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March 20, 2024/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Ending Machismo Benefits Men Too

The only death we want is that of patriarchy; Santiago, Chile/ AFP PHOTO / CLAUDIO REYES

If women lack a voice, it’s not because we don’t have one. If we’re not making policy, it’s not for lack of leading ideas. If we lack rights, it’s not that we don’t deserve them. It’s that men don’t allow it.

Men have a big advantage over women: their experience using violence to get their way. From the early days of humankind, men learned to kill animals for food and to kill men from other tribes to expand their hunting grounds. 

As Rafael Barajas/El Fisgón tells us, for women to take their rightful place alongside men — not behind them or under them — it’s men that need to change. They need to confront their own violent behavior. They need to understand machismo not as something to be proud of but as something that harms others and themselves. 

Easier said than done! The attitudes and daily habits — the norms of society embedded in Mexico’s culture at least since the Spanish conquest — are in the air everyone breathes. As Fisgón says, for too many, machismo feels natural and defines what it means to be a Mexican man. 

But women in and out of Morena, the party now governing Mexico, are making gains. They’re making gender parity the new normal, expanding reproductive rights, and demanding an end to femicide. Women resist and insist: hear our voices, experience our leadership, tap our power. Men, as much as women, gain from ending violence — and from doubling a nation’s potential. 

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Rafael Barajas Talks About Masculinity

For International Women’s Day, the online news source Common Sense (Sentido Común) interviewed El Fisgón in Spanish. Denys Vigil provided the translation, and we edited the interview for brevity. 

Sentido Común: In Mexico, we have contention about the machismo — hegemonic masculinity — embedded in our culture. How should that be understood from the left?

El Fisgón:  For one thing, we men have to understand that patriarchy also hurts us. It’s incredible how easily we men have reproduced patriarchal violence as if it were something natural, as if it were a dictate of nature.

You can’t explain the frequency of femicides apart from the sexist culture of machismo. It is the germ of all the femicides occurring in this country.

During various periods of our history, our national identity was connected with machismo. He who is not macho is not Mexican. He who is not macho is a traitor to the country. Being gay is a betrayal of men, and therefore, of the country and even of humanity. Our catalog of insults is deeply sexist: “son of a bad mother,” “homosexual,” “not man enough,” “cuckold.” All this has justified so much violence.

Politics? I’m convinced that in Mexico, this figure of the all-powerful political being who can afford all the luxuries and is permitted outbursts of anger and violence has to do with that sexist logic. It came to be considered normal for a congressman to carry a gun because he has political power, because he can. This sexist logic justifies the total submission not only of women but of all men who aren’t among the “alpha males.”

These men, who hated their fathers so much for the violence they committed against their mothers, in turn reproduced that violence themselves. That is, they had no idea of any other way of behaving. You have to understand that ending machismo is a cultural battle of the first order. And there is nothing more difficult than changing people's habits, customs, and traditions. 

The 4T is the only electoral political movement with a sector of organized feminists. What have they accomplished?

Obviously, a feminist sector exists both inside and outside Morena, but the feminist sector within has done a fantastic job. I’m struck by how feminist groups outside Morena deny the merits of this group. Sometimes it’s mentioned that it’s thanks to the outside feminist movement that abortion was decriminalized in several states. It’s ignored that the majority of those who promoted and voted for these initiatives were in the Morena feminist group.

Morena’s project of Political Training for a Revolution in Consciousness has promoted an initiative — courses on “masculinities in transition.” Throughout history, we’ve never encountered a privileged group that agrees to give up their privileges, which is why most revolutions occurring on the planet have been violent. And yet today, we see an awareness in a new generation of young people who say: “What we are doing is wrong, let's review what we are doing.” 

More than three thousand colleagues have taken this course on “masculinities in transition,” and almost two thousand registered in the last registration. The first step to change is awareness that you want to change. Important transformations require a huge effort, and they don’t happen suddenly, but slowly. It will be a very complicated and probably painful process, full of contradictions, but we’re going to achieve it.

“For the good of all, the poor first?” as AMLO declared?

The poorest of the poor are women, so of course, the poorest first.

Morena’s first six-year term has brought progress on women’s rights and equality, despite people saying, “No, Andrés Manuel is not a feminist.” But before AMLO and Morena, we never had a cabinet with gender parity, and we never had a congress with parity. Do you think that happened naturally? Of course not, it has been the result of political will.

(L-R) Cabinet members Luisa Maria Alcalde, Rocio Nahle, Irma Sandoval, Olga Maria del Carmen Sanchez.

Photo: Facebook/Twitter/plumas libre

When we look at the quality of the civil servants in this administration, when we analyze who the best officials of the 4T are, you’ll see that the majority are women: Rocío Nahle, Raquel Buenrostro, Ernestina Godoy, Claudia Sheinbaum, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, and the female governors. One wonders how much talent we’ve lost because of machismo, how much intelligence we despise because of machismo.

That is to say, how stupid machismo is, how barbaric! The damage that patriarchy has done!

Shoot to Kill: Arizona Targets Migrants

The face of fascism in the United States is becoming more ominous and more obvious. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised to create a network of concentration camps along the US-Mexico border as part of his plan to deport the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the US.

Arizona — with a Chicano-Mexicano community of more than 2 million, or 25% of the state population — jumped to the forefront of this racist and neo-fascist right-wing movement with two horrendous legislative proposals. One bill would make the immigration of undocumented persons a state crime, bypassing federal judicial processes and authorizing local and state police to enforce federal immigration law. An even more vicious bill now advancing in the Arizona Legislature would empower a property owner with the “right” to kill or threaten to kill people who come across the Mexican border without papers, and who cross their property to enter the US. You read that right! This would create a legal “open season” on migrants.   

The bill hasn’t passed yet, but the bullets are already flying. Next month, Arizona rancher George Kelly faces trial on second-degree murder charges in the January 2023 shooting death of Gabriel Cuen-Butimea, an undocumented migrant, who was found dead on Kelly's property. Under the proposed new law, Kelly would face no charges for what he did.

This outrageous “shoot to kill” law is very much in sync with the long US tradition of legalized vigilante terror against people of color, a tradition starting in the 1600’s when the first British colonizers came to the US. The colonizers began the systematic dispossession and murder of Indigenous peoples and established monetary rewards for the bounty-hunters who produced the scalps of Indigenous victims, including men, women, and children. 

Later, these settlers’ descendants established chattel slavery and created armed death squads to pursue and kill Africans who escaped the slave labor plantations. After the US annexed Mexico’s northern territories, it expanded the genocidal war against Indigenous peoples, but now added the conquered Mexican population to their shameful list of victims. An estimated 5000 Mexicanos were shot or lynched by Texas Rangers as a part of the massive land theft following annexation.

The proposed Arizona laws show us the ugly face of the brutal white supremacist movement seeking to take power at the state and federal levels. And it reminds us of how critical it is for the Chicano Movement in the US (as well as others) to unite with Mexico’s growing social movements to beat back this fascist tide and achieve a humane immigration policy in the US — one that welcomes and supports our brothers and sisters who seek refuge and asylum from violence and poverty.

Si Se Puede!

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.

David Raby, Mexico opposition plots judicial coup as dirty tricks campaign fails Morning Star. With an electoral wipeout at the hands of the progressive Claudia Sheinbaum looming, right-wing forces are spending millions on slander and manipulation to discredit AMLO’s ‘4T Transformation’ agenda.

Enrique Méndez, Ultra derecha extranjera busca influir en elecciones de México: Sheinbaum La Jornada. La candidata presidencial de la coalición Sigamos Haciendo Historia, Claudia Sheinbaum, afirmó que “sí hay intención” de la ultra derecha de otros países de influir en las elecciones de México, pero “no les va a funcionar aunque el PRIAN busque voceros en España porque los de Xóchitl Gálvez aquí están desacreditados.

Timothy Wise, Mexico defends GM corn restrictions with science IATP. Ever since Mexico first announced its intentions to limit GM corn and glyphosate in its tortilla chain, the U.S. government has asserted that Mexico’s policies are not based on science. Mexico’s comprehensive response refutes that claim, presenting hundreds of academic studies that show cause for concern about human health and the threat to native corn diversity.

Timothy Wise, México defiende con ciencia las restricciones al maíz transgénico IATP. Desde que México anunció por primera vez sus intenciones de limitar el maíz transgénico y el glifosato en su cadena de tortillas, el gobierno estadounidense ha afirmado que las políticas de México no se basan en la ciencia. Esta respuesta exhaustiva refuta esa afirmación, presentando cientos de estudios académicos que muestran motivos de preocupación sobre la salud humana y la amenaza a la diversidad del maíz nativo.

Kent Patterson, AMLO and the Third Rail of Mexican Politics Counterpunch. “There are no solitary national solutions in leaving behind neoliberalism. The frameworks of treaties with other countries that grant transnational businesses the most powerful tools to overwhelm us and limit our sovereignty must be confronted.”

Francisco Javier Soto, Salinas Pliego con Total Play, ha evadido impuestos durante 9 años con deducciones fiscales: AMLO Sentido Común. Al odioso ultraderechista, famoso por las concesiones y privilegios que le otorgaron gobiernos corruptos anteriores, el gobierno mexicano le expropió esta semana su campo de golf en Oaxaca, que lo convertirá en un parque natural.

Mexico’s Health Care Will Soon be Totally Free Prensa Latina. President AMLO reiterated that before the end of his presidential term in September of this year, the transformation of the sector will be fully completed and public health care in Mexico will be totally free, as well as medicines, all specialties will be covered and hospitals will be open 24 hours a day and every day, not only on working days.

Jorge Rodríguez, Xóchitl Gálvez, un peligro para México Sentido Común. Ante el reciente éxito electoral de Nayib Bukele (quien sí cambió la constitución de El Salvador para poder reelegirse), era obvio que los asesores de Xóchitl Gálvez harían del populismo punitivo su eje discursivo.

General Motors' Mexico unit agrees to 9.2% wage hike -union Reuters. The agreement was reached on Tuesday, according to the statement, and also includes increases to the savings fund and food vouchers.

Epigmenio Ibarra, Una nueva conjura de las élites Milenio. Consciente de su propia soberanía, este pueblo que ha dejado de ser la arcilla que moldeaban a su antojo, no caerá en la trampa, expresará libremente su voluntad en las urnas y defenderá su voto y la democracia por la que tanto ha luchado.

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, Susan Weiss.  To give feedback or get involved yourself, please email us!

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