The “Other” Politics of Ayotzinapa

The “Other” Politics of Ayotzinapa
Written by Charlotte Maria Sáenz
Monday, 06 April 2015 15:44



How a popular movement arisen from the massacre of 46 student-teachers in Mexico demonstrates a horizontal politics of shared leadership.

Family and colleagues of 46[1] student-teachers[2] forcibly disappeared and killed in Iguala, Guerrero last September 26, 2014 have grown into a civilian movement known as “Ayotzinapa” that includes people from all walks of life and from around the world. Their simple but powerful actions of visibility and protest have put in stark light the excesses and failures of a corrupt government structure which operates in deep collusion with drug lords and corporate interests. The case of Ayotzinapa is but a window into a larger pattern of forced disappearances that plagues the nation as a whole. The movement demands accountability and justice for all of Mexico’s disappeared as well as for radical change in a country ravaged by an epidemic of extreme violence, corruption and impunity.

Theirs is another “¡Ya Basta!” (Enough!), reminiscent of the Zapatista uprising that in 1994 rose up in response to the North American Free Trade Agreement which sounded a death-toll of the Mexican campesino, a largely indigenous and poor peasantry. Carrying this history and awareness in their resistance as campesinos themselves, the Ayotzinapa families, students and teachers manifest the kind of ethics and politics called for by the Zapatista Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle in 2006. La Sexta, as it became known in Spanish, called for a new way of doing politics, one that does not rely on political parties or electoral circuses, but rather one that is based on an ethics of accountability where “the people rule and the government obeys,”[3] a politics comprised of “everything for everyone, nothing for us.” In short: a politics from below and to the left…by the people for the people.

It comes at a crucial time, as Mexico seems to be sinking into an even more severe political and economic crisis: the peso keeps falling[4] while disappearances[5] and assassinations[6] keep rising. Meanwhile civilian social protests are violently repressed by the state, while a daily theater of death is delivered by the various drug cartels terrorizing the nation with uncountable disappearances, beheadings and hanging corpses. Such gruesome spectacles are meant to intimidate the populace into fearful denial, complacency and silence. Official estimates state that over 100,000 people have been killed and approximately 25,000 disappeared since former President Calderon declared war on the drug lords in 2006. Many believe the actual numbers are much higher. The Ayotzinapa case confirmed the suspected link between murderous drug cartels and the governments of ruling political parties as both municipal police and federal army were involved in detaining the student-teachers that fateful 26th of September, resulting in 3 dead and 43 disappeared. The federal government has completely failed to provide explanations for the army’s role in the students’ disappearance, denying access to the army barracks from where came the last signal of their cellular phones.

The resulting outrage expressed on both a national as well as global scale accompanies and supports the determination and leadership of the disappeared students’ colleagues and family members trying to find out what happened to their loved ones. Their collective intelligence manifests in an ability to organize and act swiftly. They have formed various civilian caravans composed of parents, student, teachers, human rights workers and legal advisors to tour the north, south, and center of the country to meet with other families of the disappeared. Their hope is to make more visible their plight and connect with others like them, striking a deep chord with the Mexican public; they mirror the reality of an entire nation at the mercy of murderous cartels complicit with an inept government. The strength and persistence of what has now become a wide-reaching movement far surpasses that of a President and Attorney General who have merely tried to sweep the whole pesky affair under the proverbial rug. Not only has the Mexican federal government failed to provide plausible explanations or competent actions, they have not been able to even express credible empathy.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5268-the-other-politics-of-ayotzinapa