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DECEMBER 4, 2014

Crisis in Mexico: An InfrarrealistaRevolutionBY FRANCISCO GOLDMAN

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The informal nationwide civic movement that has emerged in Mexico in response to thedisappearance of forty-three students is propelled by people and groups with all kinds ofagendas and ambitions.PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEJANDRO ACOSTA / REUTERS

This is the fourth part in Francisco Goldman’s series on the recent upheavalin Mexico. He has also written “The Disappearance of the Forty Three(http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/crisis-mexico-disappearance-forty-three),” “Could Mexico’s Missing Students Spark aRevolution (http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/crisis-mexico-forty-three-missing-students-spark-revolution)?,” and “The Protests forthe Missing Forty Three (http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/crisis-mexico-protests-missing-forty-three).”

n mid November, three caravans converged on Mexico City, led byfamily members of the forty-three students from the Ayotzinapa

Normal School whose abduction, in late September, has led tonationwide protests. One caravan was coming directly from GuerreroState, where the students disappeared, another from the state of

Chiapas, and another from the city of Atenco, in Mexico State, thesite of the most notorious act of violent government repressioncommitted by Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s current President, in2006, when he was governor there. The plan was for the caravans tocome together and for the travellers to lead a giant march onNovember 20th.

The kidnapping is now known to have been carried about by themunicipal police of Iguala, Guerrero, on orders from the city’s mayor.According to the government, the police handed the students over toa local narco gang, which murdered them and burned their remains inthe Cocula municipal dump. This scenario is still awaiting forensicconfirmation, and the families of the missing students, and manyothers, do not accept it. “They were taken alive, we want them backalive!’ remains one of the most common chants at the marches. “It wasthe state!” and “Peña Out!” are also staple slogans.

As the caravans approached Mexico City, President Peña Nieto, alongwith members and supporters of his PRI government, began issuingstatements and warnings that seemed to signal an aggressive newstrategy to counter the protests. On November seventeenth, BeatrizPagés Rebollar, the country’s Secretary of Culture, published aneditorial on the PRI’s official website. “The chain of protests and actsof vandalism—perfectly well orchestrated—replicated in various partsof the country, demonstrate that the disappearances and probableextermination of the 43 normal-school students were part of astrategic trap aimed at Mexico,” she wrote. “All these activists andpropagandists have the same modus operandi.” Pagés includedopposition media on her list of these activists and propagandists,accusing them of fraudulently confusing Mexicans into believing thatthe students’ disappearance “was a crime of state, as if the Mexicangovernment gave the order to exterminate them.”

Two days later, Carlos Alazraki, a veteran PRI insider and an

Two days later, Carlos Alazraki, a veteran PRI insider and anadvertising executive who has worked on the election campaigns ofseveral of the party’s Presidential candidates, published an editorial(http://razon.com.mx/spip.php?page=columnista&id_article=236454) entitled “Open Letter to AllNormal Mexicans (Like You)” in the newspaper La Razón. “46 daysago, two bands, students and Iguala narcos, got into a brawl,” hewrote. “There are varying versions of what happened. . . . That one[band] were guerrillas, the other narcos. One or the other wanted torun the whole region.” Since the start of the “narco war,” in 2006,equating victims’ criminality with that of narcos has been a routinepro-government strategy. Such insinuations characterized many ofPRI supporters’ early responses to the crime in Iguala. Alazrakiclosed, “Dear comemierdas. I curse the hour in which you were born.You’re murderers. You hate Mexico. And to finish, let me remind youthat violence generates violence. Don’t be shocked if the federalgovernment responds.”

The day before, in Mexico State, President Peña Nieto said in aspeech, “There are protests that are not clear in their objectives. Theyappear to respond to an interest in causing destabilization, generatingsocial disorder and, above all, in attacking the national project thatwe’ve been constructing.” Just a few days before that, he’d warned(http://revoluciontrespuntocero.com/el-estado-esta-legitimamente-facultado-de-hacer-uso-de-la-fuerza-advierte-pena-audio/) that thestate is legitimately empowered to employ force to impose order.

Peña Nieto often speaks like an actor playing a stereotypical Presidenton a television show: talking about the legitimate use of force asthough phrases like that have a magical power to insulate him fromthe squalid realities of authoritarian power brutally and lawlesslywielded, and of a government hopelessly compromised. ( Jon LeeAnderson recently wrote about Peña Nieto(http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/murder-moment-

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change-mexico).) When a President like that speaks of the legitimateuse of power and describes protesters as threats to a “national project,”what people hear are threats to wield that power violently andarbitrarily.

n the late afternoon hours of November 20th, people began togather at various spots in Mexico City to meet the three

Ayotzinapa caravans for the march that would converge in theZócalo, the main plaza of Mexico City. That night, I went to themarch with some friends and neighbors. By the monument El Ángel,I saw an elderly woman holding a hand-drawn sign that read, “Yes,I’m afraid! I tremble, sweat, turn pale, but I march! For Ayotzi, for me,for you, for Mexico.” As Ayotzinapa family members and studentsand other members of the Guerrero caravan were led to the front ofthe march, people chanted, “You’re not alone.” In the Ayotzinapagroup was a young woman who held a swaddled baby and sobbing asshe walked forward. There were machete-wielding peasant farmersfrom Atenco mounted on horseback. I saw many middle-classfamilies, including children. Raucous contingents of universitystudents joined too, of course. It seemed as if every imaginable groupand sub-group, large and tiny, that exists in Mexico City was present.For a while, we marched between a contingent from a capoeira schooland a marijuana-legalization group. I saw a nearly seven-foot-tallyoung man with long, blond hair, marching in the nude and holdingup a sign that read “Sweden is Watching.” Many protesters shoutedcounts up to forty-three, followed by “Justicia!” “#YaMeCansé” wasscrawled on countless signs, followed by whatever that marcher had“had enough” of. For instance, “#YaMeCansé of the war against thoseof us raising our voices. The criminals are the politicians!” Manychants were inventive or cheerfully obscene or sexual. The largercontingents, from universities and secondary schools, used ropebarriers to cordon themselves off from infiltrators. People shouted atmarchers wearing masks to uncover their faces. The masked marchers

were presumed to be possible members of anarchist groups, or evenprovocateurs who would provide the police with a justification forresponding with violence.

Usually, the main significance of a march is simply that it took place:that people took the time to walk in protest or support of something,because it felt like the right outlet for their indignation or approval.But sometimes a march makes concrete a moment of collectivecultural expression that can be harder to put into words. This marchwas an expression of Mexico City—of a way its residents like to thinkof themselves—in full flower. But it was also a manifestation of adiscernible change that seems to be taking place throughout Mexico.When a friend said that he “could feel Mexico on the move” atthe march (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-21/thousands-protest-in-mexico-city-s-streets-for-missing-students.html), he didn’t seem, to me, to be exaggerating. We didn’treach the Zócalo until about three hours after the first marchers. Bythen, the podium where the Ayotzinapa family members hadaddressed the rally was dark and empty, and I saw no sign of the gianteffigy of Peña Nieto that had been set aflame(http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/11/20/247619/protesters-firebomb-police-try.html), photos of which were featured, the nextday, in media reports all around the world.

As had occurred at the end of the previous march, a small group ofanarchists (or perhaps government provocateurs) clustered in front ofone door of the National Palace, apparently battling a line of armoredriot police. From the distant, opposite end of the vast plaza, we couldhear and see explosions and flashes, presumably from Molotovcocktails, perhaps also from tear-gas canisters fired by police. A darkmass of thousands still mulled in the Zócalo, many slowly movingtoward the streets exiting the plaza. The reporter in me wanted to geta closer look at the conflagration, but the people I was with didn’twant to go any nearer. I left them waiting, and I’d walked perhaps

fifty yards when I suddenly heard loud bangs and screams and sensedpanic surging through the crowd. I turned around and walking back,as swiftly as I could, to where I’d left my group. When I reachedthem, Nayeli, a twelve-year-old girl who is our upstairs neighbor,grabbed my hand. All around us, people were now running out of theplaza, faster and with growing panic. The situation was rife with allthe danger of becoming a stampede(http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/07/crush-point). Wemade our way through the darkened streets, navigating down theblocks that seemed emptiest, until we finally found a taxi.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I began learning about what hadhappened that night in the Zócalo and the surrounding streets,including those we’d fled through. A large number of Mexico Citypolice had suddenly emerged from the shadows on the Cathedral sideof the Zócalo and charged the protesters. All around the plaza, theyblocked off streets, trapping thousands inside a circle that, it turnedout, we’d just escaped. Eventually, eleven protesters were arrested, butmany more were beaten, clubbed, and kicked. It seems that none ofthe eleven who were arrested were among those who’d been attackingthe palace, hurling Molotovs, or otherwise battling the police. Somewere arrested while fleeing the plaza, and others in the streets aroundit. Witnesses used smart phones to film some of the arrests. Most ofthe arrested were university students. Most had begun to run from theZócalo, like so many others in the crowd, swept up in the panic. Athirty-one-year-old named Liliana Garduño Ortega, who had beenphotographing the protest, fell down in the stampede. The nextmoment, police began clubbing her and kicking her in the head, andthen arrested her. Hillary Analí González Olguín, a twenty-two-year-old university student at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma deMéxico (UNAM), was also beaten and arrested after falling down. Anart student named Atzín Andrade, twenty-nine, had becomeseparated from his friends and was waiting for them by a flagpolewhen police grabbed him. Luis Carlos Pichardo, a fifty-five-year-old

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filmmaker, and Laurence Maxwell Ilaboca, forty-seven, a Chileandoing postgraduate studies in the Department of Philosophy andLetters at UNAM, were among the arrested. None of the eleven hadany previous record.

The Mexico City police turned them over to federal authorities, andthey were formally accused of attempted homicide, criminalassociation, and rioting. They were then transferred to federal prisonsin Veracruz and Nayarít. According to their lawyers and human-rights groups, the eleven were beaten, tortured, and denied dueprocess. José Alberto, a twenty-one-year-old merchant, didn’t evenknow (http://www.animalpolitico.com/2014/11/20novmx-era-manifestante-pero-la-policia-lo-detuvo-golpeo-y-abandono-inconsciente-en-la-calle/) that there were going to be protests in theZócalo that night when he arranged to meet his wife, Tamara, there.They became caught in the crowd that was charged by police. Bothwere beaten (his beating was especially bad) by at least ten police; hewas taken to a police bus, beaten some more, and received ten orfifteen shocks, he said, from an electric prod, after which he lostconsciousness. He was found lying unconscious in Corregidora Streetin the early morning hours, and was then taken to a hospital.

The day after the march, President Peña Nieto thanked Mexico City’smayor, Miguel Ánhel Mancera, and his police for their coöperationwith federal authorities in upholding order in the Zócalo.

few days later, an old friend of mine, Paloma Díaz, contacted mebecause one of the eleven, Atzín Andrade, is one of her students

at La Esmeralda, the public national arts university. She drove me outto the campus, south of the city. Paloma and the school’s director,Carla Rippey, whom I’d never met, were close to the Chilean writerRoberto Bolaño during the years he spent in Mexico City in hisyouth; probably there is nobody now living in the city who knew himbetter. Bolaño wrote infatuated infrarrealista poems for a teen-aged

Paloma; in “Savage Detectives(http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/26/vagabonds),”Rippey is the inspiration for the character Catalina O’Hara, abeautiful United States-born artist living in Mexico.

Bolaño was a leftist who disdained the established left, itsorthodoxies, politicians, and political parties. In the early nineteen-seventies, he led a group of poets who believed that life in Mexico andin the rest of Latin America was so violent and absurd that poetsneeded to subvert reality and realism—as well as élitist literaryhierarchies—even more than the surrealists had. That attitude hasbeen very much in the air since the Ayotzinapa incident. Indeed,in Reforma(http://www.reforma.com/aplicacioneslibre/preacceso/articulo/default.aspx?id=51174&urlredirect=http://www.reforma.com/aplicaciones/editoriales/editorial.aspx?id=51174) earlier this week, the anthropologist and writer RogerBartra, who is relatively conservative among Mexico’s most prominentpublic intellectuals, christened “the heterogeneous and radical protestmovement that has unleashed massive marches in Mexico City” as“the infrarrealista left.” He chose that name, he writes, “notpejoratively,” but “because this left seems to flow beneath politicalrealities, carving tunnels to topple the government and underminingthe cement of a system it considers corrupt and repressive,” just as, hewrites, Bolaño and his compatriots sought to “subvert a literary orderthey considered oppressive.” Mexico’s most lauded group of youngjournalist-writers—a group (nominally led by Diego Osorno(http://www.diegoeosorno.com/)) who have stripped away thereportorial clichés of the narco war and brought its previously hiddenhuman realities to readers—also refer to themselvesas infrarrealista journalists.

The protests over the missing Ayotzinapa students, Paloma told me,were the first in recent memory in which students of the highlyselective Esmeralda had fully participated. In the past, she said,

postmodern ironies and theorizing have engaged them far more thanpolitical involvement. She added that it was amusing to see artstudents who have devoted their nascent careers to conceptualperformance and technological videos struggle to paint posters andbanners, many of them reading “43 + 11.” Rippey said that the arrestof the easy-going Atzín Andrade—who had been attending his first-ever protest march and who was being held in a federal prison oncharges of “attempted homicide”—had driven home to the studentsthat what had happened to him could happen to any of them. Rippeysaid that it was important, too, to temper her students’ passions. “Thisis a free public university,” she said, “and that was a greataccomplishment. There are things in Mexico to be grateful for.”

Frida Mendoza Chavez, a bright and energetic twenty-four-year-oldstudent leader, told me, “As a student at this school, I belong to astructure that the government created and that allows me to believe ina sense of community inside of it. Allowing us to have that place insociety also provides us with critical criteria to support institutionallegality. From here we have a right to say that we can’t permit anymore societal injustice, any more injustice toward humanity. But realreforms have to come from the trenches, where we know where westand as a country. How can they come from the corridors of power?How can [the President] clean up anything when he himself is aproduct of corruption and impunity?”

Mendoza’s eloquent speech (“That came out sounding good!” sheexclaimed happily) reflected what, to me at least, is one of the mostimportant and overlooked aspects of this so-called “Mexicanmoment.” The informal nationwide civic movement that has emergedis, undoubtedly, infrarrealista in many ways; it is propelled by peopleand groups with all kinds of agendas and ambitions, including themost intransigent or irrational ones. But, from what I’ve observed, it isincorrect to portray it—as the government’s supporters, and someeminent intellectual observers, do—either as a movement for radical

or violent Communist revolution or else as an unfocussed mass ofrabble-rousers who think that merely marching constitutes amovement.

In recent days, a group of Mexican artists released a video(http://revoluciontrespuntocero.com/artistas-mexicanos-piden-al-mundo-suspender-tratados-con-mexico-hasta-que-cumpla-sus-obligaciones-fotos-y-video/) called “What’s Happening in Mexico.Why We Say #YaMeCansé,” which powerfully condenses the causesand aims of the emerging movement. A written statementaccompanying the video describes it as a response to “the criticalsituation in which the lives of so many Mexicans have fallen, whohave to deal every day with the impunity, impotence and danger thatcomes with living in a country that doesn’t provide security, governedby a state that, far from preoccupying itself with imparting justice,colludes closely with organized crime and, on top of everything else,is determined to hide the truth of these facts.” The artists suggest thecreation of a “Citizens Institute empowered to audit the state andbegin creating the conditions that can bring justice to the citizens ofMexico.”

Nearly a year ago, in February, after Joaquín (El Chapo) Guzmán(http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/05/the-hunt-for-el-chapo), the drug lord at the head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, wascaptured, Edgardo Buscaglia, a Mexican security expert and seniorresearch scholar at Columbia Law School, commented, “El Chapoand his people in Sinaloa had hundreds of Mexican politicians intheir pockets. Let’s see if they arrest any of them now.” Of course theyhaven’t. Buscaglia said that as long as the chains of complicitybetween politicians and narco lords weren’t interrupted, the narco warcould be considered lost. The Ayotzinapa tragedy made those chainsstarkly clear.

Meanwhile, the clearest example of corruption in Mexico at the

Meanwhile, the clearest example of corruption in Mexico at themoment seems to be President Peña Nieto himself. He cannotcredibly explain how a relatively young civil servant from a middle-class family has managed to accumulate as much wealth as he has.The most publicized (though not the only) evidence of this wealth isthe seven-million-dollar mansion that the President says belongs tohis wife, a soap-opera star who hasn’t worked since 2007. The title onthe house is owned by a construction corporation that has woncontracts (some of them controversial) from Peña Nieto’sadministrations during both his governorship and his Presidency. Lastweek, when given an award by the Committee to Protect Journalistsfor his lifetime contribution to the freedom of the press, Jorge Ramos,the Univision broadcaster, spoke about Peña Nieto in a way that nobroadcaster, and very few Mexican politicians, has dared. “Can youimagine what would happen here in the United States if agovernment contractor secretly financed the private home of MichelleObama? Well . . . that is what’s happening in Mexico and, believe it ornot, there’s not even one independent investigation being held to lookinto this matter,” he said. “That’s not saving Mexico. That’scorruption.”

On November 27th, Peña Nieto announced ten measures intended topull Mexico out of its current crisis. He suggested disbanding thecountry’s municipal forces and uniting them under the control of statepolice. He suggested a national emergency telephone number. Herevived the idea of strengthening the anti-corruption prosecutor. Theproposals, however fell flat, and were mostly derided in Mexico andabroad. If state police are corrupt, too—and so are the federal police—what good can it do to put them under the same command? As thepopular radio host Sopitas commented, “If first you don’t effectivelyclean up corruption, uniting the police is the equivalent ofinstitutionalizing the narco police.” Others said that a nationalemergency number, because of organized-crime corruption, wouldonly serve to alert narco groups of actions being taken against them.

Peña Nieto’s measures admitted no culpability on his government’spart, and no member of his cabinet was made to resign over thehandling of the crisis. No concrete anti-corruption measures weretaken against top-tier politicians. Then again, how can Peña Nietotake on government corruption and impunity when he has becomethe most obvious symbol of those ills?

On Saturday, November 29th, a federal judge freed the eleven peoplearrested on November 20th, saying that there was absolutely noevidence to support the charges against them. It was a sharp rebuke tothe government, and a victory for all those who had protested anddenounced the arrests. On December 1st, the second anniversary ofhis Presidency, Peña Nieto was greeted by a poll that showed hisapproval rating at thirty-nine per cent, the lowest for any MexicanPresident since 1995, following Mexico’s disastrous peso devaluation.That night, there was another massive protest in the capital. To avoidthe police trap provided by the geography of the Zócalo, the usualdirection of the march was reversed, to proceed from the Zócalo to ElÁngel. It seemed that it would be easier for crowds to disperse fromthe multi-spoked traffic rotary surrounding the monument, withstreets leading into a busy commercial and tourist zone. Violentanarchists, about thirty in number, showed up again, providing policewith pretexts to attack non-violent bystanders. A smart-phone video(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3t3-rfc9JI) shared on socialmedia shows a police commander using violent language and orderinghis men to grab anyone they see running. A number of people,including women, were beaten. Maps of the surrounding streets,marking in red areas that protestors heading home shouldavoid, circulated on Twitter. A crowd of about a hundred protesterswas about to be engulfed by police when a group from the city’shuman-rights commission showed up and formed a human cordon toprotect them. The protesters chanted against violence while thehuman-rights workers walked them to a subway station.

FRANCISCO GOLDMAN

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