#title A talk on the book *Radical Lefts in Mexico*
#date 2023
#source <[[https://archive.org/details/izquierdas-radicales-en-mexico][www.archive.org/details/izquierdas-radicales-en-mexico]]>
#lang en
#pubdate 2026-11-11T00:39:26
#topics anarchism, Mexico,
#notes The book being discussed covered in part Ted Kaczynski and Ted’s fans in Mexico: [[https://www.penguinlibros.com/es/tematicas/324154-ebook-izquierdas-radicales-en-mexico-9786073829328/fragmento][Izquierdas Radicales En Mexico]]. This discussion doesn’t mention Ted or Ted’s fans, though it does mention insurrectionary and individualist anarchists that are relevant to the story of Ted’s fans in Mexico.

<strong>Juan Carlos Ortega Prado:</strong> Welcome, thank you for being here, for your patience, and it will be a pleasure.

It will be a pleasure to have this conversation disguised as a book presentation.

What we really want this to be is a chat, a conversation, a listening session, building something together from the ideas in this book, but also from our own ideas, experiences, and life stories.

What do we all have? I am Juan Carlos Ortega Prado, editor of *Debate and Current Affairs* at Grijalbo, and therefore the editor of this book, which makes me deeply happy.

I am very happy because of what this book has meant and continues to mean in terms of opening up debate, in terms of reflecting on our political position, in terms of rethinking, with data, structures, and very useful categories contained in this book, what we want to do politically in our lives, in our communities.

This book, Radical Lefts in Mexico, is, in that sense, one of the crown jewels of Penguin Random House, which we are very proud to present, to produce, and to bring to this setting.

Without further ado, then, if you’re all right, I’d like to begin this discussion.

Some of you here know the presenters very well, and naturally, you’ll recognize the authors.

So, I’ll just say a few brief words.

Thank you so much, Kiko, for being here.

You’re a dear friend and a role model for the left.

Thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Carlos Illades, of course, co-author of this work and author of a number of important works for the left and for political reflection in the country.

Pablo Ferry, a tremendous journalist as well. A very good center forward. I remember him being tremendous. Thank you very much for being here.

Pablo Rafael Mondragón, the other author of the book. Magnificent, intellectual, academic.

And Daniela, thank you so much, also an author and a top-notch journalist.

If you’d like, then I’ll give the floor first to the presenters, then the authors, and let’s get this off to a conversation as soon as possible.

Please know that every idea and comment will be heard.

We’ll only be here for 1:30, that’s the only thing to consider if you want to buy the book.

Naturally Utopian, that’s right, of course, we can continue outside.

If you want to buy the book, Utopian is offering it right around the corner, and that’s it.

If anyone wants to speak, I would just ask that once the dialogue gets going, they ask me for this microphone, because otherwise those watching the broadcast will miss it.

No, we can hear each other very well here, but those listening online won’t hear us as well.

So, Pablo, if it’s alright with you, I’d love to give you the floor, and thank you very much, welcome.

<strong>Pablo:</strong> Well, good afternoon everyone, good afternoon to Carlos, Rafael, Kiko, and Daniela.

Thank you to everyone who’s here and to those watching online.

Thank you to the Utópicas bookstore for giving us the space this afternoon to talk about such a current and interesting topic as the configuration of the radical left in Latin America and in Mexico specifically.

No, beyond giving a brief summary as an introduction to the book, which I don’t think is relevant or interesting now because that’s what the book is for, or at least the prologue, I’ll simply mention that *Radical Lefts in Mexico: Anarchisms and Postmodern Nihilisms* is an exhaustive atlas of what has been and what is being, and also a compendium of questions about what the left will be—that is, everything to the left of the left in this country.

I wasn’t just mentioning to Dr. Yades, or to Rafa before we started, that I remembered reading chapters 5 and 6, which deal with the last few years of the radical left in the country.

At the end of last year, while delving into the documents hacked by the Guacamayas collective from the army archives, I found a bunch of documents called “fields of power.” These documents, 708,090 pages long, contained sections that Dr. Yades said would be a bit of a stretch, since they would appear right away.

It had a somewhat naive tone because of the colors, because of the way they were presented there, but in the end, they were summaries of what the army sees, which is the radical left, for example, in Mexico City or in Puebla or in Coahuila, right? And suddenly, peaceful anarchist groups would appear, and then they would explain that peaceful anarchist groups are the ones who, boom, boom, boom, no, a kind of RAE-type definition, and then the radical anarchist groups would come along, no, and I was thinking and saying, wow, I mean, look at that.

Something that seems not to exist, that is in a very underground world, and that as a public, as a society, as a public—I mean, because of the presence or omnipresence of the media in our lives, but as a society in reality—that only appears from time to time in demonstrations, like on March 8<sup>th</sup> lately, etc.

And how the State is so aware of it, and I understand that it’s so important, not in its perception of reality and while reading, especially the last two chapters, I was thinking about that very thing, it didn’t remind me, so I started looking again, and I actually brought it to the authors on a USB drive, and I want to share it because I’m sure you’ll find it interesting.

But anyway, beyond that anecdote, I wanted to start with a very simple question.

If you’d like, I can pass the microphone to one of you, and then Kiko or Daniela can take over.

What sparked the need for one of you, or for both of you? Perhaps the reasons are different.

What sparked the authors’ need to write the book? In other words, why did you feel it was necessary to tell the story of the radical left, or the left, the radical left in Mexico? I don’t know if you’re being silly, Doctor.

<strong>Speaker 3:</strong> Well, good afternoon.

Yes, regarding this specific question, in 2012, which was the year of Enrique Peña Nieto’s inauguration, if you remember or read about it—because some of you are quite young—there were a series of violent incidents in the Alameda Central park and at the Legislative Palace and although it wasn’t the first time that masked groups had demonstrated, it was the time it reached a larger, more public scale during the first years of his presidency.

That’s when I became interested in the topic.

I’ve known Rafa since 2014; he’s a profound scholar with extensive knowledge of counterculture and anarchism and then? Well, over time, we started working together on this topic, and what we realized, in each of our respective lines of research, was that these weren’t simply violent groups, thugs, or conservatives—well, they’re not conservatives at all; they have their own demands.

Well, not only the left and the partisan left, but even groups that don’t belong to the left, like feminism and environmentalism, although obviously.

Added to this are the historical demands of anarchism, which is something like a radical confrontation with the state against capital, what they call civilization, domination, and so on.

So that’s where the interest arose, and then we began to look at, to trace the intellectual sources, the political experiences of these groups.

The intellectual sources go back quite a long way.

Some, in their modern versions, at least date back to the late 1970s, and also to their public actions and networks.

These public actions have a lot to do with the Black Bloc tactics that have been expressed since the 1980s, but very specifically in the alter-globalization movements and, on the other hand, their...

Intellectual manifestations or expressions that, I insist, are not as simple or elementary as they are usually presented by the State or the press, and particularly by electronic media.

Well, first of all, good afternoon, and thank you very much for being here.

<strong>Rafael:</strong> I wanted to say that this book is—I mean, thank you very much for the compliment, Pablo—but I see it as a first approach to a topic that many people know about, not much more than we do, no, because there are also people who have lived through things that we recount in it, and it’s an invitation to begin a more public conversation, a conversation that has been going on for many years and we believe it’s a very important, very necessary conversation.

That’s the first thing, because I’m very honored that you present it as an atlas and I say, I think, wow, and all the things we didn’t get to talk about, it just keeps going, but well, we’re also very simply saying, well, this is what we can offer, and we want to listen, right? And hopefully, the book will serve to spark many conversations and for other voices to take a stand and emerge and I wanted to continue with what Carlos was saying about telling a personal story, because I think it’s valid, not in this space.

In 2012, I had left the university—I’m a university professor—and I was very angry with the university, so I became a bureaucrat.

Because it gave me a lot of free time, right? I mean, I’d go to an office for a few hours, and the rest of the time I could dedicate to self-management and friends who had been participating in the encampment movement started calling me during 2011 and 2012, because that movement had been brewing for many years.

Something was cooking, and there was a great need to create spaces for conversation, to share experiences—not about topics like security, how to fight in the streets, but how to protect yourselves when everyone is sleeping in one place, but also to share something about the history of ideas, right? And so they invited me, and I started going, especially to the Revolutionary Encampment, and that’s where I met people I love very much and I also reconnected with others I’d known for years, and I got to see from a personal perspective what that dark period was like—not the end of utopia, but the emergence of rage, a rage that sought dignity but couldn’t find it, that ignominious display of force and cruelty.

It coincided with December 1<sup>st</sup> because the way people were repressed was infamous, and what happened, happened and let’s say the Black Bloc movement had been going on for many decades, but I think it was a very important turning point regarding the loss of joy, and a politics of rage and sadness.

It wasn’t a peak; it was a peak and I got to see that, from the perspective of my friends, especially those a bit younger than me, and I participated in some debates and reflections.

I also witnessed the consequences of the politics of rage—not that it was justified, but in the medium and long term, it left its mark on people’s lives, their families, their friends, right? And I also realized that there were people there who had been trying to create a space for reflection for many years, and that we had to go and learn from them—not that it had been going on for decades.

Dani, I mean, it wasn’t even from the nineties, it emerged with the critiques of globalization and the alter-globalization movement, but it came from way back, way back.

At that time, I wrote a little book called ‘The School as a Space of Utopia.’ A little book I wrote for the teachers in teacher training colleges, and it circulated informally for many years before being printed, because I also gave it to the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and UNAM took about four years to use it.

It was for an educational reform, and by the time it came out, there was already another educational reform in place.

But that’s how it goes, isn’t it? That’s when I said what followed, well, it shouldn’t be done at the university, no, but anyway.

That little book was written in that context too, right? And it was an attempt to talk about the anarchist past, about anarchist pasts, to open up the conversation and that helped me realize that there were people who had been opening this conversation long before us, even across generations, and that there wasn’t just one position, right? And that we had to listen and then I don’t know how you saw it, Carlos.

What I also realized is that there wasn’t much desire within the formally constituted left, with all the quotation marks that implies, there wasn’t much desire to talk, not to listen, no.

I mean, it was like everything was very well-behaved, not very proper, and there was no desire to ask questions and that we had to build a debate that didn’t just involve those groups where sometimes people didn’t want to talk and that’s what’s happened to us.

I’m going to pass the word to you now with this book, which, at least with me, Carlos has been trying to open up the public debate for a long time.

This is the first book I’ve published with a publishing house like this, and so a lot of people come in who have nothing to do with anarchism or the left and they’re very scared.

Or they’re very angry and share that anger and kind of want to, they say, yes, we have to burn everything down, right? Yes, or they’re very fascinated, maybe not in a good way, because they see it as a spectacle, a show, or on the contrary they say, hey, I didn’t know this was being discussed and this is really good and how can I find out more? Or people who suddenly start saying, well, I have a family history.

You know, my grandmother was a Spanish exile and these things were circulated in my house and that’s good and if this book can help make that happen more, then it’s great that it came out, right? And I went into much more detail than Carlos in my answer, but oh well.

<strong>Speaker 5:</strong> Do you want to participate, Kika? Well, good evening, it’s a pleasure, and thank you to Utópicas for hosting us, and to Carlos and Rafa for inviting us to join you and get these conversations going.

No, I’m also going to touch on something personal, and my relationship with Rafa stems from those conversations and those almost always questions of how.

What do we do, right? What do we do? And I feel that this question of what we do has motivated and is constantly running through the book, and it has been answered from many places, from many ideologies, from many geographies, from many eras, in ways different from what we do, and we reach a point where I feel very identified with the book, which has to do with a certain aspect.

Which, well, we’ve also talked about a lot, right? And it has to do with this quote from Toby.

We haven’t spent decades fighting against the system, and we see that we’ve achieved little.

The idea of no future remains attractive because the efforts we’ve made sometimes aren’t so easily noticed and I get the feeling that throughout the book—and I do agree with Pablo—it’s an atlas, or a kind of very specific record, for those of us who aren’t close to these conversations.

It gives us a reference point, and from there, we can say, “Look, these are the people, let’s look for them here and there,” and then those conversations you’re referring to open up.

But well, while reading, the question of what we do is a recurring one, and there are many ways to answer it.

To learn it, some of which we’ll personally identify with more than others and I also feel that at several points we arrive at this point that Toby was talking about, not in the context.

Here they put this quote in the context of 2006, which is the conflict, the attack on the APO in 2006 in Oaxaca, which was also in a brutal context, the same context as Atenco and I get the feeling that we constantly arrive at this, at this question, right? Or at this approach.

We’ve spent decades fighting.

The idea of no future remains alluring because what we’ve done doesn’t seem to be noticeable enough, right? And for me, reading this phrase from Toby, who was such an inspiring person, and whose generosity and enthusiasm for the future and the present made me feel understood, right? And from that understanding, which could also be a kind of fatalism, saying, of course, we’ve been here for so many years, since what year does it start here, we’ve been here for centuries, and it seems we always end up in the same place, right? And one of the things that the book brings me to is this question and this reflection from Toby, like waves that come and go, constantly leaves me reflecting on it.

It also makes me nostalgically remember those moments narrated here, moments that feel like I’ve lived them.

It feels like I’ve experienced the impetus of...

From the punk kids, the anarchists, the women who started organizing in their neighborhoods, probably without yet calling it feminism, but with a desire and a spirit to care for others and to distance themselves from these patriarchal rules that even within their own groups defined and subjugated them and I’m left with a sense of nostalgia for that, and I wish—how I wish—to shake off that nostalgia, not to remain stuck in it, and to think that from all that was raised and has been raised as a possible answer to the question, “What can we do, or what are we going to do?”, we can reclaim it and I think that the book, in that sense, at this particular moment we are living through, at least in Latin America, which is what I know more or less about, seems to offer us the possibility of taking stock and tracing all the many ways in which this question has been addressed, and reclaiming them with fervor and not with nostalgia.

Right? And then to consider what from all these experiences we can independently bring forward.

Perhaps it’s the ideological name, but let’s consider that they’re pointing toward the same thing that I think also runs through it.

Those who are here want a dignified life and it seems to me that in that sense the book is very relevant, and it’s not just a biography, not just an atlas, but it becomes a kind of reminder of the many experiences worth bringing into the present, that it’s worthwhile not to think that we’re starting from scratch, but that many centuries ago someone else thought about it, someone else shared the same question, and to recover it with impetus and not with so much nostalgia.

Well, not to answer it now, because it seems that right now it’s very difficult to answer it, and well, since the format was a question after a comment, it’s my turn to ask, and I’d like to ask you how I can help you answer this question I have, which is: what ideas, what answers, what strategies from the many forms that you, personally or collectively, are recovering here would you recover to answer us now?

<strong>Rafael:</strong> Thank you.

Well, I think, very humbly, because, well, I think that, first of all, the diagnosis of these so-called radical groups—that is, it’s the diagnosis of most of us.

The thing is, these groups derive from that diagnosis a set of actions that the rest of us don’t dare to take.

I mean, their diagnosis of the crisis we’re experiencing is the crisis of a civilization, not only because of exploitation, but also because of other issues related to our relationship with nature.

With the need to transform daily life, that this transformation begins at the most intimate level, passes through self-management, and ends up in the collective when the horizon of the collective is considered.

Because there are also people who don’t consider it; Carlos and I even joked about it once.

Even the International Monetary Fund says that the current model has run its course, but they don’t draw the necessary conclusions.

So, I think that explains why anarchist groups have, let’s say, the collective recognition they have among many people, especially young people, because I think they’re telling the truth, not in the middle of some Netflix-style post-apocalyptic series, no, no, but this, and I think telling the truth in that way has value.

That’s the first thing I would say.

I would say that abandoning revolution in favor of transforming everyday life has something very positive about it.

I don’t stop thinking about revolution and the labor movement and things that seem like nobody talks about anymore, but this idea of self-management, of autonomy, doesn’t it seem to me that it’s still very important, just like the individualistic aspect.

This idea of a dignified life, which is the great contribution of the individualistic anarchist tradition, not a dignified life, but an intense life, a life worth living, a beautiful life, that’s it, I mean, I think so and also, getting to more concrete things, I think there’s a very current debate within these groups.

It’s about what’s important and what’s not, for example, regarding affinity groups.

They’re, in a way, ahead of a lot of things everyone’s already doing on social media, and how that works and how it doesn’t.

There’s a debate that needs to be addressed.

It’s useful because it allows for the creation of fluid organizations, not necessarily responsive ones, but it’s not useful because it’s very easy to steer them in a direction you don’t want.

This isn’t a discussion for the PRD or Morena parties; it’s a discussion for these groups and we have to listen and pay attention because some of them are precursors—not of a lot of things they’re doing, like, I don’t know, the occupation of the UAM—no, maybe they don’t consider themselves anarchists, but they learned by watching young women fight in the streets, not about means and ends, not about the relationship between violence and conflict, about the necessity of conflict.

I’m not going to summarize the book, but I think there’s a discussion there that needs to be addressed.

We need to listen, take a stand, and learn from the reasons behind each point, right? And perhaps the most controversial part of the book, which isn’t related to what we call nihilism, but rather to this closure of utopia, this closure to the will to encounter the other—who isn’t always the enemy, but rather the different one—and to build a shared horizon together.

Maybe I’m too...

well-intentioned, or perhaps just good, but I do believe it’s necessary to have a debate about recovering the encounter with the other and with utopia.

I think that not doing so has caused tactical and strategic problems, but also ethical ones, because we have to be different from those we confront and I think there’s a debate there that’s historical in Mexico, very clear, at least since the 1970s: the punks, historical anarchism, affinity groups, the debates within the Black Bloc.

That’s the debate, and we have to learn because we’re in a country at war, where the war has affected us all, even those of us who are fighting it.

I mean, I come from the north, my family was displaced by the war, so these issues interest me too and the question of how to confront war is a very current one, one that they, we, or you have faced, right? And how do you remove the war from your subjectivity and destroy what destroys you without destroying yourself? It’s a question that I think is important, isn’t it?

<strong>Speaker 3:</strong> Yes, I completely agree with what Rafael is saying.

I would now add two things to complement it.

First, there’s the issue of the project itself.

Can there be a left without a project? I think that’s crucial and the other point you raised a moment ago, the media—that is, the political violence in Mexico had very serious consequences.

A dirty war that still hasn’t been resolved, not even reparations for the damage, the investigations, and then a senseless war—the war against organized crime.

But in any case, it’s violence.

So I think those two questions, or rather those two issues, are crucial for any left, whether anarchist, communist, individualist, or collectivist.

That is, can there be change without a project? And I think one of the things the book raises is the difficulty of finding a project within these groups.

We can, at least personally, acknowledge their positions in terms of the things that matter to them, what they see as wrong.

Undoubtedly, their demands are extremely legitimate.

We also have to subscribe to their way of life, which I think is fundamental.

Can you live as an anarchist? That’s not the difference between anarchism and other ideologies.

Well, it’s similar to socialism.

To early socialism, but that’s the difference with other left-wing movements.

You can be an anarchist, let’s say, in everyday life, but being a communist in everyday life isn’t possible.

It’s pointless.

It’s more of an ideological issue than a practical one, but undoubtedly, if there isn’t a project, no matter how many actions there are, no matter how many disruptive acts there are—which is the logic these groups operate under—or even the symbolic, sometimes hyper-formative, use of violence, which I think is one of the characteristics of these groups, that is, producing a spectacle that the media buys into very easily, as we’ve seen in the interviews we’ve had with the media.

It’s impressive what television, above all, captures and the underlying issue, or the possibility of investigating where these groups come from, what they intend, is lost and I think that remains legitimate.

That second question is whether the use of violence—violence, let’s say, as a tactic of struggle, which is quite good in Russian populism—will come to anarchism from the propaganda-by-the-deed of the 1881 Congress.

This is indeed a form, let’s say, no, I wouldn’t say valid, but rather, can offer positive results for a struggle that seems to me to be in the present, but which is also rooted in the future.

This is, I believe, and yesterday I would have brought it to a third point, whether the left recovers an idea of historicity.

That is, that there is a past, present, and future.

It is impossible to change the world, and that is why the book’s subtitle is “Anarchism without Postmodern Nihilisms,” because if anything is diluted in postmodernity, it is the idea of this historicity, that there is a connection between the past, the present, and the future and I believe that in that connection, there is still a place for utopian thought and I believe that this anarchism...

Despite, or perhaps notwithstanding, its accurate diagnosis of the crisis of contemporary civilization and politics, it lacks a utopian vision, which I believe is a fundamental component.

Not to create a utopia, but to have something to guide action.

I still consider it essential for any left-wing project, be it revolutionary, reformist, individualist, or collectivist.

Anyway, that’s my point of view.

Thank you.

<strong>Speaker 6:</strong> Good afternoon to everyone here and to those who follow us online.

Thanks to Carlos and Rafa, and to you all as well, comrades.

When Rafa sent me the invitation to discuss the book, I didn’t reply immediately.

I asked him, “First, let’s talk with the people who make up the Reconstruir social library collective.” Why? Because I thought he wasn’t inviting Kiko, but rather the Reconstruir social library, and in a way, I think that’s the case, right? So we talked, and many questions arose from the book’s title.

Well, “radical leftists, left.” Did the publisher use it as a marketing ploy or something to sell copies? Is it a category that academia has adopted? There will be many questions about it, right? Why do we always like to go back to the origins? And we were saying, well, when did the terms “left” and “right” come into use? We remembered the French Revolution and the issue of the Convention and those on the right were those who wanted the monarchy to continue with its absolute power, right? And those who positioned themselves to the left of the Tuileries Palace were those who wanted to eliminate the monarchy, but they shared a common element: the state apparatus and the government as instruments for maintaining order or for access to justice.

In that sense, anarchism is outside that parameter or that classical political geometry.

Let’s say, I don’t know if it would be, for example, on the left—excuse me, not below—and against those at the top, but well, from the beginning, anarchism proposed it.

In that way, it was a current within the revolutionary workers’ movement, within the First International, and it proposed it—it still does and the moment we told him yes, that we agreed to comment on the book, the time came to upload it and promote it.

We uploaded the promotional material to the library’s website, and immediately, within two minutes, there were some comments.

One of those first comments was, “So you guys from the social library, you’re leftists.” I already figured as much, said one person.

Another comment went something like this, a euphemism for “radical leftists,” more like “mentally unstable with cognitive bias.” Interesting, isn’t it? Some were already calling a psychologist, and others were, well, fine, but what caught my attention most was, why? Because it speaks to an intellectual atmosphere that doesn’t just dominate the anarchist scene, but is widespread and has been around for a long time.

But there’s another one there, let’s say, what they’ve just called postmodernism, not a weak thought that doesn’t do critical analysis, evaluation, or judgment, or anything.

No, just a label, there’s the label, you are this.

Why? Well, because I say so, I like it, right? Truth or the search for knowledge is no longer the horizon, but rather taste, right? I also followed some of the interviews they gave, for example, the one with El Economista and the one on Canal 22.

They focused primarily on the idea of how to contain these groups.

I was like, wow, there’s a quasi-fascist or fascist-like atmosphere, in the sense that what permeates everything is a culture of security.

Security for what? Well, for order, not the existing order.

Okay, so I said, well, this is what they’re saying, this is this rotten philosophy or culture of...

What some call postmodernity, like Castoriadis, Miguel Amorós, Carlos Díaz, they even talk about several elements, not this culture of postmodernity.

You address it in the book and talk about the fragmented subject as an element or as part of the culture of deregulated capitalism.

If I remember correctly, that’s more or less how they approach it and in that sense, we could say that...

This book, and many other exercises that are efforts, can help us overcome this paralysis of the security culture that’s being forced on us from all sides, and also the idea of postmodernism, or rather, the philosophy of postmodernism, which I’d prefer to call, as Miguel Amorós does, weak thought—this inability to ask questions.

Right now, if you delve into it, well, there are many questions.

Talking with Rafa, I was saying that perhaps because the book was written during the pandemic, there were few opportunities for travel.

Certainly, there’s a lack of reference points, as you’ve already mentioned; there are many people alive who can contribute.

This is a first approach, a contribution to the debate, and yes, fundamentally we’re dealing with how to overcome this entanglement and this war that states and multinationals are waging against each and every inhabitant of this planet.

They are planetary ecocidal maniacs, and that needs to be said, right?

<strong>Speaker 3:</strong> Just a quick note.

I’ve been asked 50 times if López Obrador is a leftist, and now I find out that anarchists don’t consider themselves part of the left, which also really intrigues me.

<strong>Rafael:</strong> I don’t know if they’d like us to pass the microphone, I don’t know if anyone wants to say anything.

<strong>Pablo:</strong> Asked while, well, I was saying something that I think is fundamental, this thing about understanding the radical left from the perspective of the security culture, right? And of course, the paradox there, in my opinion, is that the mainstream ultimately understands or sees the radical left as a threat, when in reality they were the first ones threatened by the security apparatus, right? And that brings me to a page in the book that fascinated me.

Because of the lack of cynicism of the person in question who tells it, it’s on page 150.

I have it marked, I have it marked.

They’re talking about the chapter, it’s called The Anarcho-Punk Millennium, and so, well, they’re talking a bit about the intersection between the first punk collectives and the historical anarchists, right? Ricardo Mestre, for example, this exiled Spaniard and they talk a bit about how this collectivization of the punk movement, stemming from this and other intersections, was fundamental—and I quote—as the 1980s progressed, leading to a resurgence of police violence in a desperate attempt to contain the expansion of criminal groups, many of them allied with the police themselves and this leads to a footnote.

In it, I understand that in an interview Juan Manuel Servina conducted with Pablo Gaitán, a statement is included from the former chief of police of the Federal District, a certain José Domingo Ramírez Garrido Abreu, in 1986 and this person says the following—and this is a direct quote—“We’re doing something very interesting,” this gentleman says, “any police officer who kills a criminal, we give them a medal for police valor and a handsome check for 100,000 pesos.” We do this so that the young men will be encouraged to kill criminals, and on the other hand, we’re asking for a change in how the justice system works, because it turns out that many of those who end up in jail are our own young men.

Brutal, isn’t it? I mean, the absolute lack of cynicism as a virtue at that moment, right? And this brings me back to the question—long comment, I’m sorry—but it brings me back to the question, and that is, how to understand? Or rather, how to understand, or rather, how to reflect on, the violence that affects us as a society and that also affects these groups because, in the end, they are part of society, and also, I mean, based on the paradox I mentioned before, right? I mean, in the end, the way it’s presented in El Economista or in other media outlets that have interviewed you, or could interview you.

Somehow, it seems that insecurity, or rather, within the realm of insecurity, makes no difference whether it’s a group of criminals armed with .50 caliber rifles on highway X in Tamaulipas or a group of young men or women with their faces covered breaking a window, right? In other words, the postmodernism I mentioned, Kiko, prevents any analysis beyond the mere statement.

These groups aren’t seen as part of the same paradigm, and this seems very worrying to me because of the response the State might give to them.

I don’t know, what do you all think?

<strong>Rafael:</strong> Well, maybe someone wants to speak up because there are people here who were in Mexico City in the eighties and know what that ignominy was like.

The collective movement is a response to that, not to that order to kill criminals in the street—young people who were self-organizing to protect themselves, perhaps in a way that others might say wasn’t right, but it’s the gang movement, right? But those were the criminals, not the so-called criminals.

I don’t know if, well, seeing it from the perspective of someone born in ’83, I wasn’t there.

But seeing it from the perspective of someone born in ’83 who comes from another part of the country, it seems very valuable to me that the response had to do with this, with this discussion of being collective and with the construction of a cosmopolitanism from below that broke the logic of confinement in the neighborhoods, which was the big problem with the gangs, right? I mean, gangs are youth self-defense groups.

But the problem is that there comes a point when the gang starts functioning in such a way that you end up fighting your cousin instead of hurting the person who hurts you and then the possibility that the punks had of breaking free from their imposed confinement in the neighborhoods and starting to reclaim the city—and to reclaim it intellectually as well, because they become intellectuals in a non-pejorative sense.

Reading practices, collective libraries, self-education projects, fanzines.

I think it’s a very interesting way of turning the discourse of violence on its head, saying that they aren’t that, that the State tells them they are, right?

<strong>Speaker 3:</strong> Yes, going back to Pablo’s question, given the level of violence in the country, it would be extremely strange if violence weren’t the language used even by social movements.

Obviously, acknowledging this difference in degree, which is not insignificant, if it’s what people hear, what they see, what the State tries to address or respond to, then it would be very odd if these groups didn’t act that way.

The issue, I think, is this: originally, the Black Bloc’s tactic was self-defense, yes and it was self-defense, and obviously violent, against attacks by the State; that is, it was to protect the protesters.

When it started in Germany in the 80s, with environmentalists, and later in the anti-globalization movements, it was to defend the masses from attacks by the State.

The question here is whether this evolution has occurred in some places, where it no longer matters who the violence is directed against and the consequences don’t matter; I mean, going from self-defense groups or organizations within collectives or movements to groups directly attacking the police.

Yes, I mean, I’m not arguing whether that’s right or wrong.

What matters to me, what worries me, is that the idea of protecting the protesters is no longer the focus of this violence, but rather the idea or practice of violence as a spectacular, performative, and liberating act and that’s where I see the problem.

I certainly agree with Pablo.

There’s a huge difference between these groups and drug traffickers, an immense one, but the question is whether, as a tactic, this benefits a project—if there were one—of the left.

<strong>Speaker 7:</strong> Thank you very much, I thought it was very important.

The fact that this book was presented here in this bookstore, and that it’s also being broadcast live, is very important so that it reaches more people.

I want to focus on 2012 because, well, that’s when Peña Nieto’s six-year term began.

I want to mention two events from that day, during the inauguration, and one of them involves the murder of a fellow activist, Teodolfo Torres Soriano.

He was recording in the Chamber of Deputies and suffered a traumatic brain injury.

He was missing for several months.

He was key in the...

excuse me, Cuickendall...

it was Cuickendall and Teodolfo recorded him, and that led to his disappearance, and to this day he remains missing.

Excuse me, I confused Quickendhal, an activist who adhered to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, with Marcelo Ebrard’s statement that the bullets were blanks, not gas projectiles.

He was wrong, and well, these kinds of situations were repeated.

This year we already had the precedent in San Salvador Atenco with the young man Alexis Benhumea from UNAM, who also endured this situation for a month.

These situations of violence that have existed in recent years have intensified.

We see that it’s no longer just anarchist groups that have occupied central or key spaces or institutions like the National Human Rights Commission, but also representative offices, for example, have been occupied in recent years by different collectives, a great diversity, many of them adherents of the Sixth Declaration or now sympathizers of the Zapatista cause.

You also mention the struggle for the safe return of the missing students, in this case, the students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, grouped in the Federation of Socialist Peasant Students of Mexico, who have become quite radicalized.

They’ve done everything, and they, along with the Ayotzinapa Parents’ Committee, have done so.

This relates somewhat to my question.

They’ve mentioned on several occasions in their own assemblies that they’ve done everything: they’ve occupied toll booths, and just last year they were at the Mexican Navy headquarters in Acapulco, claiming that they have very valuable information to find the whereabouts of the 43 missing students.

As part of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College and as part of the Federation of Socialist Peasant Students of Mexico, they’ve mentioned that they’ve done everything and nothing has been achieved, that the fundamental issue is their safe return.

So, in that sense, the question arises: have social movements in our country become much more radicalized? Searching mothers, mothers searching for their missing children.

We see mothers with murdered children who have taken up spaces—they’ve called them public spaces—the roundabout of the women who fight, the roundabout of the disappeared and this situation has led them to organize.

These groups, however, have achieved minimal progress in terms of justice, in terms of finding their missing loved ones alive and well, I wanted to know your opinion about these groups, these social organizations, these comrades who, without being anarchists—well, they identify as socialists—have defended their teacher training colleges, but we increasingly see the situation of closing, not necessarily physically closing, the teacher training colleges, with the purpose of ending rural teacher training after 100 years of existence.

That is, in essence, my question and my reflection.

<strong>Speaker 5:</strong> It’s a pleasure, and thank you very much.

I was thinking, specifically when you were talking about the group of parents of the missing students and then about the other search collectives, I was really thinking.

It’s very interesting that sometimes there isn’t a self-definition, probably not from any of the groups here, not even from the left or the right, and that this lack of self-definition doesn’t determine their actions either, because there can be many actions here claimed by the groups that do call themselves the Black Bloc, these anarchists and what I find very interesting is how even the generation of people who make up these groups, these collectives, thinking about the mothers searching for their missing students or thinking about the parents of the 43, don’t even share things, they might share things like age, like physical appearance, right? And yet there’s a kind of recovery of some of the practices, and it seems to me...

What I find very interesting and amazing is that they don’t define themselves.

I’m not talking about the student teachers’ association, but about some groups of parents searching for their missing children in other parts of the country, including the Ayotzinapa parents’ group.

There are certain strategies that are incredibly interesting, and in my experience, they’ve even pushed the boundaries of what was imaginable, right? And that seems very powerful to me, even though, in the overall assessment, one could say that not much has been achieved because the safe return of not only the 43 missing students, but also many of the other 100,000 they are searching for, hasn’t been achieved.

I think there’s something very powerful in that approach, in that way, in the way that imagination shatters the limits of belief to invent forms of struggle, not something that’s very common now, which is field searches, not just going out with a rod, digging, sniffing.

We take it for granted that it seems so commonplace, but really, imagine everything that had to happen for that gesture, which is now so commonplace, to exist.

Could it, I mean, even be thought of, conceived, and carried out, and spread throughout the entire country? And I want to focus a little bit here on what has to do with the imagination that makes that possible, not when, in 2013, there was an international meeting of groups of families of the disappeared in Saltillo.

The 43 hadn’t yet been disappeared, and collective field searches weren’t yet being carried out.

There were many groups that organized around the peace movement and other local groups to search for missing persons cases.

They did field searches, but through a preliminary investigation, that is, very much directed by the State, by the judicial system.

If it wasn’t part of that preliminary investigation, there was no action, no search and suddenly, a mother in the middle of that scene, after three days of arguing with the UN, with people from who-knows-where, with people from Peru, about how to find the missing people, suddenly a mother stands up and says, well, why don’t we all go up the mountain and look for the warehouses where they’re holding our kidnapped children and free them? And the look on everyone’s face, I mean, we were all like, this is crazy! And someone said, this is crazy because they’re going to kill us! And someone else replied, well, yes, and someone else responded, if 510 of us go, of course they’re going to kill us, but if thousands of us go, they can’t kill all of us and I remember the disbelief that many of us reporters there felt, saying, this, I mean, this isn’t...

I mean, imagine a group of 1,000 people climbing mountains with sticks.

With ropes, with whatever they could find, with stones, to find a warehouse in the middle of nowhere and rescue the 1,000 people we imagined were being held there, disappeared.

Well, that act of imagination, which seemed so crazy to us, is now an everyday practice throughout the country and they’ve also managed to, I don’t know another word, but to hack, no.

Well, I don’t know if it’s true, but they’ve managed to break through and crack so many state practices that I find incredibly interesting, right? What happens in a search, I think, has a lot to do with that genuine desire, that conviction, and that pushing of the imagination beyond limits.

To achieve something, not necessarily finding the disappeared in this specific case, but the way they’ve managed to organize, learn, and know more, the way they’ve come up with things that are very common now, but again, in the beginning they weren’t, the way they’ve managed to organize, learn, and know more.

The scientific experts themselves, the way they’ve managed to recover the work of the farmers in the local territories where they’re excavating, the way they’ve learned that if a certain root smells like something, well, that can create confusion, because it’s not actually a mass grave, but the root of a certain tree.

The fact that you learn from the farmers that if that tree has a dead part, it’s probably because there was a fire there, so they probably could have done something there, right? And it seems to me that even though there isn’t a self-designated group, there’s a wealth of experiences and methods that, while they haven’t achieved what they want to achieve, which is to find the disappeared, have managed to disrupt a lot of state structures, not just now, but what I think will continue, and also the discourse of the media itself, right? This criminalization, for example, of the families who are searching.

Now I think the constant challenge is how to prevent those methods of undermining forensic services, for example, from being co-opted again.

No, because it’s also true that the State is very swift and learns very quickly, and but there’s a...

there’s a...

I mean, for me there’s a...

What I’d like to say is a vindication of the imagination that comes from the deepest pain and a very profound need that I find admirable and that is probably shared by many of the stories here.

<strong>Speaker 6:</strong> I mean, what you just mentioned is wonderful, and in this sense, well, I’m going to do some anarchist propaganda.

Their experience of having resorted to each and every form of assistance, seeking mediation to resolve the problem, and seeing that all avenues were exhausted, what did they say? The only way to try to reach our families is on our own.

That’s called direct action, and that’s the methodological basis of all anarchism and anarchism didn’t invent it; it’s not unique to all peoples.

In every society, absolutely before the existence of states, before the existence of churches, people solved their problems, met their needs, or built their aspirations for themselves.

So, direct action is the action carried out by those affected in this case.

Without intermediaries, that is, without government or party mediation.

Well, that’s all.

<strong>Speaker 8:</strong> Hello, good afternoon.

First of all, I’d like to congratulate you on your editorial effort, especially because sometimes discussing these topics in these spaces is a bit difficult.

Beyond the network that exists daily, at least in Mexico City and Oaxaca, where I spend most of my time, it can sometimes be a little hard to find people.

So, I appreciate that you were able to organize this, and I’m also very interested in your perspective on what happened 10 years ago.

I think there’s also a significant generational difference.

My experience from 10 years ago was very negative, in the sense that I sadly witnessed—perhaps because it was my first political experience within the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at UNAM—how what was supposedly a horizontal movement became hierarchical, culminating in this magazine, Gatopardo, when the supposed leaders were photographed in the sculpture garden.

It made you think, “What the hell is going on here?” I mean, you’re left thinking, like, what is this all about, really? Right? And I mean, I was at many of the assemblies, and unfortunately, that’s where I met Tolini, and you saw how he was monopolizing power and starting to build that hierarchical structure, and you think, what’s going on here? And I think that, at least personally, I think this more radical awakening of consciousness came with Ayotzinapa.

It really affected me very closely, too, in the marches and all of this, the issue of repression, and you realize the subtleties of the State, right? And perhaps I’m also commenting on this as a historian, I mean, reviewing the archives from days ago and seeing the meticulousness with which the State tracks down anything that even smells of anarchism is impressive, isn’t it? And I’m talking about, for example, things like...

The Río Blanco uprising wasn’t a strike, it was practically a revolt; it wasn’t something that fits the narrative of Mexican state historiography and to be more specific, this mention of the entire punk movement in Mexico City also really catches my attention, because it’s one of my earliest memories of being in Tlatelolco with my parents and seeing punks—not passing around anarchist propaganda, no, even though I was very young and you could really feel that atmosphere of depression in Mexico City, especially in the Tlatelolco area.

The earthquake was still very recent, and the whole issue of the Panchitos was something I was still thinking about a lot back then, all this social stigma and this punitiveness that unfortunately exists in Mexican society, which makes some of it promote or support things by the state that aren’t exactly despicable and what I’d like to ask you, taking into account all this talk of generational differences and perspectives surrounding anarchist movements, is precisely that I’m thinking a lot about a text by this English philosopher, Mark Fisher, from *The Vampire’s Castle*.

Because his perspective always makes me laugh a bit, so self-absorbed in the European world and in his critique of the anarchist movement, which, according to him, was already too entrenched in academic and university circles.

No, but I realize that it’s more of a generational difference, or rather, these generational miscommunications are starting to emerge, and what I’d like to ask you is: What is it that, beyond the fact that I’m going to read the book, I’d like to know, in your personal experience and also in your research, what differences you’ve found in these perspectives on anarchist organization in Mexico? I mean, do you detect differences precisely in how these movements are perceived and organized?

<strong>Speaker 3:</strong> Well, I do see some differences, it speaks to generational differences.

Well, I’m further behind, not only you, but Rafa as well.

I think the tactics of struggle have changed quite a bit, haven’t they? I mean, I think the Black Bloc is a twist, and in fact, that’s how it was conceived.

It’s a step in the right direction compared to what urban guerrilla warfare used to be, right? So this shift of the fight to street fighting, which we already saw to some extent, for example, in the UNAM strike of ’99, seems to me to be an important change in the tactics of struggle.

I mean, it’s street fighting with an organization that forms and dissolves according to its own ideas, like those of affinity groups, which, while historically significant in anarchism, are now conceived in a different way in street fighting.

That’s what I would see as..

and the other difference we mentioned earlier, a fundamental ideological one, is that I think we’re talking about an anarchism—if it is indeed anarchism—or a nihilism that no longer has a utopian perspective; that is to say, it lacks that component.

I’m not saying that all left-wing movements have a very large utopian component, but there’s always a utopian trait that I think these groups don’t share.

Those would be the basic differences I could mention.

<strong>Omar:</strong> Well, my name is Omar.

I started being active in the anarchist movement when I was about 13 years old.

My first experience was with a neighborhood committee here in the Santo Domingo neighborhood, with a man who was a former Marxist-Leninist guerrilla.

He started having this kind of hallucinatory trip and began rereading Magón, Bakuni, Emma Goldman, and all those other figures and well, that’s where one of the great awakenings of anarchism came from, which a great comrade who passed away a long time ago wrote a book called, you know, “Seditious Awakenings of Anarchism.” So, yeah, we were kids from the neighborhood, and we started organizing ourselves into punk collectives.

We started hanging out at the narcopunk scene in El Chopo because we thought No Future’s punk was kind of cringeworthy—they don’t call it that, they don’t say it.

So we’d get all worked up, and well, we’d go buy fanzines, buy fanzines.

Back then, books from Antorcha and other publishers were still circulating a lot.

For example, Kiko just mentioned Carlos Díaz, who’s an interesting guy, very knowledgeable about anarchism and a scholar in general.

But he also published a very interesting book called ‘Y 6 6 on Anarchism.’ And the curious thing is that he doesn’t cite any anarchists.

No, that’s what I want to make, a distinction.

Sometimes we have a linear idea of anarchism, and there are no breaks or shifts in perspective, which later...

Due to the tradition of the Spanish language, or the anarchist tradition of the Spanish Civil War, the libertarian tradition—no, but now libertarianism is also referred to as liberalism and various neo-reactionary currents and blah, blah, blah, they say, and Mark Fisher and blah, blah, blah—no, anyway, we get to that point at age 13, and I finish middle school, enter the CCH (College of Sciences and Humanities), and get involved in the great project of the late Pablo González Casanova.

I had already read about democracy in Mexico, so I had this idea that I wanted to be a great student activist, but I didn’t achieve it, no, I never achieved any of that.

Later, I became detached from activism because it’s alienating, so, well, nothing.

Then, the anarcho-vegan groups, which were also important, were among the first expressions that I found interesting regarding a critique of global warming, not the population problem.

It had some very strange aspects, not that they also stemmed from readings of Spanish anarchists and neo-Malthusianism, which were also a reference point for individualist anarchism, which I don’t share because they seem rather detestable and well, also within the student movement, it was growing there and there were two spaces, not the space of the Chopo anarchists, I mean, the Chopo punks, and the CCH Sprepas anarchists, especially this generation that later began to converge through an anarchist perspective.

We found them all at the university, not at the CCH anymore.

We had already formed several federations or attempts at student organization to expel the porros from UNAM, which was one of the greatest strengths of the anarchist movement, which was entirely anarchist, because it was about putting your body on the line and we all came from this kind of virile background, you know, because it was very virile, very violent, and we weren’t afraid to put our bodies on the line.

We came from the violence that was prevalent in the neighborhood, so why wouldn’t we give our lives for something, even for someone, for people we didn’t even know, who maybe don’t even think about us now? Or for those who also had to put their bodies on the line and who aren’t even in university anymore.

So these were very interesting experiences, and I also went to Oaxaca, Tenco, and I was involved in a lot of the summits against summits, a great debate within the anarchist movement, which at that time was always there, or still is, I don’t know now, the truth is I hardly follow social media, but it’s still very underground in my opinion, there’s a lot of ignorance about it to this day.

So much so that in my generation, for example, well, we were young, I don’t know if it’s like that, being young, I just turned 35, I still feel young, so you’re like Malatesta, no, but well, we had to create publishing houses because there was a lack of debate, no, even the people who called themselves anarchists didn’t have a body of doctrine or anything, because that also made us cringe, it made me cringe.

Having to talk about Bakun all the time, talking about Malatesta, no, or other authors who later became canonical, especially around 2012, because we had been criticizing all of classical anarchism, I mean, we had been learning all of classical anarchism and there was this thing called synthetism and platformism.

So a debate arose between synthetism and platformism, and also regarding the recovery of a concept that the Marble Task calls anarchism without adjectives.

No.

So, sometimes the inherent ambiguity of anarchism in Mexico—I don’t know, well, also in the United States and elsewhere—is kind of crazy, it comes from that concept, not from the concept of anarchism without adjectives.

Later, these discussions about platformism, synthesis, and so on, the class struggle, arose because within the anti-globalization movement there was an issue there.

Or the alter-globalization movement, or the summits against summits, whatever you want to call it.

There was confusion; there wasn’t really a kind of radical democracy.

So many people started thinking about the class struggle, not from a libertarian point of view, and well, that’s it.

Again, Carlos Díaz, 16 Theses on Anarchism.

There are no quotes from any anarchists.

There are quotes from an author named Jacques Camat and another author named Amadeo Bordiga, and another author named Karl Korch, and well, and the classic references to Rosa Luxemburg, Rosa Luxemburg, and George Lucas, right? And well, then one is left kind of stunned by that, and then to the references, not to Marxism.

Well, it turns out that Jack Scamat, this author, is the influence on all the ultra-leftists.

That’s why I don’t think that “left” would have been the definition for me.

For me, it’s a long process of clarification, not only in Mexico, but internationally, of moving away from ultra-leftism, not currently in the United States and in Europe, even some accelerationist authors have already begun to approach what a French journal called Theory Comunist calls “communization.” It’s something else, it’s a very interesting experience and in 2012, other libertarian perspectives were recovering this whole tradition, not of Bohr, the Situationist International, this “socialism barbarism,” “invariance,” this Italian section of the Situationist International, Lud with Segli Proletari, not with Giorgio Cesarano and authors who greatly influenced the way of thinking that is still in crisis to this day.

I mean, that’s it.

Did it put insurrectionist anarchism in crisis? Yes.

Why? Because there were two trends emerging: the insurrectionist anarchist trend, which was authoritarian—it seems it always was a very authoritarian trend, given that I was someone who at that time liked to use the anarchist label—and then there was the one that came with the Invisible Committee, which also became very fashionable and well, my friend also has a lot to say about this.

The Invisible Committee, well, they also produced a text called “Appeal”—not “Appeal,” no—which doesn’t really come from anarchism; it comes from currents of the French far left, radical, I mean, insurrectionary, not insurrectionist because that’s ideology, insurrectionary, no and the perspective is very different, very different with respect to what they call the cycles of proletarian struggle or capitalist restructuring.

So, there’s a very important debate there that has already had a lot of impact, even on mainstream philosophers like Mark Fisher or Ray Brasier and others.

For example, at which university are they offering the course on Roland Simon? At the University of Beirut.

Simon has a book called *A Critical History of the Ultra-Left*, which I recommend everyone read to understand this, so that they can understand it for themselves.

<strong>Lorenzo Sánchez:</strong> Hello, how are you? Good evening, my name is Lorenzo Sánchez.

I’m currently trying to study communication and culture at the Autonomous University of Ciudad de Asunción (UAC), and I work in healthcare; I’m a stretcher bearer.

So, the pandemic affected us, and we were there, seeing the sick, not the children.

I want to tell you that I started listening to punk when I was about 10 years old; I’m almost 50.

Before punk, I listened to heavy metal and rock, but punk, in particular, really grabbed me, and I think it awakened my consciousness.

So I started getting involved, listening to a lot of bands, and when I was in my early twenties, some friends from the neighborhood, Pont, formed a band and from there, I started getting involved in popular movements.

I remember my first experience was the teachers’ strike with the SNTE (National Union of Education Workers).

I was in middle school, and I helped them distribute ballots.

I didn’t even know, I had no idea, but I thought it was fair because I saw my teachers there.

So that was the first thing that impacted me, not the solidarity.

I didn’t understand anything as a child, but I wanted to help my teachers, and that was the first thing.

The second thing that impacted me was Zapatismo.

I was a heavy drinker, not like it’s a rule, almost like we all like alcohol, no.

So I was a heavy drinker, and I remember that the woman I was living with at the time told me: “Hey Lorenzo, something’s happening over there in Chapa.” I was completely wasted and I said: “You know what? I don’t understand anything.

We’ll see about the hangover tomorrow.” The next day I started reading, and I was really shocked to see some hooded men, you know? And I started investigating La Jornada, which is what I’ve read so far, and it impacted me.

That’s what I remember.

A few months later, a kind of support group from the punk movement, from my punk friends, was organized for the Zapatistas.

Not just somewhere on a hill, no, I went and from there, the second thing that really impacted me was the CGH strike.

I was a kid in my early twenties, I didn’t have any schooling, I had finished middle school and went to Conalep for a year and then dropped out, I left school very young, and so on and me, without being involved in any school, I said, I’m going to support these kids because I feel they’re fighting for things that I think are very just.

So, as a young man, my friend here too, I met him around that time, he’s a journalist and I started trying to write, first because of a man who’s no longer with us, and then he taught me.

I tried to start writing and little by little I started to loosen up, and I’ve been writing for about 20 years now, and I don’t want to go on too long.

What I want to tell you is that I’ve tried to participate in collectives, but I feel like the problem is me.

I’m very reserved, very shy.

So, it’s kind of hard for me to get involved with people and what I’ve decided for many years now is to work in a solid, individual way, not like this.

For example, I’d love to have the courage that my comrades have to stand up to the police.

I don’t think that’s very brave.

I think someone once told me, “Look, you have to be in the trenches where you think you’ll be useful, not where you won’t.” So, after being told that, I said, “I’m not useful here.

I think I’ll be useful by speaking and writing,” and that’s what I’ve tried to do.

So, for me, I declare myself—like Carlos said—many of my punk and anarchist comrades are like those intellectuals, not because we haven’t been interested in studying, in reading, in informing ourselves.

I do share that view, but I work almost entirely on what I’ve managed to accomplish, and I consider anarchism—I don’t call myself an anarchist.

I say I’m an anarchist sympathizer, because if I compare myself to or look at the life of Ricardo Flores Magón or so many other comrades, well, I haven’t done absolutely anything.

So, for me, calling oneself an anarchist is a very big deal, and I call myself a sympathizer.

I knew Tobi, I also know Kiko, but...

So, I’ve always had many, many, many doubts, and one day at El Chopo I asked Tobi, “Hey Tobi, where would you place anarchism?” And he told me, “Well, for me, anarchism comes from the left, because that’s like the root, although I’ve always said anarchism is the left of the left, of the left.” Anarchism is the most detested ideology, even by those on the left—and we’re talking specifically about communists, not all of them, but the vast majority detest anarchism.

There’s what Stalin wrote, for example, against anarchism, and according to Stalin, it was revolutionary, which it wasn’t.

Then Toby told me, yes, anarchism can be left-wing, but it goes beyond that.

So I’m sticking with that.

For me, anarchism does go beyond that; it’s left-wing, but it goes much further.

So I consider that the comrades who are involved in this—there are anarchist teachers, doctors, lawyers, and some of us who work for the government, and maybe someone says it’s a crime, but hey, you have to live, you have to eat, and that doesn’t mean you sell out.

It’s one thing to work there and another to sell out.

These are completely different things in my opinion, and besides, what can a simple person like me sell? Absolutely nothing.

So I’ve tried to share my ideas, not impose them.

I used to be like that, but not anymore, because I understood that it’s not right.

Part of anarchism, as I understand it now, is not being authoritarian.

So, whoever understands it, let them understand, I say cool, and if I’m not interested, no.

For me, anarchism now is, for example, in...

I don’t know, I always read Factoreau many years ago, this American thinker who talks about civil disobedience.

So, the first thing I said when I was drowning in alcohol, my brother told me: “You’re such an anarchist, and you’re always getting drunk, go on.” So I said: “That’s it.” From then on, obviously, with many things, I managed to stop drinking.

I haven’t drunk in 18 years, and it’s been more than six or seven years since I’ve had a cigarette.

Because those who cultivate the cigarettes are the children of young children, not the exploited.

So I said, I don’t want that.

I haven’t tried drugs, I’m not interested because I also don’t want to collaborate with organized crime, which is the state and the drug cartels.

So, how can I undermine the state in my opinion? I’m not getting involved in that.

For me, I don’t go there.

I try not to consume anything from Coca-Cola or Pepsi, from anyone.

No, I mean, I try.

Obviously, someday you’re going to have a situation where you have no other choice and you’re going to have to buy something, but it’s the least I can do.

So, for me, that’s my struggle and another thing, I consider one of the struggles that anarchism, anarchist militants, and anarchist feminist women have to have—they do it, but many of our comrades don’t—is the issue of femicides.

Personally, it angers me that when I started to become interested in the issue of femicide...

I was in a group called Coria, which has been working on domestic violence for 20 years.

I work on that issue, so now I try—I have a small radio program at the university—and I try to talk about femicides and machismo because I think that right here in the scene there are many comrades who call themselves anarchists and who are macho, and many female comrades.

That’s something that’s said to us, and honestly, I think it’s work that has to be done and I really admire the comrades who are in the streets; I wish I had the courage, not to confront them.

We saw the repression in Atenco, we saw the repression in what happened here in 2012, we saw the marches of the first Ayotzinapa march, how the police repressed them downtown.

Even I, when I was a kid, 17 or 18 years old, I used to wear my little t-shirt and my patches.

I never had the courage to wear one, to stand up my hair, no.

But I was a “pongo,” I mean, I still consider myself a “pongo,” but just the simple fact of being seen as strange was enough to get you thrown in a patrol car, accused of being a drug addict when I didn’t even drink back then, no, I mean, I didn’t do drugs, never, I’ve never used drugs, and I understand very clearly what one of the comrades said here: one defends oneself against the violence of the State, not because they are the ones who repress us for the simple fact of being different and wanting justice, so for me.

It’s very good to read Malatesta, and I loved Malatesta’s book on anarchy.

It’s a very simple, very beautiful book, and there are other things.

I greatly admire Ricardo Flores Magón; I’ve read him a lot, I’ve studied him.

Patricia Galeana said that you start to love people as you begin to study them, and that’s something I feel about Ricardo Flores Magón.

I believe he made mistakes; he’s not perfect, he’s not my god, he’s simply a comrade I care about a lot.

So, to conclude, I think we need to be involved in other things.

I’m involved in anarchism, and I even talk to people who don’t know what it means.

I have a coworker who told me, “Hey Lore, anarchists are the ones who commit violence and break windows.” I calmly explained to him why that was my defense, because I’ve never broken a window, I’ve never broken a window, I’ve never scratched a wall, no, I haven’t.

Like my coworker said, I don’t judge whether something is right or wrong.

I simply haven’t done it, no, I mean, I haven’t done it.

So I told him, not with Dad, yes, it goes like this, it goes like this, and at the end of the time he told me, you know what, I’m grateful because you took the blindfold off my eyes.

I’ve been made to like the media, not the media, most of which are awful, and he told me that, and there are many things to say, not because there isn’t time, but I thank you because when I saw the title of the book I said wow.

I think it’s really good because obviously there have been many books about anarchism and many anarchists have written them.

Rius himself was interested in the topic, no, I was lucky enough to meet him and talk with him.

I think it’s very good and as Kiko said, it’s a good effort and I thank you very much for taking the trouble to talk about this topic because really, being an anarchist is very stigmatized, they’re violent, they’re drug addicts, they’re good for nothing and believe me, at least in my life I’ve tried to say, well, yes, I was the drunk, I was the good-for-nothing, but now I want that stigma to at least start to disappear in people’s minds because it’s a very powerful stigma.

Thank you all very much.

Yes, look, the program is called Masculinities and Machismo.

A friend of mine who’s a guest tomorrow told me that he knows a lot about the term “masculinities.” His name is Roberto Garda, and he knows a lot about the topic of masculinities.

He suggested that I change the name of the program.

He already explained why, and well, since I’m getting old, I’m stuck on analyses from 20 years ago, but it’s still a good idea.

The program is called Masculinities and Machismo, and it airs on Sonco Radio.

You can listen to it on Facebook, and I’m trying to host it.

I should clarify that I haven’t worked in radio, and I’ve been a radio fan since I was a kid, but this is my effort.

Tesonco Radio airs the program, it’s called Masculinities and Machismo, and it’s on Fridays from 11:40 a.m. to 12:40 p.m.

So, on that program, I’m basically trying to address the topic of non-toxic masculinities.

That’s something I wanted to suggest, Kiko, and I hope I can go to the library space sometime soon.

I’m offering to talk about this because I think there’s a lot of work to be done there.

Women need this support, especially those of us who call ourselves libertarians, those of us who call ourselves leftists—because that’s the complaint.

Machismo is on the right, that’s a classic stereotype, but it’s also on the left, and it’s something we have to try to eradicate.

Thank you very much.

<strong>Speaker 3:</strong> Good evening, thank you very much.

Well, first I want to say, Daniela, Rafael, Carlos, I mean, your writings have been with me for a long time now and have helped me a lot to understand reality.

It has to do precisely with a search for how to define myself politically, not under what stance, but under what principles it is best to approach current problems.

I also want to go back, let’s say, to 2012.