. Proviene generaciones de entender los irreductibles del capitalismo de cuates mexicano. Y la cobardía de Morena por confrontarlo.

Uruguay's Mujica Was 'Example For Latin America And The Entire World': Sheinbaum Barron’s. Sheinbaum said Mujica, an icon of the Latin American left who died of cancer aged 89, was a model of "wisdom, thought and simplicity."

Claudia confirma que se retirará concesión de Parque Bicentenario; lo operará Cultura Sin Embargo. La decisión se tomó luego de la muerte de dos fotoperiodistas en el festival AXE Ceremonia, donde además los asistentes reportaron deficiencias en la logística y medidas de protección civil.

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice. We see the 2018 election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of Mexico 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 Mexico’s national sovereignty.

Editorial committee: Meizhu Lui, Bruce Hobson, Agatha Hinman, Victoria Hamlin, Courtney Childs, Pedro Gellert. To give feedback or get involved yourself, please email us!

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