From: Mneillft-AT-aol.com
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 18:21:17 -0400
Subject: mexico, civil society, neoliberalism


Mexico: February 1995 -- Some Excerpts from a Political Diary

by Monty Neill

I journeyed to Mexico in February 1995 as a combined vacation, visit with old
friends, and opportunity to make some political contacts and have discussions
in the wake of the EZLN offensive. The day I traveled to Mexico City was the
day after Zedillo and the army launched its offensive against the EZLN. Thus,
my discussions were framed by that particular context, and by the massive
demonstrations and outpouring of support for the Zapatistas.  I took
extensive notes, and on my return I wrote up a "Political Diary," intending
it to be printed in the next Midnight Notes (of which I am a member). That
printing has been delayed (we hope next fall), but I think some of the
political diary is relevant to considerations, in Mexico and more widely, of
"civil society" and organizing against "neoliberalism."  Thus, I present this
edited version of the diary to aut-op-sy. The sections below focus on
discussions of class and political composition.  For their protection, I use
letters to stand for key people with whom I had extended discussions.

Feb. 10: The political landscape of the left: an introduction.  

A., a univerity professor, and B., a researcher, are old friends. They spent
some time filling me in on the politics of the left in Mexico. There are two
major areas, the Convencion Nacional Democratica (CND or Convention), and the
Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (PRD).  The CND was organized over
several months by a variety of groups, including the Chiapas umbrella peasant
organization, CEOIC; a non-governmental organization (ONG) representing other
ONGs; a PRD group; and the Caravana de Caravanas, a coalition of various
Leninist groups; as well as the EZLN. It is national in scope, with
representatives from all Mexico's states attending its meetings. It's first
public appearance was at an August 1994 Convention hosted by the EZLN in
Aguascalientes, Chiapas (named after Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes, where
Zapata hosted a meeting to extablish unity among Mexican revolutionaries).

The plan was to unite the left in Mexico. The fate of the EZLN, said Marcos,
was in the hands of the Convention, which would be the political leadership
of change at the national level. Indeed, the organizing of the Convention
precipitated a huge outpouring of political energy, reworking relationships
within the left and rethinking how to do politics. The Convention has
attempted to work out plans for a transition to a democratic regime. But it
has been divided. 

An important debate within the CND, as it long has been in the Mexican left,
is whether to participate in elections. This debate surfaced at the August
convention.  While the CND itself does not participate in elections, the
final statement at the convention agreed to a consensus on making way for
electoral politics and participating in them.

The PRD is of course a party contesting elections at all levels. It came into
being around the 1988 presidential campaign of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas. Yet the
PRD is also a coalition with internal divisions, including over whether to
join the CND, which it has not, though many PRD members are in the CND also. 

In both the PRD and the Convention are groups sometimes labelled "ultras"
(sometimes a term used by reformists to criticize confrontational tactics).
 They have been critical of the Zapatista's, charging that they are too
social democratic,  The ultra's generally have Leninist roots. 

But who, I wonder, is defined as the "class" by the Leninists? And while I
can see the social democracy in the public formulations of the EZLN demands,
it seems to me that their's is a class project and it cannot be reduced to
social democracy. A. and B. concur. A. says that what confronts the left are
the problems of how to change the state and how to advance a class project.

There remain multi-way divisions within and between the two major areas on
the left; and the consequence has been a political inability to move, an
inability that led Marco to express bitter disappointment and that probably
contributed greatly to the unexpectedly poor showing of Cardenas, the PRD
candidate, in the August election.  While he almost certainly won the 1988
election, which was stolen by the ruling Partido Revolucionara
Institucionaliizada (PRI) through fraud, thus installing Salinas, Cardenas
fell to under 20% of the vote and a third-place finish in August 1994, an
election Zedillo clearly won.

The Zapatistas more recently have called for a national liberation strategy
involving nearly the whole people. While the Zapatistas have attempted to
unite the left, the left remains divided over how to carry out a national
liberation project, the divisions being the same as before. 

Feb. 12: Continuing the discussion.

I raise again to A. the issue of the "ultra's" claim that the EZLN is social
democratic, that the EZLN does not have a "class project." Yes, says A.,
there is a social democratic aspect to the EZLN proposals, but there is a
great deal more as well, something new.

How, in any event, to define class? What about the so-called
micro-entrepreneurs, the venders and small service providers? They really own
almost nothing; what appeals to them?  And what about the unwaged? What do
they want, what are they in struggle for, how do they relate to the Zapatista
movement, to potential revolution in Mexico?

The "ultras" says A. have a Leninist-Stalinist conception of class. This is
part of the problem, that they can't see the class project in the Zapatista
revolt.

I am reminded of a piece I read some time ago about Mozambique, about how
farmers with a history of cooperative activity resisted having state farms
imposed on them, resisted in fact being proletarianized. No one, I suggest,
really wants to be a proletarian, except as an alternative to starvation. A.
says the micro-entrepreneurs in Mexico are always failing and starting again
-- anything to avoid wage-labor and having the immediate boss. Yet their
supposed non-proletarian being is almost entirely formal, they own so little.

If the class project is not the Stalinist one of constructing the
proletariat, then can there not be room for the micro-entrepreneur?  Clearly
the relations have to be different, non-capitalist. But is there any
worthwhile evidence that turning everyone into a formal proletarian under the
state- as-capitalist makes communism closer? Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR
would suggest it is not so. It may be that the Zapatista's are opening up
space for new thinking in Mexico on these issues -- who is the class, what is
it doing, what is class democracy, socialism, communism?  Will the left in
Mexico be able to see this, to move ahead?

A. also talked about the Cardenas campaign in the last election.  He had
thought that if Cardenas had done well -- he did not believe Cardenas would
win -- it would open up a lot of space.  That space could be used by the
Convention; indeed, he thought the Convention was the only formation that
could use it.  But it, too, had fallen into old traps; the various movements
had not coalesced; the seemingly-growing revolt stagnated; Cardenas failed
badly. A. thought the in-fighting in the left had turned many off, people who
voted for the devil they knew very well, the PRI, rather than the left that
did not have its act together.  Cardenas, he thought, was a great man. He was
probably the only person who could lead a transition government, which was a
developing demand and strategy from the Zapatistas, who had asked Cardenas to
lead a national liberation effort (which Cardenas had not said he would).
 But it is often hard to see what Cardenas is doing, he contradicts himself
-- for example, now condemning the banks and NAFTA, now appeasing them. 

So things stagnate on the left, while the state and the national economy
slide deeper into crisis. 

Feb. 13. reading papers and talking.

Today in La Jornada, communiques from the EZLN, dated from 9, 10, 11 of Feb.
In one, they say that the basic issue in Chiapas is control over natural
resources, especially oil, and that decisions are made in the U.S., not
Mexico. 

Indeed, if the Mexican state is pledging oil revenues as security for
billions in loans, then the lenders will surely want to know if the Mexican
state can in fact produce the oil, much of which comes from Chiapas. But I
think the issue is also broader, that strong control by the state over
society is a condition for investments and loans, and such control is most
threatened, directly and indirectly, by the Zapatistas. The growing
impoverishment, sure to be escalated by the collapse of the peso and the
"bailout" deals, requires strong control. But Zedillo is also -- he says --
aiming to lessen the autocratic, centralized power of the presidency and the
PRI. The army, it would appear, is at least partially filling in the power
vacuum. And both control over oil and general social control require
eliminating the EZLN.

A. says that Mexico appears to have no future as a nation.  In the past, he
thought it did; now he suspects not. No bailout means economic death, but the
bailout is simply a slower death. There are, he says, many who say it is
ultimately better not to take the bailout. 

The EZLN also have charged the government with conducting a genocidal war.
They have from their first public communiques argued that Salinas-style
"development" in Chiapas, as envisioned in NAFTA, was the death of the
Chiapan people and their culture. The war says that such death is indeed the
intent of the government. It is the government, not the EZLN, that has
negotiated dishonestly, and Zedillo's claims are rebutted point by point as a
pack of lies. 

A. says that the key point is that the EZLN wants to reconstruct the state,
but the state cannot negotiate this. The government could, he thought,
concede the rest of the demands. I question this -- the state cannot afford
to do so, it is too much money. Perhaps, says A., but the key issue is not
the money, it is the power of the state. Perhaps, say I, but if the state
spends the money, which it could only do by reorganizing its income, it would
instantly make itself vulnerable to the same demands across all of Mexico. If
the Chiapanecans earned the North American-level wages the EZLN demands,
capital would leave anyway. It comes, we sense, to the same thing: the
Zapatista demands cannot be met by this state; the "economic" and the
"political" intertwine.

El Financiero today is mostly filled with discussions of privatization.  A
cartoon depicts an octopus wrapping its arms around ports, accompanying
articles on privatization and modernization plans for ports; another piece
describes the prerequisites for privatizing airports; and hotel owners want
legalized casinos. 

February 14, Meeting with a Feminist.

I met briefly with a feminist activist who works with household workers. The
overwhelming majority of waged women in Mexico are household workers.  She
works with a core of about 15 women who have decided not to try to become a
union but instead be a mutual aid society. In Cuernavaca, a similar and
connected group decided to unionize, but the state denied them the right to
file papers. She says in her academic work, she is often denied the right to
interview union members.  The official unions are part of the PRI and
therefore the state. Hence, controls over talking with union people and
obstacles to forming potentially independent unions.  (See Las Costureras in
Midnight Notes #9).

February 15, Meetings and demonstrations.  

There is to be another major demonstration later in the day. But before then,
my friend B. has arranged a meeting with a small group. Her friend, C., has
been wanting to meet with various folks to raise issues around re-thinking
class strategy: who is the class, what is its project, what is socialism or
communism, what is democracy? So I am to be the pretext for the meeting. I'll
talk a bit about Midnight Notes, they'll talk about themselves and their work
and political views, and we'll dialogue for a while. B. will translate.

The meeting, at a local university, is with three others, men and women, who
are part of the same group; several invitees can't come. 

C., introducing himself, he is in a group with a mix of political
perspectives, some shades of Leninism, some of autonomism, a few Maoists. 

D., our host, is a Marxist economist from, he said, the generation of '68
(the year of the student uprising and the massacre). He was involved in a
project in northern Mexico that was part of a popular movement with strong
student, union and colonias (urban working class communities) participation.
More recently, he's been in Mexico City. The group has a workshop studying
the impact of modernization on work, studying what wages will buy, the social
wage, and employment. They are just beginning some ties with the US and
Canada. 

Another in the group, E., is a part-time lawyer and works on the groups'
paper. F., who teaches mathematics, discussed the group's work of
interviewing workers as a process of recovering and documenting history.
Their group has been repressed a lot. 

D. says that Mexico is tied to globalization via subordination to US capital
and its modernizing plans: auto assembly, some chemicals and manufacturing,
with the rest of industry in Mexico disappearing or fusing with US capital,
some European or Japanese capital. The strong Mexican capitalist groups are
those with ties to the US. Mexican finance capital has been reorganizing
since 1982 and the declaration of the inability to pay its international
debt. Prior to that, it was state-driven accumulation, now it is more
private, and small industry is disappearing. Some micro-businesses survive,
pay no taxes, use family labor, have low productivity.

The official labor organizations do not represent labor. The few efforts they
make are useless. The 1987 salary freeze and the subsequent series of pacts
by government, business and labor have acted to hold wages down. 

There are, he said, "precarious" labor and small businesses, which may be
formal or informal. The formal/informal distinction is not useful; his group
uses "precarious." He thinks that soon laws providing guarantees to workers
will change to allow for pay by the hour rather than salaries, which change
will be used to further lower wages and increase insecurity. Mexican wages
have recently dropped from a 1:8 ratio to US wages to a 1:10 ratio, and with
devaluation would be falling more. 

There are local struggles -- they break out one by one and are defeated one
by one. There are a lot of layoffs, followed by restructuring and rehiring. 

Auto assembly used to be concentrated around Mexico City. The unions would
negotiate benefits above the minimums guaranteed in law. In the
<maquilladora> plants along the border with the US, benefits are held below
the legal minimums and the wages are lower. In short, the labor movement in
Mexico is weak. In Chiapas, people have been even more marginalized. 

The myth of economic growth that followed NAFTA (which A. had said was widely
believed) and that of peace in Chiapas following the January 1994 cease fire,
enabled the PRI to win. 

Until December 1994, the upper middle income group had gained through
neoliberalism. But devaluation has hit them hardest. (In fact, once a week
the wives of the bourgeoisie -- not the biggest, though -- arrive in their
chauffer-driven cars to protest in front of Zedillo's office.) No one else
actually gained in 1994. The low-wage workers were bad off, still are, but
not yet worse off, though they will be.

Just as the unions are weak, so are the non-governmental organizations, the
social and civil organizations. The Convention started with a stong impetus,
but the left did not know what to do with the new experiences emerging from
the Zapatista uprising. Politically, there has been no advance.

I talked about conditions in the US. US capital is transnational and does not
care about US workers -- they go where profits can best be made and have no
national interests except as it serves profitability. In this sense, there is
no US capital. All forms of working class organization, from unions to social
organizations to left groups to churches (which mostly had been used in the
Black community) were in retreat, and there was now no social space or
organizations with strength to be a basis for organizing. Wages had been
falling steadily, from 2/3% - 1% per year since 1973. Wages were higher than
in Mexico, as were prices, but at least in Mexico there was a left and some
of it was in strong opposition to Zedillo, the PRI, the state and Mexico's
capitalists.  This rap elicited general agreement, as well as surprise about
the situation in the US.

F., the math teacher, said that most important was how to understand Marxism
yet respond to real necessities of people, how to keep struggling in
movements while rethinking Marxism. Theory must be adapted to what is going
on.

The EZLN opened ground, new space and ideas. They pushed the government to
the wall, now the government is striking out blindly.

The major impact of the Zapatistas was hope. The collapse of Soviet socialism
had produced a loss of hope that an alternative to capitalism was possible;
the EZLN has brought that back.

It is not so much the use of arms.  More can be done without arms. One must
be imaginative, as are the EZLN. 

The Zapatistas also brought out the Indian movement, revived it, led to new
compositions in that movement. Indians are no longer ashamed to be Indian.
(Several others expressed agreement, saying how important that point was.) 

C. began by noting that he was optimistic. Since last year, new discussions
and re-thinking had spread. It was uneven and not deep enough and the deepest
problems were not yet addressed.

The most important point was the emergence of a revolutionary mass movement.
At its heads are the community organizations of the EZLN. There was the real
emergence of dual power in Chiapas. This makes it possible to talk about and
make revolution. It affects other organizations, especially peasants and
their organizations in Chiapas. It also affected regional organizations. And
it affects Trotskyists, Stalinists and urban movements, who are modifying.

In Oaxaca it affected even the electoral movement, as well as social
democratic projects in Tabasco, Michoacan and other states. The Zapatista
uprising could create the possibility to redirect theory that regular
political groups hold.

A revolutionary movement is needed to redo Marxism as revolutionary theory.
The movement makes us re-think problems of the left. It makes us think of new
kinds of organizations that articulate with the masses. It leads to
questioning vanguards. It poses not only the issue of the removal of the
government, but of how we organize our power within our class. It forces us
to rethink power and communism. We can therefore rethink all problems.  How
do the masses start to wake up and organize themselves?

A new element has been introduced: how to think about culture. The issue of a
national project within a radical humanist project. This project takes off
>from the poor. It means rethinking the cultural issues: what is proletarian
culture? Radical humanism stands against capitalist progress.

Taking a position with respect to human culture means looking at modernity
since the 18th century and doing two critiques: of Eurocentrism and of
capitalism. The Zapatistas have led us to question the national project, but
the EZLN is not critical enough of Western Civilization or of capitalism. It
has provided us with the space to critique them. It is also now a special
moment in the history of capitalism.

The EZLN reopens the question of who is the revolutionary subject and breaks
dogmatic ideas of who is the proletariat, who is the poor -- the precarious.
How to think about the poor, a structural fact of life in third world
nations. Who also is the "middle class." The EZLN opens up revolutionary
possibilities with them and the possibility of breaking with the Stalinist
tradition. A new strategy is needed.

Integrating the different class structures is possible only if we have new
ideas about what can be done with the poor. We need ways to get out of the
false traditions of globalization and return to working class and poor
peoples culture, putting Marx at the center.  

A new proposal for communism is not just Mexican. This is starting to happen
with the EZLN and represents an exceptional opportunity. It is not just a
matter of hope -- the contradictions are deepening. From this we can start to
rethink a different leftist movement. Even with represssion, this kind of
movement can happen. We should not be pessimistic.

E. questioned, what about the left we have now? C. replied, the
contradictions won't be simply resolved, but the space is opening up.

I then explained some of what A. and I had been discussing. This clearly fit
well with their thinking.

After the meeting, B. and C. and I repaired to B.'s house for a delicious
lunch of fish, rice, mushrooms. I asked C., given the status of the left,
which he agreed was a problem, what were the forces that led to his optimism.

C. thought there are three areas or sources of movement. One is the emerging
discussions among intellectuals, acting mostly open but some clandestine
groups.

Second is among clandestine groups, mostly Marxist-Leninists, the left of the
Convention or the "ultras." They have an idea of a national liberation
movement. There is little new discusion, but it is beginning to happen as
more people realize they must rethink.  In all groups there are people with
these views. But folks with these views are not interconnected. They won't
renounce M-L, but they may change toward "radical humanist" -- at the level
of practice, they are still Leninists, but their practice could change. 

These people are dispersed all over the country. They are formed as
independent groups and movements across all sectors -- some worker groups,
even some in the most modern industries, the public sector, phone and auto,
though in those sectors they are isolated. 

In many ways they are more radical than the EZLN, the third source. At first
the EZLN tried to connect with them; these people at first accepted the EZLN,
but now it is more difficult. Some things going on are not explicit and it is
hard to understand the strategy of the EZLN. Some say the EZLN are social
democrats. 

The EZLN utilizes some of these groups, but the EZLN has not been open enough
to negotiate with these groups. If there are increased attacks on the EZLN,
there may be more negotiations with these other groups. If the EZLN becomes a
legal political group, the other groups might combine into one group. 

A new space is what the EZLN has created. Still, some people are locked into
old methods, Maoist or Sendero. 

The big issue will be strategies of power, what to make socialism into.  The
intellectuals would support dual power experiences such as Chiapas. The
second group, however, thinks they are dual power, but they have no
reflective capacity about dual power. They have an old, fixed model.

With the EZLN, it is less clear about dual power. Sometimes it seems they are
thinking about a new state, other times it seems like liberal democracy; or
maybe we don't understand them; or maybe the EZLN has not fully worked out
their thinking.

It is hard to know about the government in the rebel zones that developed
before the military occupation.  There is an assembly structure for the
government, and the M-L groups are part of it. In the rebel territory, they
pay no taxes to the Mexican government. In these areas, there are two forces,
the EZLN and the sector of social organizations and left groups.  Most people
in these organizations are Leninist, but they are doing new things and having
new discussions. If the Zapatistas refers to the whole movement, as some use
the term, then behind them are the EZLN, headed by the CCRI, and the other
political groups.

C. and I took the metro toward the zocalo. At one stop a procession headed
toward the demonstration was alongside us, so we got out. We walked the 3-4
subway stop distance, passing probably 2000 marchers: men, women, babies,
teenagers, elderly people, the colonias, the working poor of Mexico City.
They were all from the same group, the Frente Popular Francisco Villa. They
are, said C., one of the groups he was talking about, with a Leninist
orientation. I had had a hard time conceptualizing a Leninist group that was
something other than a small sect, and it helped me understand who he was
talking about to see the FPFV, thousands strong and marching to the Zocalo.


February 16, Final talks.

A. and I talk some more. He emphasized that the military intervention was
intended to overrun the zone of autonomy, the rebel government, its laws --
which as regards land, relations between women and men, and other things,
were new and different -- and its social power.  He thought the civil
structures would reform in the forest, but under very much worse conditions
and perhaps in ways limited by the war. The autonomous zones were possible
because of the military action of the EZLN, but the non-intervention of the
Mexican government allowed the civil organization, new government, laws, etc.
to flourish there and more widely in Chiapas. Many leftists, A. said in
agreement with the folks at the meeting in the morning, are beginning to
rethink socialism, etc. 

A. believes that working within a national perspective cannot succeed. The
EZLN has understood globalization better than anyone. They have bridged an
Indian revolt in an "unnamed state is southeast Mexico" with a growing model
of development that is global. They did so from an armed movement, but other
armed movements have remained national, such as the Palestinians,
Salvadorans, IRA, ETA. National limitations are a real problem. It is not
just the EZLN speech, but also their practice -- such as in launching the
attack on the day NAFTA went into effect and in their use of the world media.

The EZLN proposes a way to counteract the global model by saying, create
areas of autonomy. The Mexican government can't allow autonomy. Actually, the
University is officially an autonomous area.  Neoliberalism, said A., is a
totalitarian ideology. But, with fax and phone, the Zapatistas created an
autonomous zone in Chiapas.  It shows you can create areas of autonomy within
the global capitalist economy.

This authonomy needs to be evaluated. It was created by force of arms. Now
there need to be autonomous spaces of production and consumption, and in the
universities.  It can link Indians in Canada, consumers in the US.  The idea
of creating a socialist bloc in opposition to a capitalist bloc did not work.
Now the area of autonomy as a productive guerilla space. This approach needs
to be evaluated and analyzed. 

The leftists who reflects on emerging alternativist activity tends to dismiss
autonomous production, cooperatives and so on. But they need to be more
seriously evaluated.

How was civil society developed in the autonomous areas in Chiapas? Is the
CCRI really democratic? Did they really discuss and vote on the Mexican
government's proposal?  I think they did, adds A. but we don't know much
about how the rebel areas really developed.

[B. later reminded me that autonomy is an Indian project also, taking various
forms across Mexico.  The Chiapas rebel government is supported by these
projects for territorial autonomy, but it not synonymous with autonomy.
 Again the complexity of many groups, projects and demands rooted in a long
history of struggles, including previous indigenous rebellions in Chiapas and
elsewhere in Mexico.]

I am reminded of a few things. One is the work of p.m., from bolo-bolo, on
the creation of autonomous zones in very different circumstances,
Switzerland. Looking in detail at how they really operate is essential. There
is, after all, a history of "liberated zones" in, for example, Maoism. So the
content in the form must be considered. The EZLN, I think, sees itself as
creating more than temporary autonomous zones; they see themselves as
initiating a new society. They hang on to social democratic forms -- why, for
example, demand US-level wages, why retain the money form? -- but then I
don't know the particulars of Chiapas within which the EZLN is working.  

It is one thing to begin to develop autonomous political space or temporary
small autonomous zones for living. But anything larger raises the questions
of socialism and communism that certainly have not gone away, and therefore
raises questions of class and class projects, seizing power and the use of
power. Capitalism requires labor power and is not going to peacefully allow
large numbers of workers to withdraw permanently from the labor market and
live outside of capitalism.  If they were, they would not bother with the
vicious attacks on rights to land and subsistence the World Bank and IMF
continue to launch across Latin America, Africa and Asia. 

It has been a fantastic week, powerful especially to one so used to a
non-existent left movement. Though I don't see how I can be of any real help
to the Mexican people if I stay in Mexico, I don't want to leave. 

For the Mexican working class to win in the extremely difficult circumstances
of Mexico and world neoliberalism will be near miraculous, but not
impossible. It may require that Mexico once again, as in 1910, be a harbinger
of a world cycle of struggles that can push capital back. If so, then the
Mexican working people could accomplish a lot. They cannot do it alone. 

In January 1994, in Mexico and the US, the Zapatista uprising seemed it might
open a global offensive against the IMF and world capital. It has seemed
stalled at times since then, but the crisis has deepened, not abated, in all
areas. Hope remains and the struggle promotes intense thought and rapid
learning. I hope that I have learned and that these notes will aid a
circulation of knowledge that will help the companeros in Mexico. Viva
Zapata.

Monty Neill
P.O. Box 204
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 USA

mneillft-AT-aol. com


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