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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.

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Ayotzinapa and Palestine bleed on the same map

Originally published on It’s Going Down.

September 26, 2025, marks 11 years since the State attack on students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School in Iguala, Guerrero, during which six people were killed, 25 wounded, and 43 students disappeared. The following is the transcript of a Spanish-language audio segment produced by Radio Cósmica Libre in collaboration with the efforts of Communicators for Palestine. It is based on information provided by Eduardo Ibañez from the Mexico City Encampment for the 43. It has been translated into English by Scott Campbell.

Mexico, September 26, 2014. Palestine, July 2014. Two dates that seem unrelated but that resonate with a shared echo.

That night in Iguala, 43 campesino students were uprooted from their dormitories, from their classrooms, from their dreams. That summer in Gaza, more than 2,000 Palestinian lives were taken in a matter of weeks by the military machinery of Israel. What connects a young normalista from Guerrero with a Palestinian girl who will never become a teenager? The answer is in the language of State violence, in the economy of death that connects the Mexican narco-state with Israeli necropolitics.

It is a long story. In Mexico, the rural normal schools emerged in the 1930s to educate the children of poor campesinos and to train teachers committed to their communities. In Palestine, the Nakba of 1948 inaugurated a life under occupation, dispossession, and forced displacement.

Two processes that appear distinct but that share the experience of peoples who were denied the right to exist in conditions of dignity. In 2014, the stories intersected. While Gaza suffered bombardments during July and August, students from the Ayotzinapa rural normal school went out into the streets of Mexico to protest in solidarity.

Just one month later, they themselves were victims of forced disappearance and murder in Iguala. The disappearance did not just erase bodies, it also condemned mothers, sisters, and wives to a life of interminable searching. State violence produces widows, orphans, mutilated families, communities condemned to permanent mourning.

State crime has no passport. Governments that kill in the name of security learn from one another. Necropolitics speaks many languages, but death always says the same thing: “You don’t matter.”

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Freedom for the prisoners from San Juan Cancuc, Chiapas

Originally posted on It’s Going Down.

UPDATE: On November 21, 2025, a court ordered the immediate release of the five imprisoned compañeros from San Juan Cancuc. Read a statement regarding their release here.

The text below provides an overview of the case of five imprisoned Tzeltal land defenders from San Juan Cancuc, Chiapas, and how they can be supported during a crucial moment in the fight for their freedom.

The Context

San Juan Cancuc is an Indigenous Tzeltal municipality in the highlands of Chiapas located about halfway between the popular tourist destinations of San Cristóbal de Las Casas and the Cascadas de Agua Azul. For more than 20 years, the federal and state governments have been attempting to “develop” the region via the construction of a superhighway, called the Highway of Cultures. This highway would connect the coast of Chiapas in the west – where the Interoceanic Corridor will pass – with the highlands and jungle regions of the east – where they Maya Train will pass. With neoliberal development comes militarization, and attempts have been underway to construct a National Guard base near San Juan Cancuc. Since coming to power in 2018, the MORENA party has accelerated these projects.

The proposed Highway of Cultures is to pass through San Juan Cancuc and the State has put pressure on the municipality to agree to the construction – including withholding social programs. In repeated community assemblies, the residents of the municipality and neighboring communities have rejected both construction of the superhighway and the National Guard base.

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In Memory of Carolina Saldaña

En español a continuación.

On August 1, I was looking for resources to share about Black August and naturally thought of Carolina. She’d written a book on it in Spanish, after all. For many years, she had organized events in Mexico commemorating Black August, seeking to lift up the legacy and ongoing struggle of the Black liberation movement and its political prisoners and prisoners of war. While I didn’t end up using any of her work that day in what I shared, remembering her called forth a wave of fond recollections. I made a mental note to reach out to her, as we hadn’t been in touch in a couple of years. Sadly, a few hours later, I heard from compas in Mexico that she passed away that morning.

Common adjectives that have been used to remember Carolina Saldaña include relentless, tireless, and unceasing. They are all accurate and true. Carolina was truly a force, guided by a commitment and passion for solidarity and freedom that compelled her work over the years that I had the honor to know her. We first connected in 2008, when I began working with the now-defunct website El Enemigo Común. Carolina was already involved – unsurprisingly – as she seemed to be active with most independent media projects in Mexico. Our communication originated over email until we had the opportunity to meet in person a couple of years later during one of my trips to Mexico.

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Accountable to history

Photo by Al Benoit on Unsplash

When I was very young, I used to believe that my parents were omniscient and infallible. They knew everything and were never wrong. As I aged, I of course realized the faults of my assumptions. Being a parent now myself, I especially realize how absurd that notion was. We make it up as we go along, doing the best we can with the information we have at hand. Mistakes are part of the practice.

Part of my younger beliefs was that my parents were responsible for or had control over worldly developments. They were adults, they had agency that I did not. I am sure there is some psychological term for this, but, likely for the sake of simplicity, I subordinated systems of authority and power into the hands of those I was most familiar with who also had such seemingly tremendous power and authority – my parents.

Again, this belief waned as I grew, but it became replaced by a perhaps more right-sized view of accountability and action in the world. Rather than holding the expectation that my parents could control everything, I was interested in what they contributed to change and making the world a better place, broadly speaking. As my worldview became explicitly infused with politics during my adolescence and its accompanying arrogance, I more specifically wanted to know what they did that was in accord with my view of what they should have done.

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