The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

Online at mexicosolidarityproject.org

September 20, 2023/ This week's issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

In one of Marge Piercy’s most beloved poems, To Be of Use, she writes: “The pitcher cries for water to carry/and a person for work that is real.”  In a world where people labor for less and less to create more and more for those who already have too much, "work that is real has become elusive".

Work becomes a source of stress, frustration and anger when our employers treat us like just another production input rather than as human beings with intelligence, skills, family lives — and the need to occasionally use the bathroom.

But there is another kind of work that we willingly do — and without pay. A friend who worked for a construction company counted the years toward retirement, when he could finally volunteer with Habitat for Humanity and build houses for the poor. Work we do alongside others with a common purpose satisfies. We long to be of use.In this week’s interview, farmer, farmworker and organizer Rosalinda Guillen names good work: it involves love for the work you do.  Farmers love working in sync with nature and nurturing the plants that people need for healthy sustenance. But that love of working on the land turns to hate when, as farm workers, they are forced to cause harm to the earth, to themselves, and to others through backbreaking methods of work, denial of their knowledge, toxic fertilizers and pesticides in the air and on the produce.

Farmers and workers in México and worldwide are crying out against those who would deny us this simple daily joy:  the joy of doing work that is real.

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Farm Workers Know What Agribusiness Doesn't

Your ancestors farmed their own land in Texas when Texas still belonged to México. How did they lose their land?

I come from generations of farmers. My father, Jesus Guillen, never talked about how we lost the land, so I don’t know. It must have been a painful story. He was a positive person, and once we settled in Washington state, he never looked back. But I was taught that I had to behave differently with white people, that you have to be careful until you know which ones can be trusted. That gave me a clue!

You picked strawberries, and you say that your father told you to sit with the earth before the sun comes up and work starts, to just feel it and smell it. That really speaks to his love of the land and farming.

Like so many of us who come from a farming tradition, I am a person of the land. I loved picking strawberries. In the fields, you can feel beauty everywhere.

But no one documented what was happening. If you went to a doctor, they didn’t say what caused the sickness, they didn’t collect data. Without data, a problem doesn’t exist! Farm work has become so dangerous and exploitative that workers now hate what they once loved. The agriculture industry has beaten the desire to connect to the land out of us. We get chewed up and spit out. Today farmworkers in the US have an average lifespan of just 49!

So you see working with the earth as vastly different from working on the earth. Would that difference explain why you organize not just for farmworker labor rights, but also for food and environmental justice? 

I don’t see these goals as separate. Yes, we fight sexual harassment on the job, lack of health care, retaliatory firings, overtime benefits — and all that requires unionization. But we also want to give workers a taste of a completely different way to organize work, to use their skills doing what they love to do.

What would it feel like to make decisions about your work without a white boss over you? We started a 65-acre worker-owned coop to answer that question. On this farm, workers collectively decide how many baskets of fruit each worker should pick. But when to start working, when to take a break, how fast to pick — that’s up to the worker. People brought into the co-op soon become amazed at how different the work feels. They can begin to imagine a whole society where power is distributed among the people and hard work becomes valued labor.

When you grow a non-native crop in an area simply because that crop could be profitable, you have to abuse the land to force it to produce. You have to add chemical “amendments” to the soil. That depletes the soil and requires even more chemicals.

Those of us who work the land feel environmental justice as a lived experience. We understand that the land’s health determines the health of all the living things on it, not just people. Not protecting innocent species on the lands we work will always be the greatest selfish act.

Food justice calls out inequities and racism in the food system. No one should have to feed themselves with food produced through the exploitation of humans, innocent creatures, or through the poisoning and abuse of Mother Earth.

You started Community to Community — C2C — to change rural living conditions. The organization has intentionally chosen women of color for leadership. Why?

At C2C we use consensus, rather than hierarchical, decision making. People who take part in a decision will carry out the plan decided upon and produce results. When women lead, we succeed.

But you don’t call C2C a women’s empowerment project. Why not?

We don’t “develop” leaders, women are leaders. It’s just that they have always been behind the scenes, leading from behind. And they don’t need to be “empowered,” they have the power. We provide safe spaces for analysis and alternatives, so that together we find the openings that can help us channel that creative power into movement building. And with the evolving concept of eco-feminism, we also learn respect not just for women and men, but for trans, LGBTQ, gender fluidity. Staying connected to Mother Earth grounds us. We say we are making the road by walking together!

The Political Phenomenon that Wasn’t

Renata Turrent is an expert in public policy, and is presently subdirector of the online magazine Sentido Común (Common Sense). She has collaborated with other public and private media. Renata is professor of economic development and an economics postgraduate at the National Autonomous University in México City (UNAM). 

The right wing parties have tried to impose a false narrative about their presidential candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez. They paint her as a charismatic indigenous self-made business woman who has not been involved in corruption —  as a fighter against corruption. However, her popularity has not risen and her corruption scandals have started to surface.

The percent of people who recognize Gálvez' name has been stagnant at 50% since AMLO stopped criticizing her in his morning briefings, his mañaneras. She made him stop talking about her by taking legal action, but this strategy backfired. Now she throws darts almost daily to see if she can get back into the president’s mouth and then portray herself as a victim.

(green = good, red = bad, dotted = neutral

Morena’s candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, leads Xóchitl Gálvez by 25 points. Gálvez represents the alliance of the PRI, PAN, and PR. Even without a multi-party alliance, polls show that people prefer Morena by more than 300% over the second-place party, Gálvez’ party, the PAN.

And yet, some people on the right still cling to the narrative of the “Xóchitl phenomenon.” It seems that the opposition has not understood that the Mexican People have woken up. They have learned to be careful observers of what politicians and parties do.

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

E.D. Cauchi, Mexican drug cartels pay Americans to smuggle weapons across the border, intelligence documents show CBS News. The American government has known this for years but, sources said, it's done little to stop these weapons trafficking networks.

México ampliará un año más convenio con Cuba para recibir médicos Telesur. Han realizado 665.194 consultas, 42.600 ultrasonidos, 38.600 sesiones de diálisis, 23.492 cirugías, 3.212 estudios, 1.983 partos, 891 cesáreas, y 592 endoscopías.

The FAA has returned Mexico’s aviation safety rating to Category I Federal Aviation Administration. Mexico can add new service and routes to the U.S., and U.S. airlines can resume marketing and selling tickets with their names and designator codes on Mexican-operated flights.

Angelica Ferrer, De Toluca a la Ciudad de México: este es el nuevo tren interurbano "El Insurgente" Sputnik. Durante septiembre, el servicio será gratuito y desde octubre próximo hasta junio de 2024 la tarifa será de 15 pesos sin importar la distancia que los pasajeros recorran.

Carin Zissis, LatAm in Focus: How Women Won Political Parity in Mexico—and What Comes Next AS/COA. Although Mexico achieved gender parity in its legislature and ranks fourth worldwide in terms of women’s parliamentary representation, femicide rates and persistent economic inequality in Mexico have sparked a resurgent women’s movement.

Daniela Barragán García, Xóchitl alienta sospechas sobre su comportamiento ético: historia de dos propiedades Sin Embargo. La hoy aspirante presidencial del PRI, PAN y PRD, guarda en dos casas promesas incumplidas y permisos otorgados bajo su administración en la Delegación Miguel Hidalgo.

Gram Slattery, Americans broadly support military strikes in Mexico, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds Reuters. When asked if the United States should do so without the permission of the Mexican government, however, 59% of poll respondents opposed unilateral action.

Alina Herrera Fuentes, Falsas disputas sobre el Sistema Nacional de Cuidados Sentido Común. En palabras de Nadine Gasman, la directora del Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres, lograr un Sistema Nacional de Cuidados será “una revolución, que va a impactar la vida de todo el mundo.”

Mexico’s disadvantaged south is now leading in economic growth Mexico News Daily.  The Banxico data is very encouraging for a region that includes Mexico’s poorest and least developed states.

Antonio Gershenson, Un nuevo Ejército, un nuevo desfile La Jornada. Por una buena razón, no hemos visto desfilar en nuestros festejos del 16 de septiembre alguna representación del ejército de Estados Unidos. Más bien, desearían hacer presencia militar en nuestro país por otros motivos nada amables.

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

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