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Items to Support EZLN Tour to Mexico City

Poster for EZLN event titled 'Gira por la Vida, Capítulo México', scheduled for December 2026 to January 2027 in CDMX, featuring eyes peering from a ski mask with text emphasizing struggle, resistance, rebellion, and dignity.

tl;dr: the merch is at the bottom.

On July 21, during the gathering or “seedbed” entitled “War against Humanity (Populations and Nature Under Siege),” called for by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, EZLN spokesperson Insurgent Subcommander Moisés announced that a delegation of 1,111 Zapatistas would travel to Mexico City in December, staying for the entire month. They will hold a series of meetings, gatherings, protests, and marches; organize the next “Gathering of Resistances and Rebellions” and “Gathering of Art;” and, on January 1, 2027, celebrate the 33rd anniversary of the EZLN’s armed uprising from the heart of the Mexican state.

However, the main motivation for the “Tour for Life – Mexico Chapter” is to meet with collectives and organizations searching for their disappeared family members and loved ones. More often than not, these efforts are led by the mothers of the disappeared. In elaborating on the upcoming trip in an August 9 statement, Moisés and Insurgent Captain Marcos stated that “Where are they?” is the most important question today in Mexico and Central America: “One of the main goals of our trip and stay in Mexico City is to meet with the collectives of those searching. Not only to listen to them and echo their demand for truth and justice. But also to offer them the collective embrace of the Zapatista peoples and communities. And, through that embrace, to try to let them know, at least a little, just how much we admire, respect, and love them.”

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In a world of sharp edges, do we need more knives?

I suppose this merits a content warning. But what doesn’t, anymore?

I don’t have an answer to that question. I just thought it sounded pretty. Maybe I’m being too blithe. Or too emo. Maybe yes. Maybe no. Binaries are boring. Manicheanism is so third century. It is impossible to be right all the time. Or left. Or pre or post or anti or pro. Hypocrisy is an innate human condition. We fit in no boxes, neither the ones they try to cram us into nor the ones into which we willingly seal ourselves. The contorting hurts, we adopt unnatural postures, but in that discomfort instead of cutting to break free, we often cut one another to fit them into our box. Or to ensure they’ll never fit. Or we cut ourselves thinking it’s worth the pain to have a little more breathing room in our cage. It’s a shame the remnants that get left behind: gossamer slices of authenticity we were too embarrassed or afraid to share in this world full of sharp edges.

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Meanwhile, in Mexico: Axolotls and attacks on autonomy

With the on-again, off-again war against Iran, Israel’s “ceasefire” slaughters in Gaza and Lebanon, the fact that everything is unaffordable and people can’t find jobs, and the nonconsensual foisting of an immensely inept Skynet on all of us, it’s hard to track – let alone process and still function – with all that is happening under the current worldwide regime of fascist terribleness. But in case the barrage of promotions hasn’t wormed its way into your brain yet, let us not forget that the World Cup is right around the corner, another Carnival of Capitalism to distract us.

In Mexico City, the head of the government, Clara Brugada, is preparing for the event by overseeing the spending of between 500 million and 3.2 billion pesos (29 to 185 million USD) to basically paint purple axolotls all over the city. Why fix crumbling infrastructure when one can just “axolotlify” it? Why attend to the fact that rent has increased 155% in the city and every 48 hours three houses are taken off the market and turned into vacation rentals as gentrification spirals out of control? Where social cleansing is not limited to painted axolotls but increased raids against migrants in the city? As expected, some of the populace has responded with memes. Others have taken to the streets, pointing to the deeper crises in Mexico, with the cry that “Behind the Cup are hidden graves and troops.”

For her part, President Claudia Sheinbaum thinks the “axolotlization” of Mexico City “looks pretty.” But she’s also got her hands full with CIA officers driving off cliffs in Chihuahua and blowing up narcos in the State of Mexico, not to mention her ally, Rubén Rocha Moya, the currently-on-sabbatical governor of Sinaloa being indicted by the United States for protecting the Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel in return for its help getting elected. This not only implicates a prominent member of the ruling MORENA party in organized crime, but also shows he is an active partisan in the Sinaloa Cartel’s internal war that has left more than 4,000 dead and 3,500 disappeared since September 2024.

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Subversion and self-critique in the self-managed university

I am pleased to share that my first peer-reviewed article, “Re-visioning the university: José Revueltas and academic self-management,” has been published by the journal Radical Americas. Below is a short post contextualizing and summarizing the article that I wrote for the journal’s blog, reposted here with permission.

This past 14 April marked fifty years since the death of José Revueltas, a singular figure of the mid-twentieth-century Mexican left. A four-time political prisoner, a winner of the National Prize for Literature, a communist twice expelled from the Mexican Communist Party, and a self-taught university professor, Revueltas was a heterodox, flawed, contradictory but immensely committed individual in the struggle for a better world. As a student of social movements and state repression in Mexico, I was intrigued by both his fascinating biography and – with important and notable exceptions – the limited scholarly engagement his later work and theoretical contributions have received.

Initial drafts of this article came together as students around the United States and beyond claimed space on their campuses to demand an end to U.S. and academic complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza. That wave of mobilization has passed, but another will surely come. In the meantime, the university remains in crisis, caught between forces of neoliberalism and far-right reaction and the ever-present question of its role in society. Revisiting Revueltas’s theory of academic self-management as put forward during the student movement in Mexico City in 1968 thus seems apropos at this moment. I am excited to have it published as an open-access article by Radical Americas, a journal welcoming early career professionals (which I most definitely am) and dedicated to the practice of systemic critique.

As such, my article seeks to accomplish two main tasks. One is to trace Revueltas’s political trajectory over the decades, demonstrating how it evolved to criticize the means he once embraced as the framework for revolutionary change, and how this evolution coincided with the dynamics of the 1968 movement. The second is to examine the contents of his theory of academic self-management as a transformative vehicle for the restructuring of society as a whole. In his attempt to theorize and give shape and direction to a movement as it was unfolding, Revueltas argued for the subversive role of the university as space for the self-critique of the society in which it was embedded. He proposed a non-hierarchical institution collaboratively managed by faculty and students dedicated to reflexively engaging with the most pressing concerns of the country and world. His vision for academic self-management began in the university but did not end there. Instead, practices of self-management would extend to the masses, ultimately leading to a socialist Mexico predicated upon absolute freedom, democracy, and justice. While aspirational, arguably utopian, and not explicitly adopted by the student movement, Revueltas’s theory offers insights not only into his own political progression and the mobilizations of which he was a part but can serve as a point of inflection for those immersed in similar concerns today.

Re-visioning the university: José Revueltas and academic self-management by Scott Campbell (Claremont Graduate University, CA, USA) is published in Radical Americas, volume 11.

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In the face of the war that traverses the world, our country, and our state: Let’s organize!

The following statement by the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero – Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ) announces that the organization is joining with the Union of Peoples and Organizations of the State of Guerrero (UPOEG). Shortly after this statement, the two groups, alongside the affiliated Community Police of the Regional Coordinator of Communal Authorities of the Founding Communities (CRAC-PC-PF), issued a manifesto that mirrors much of what is addressed below. The below was translated from the Spanish by Scott Campbell.

On Friday, January 30, alongside human rights observers, these groups organized a caravan to El Terrero, Guerrero, from which 300 community members were displaced six years ago by the state-backed narco-paramilitary group Los Ardillos. On the way, Los Ardillos attacked the caravan twice, with heavy weapons fire and exploding drones. The army and National Guard, both of whom were nearby, did not intervene. The caravan was forced to turn back. Fortunately, no one was injured or killed.

TO THE ZAPATISTA ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION

TO THE NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS-INDIGENOUS GOVERNING COUNCIL

TO THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SEXTA

TO THE NETWORKS OF RESISTANCE AND REBELLION

TO REBELLIOUS EUROPE

TO NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS BODIES

TO THE CIVIL OBSERVATION MISSION OF THE SEXTA

TO THE FREE AND INDEPENDENT MEDIA

TO THE PEOPLE OF GUERRERO

TO THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO AND THE WORLD

January 27, 2026

Brothers and sisters, the war that unfolds all over the world is the same that is experienced in Mexico. Our dead are added to the dead which are counted by the thousands. In this new partitioning of the world and territorial reconfiguration, capitalism strikes with greater violence to appropriate everything, even though to do so it must trample on the pretenses that the very same capitalism claims exist: the sovereignty of the nation-state, national and international law, human rights, minority rights, Indigenous rights, women’s rights, and children’s rights. Not sovereignty, nor law, nor respect for life in any of its forms: everything is earnings at any cost. The masks have fallen and capitalism shows itself for what it is – war and death against humanity and life.

In the state of Guerrero, murders are part of daily life, the State does not exist as a representative of the popular will, and the laws are a dead letter. For many years our state has been governed by capitalists, be they mining companies that plunder natural resources or be they criminal groups that poison our young people and terrorize the entire population. The state pretends to exist to keep up appearances of being one more part of an orderly country with progress and development – damn lies! As such we can see the photograph of President Claudia Sheinbaum with Guerrero state governor Evelyn Salgado finishing breakfast, both smiling, they hug, they pose, while the country continues filling with clandestine graves, while searching mothers keep up hope of finding their children alive, digging in hills and mountains, while the borders fill with criminals that displace entire communities, be they criminals from the cartels or criminals of the world, Donald Trump and his goons, who with satisfaction and mockery see how they have the world’s political class on its knees, including Mexico.

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Incomplete thoughts on ICE and harm

The actions of ICE around the so-called United States are deeply troubling on several levels. One is the violence and terror of their actions themselves. Another is the fascist, white supremacist ideology dictating and justifying those actions. A third, perhaps underexamined, is the impact those actions have on us as targets, resistors, or merely observers.

The deployment of unaccountable, masked mercenaries whose sole purpose is to kidnap, terrorize, and murder people of color and those in solidarity with them has appropriately sparked outrage. Their mission is to rend the social fabric of families and entire communities. The newest ICE recruit, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and everyone in between deserve nothing but our opprobrium, condemnation, and rejection. Their mythical palingenetic vision of a pure nation to be achieved through ethnic cleansing and mass violence is unequivocally fascist. They must be countered. There is no grey area: they have made their agenda and ambitions clear. To support ICE is to support fascism. To support fascism is to be a fascist. These are the terms of the debate. And there is no debate with fascism. It is only to be defeated. That millions of U.S. citizens continue to back the activities of ICE gives it no more legitimacy than did the 43% of Germans who voted for the Nazi Party in March 1933 give legitimacy to its platform. When the mandate for one’s existence – be it an individual, a party, an ideology, or a government – is to cause harm, then one has forfeited any claim to legitimacy.

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Update on Yorch: Saying Goodbye

Translated from the Spanish-language post on the Auditorio Che Facebook page.
Learn more about Mexican anarchist political prisoner Jorge “Yorch” Esquivel here.

UPDATE: At 11:30am on Tuesday, December 9, 2025, beloved compa Jorge “Yorch” Esquivel passed on. More information will be made available in time.

December 6, 2025, 3:40pm

Dear family, compas, friends, and community:

Thank you very much for all your letters, love, and solidarity with our beloved Yorch. We have read each and every one of your messages and we are very grateful because we know that he hears us and knows that he is not alone.

We want to share with you that our compañero’s health has become more delicate every day. Even with the dignified attention that he is finally receiving and the enormous and loving efforts made by doctors and hospital personnel charged with his treatment, due to the advanced state of deterioration he was in upon arriving at the hospital – where he is now – it has been very complex attending to his urgent condition. After the long period of medical neglect, the effects of the damned prison on all facets of prisoners’ health – and more in this case, where the violence of the State and UNAM orchestrated repression against him – and his prior medical issues which themselves paint a picture of potential complications due to his hospitalization, multiple surgeries, and irreversible damage suffered in 2019 when Yorch survived appendicitis that was not treated in time.

Sadly, our compañero now does not have the possibility of recovering a dignified quality of life and he has a very high probability of remaining in the state he is in now and due to the risks presented by the procedures and treatments indicated by his clinical state in the coming days. During recent weeks, Yorch was wandering from site to site without precise information. We did not receive clear news regarding his condition, treatment, or anything else. The prison authorities and those of the various hospitals where he has been this past month did not inform us of the severity of his condition until he arrived at the current hospital and we learned minutes before they had to intubate him – due to neurological failures that don’t allow for him to breathe unaided – that this was just a small part of the series of complications he has. The situation took us completely by surprise.

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The San Juan Cancuc Five are free!

A statement from the Grupo de Trabajo No Estamos Todxs, originally published in Spanish and translated by Scott Campbell, on the release of the five Tzeltal political prisoners from San Juan Cancuc, Chiapas. Read more about their case here.

Valle de Jovel, November 21, 2025, from the territory called Mexico.

To all the compas that have accompanied the fight for the freedom of our imprisoned compañeros from San Juan Cancuc.

To their relatives and our five formerly imprisoned compañeros from San Juan Cancuc, to them above all.

For more than three years, we have had the enormous opportunity to accompany our imprisoned compañeros. Years of talks, of hugs, of seeing them and knowing them, of their dreams and their hopes. Above all, of their dignified demand for justice and freedom.

Today, in this land where injustice has become the norm, but resistance and dignified rage have also become a permanent condition. Today, dawn brought with it a rumor that turned into a cry and then a song: our five compañeros from San Juan Cancuc are free.

Free, but not due to the goodwill of the bad government, but due to the dignified stubbornness of their families, of their community, and of all the hands and hearts that, from so many corners of the world, did not stop fighting against the machinery that manufactures guilt.

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Elections: The house always wins

“No to the political parties’ electoral process.”

Those to the left of the varied strains of normative fascism that pass for mainstream political discourse in the United States nowadays have likely been inundated with celebratory messages and reports of Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral elections yesterday. By all accounts, today the air is a little fresher as we are all lifted up by the winds of change because around one million people in a corner of what is called the U.S. voted for a “democratic socialist,” whatever that means anymore. Faith in democracy and electoral politics abound as the “right” or “good” candidate won this time. Mamdani is the exception that proves the rule that the system works. Nagging doubts about the validity of representative democracy as a means to order our social and political lives have been put to rest. Hope has been restored. But there is a thin line between hope and naivety. I propose the following be considered alongside any rejoicing.

Nobody won. There are almost 4.7 million “active registered voters” in NYC out of a population of 8.48 million. Only two million or so people voted. Meaning the vast majority of New Yorkers, including registered voters, did not vote. As in every election, most people couldn’t be bothered to engage in the charade of casting a vote. Mamdani didn’t win. Nobody won. Nobody represents us. Nobody should be in office.

Mamdani’s victory isn’t news. He was the Democratic candidate in a Democratic city running an iteration of “The Rent is Too Damn High” campaign in a place where rent costs an average of $4,000 per month. It would be nonsensical for him not to win when almost two-thirds of registered NYC voters are Democrats. (Yes, yes, I get it, the party  and media machines were against him.) The heavens haven’t opened; politics have just played out as politics play out. Despite the overwhelming odds in his favor, Mamdani only won 50% of the vote. Andrew Cuomo, whose own shadow wouldn’t even vote for him, still managed to get more than 850,000 votes. This wasn’t a runaway victory or a landslide endorsement of democratic socialism or, even less, a statement on U.S. foreign policy. It was a Democrat winning where the Democrat always wins.

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Conversation with Non Serviam Media

Last month, I had the opportunity to chat with Lucy with the Non Serviam Media team about a variety of topics, from organizing, anarchism, academia, and the importance of an anti-colonial framework in doing political work. If you’re interested in hearing me prattle on for 90 minutes or so, here’s your opportunity! It can be listened to below or wherever you listen to your podcasts.