A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneracion: Platformism in Mexico - Liza's Mexican Tour Rediscovering the Struggles of Mesoamerica (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

"It's not the rebels who create the world's problems, it's the world's 
problems that create the rebels." - Ricardo Flores Magón ---- On my tour 
of Mexico this past July 2025, our intention was to fraternize and learn 
firsthand about the political situations, social struggles, and 
strategies being developed by comrades from different currents in that 
territory, and especially, to gain insight into anarchist and 
revolutionary projects. During my visit to Mexico City and, later, 
Guadalajara (Jalisco), we held a political event to present Liza, an 
anarchist platform from Madrid, with the support and organization of the 
political base of the RASH Guadalajara collective, and the participation 
of university professor Marcelo Sandoval.

First, I want to express that without the care, friendship, and ties 
that united me to the people who welcomed me there in Mexico, this stay 
would not have been possible, nor would many of the diverse political 
objectives I achieved, deepening the enrichment I was able to bring back 
to Madrid, which are expressed in this chronicle. Only mutual support 
and the bonds we built have made this trip possible as it has unfolded; 
internationalism, to a large extent, is also sustained by this.

In Mexico City, walking through its streets, one can feel the presence 
of feminist and LGBTQ+ struggles, expression through graffiti, banners, 
memorial altars, self-managed plaques, murals... all of this is present 
in everyday life. They remind the progressive government of the 4T (the 
name of the political project of Morena, the parliamentary party of 
former President López Obrador and current President Claudia Sheinbaum) 
that the missing women and murdered women of all these years are 
missing. That the feminist class struggle, trans-inclusive and 
anti-punitive, is the only path forward, and not the creation of a 
purple police force like the ones they've founded in Mexico City over 
the years.

Mexican muralism, present in official spaces such as the National Palace 
and the Palace of Fine Arts, however, allows us to contemplate works by 
Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros in 
prominent locations. These muralist works largely represent the class 
struggle against the bourgeoisie, mass socialism, or a rethinking of 
colonialism; murals that have become part of Mexico's heritage and 
provide insights into the political thought of the 1920s and 1930s in 
that country. Muralism remains present in Mexico's current political 
reality through multiple protests against the genocide in Palestine and 
the struggle of the neo-Zapatistas, the EZLN, for several decades in 
Chiapas.

I went to support and participate in a march in Mexico City against 
gentrification and touristification. This march took place on the 
afternoon of July 4th, so it also had a very anti-gringo tone, not only 
because of the racist policies of US imperialism, which were even more 
pressing under Donald Trump's administration, but also because of the 
political connection between the gringo presence and the gentrification 
of cities in Mexico. There, these phenomena cannot be understood 
separately, although the determining factor isn't the origin of the 
gentrifier, but rather their class identity as a structural background. 
During my stay there, there was another march against gentrification in 
Mexico City, also in the city of Oaxaca, further south in the highlands. 
In Guadalajara, I participated in a talk where they were also trying to 
organize a response to gentrification, laying the groundwork for a 
tenants' union and calling for the decriminalization of squatting.

Mexico City, a city with a metropolitan area of 21 million inhabitants, 
is already only half the population of the Spanish state. Such a vast 
city, with centuries of history dating back to its mythological founding 
on the spot where the eagle landed on a cactus devouring a snake. This 
site, chosen by the Mexica to build on Lake Texcoco, and which 
periodically moves the earth beneath the feet of its inhabitants, 
contains dozens of political spaces enriching its most distant and 
present history. This city houses the Leon Trotsky House Museum, the 
site where he was assassinated in 1940, in the Coyoacán neighborhood, 
with a blow from an ice axe by the Stalinist agent and 
counterrevolutionary Ramón Mercader. In the Rotunda of Illustrious 
Persons of the Civil Pantheon of Dolores I went to visit the tomb of 
Ricardo Flores Magón, the most important figure of Mexican anarchism at 
the beginning of the 20th century, founder of the newspaper 
"Regeneración", where he expressed his ideas to create a strategic unity 
between workers and rural peasant population under the slogan "Land and 
Liberty", and which had a great imprint on the Mexican Revolution of 
1910 allied with the liberating Army of the South of Emiliano Zapata.

To learn more about this fundamental process, a precursor to other 
social revolutions such as the Ukrainian, Korean, and Spanish 
revolutions, you can visit the Museum of the Revolution. However, the 
official history must be read between the lines, since the outcome of 
this process, which had significant popular components and profound 
revolutionary subjects, was ultimately annihilated by the 
counterrevolution that crystallized into what would later give rise to 
the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), the Mexican regime's party 
with nationalist overtones that held power for more than seven decades. 
Analyzing this revolutionary process, and its most interesting elements, 
highlighted in Magonism and Zapatism, are interesting avenues for 
charting a current strategic path from a perspective of radical, 
class-based, and internationalist transformation.

I was invited to the Reconstruct Social Library, founded in Mexico City 
in 1978, which specializes in works on anarchist history, theory, and 
political philosophy. There, I was able not only to discover, through 
the help of those who self-manage it, some old and original copies of 
Mexican anarchism, Bakuninism, and the Spanish social revolution; but 
also to share impressions on The Idea in Our Times on both sides of the 
ocean and to jointly exchange materials. The situation of anarchism in 
Mexico is in a standby phase , stifled in recent years by the pull of 
the governmental project of the 4T (Tourism of the Fourth 
Transformation). The situation of misery caused by capitalism is such 
that any promise of simple reform or improvement materially implies, for 
broad sectors of the population, a small step forward from a situation 
of perpetual survival on the margins of neoliberalism. But it is 
poisoned by the acceptance of the framework of reformism within the 
system, and revolutionary proposals have been left in the field of 
defeat and immobility.

The EZLN's proposal since the 1990s is the one that best keeps alive 
that flame of transformation from below to the left, but after decades 
of failing to break the siege of the Lacandon jungle, its proposal for 
political autonomy is under siege by the narco-state. The drums of war 
also reverberate in Mexico, where a revolutionary path and program of 
anarchism that sows social struggle while abandoning isolationism is 
equally needed. I also visited the Rincón Zapatista in Mexico City, 
which unfortunately closed temporarily, as well as the same space in 
Guadalajara, Jalisco, which closed several years ago. We would have 
liked to have come into more direct contact with Zapatista territories, 
but Mexico's geographical reality made that impossible.

In both Mexico City and Guadalajara, cultural anarchism remains very 
present in the flea markets, commonly called "tianguis" there. The Chopo 
flea market in Mexico City every Saturday morning has its own anarchist 
space, where I was able to acquire interesting works of Magonism to 
study them better later as a relevant historical antecedent of our 
platformist movement. Also in Guadalajara's cultural flea market, in 
Agua Azul Park, there are many expressions of anarchism, including a 
space for vegan food, a stand with fanzines, books, and newspapers, even 
the monthly distribution of the Madrid-based publication Todo Por Hacer. 
In that same park, on Wednesday afternoons, a group of artists, social 
educators, and activists in general, along with people who live on the 
streets, meet. They have been doing so for years as a space to raise 
awareness of living in the most extreme survival, a political collective 
called "La otra calle," independent of the government and initiatives 
linked to the Church, institutions from which they suffer repression and 
stigmatization.

In northern Guadalajara, in the municipality of Zapopan, part of its 
metropolitan area, there is a natural area known as the Nixticuil 
Forest. It is currently under siege by more than forty real estate 
developers who are carving up this protected natural area with the 
connivance of Jalisco government authorities. The Nixticuil Forest 
Defense Committee has been denouncing this advance of urban development 
in this area for years and promoting awareness of the closely linked 
class and environmental activism. They organize replanting of native 
trees, among other activities, to combat the spread of speculation, 
which is not only confined to this forest, but also to the Bosque de la 
Primavera, the immense green lung of the city of Guadalajara, besieged 
each year by multiple intentional fires.

The renamed Rotunda of the Disappeared, previously (and still 
officially) known as the Rotunda of the Heroic Children, has been 
constantly covered with dozens of banners and graffiti since the last 
decade, and is a political meeting point for families claiming their 
loved ones disappeared by government authorities or drug traffickers. 
More than fourteen thousand people have disappeared this century in 
Jalisco alone, and the recent discovery this year of an illegal 
crematorium in Teuchitlán, less than an hour from Guadalajara, with the 
remains of more than four hundred people. In the historic center of 
Guadalajara, in the plaza in front of the Jalisco Governor's Office, 
every street lamp is covered with dozens of posters of missing Jalisco 
residents. Years ago, the disappearance of the 43 students from 
Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero internationalized this political 
violence against the working classes. A traumatic reality of Mexico's 
past and present is decisive in its approach to politics against 
repression and impunity.

But Mexico has planted the seed of internationalism; the empathy for its 
own suffering has led it to be currently committed to the struggle for 
Palestinian freedom and an end to the genocide. The Palestine Libre 
walkway, also renamed as such, was previously officially known on 
Guadalajara's street map as Rambla de Catalunya (where a comrade and I 
organized a rally against repression on October 1, 2017); and now, in 
2025, it is a meeting point for Palestinian struggles in Guadalajara. 
This year, some Mexican comrades were arrested by the police there after 
painting a pro-Palestinian mural, and the judge acquitted them of all 
charges due to no incriminating cause.

In Guadalajara, I participated in two previously organized political 
events. The first was on July 13 at the grave of Juan García Oliver, who 
died in that city 45 years ago. I was present as a Liza activist, and 
far from intending it to be a simple tribute, the highly contradictory 
status of Oliver was discussed. He is remembered for serving as Minister 
of Justice in the government of the Republic, and, in the words of 
historian Chris Ealham:

When the revolution was further away, he stood out for his radical and 
insurrectionist stance; and when the revolution briefly became a reality 
in the summer of 1936, he opted for Popular Frontism and collaboration 
with the republican state.

The memory of our anarchist tradition must be kept alive and placed 
before the perspective of the assessment we must address to realize the 
revolutionary potential of libertarian communism. The political event 
was also used to discuss with our Mexican comrades the current situation 
of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, its defeats and setbacks, but also its 
progress in social action over the last decade and its union potential 
in the labor struggles and precariousness that capitalism confronts us 
with in the Spanish state.

And finally, July 18th arrived, where we were invited to a central event 
of this Mexican tour: the presentation of European platformism at the 
Pochtecas chocolate shop. An event attended by some thirty comrades 
interested in learning about our anarchist political organization. We 
discussed the radical and strategic critiques we've built upon, the 
progress in our political formation, and our integration into mass 
movements through the strategy of militant dualism and the construction 
of a revolutionary social force. We also discussed the common spaces we 
are creating alongside other organizations within our current, expressed 
in this shared medium, as well as a mention of Teima, the publishing 
house where we recently released the book Black Flag: Rediscussing 
Anarchism , by Felipe Corrêa, translated for the first time from 
Portuguese in Spain.

The tools we proposed were put up for debate, and I had key 
conversations with comrades from Mexico. Furthermore, I was not alone; 
we were joined by UdeG professor Marcelo Sandoval, who gave an 
introduction to Magónism and the survival of anarchism in Mexico. A 
highly valued comrade and intellectual, he provides fundamental insights 
into political theory for the militant strategies we can build from 
Mexico. We also owe him thanks for the gift of two works on Flores 
Magón's revolutionary proposals and for rethinking current hardships 
from the perspective of militant class strength. We also exchanged 
flags, including a handmade flag of the FZLN (Zapatista National 
Liberation Front) from 1996, the political arm of the recognizable EZLN.

This exchange of anarchist strategies from both sides of our worlds, but 
with the clear goal of overcoming the capitalist system that oppresses 
us, was complemented by countless conversations and experiences at the 
most personal level that help us weave a much deeper, comprehensive 
picture. Only by sharing these experiences of direct political 
instruction in other latitudes can we all move forward together. Mutual 
affection is also sustained by the determination to build a strong and 
revolutionary organized anarchism; that is why we came to Mexico, to 
learn, dialogue, and continue cultivating that seed with a future 
international project for the emancipation of our class.

The gale will pass before us; we will make the difference in how we 
approach the onslaught of these dark storms. The revolution sails on a 
steady course, with knots woven in the long night. Freedom is not begged 
for; it is won by clasping the hand of the land that is yours and mine, 
that belongs to everyone, or it will belong to no one.

Ángel Malatesta, Liza activist

https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/08/14/el-plataformismo-en-su-paso-por-mexico/
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