The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

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October 26, 2022/ This week’s issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Firestorm in LA: Racism Redraws the Lines

California has been running extra hot and dry these days, and now a political firestorm has erupted in Los Angeles, destroying careers that took decades to build and rearranging the local political landscape.

That firestorm erupted after the leak of a private conversation between four high-ranking Mexican@ leaders that used extreme racist language to belittle Blacks, Indigenous Oaxacans who live in LA’s Koreatown, Jews, and Armenians. No one — except whites — escaped the vulgar vitriol. The subsequent explosion of outrage reached all the way to the White House. Joe Biden called on all four to resign.

Most all the attention has so far focused on the taped conversation’s racism. But we shouldn’t overlook what the conversation happened to be all about: a move to gerrymander existing electoral districts mainly at the expense of current Black districts. We usually associate gerrymandering with election-manipulating white Republicans. Here, by contrast, we had Latin@ Democrats plotting not just racist dirty deeds, but deeds deeply anti-democratic.

In the wake of this scandal, who’s now going to get the votes of the many folks of Mexican origin and descent who live in LA? Even without gerrymandering, veteran political activist Valentin Ramirez notes in our interview this week, this firestorm may have altered the lines that determine how people cast their ballots.

The most lasting lesson from this entire episode? You can’t count on your own “kind” to have your back. Just because candidates hail from where you do doesn’t mean they’ll adequately represent you. LA politicians can no longer automatically take for granted loyalty due to national or racial identification. Who really feels your pain? Who will alleviate it? Your answer will be the name where you should mark your x.

And if a new alliance of those on the margins should take hold, the marginalized will be able to do more than oust those who call for that loyalty and then betray their trust. They’ll be able to take down the white establishment figures who’ve been watching the firestorm, as usual, well outside a safe and sound distance.

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LA’s Mexican Communities: Division and Unity

I’m indigenous myself, and she called us “little short dark people. Very ugly.” In México, indigenous people are victims of racism, and then we come to the US and we face the same problem. 

I’ve organized many fiestas and cultural events with Oaxacans, but we’ve never had a demonstration. Why? Most of us are immigrants, with many undocumented who have to be careful. Our undocumented drive to work because they have to, but they think twice before they take a risk driving to a park or to go anywhere just for fun.

Adult Oaxacans spend their time trying to make a little money to support their families, both here and back home. They clean houses, work in hotels, do the hardest jobs. They focus on daily life: the high cost of rent, poor services in the barrios, safety for their kids. They don’t go to marches, even when a march calls for changes to the immigration laws. And they tell their kids, just work hard, go to school, keep quiet.

So I thought that any march against Nury would draw mostly Blacks, union members, the people used to demonstrating. But I got a surprise. Some 95 percent of the demonstrators turned out to be Oaxacan! And they came from San Diego, Bakersfield, Fresno, Santa Barbara, not just LA. People were so mad!

Some politicians wanted to speak, but we said no, this isn’t about campaigning. Only the communities will speak. And in our culture we have many organizations working together. We agreed that people from the Black, Korean, and Oaxacan communities would be our speakers.

Photo: Valentin Ramirez speaking at the demonstration, LA Times

Some say that LA City Council members Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León should not resign, because that would weaken Latino representation.

LA had four Latino city councilors out of 15, and, yes, if 3 resign that will leave one. But if they insult us, how do they represent us? Some say that they have done some good things, like raising the minimum wage and getting financial help for workers during COVID. But we say, “OK, thank you for what you did, but you must resign — and then prove yourselves again if you want our support.”

Latinos make up 48 percent of LA, with 9 percent Black and 12 percent Asian. The only winners from this mess? The whites who control LA, even though they make up only 30 percent of the city.

Is this incident causing a split among Angelenos of Mexican descent?

We have Mexicanos with lighter skin who identify with whites. People like Nury got a degree, they live in a nice house, they have a nice car, they don’t relate to the workers that live in the barrios in Koreatown, those who make up the majority of Mexicans in LA. Why don’t we have nice playgrounds, clean bathrooms, safe streets like the white neighborhoods where they live? So, yes, this incident didn’t cause a split, it showed the divide between those who’ve made it and those trying to make it. 

Blacks and Koreans also turned out for the march. Do you see new possibilities for allying with them?

We already work together at our jobs in the hotels. We live near each other, We share the same hardships, so it’s not hard to work together politically. 

We don’t want a city run by wealthy white people or those who try to divide Black against Latino

AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu

We need leaders who don’t just want our vote to get a position for their own advancement. We need the community to advance in return for our support. With this racist incident, we now have something to unite and mobilize around. Together we’ll get people on the City Council who’ll work for us.

As an organizer, I always invite everybody. It doesn’t matter where you were born, it doesn’t matter the color of your skin. We’re fighting for our dignity and respect, our right to what others in our cities have.

The Elite Capture of Our ‘Democracy’

We’re now seeing a determined effort to foment a “New Cold War,” with part of the strategy an attempt to divide the world’s governments into two camps: democracies and autocracies. Imperialist countries have invariably anointed themselves with the authority to judge which countries get to be considered democracies. Those nations that don’t abide by the dictates of Washington get labeled autocracies and face punishing consequences.

The latest salvo in the effort to paint AMLO and his movement as “authoritarian” for the “crime” of asserting the right of nations to self-determination and sovereignty has come from right-wing Mexican political commentator Denise Dresser, in a piece for the influential US journal Foreign Affairs entitled “Mexico’s Dying Democracy.”

The piece suffers from the usual pitfalls of such articles: distortions, dubious arguments, even fake quotes. Dresser makes a deliberate effort to associate AMLO with Trump, even attributing the phrase “make México great again” to AMLO, who never used those words. Many of her claims — that AMLO, for instance, “tolerates criminality and violence to justify the militarization of the country” — should have never made it past an editor.

Dresser, one of the most widely heard voices inside México, firmly defends México's economic elites and the status quo that serves them. She and those elites define democracy as service to ruling class interests. One vivid example: Dresser depicts AMLO’s efforts to restore a prominent role for the state in the energy sector as an attempt to pick “public fights with President Joe Biden.” Europeans these days are learning that the absence of the energy sovereignty AMLO seeks, the lack of control over energy resources, can spell disaster for public budgets and political stability.

AMLO believes México can and must assert its sovereignty to democratically determine national resource policies. Dresser seems to support US efforts to intervene in Mexican domestic affairs. What she calls “trade battles” are actually political fights. She laments AMLO’s rejection of free trade orthodoxy, ignoring facts that show that 30-plus years of economic liberalization have failed to deliver the much-promised reductions in poverty.

Dresser also scorns AMLO’s experiments with direct democracy. She stubbornly clings to neoliberal doctrine and reduces democracy to an act of voting once every few years, leaving decisions regarding the distribution of wealth to the “free market” and the whims of technocrats.

Earlier this month, Dresser got a taste of what democracy truly looks like after she was jeered during a march to commemorate the Tlatelolco Massacre of pro-democracy students in 1968. She eventually left the main public plaza in México City untouched and unharmed. Dresser’s friends in the media quickly jumped on the incident. They claimed her expulsion resulted from AMLO’s anti-democratic “polarization” and blasted students for “acts of intimidation.”   

But no one is silencing Dresser. Her positions and allegiance to the political parties of the ancien régime make her unwelcome in certain spaces. Her expulsion from the plaza should be understood as a profoundly democratic act. Dresser has ample space on TV and in newspapers. The streets belong to the movements.

Recent news reports and commentaries, from progressive and mainstream media,

on life and struggles on both sides of the US-México border

Carmakers report ‘extraordinary’ jump in production and exports as Mexico becomes top exporter of cars to US, México News Daily. GM, the No. 1 manufacturer and exporter of Mexican-made vehicles in September, has plants in México state, Guanajuato, Coahuila, and San Luis Potosí.

Fabrizio Mejía Madrid, Adiós, PRI, SinEmbargo. Al final, el sepelio del PRI fue fiel a sus últimas tres décadas: la nostalgia de cuando construyeron carreteras y presas, pero su realidad de una modernización que se hizo sobre la misma red de intereses de siempre.

Kim Diaz, The condition that Claudia Sheinbaum set for F1 to continue coming to México City, NewsTrace. The mayor welcomes Grand Prix auto racing in the capital, so long as public funds are not subsidizing the action.

María Fernanda Navarro, Venta de viviendas: imán de extranjeros, expulsor de locales, Indigo. La pandemia impulsó la llegada de personas de distintas nacionalidades a la capital del país, quienes aprovecharon diversos factores como el trabajo a distancia para asentarse en México y sacar ventaja de la fuerza que tienen sus monedas en comparación con el peso.

Andrew Rudman, The Changing Threshold of North American Supply Chains, Wilson Quarterly. AMLO continues to assert that USMCA permits Mexico to retain the right to manage its natural resources and insists that the trade relationship with the United States cannot come “at the cost of our dignity.”

Encuesta MetricsMX: Guanajuato se pintaría de guinda con Ricardo Sheffield a la cabeza, SDPnoticias. Ricardo Sheffield podría hacer que Guanajuato pase a Morena. Guanajuato es el 6º estado que mayores exportaciones genera de todo México.

AMLO Offers Mexican Govt. Help to Venezuelans Arriving From US, teleSUR. Says Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador: “We cannot turn our backs on those who suffer, Mexico is a fraternal country.”

Tlaxcala: normalistas denuncian represión policiaca; hay 30 heridos, La Jornada. Integrantes del Comité Estudiantil Ernesto Che Guevara de la Normal Rural Benito Juárez, ubicada en el municipio de Panotla, dieron a conocer que ellas y alumnos de la normal de Ayotzinapa que las apoyan fueron reprimidos ayer con gas lacrimógeno y balas de goma por elementos de la Secretaría de Seguridad Ciudadana estatal.

Sam Garcia, How Texas’s gun laws allow Mexican cartels to arm themselves to the teeth, Guardian. Loose gun laws allow cartels to drive to any Texas gun shop and stockpile guns.

Gloria Reza M., Doñán y Muriá apoyan la crítica contra AMLO de Poniatowska, Proceso. Consideraron que la observación de la escritora, una partidaria confesa de López Obrador,se debe tomar seriamente en cuenta, ya que el presupuesto para la Cultura no es prioridad para el actual gobierno federal. 

The México 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, Steven Hollis. To give feedback or get involved yourself, please email us!

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