FIRST LETTER (complete) from SCI Marcos to Don Luis Villoro. The 4 parts of the text Notes on Wars, start of the epistolary exchange on Ethics and Politics.
ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO.
January–February 2011.
To: Don Luis Villoro.
From: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Greetings, Doctor.
We truly hope that you are in better health and that you take these lines not only as an exchange of ideas, but also as a loving embrace from all that we are.
We thank you for agreeing to participate as a correspondent in this exchange of letters. We hope that from it reflections arise that can help us, here and there, to try to understand the calendar that our geography endures, that is to say, our Mexico.
Let me begin with a sort of outline—an outline of ideas, fragmented like our reality, which can follow their own independent paths or intertwine, like a braid (which is the best image that I have found to “draw” our process of theoretical reflection), and that are the product of our discontent over what is occurring now in Mexico and the world.
And here begin these hastily written notes on different subjects, all related to ethics and politics, or rather, about what we have begun to understand (and to undergo) from them, and about resistance in general, and our resistance in particular. As expected, in these notes, schematism and reduction predominate, but I think that they manage to draw one or many lines of discussion, of dialogue, of critical reflection.
And this is exactly what is intended, that the word come and go, dodging military and police checkpoints and patrols, from our here to your there, but then it happens that the word goes in other directions and it doesn’t matter if someone picks it up and sends it once again on its way (which is what words and ideas are for).
Although the theme that we have agreed on is Politics and Ethics, maybe it is necessary to make a few detours, or better, approximations from apparently distant points.
And since this involves theoretical reflections, we need to begin with reality, or what the detectives call, “the facts.”
In “Scandal in Bohemia” by Arthur Conan Doyle, the detective Sherlock Holmes says to his friend Dr. Watson: “It is a major mistake to theorize before one has the facts. Without realizing it, you begin to distort the facts in order to fit theory, instead of adjusting theory to the facts.”
We can begin, then, with a description, hasty and incomplete, of what reality presents to us, in the same form, that is to say, without anesthetic, and gather some facts. It’s something like trying to not only reconstruct the facts, but also the way that we come to know them.
And the first thing that appears in the reality of our calendar and geography is an old acquaintance of the Indigenous people of Mexico: War.
I. – THE WARS FROM ABOVE.
“And in the beginning, there were statues.”
This is how a historiographic essay on war could begin, or even a philosophical reflection on the birth of modern history, because these military statues obscure more than they reveal. Built to sing in stone the memory of military victories, they merely conceal the horror, the destruction, and the death of any war. And the stone figures of gods and angels crowned with the laurels of victory are not meant only for the conqueror to remember their success, but also to forge forgetfulness among the conquered.
But in the present moment these rocky mirrors have fallen into disuse. Besides being buried daily by the relentless criticism of birds of all kinds, they have also found an unbeatable competitor in the mass media.
The statue of Saddam Hussein toppled in Baghdad during the US invasion of Iraq was not replaced by one of George Bush, but by the advertisements of large transnational firms. Although the stupid face of the then US president could have easily served to advertise junk food, the multinationals preferred to erect themselves a monument to a newly conquered market. The business of destruction was followed by the business of reconstruction. And although the death of US troops persists, what matters is the money that comes and goes as it should: with fluidity and abundance.
The toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein is not the symbol of the victory of the multinational military force that invaded Iraq. That symbol can be found in the rise of the stocks of the sponsoring corporations.
“In the past it was the statues, today it is the stock market.”
This is how the modern historiography of war could continue.
But the reality of history (this chaotic horror, which is seen less and less and each time more aseptically), obligates, calls to account, requires consequences, and demands. An honest look and a critical analysis could identify the pieces of the puzzle and thus hear, like a macabre roar, the verdict:
“In the beginning there was war.”
The Legitimation of Barbarism.
Perhaps at some point in the history of humanity, the material, physical aspect of a war was the determining factor. But as the heavy and awkward wheel of history moved forward, that was not enough. And so, like the statutes that served to memorialize the conquerors and the forgetting of the conquered, in war the contenders needed to not only physically defeat their opponents, but also to produce a self-justification, that is, their legitimacy. To defeat them morally.
At some point in history, it was religion that granted this certification of legitimacy to warlike domination (although some of the latest modern wars do not seem to have made much progress in that sense)—but then a more elaborate thinking became necessary and philosophy entered the scene.
Now I remember some of your words: “Philosophy has always had an ambivalent relationship with social and political power. On the one hand, it succeeded religion as a theorertical justfication for domination. All constituted power attempted to legitimize itself, first through belief in religion and later through philosophical doctrine (…). It seems that the brute force that sustains domination would be meaningless to humans if it wasn’t somehow justified by an acceptable end. Philosophical discourse, in supplanting religion, has been responsible for bestowing that sensibility; it is a thinking of domination.” (Luis Villoro. “Philosophy and Domination: Opening Speech at the National College, November 1978).
Indeed, in modern history, this alibi could become as elaborate as a philosophical or juridical justification (the most pathetic examples being those given by the United Nations). But what was fundamental was, and is, a to make a media justification.
If a certain philosophy (following Don Luis, the “thinking of domination” in contradistinction to the “thinking of liberation”) took over, from religion, this task of legitimation has now been taken over from philosophy by the mass media.
Does anyone remember that the justification of the multinational forces for invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? Upon this was built a giant media scaffolding that was the fuel for a war that has still not ended, at least in military terms. Does anyone remember that they never found those weapons of mass destruction? Now it doesn’t even matter if it was a lie, if there was (and is) horror, destruction, and death, all perpetrated on a false justification.
They say that in order to declare victory in Iraq, George Bush didn’t wait for the reports that they had found and destroyed these weapons, nor for confirmation that the multinational forces already controlled, if not all of Iraqi territory, at least its key nodal points (The U.S. military was entrenched in an area called the “green zone” and could not even venture out into the surrounding neighborhoods—see the excellent reporting on this by Robert Fisk for the British newspaper “The Independent”).
No, the report that Washington received, and that allowed him to end the war (which is certainly not over yet), came from the consultants of the large transnational companies: the business of destruction can give way to the business of reconstruction (on this see the brilliant articles by Naomi Klein in the US weekly “the Nation” and her book entitled “The Shock Doctrine”).
And so, what is essential in war is not only physical (or material) force, but also the moral force, which in these instances was provided by the mass media (as before it had been provided by religion and philosophy).
The Geography of Modern War
If by physical aspect we refer to an army, that is, an armed organization, the stronger that army is (that is, the greater its power of destruction), the greater its possibilities for success.
If by moral aspect we refer to an armed organism, the more legitimate the cause that drives it (that is, the greater its power of convocation), the greater its possibilities for achieving its objectives.
The concept of war has been broadened to mean not only the destruction of the enemy’s physical capacity (soldiers and weapons) in order to impose one’s own will, but also to destroy the enemy’s moral capacity for combat, even if it has sufficient physical capability.
If war took place only on military terrain (physical that is, that being here our frame of reference), it’s logical to expect the armed organization with greater power of destruction impose its will on the other (that being the objective of the confrontation of forces), destroying the other’s material capacity to fight.
But it is no longer possible to locate any conflict upon a strictly physical terrain. The terrain of war is more and more complicated (be they large or small wars, regular or irregular, of low, medium, or high intensity, world, regional or local).
Behind that great ignored world war (the “Cold War” as it is called in modern historiography; we call it the “Third World War”), we can find a historical verdict of that will frame all the wars to come.
The possibility of nuclear war (taken to the limit by an arms race consisting of, grosso modo, how many times one could destroy the world) opened the possibility of “another” end to military conflict: armed confrontation could result not in the imposition of the will of one side over another, but could in fact suppose the annulment of the wills in struggle, that is, of their material capacity for combat. And by annulment I refer not only to “the incapacity for action” (a tie), but also (and above all) to their disappearance.
In effect, geomilitary calculations told us that in a nuclear war there would be neither winners or losers. In fact, there wouldn’t be anything. Destruction would be so total and irreversible that human civilization would cede its presence on the earth to the cockroaches.
The recurring argument in the highest ranks of the military powers of the era was that the accumulation of nuclear weapons was not for the purpose of fighting a war, but for inhibiting the possibility of war. The concept of “weapons for containment” was thus translated to the more diplomatic “elements of deterrence.”
To simplify: “modern” military doctrine can be synthesized thus: impeding the other side from imposing greater (or “strategic”) will meant imposing one’s own greater will ( “strategic”), that is, displacing the large-scale wars toward small or medium-sized wars. This was not about destroying the physical or moral capacity for combat of the enemy, but rather of avoiding a situation where the enemy was able to employ that capacity in a direct physical confrontation. On the other hand, the theater of war (as well as the physical capacity for combat) was redefined from a world scale to the local and regional. In sum, peaceful international diplomacy accompanied by regional and national wars.
The result: there was no nuclear war (at least not yet, although the stupidity of capital is as great as its ambition), but in its place there were innumerable conflicts on all levels that resulted in millions of dead, millions of displaced, millions of metric tons of destroyed material, devastated economies, destroyed nations, political systems smashed to smithereens… and millions of dollars in profit.
But the verdict had been handed down for “more modern” or “postmodern” wars: military conflicts are possible that, by nature, are irresolvable in terms of physical force, that is, by imposing one’s will over the other.
We could infer then that a parallel struggle began ABOVE “conventional” war. This was also a struggle to impose one’s will over the other: the struggle of the militarily (or “physically,” to traverse the human microcosm) powerful to avoid war ever breaking out on a terrain where they could not obtain conventional results (of the type “the best armed, trained, and organized army will be powerfully victorious over the more poorly armed, trained, and organized army”). We could suppose, then, that against this proposition is the struggle of the militarily (or physically) weaker in order to fight wars on a terrain where military power is not the determining factor.
The “more modern” or “postmodern” wars are not, then, those that bring the most sophisticated weapons to the battlefield (and here I include weapons in terms of military technique but also those defined as such in military organigrams: the infantry, cavalry, armor, etc.), but rather those that are taken to the terrain where the quantity and quality of military power is not the determining factor.
Several centuries behind, military theory from above discovered that, in this context, conflicts would be possible where the side with overwhelming military superiority would be incapable of imposing its will over a weaker rival.
Yes, they are possible.
Examples [of these types of wars] in modern history are numerous, those that come first to mind are the defeats of the greatest military power in the world, the United States of America, in Vietnam and Playa Girón, although we could add some examples from past calendars and our own geography—the defeat of the Spanish royalist army by insurgent forces in Mexico 200 years ago.
Nevertheless, war continues as does its central issue: the physical and/or moral destruction of the opponent in order to impose one’s own will continues to be the foundation for war from above.
Therefore, if military force (or physical, I reiterate) is not only not relevant but can in fact be discarded as the determining variable in the final decision, we have a situation where other variables, or existing secondary variables, become primary.
This is not new. The concept of “total war” (although not as such) has antecedents and examples. War by any means (military, economic, political, religious, ideological, diplomatic, social, and even ecological) is synonymous with “modern war.”
But we are still lacking the most fundamental aspect: the conquest of a territory. That is, will is imposed on a particular calendar, yes, but above all on a specific geography. If there is no territory conquered—that is, brought under direct or indirect control of the victorious force—there is no victory.
Although one can talk of economic wars (like the blockade that the North American government maintains against the Republic of Cuba) or the economic, religious, ideological, and racial aspects of a war, the objective is the same. And in the current era, the will that capitalism attempts to impose is to destroy/depopulate and reconstruct/reorder the conquered territory. Yes, war today is not content to conquer a territory and demand tribute from the defeated force. In the current era of capitalism it is necessary to destroy the conquered territory and depopulate it, that is, destroy its social fabric. I am speaking here of the annihilation of everything that gives cohesion to a society.
But war from above does not stop there. Simultaneous with destruction and depopulation is the reconstruction of that territory and the reordering of its social fabric, but now with another logic, another method, other actors, another objective. In sum: war imposes a new geography.
If in an international war this complex process occurs in the conquered nation and is operated from the aggressor nation, in a local or national or civil war the territory to destroy/depopulate and reconstruct/reorder is common to the forces in battle.
That is, the victorious attacking force destroys and depopulates its own territory.
And it reconstructs and reorders it according to its plan for conquest or reconquest.
Although, if it doesn’t have a plan… then “somebody” operates this reconstruction–reordering.
As originary Mexican peoples and as the EZLN we have something to say about war. Above all if that war is fought on our geography and on this calendar: Mexico, beginning of the twenty-first century…
II. THE WAR OF THE MEXICO FROM ABOVE.
“I would welcome almost any war because I believe that this country needs one.”
Theodore Roosevelt.
And now our national reality is invaded by war. A war that is not only not far away from those who were accustomed to see war in distant geographies or calendars, but also one that begins to determine the decisions and indecisions of those who thought that wars were only in the news and in places so far away like…Iraq, Afghanistan,…Chiapas.
And in all of Mexico, thanks to the sponsorship of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, we don’t have to look toward the Middle East to critically reflect on war. It is no longer necessary to turn the calendar back to Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs, always Palestine.
I don’t mention Chiapas and the war against Zapatista Indigenous communities, because it is known that they aren’t fashionable (that’s why the Chiapas state government has spent so much money so that the media no longer puts it on war’s horizon, instead, it publishes the “advances” in biodiesel production, its “good” treatment of migrants, the agricultural “successes” and other deceiving stories that are sold to editorial boards who put their own names on poorly edited and argued governmental press releases).
The war’s interruption of daily life in current-day Mexico doesn’t stem from an insurrection, nor from independent or revolutionary movements that compete for their reprint in the calendar 100 or 200 years later. It comes from, as all wars of conquest, from above, from the Power.
And this war has as Felipe Calderón Hinojosa its initiator and its institutional (and now embarrassing) promoter.
The man who took possession of the title of President by de facto wasn’t satisfied with the media backing he received, and he had to turn to something else to distract people’s attention and avoid the massive controversy regarding his legitimacy: war.
When Felipe Calderón Hinojosa made his own Theodore Roosevelt’s proclamation that “this country needs a war” (although some credit the sentence to Henry Cabot Lodge), he was met with fearful distrust from Mexican businessmen, enthusiastic approval from high-ranking military officials, and hearty applause from that which really rules: foreign capital.
Criticism of this national catastrophe called the “war on organized crime” should be completed with a profound analysis of its economic enablers. I’m not only referring to the old axiom that in times of crisis and war, the consumption of luxury goods increases. Nor am I only referring to the extra pay that soldiers receive (in Chiapas, high-ranking military officials received, or receive, an extra salary of 130% for being in “a war zone”). It would be necessary to also look at the patents, the suppliers, and the international credits that aren’t in the so-called “Merida Initiative.”
If Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s war (even though he’s tried, in vain, to get all Mexicans to endorse it) is a business (which it is), we must respond to the questions of for whom is it a business, and what monetary figure it reaches.
Some economic estimates.
It’s not insignificant what’s at stake:
(note: the quantities listed are not exact due to the fact that there is not clarity in the official governmental data, which is why in some cases the source was the Official Diary of the Federation, and it was complemented by data from agencies and serious journalistic information).
In the first four years of the “war against organized crime” (2007-2010), the main governmental entities in charge (the National Defense Ministry–that is, army and air force–, the Navy, the Federal Attorney General’s Office, and the Ministry of Public Security) received over $366 billion pesos (about $30 billion dollars at the current exchange rate) from the Federal Budget. The four federal government ministries received: in 2007 over $71 billion pesos; in 2008 over $80 billion pesos; in 2009 over $113 million pesos; and in 2010 over $102 billion pesos. Add to that the over $121 billion pesos (some $10 billion dollars) that they will receive this year in 2011.
The Ministry of Public Security alone went from receiving a budget of $13 billion pesos in 2007 to receiving one of over $35 billion pesos in 2011 (perhaps because cinematic productions are more costly).
According to the Government’s Third Report in September 2009, in June of that year, the federal armed forces had 254,705 soldiers (202,355 in the Army and Air Force and 52,350 in the Navy).
In 2009 the budget for the National Defense was $43,623,321,860 pesos, to which was added $8,762,315,960 pesos (25.14% more), in total: over $52 billion pesos for the Army and the Air Force. The Navy: over $16 billion pesos; Public Security: almost $33 billion pesos; and the Federal Attorney General’s Office: over $12 billion pesos.
The “war on organized crime’s” total budget in 2009: over $113 billion pesos.
In 2010, an Army private earned about $46,380 pesos per year; a major general received $1,603,080 pesos per year, and the Secretary of National Defense received an annual income of $1,859,712 pesos.
If my math doesn’t fail me, with 2009’s total war budget ($113 billion pesos for the four ministries)the annual salaries could have been paid of 2.5 million Army privates; or of 70,500 Major Generals; or of 60,700 Secretaries of National Defense.
But, of course, not all that is budgeted goes towards salaries and benefits. Weapons, equipment, bullets are needed…because those that they already have don’t work anymore or they’re obsolete. ”
“If the Mexican Army were to engage in combat with its over 150,000 weapons and its 331.3 million cartridges against an internal or external enemy, its firepower would only last on average 12 days of continuous combat, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s estimates for the Army’s and Air Force’s weapons. According to the predictions, the gunfire from 105mm howitzers (artillery) would last, for example, 5.5 days of combat if that weapon’s 15 grenades were shot continuously. The armored units, according to the analysis, have 2,662 75mm grenades.
In combat, the armored troops would use up all of their rounds in nine days. In the Air Force, it is said that there are a little over 1.7 million 7.62mm cartridges that are used by the PC-7 and PC-9 planes, and by the Bell 212 and MD-530 helicopters. In a war, those 1.7 million cartridges would be used up in five days of aerial fire, according to the Ministry of National Defense’s calculations. The Ministry warns that the 594 night vision goggles and the 3,095 GPS used by the Special Forces to combat drug cartels “have already completed their service.”
The shortages and the wear in the Army and Air Forces’ ranks are evident and have reached unimaginable levels in practically all of the institution’s operative areas. The National Defense [Ministry’s] analysis states that the night vision goggles and the GPS are between five and thirteen years old, and “they have already completed their service.” The same goes for the “150,392 combat helmets” that the troops use. 70% reached their estimated lifespan in 2008, and the 41,160 bulletproof vests will do so in 2009 (…).
In this panorama, the Air Force is the sector most affected by technological backwardness and overseas dependency, on the United States and Israel in particular. According to the National Defense Ministry, the Air Force’s arms depots have 753 bombs that weigh 250-1,000 lbs. each. The F-5 and PC-7 Pilatus planes use those weapons. The 753 that are in existence would last in air-to-land combat for one day. The 87,740 20mm grenades for F-5 jets would combat internal or external enemies for six days. Finally, the National Defense Ministry reveals that the air-to-air missiles for the F-5 planes only number 45, which represents only one day of aerial fire.” — Jorge Alejandro Medellín in “El Universal”, Mexico, January 2, 2009.
This was made known in 2009, two years after the federal government’s so-called “war.” Let’s leave aside the obvious question of how it was possible that the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, could launch a war (”long-term” he says) without having the minimal material conditions to sustain it, let alone “win it.” So let’s ask: What war industries will benefit from the sales of weapons, equipment, and vehicles?
If the main promotor of this war is the empire of stripes and cloudy stars (keeping note that, in reality the only congratulations that Felipe Calderón Hinojosa has received have come from the US government), we can’t lose sight of the fact that north of the Rio Grande, help is not granted; rather, they make investments, that is, business.
Victories and defeats
Does the United States win with this “local” war? The answer is: yes. Leaving aside the economic gains and the monetary investment in weapons, vehicles, and equipment (let’s not forget that the USA is the main provider of all of this to two contenders: the authorities and the “criminals.” The “war on organized crime” is a lucrative business for the North American military industry), there is, as a result of this war, a destruction/depopulation and a geopolitical reconstruction/rearrangement that benefits them.
This war (which was lost from the moment it was conceived, not as a solution to an insecurity problem, but rather a problem of questioned legitimacy) is destroying the last redoubt that the Nation had: the social fabric.
What better war for the United States than one that grants it profits, territory, and political and military control without the uncomfortable body bags and cripples that arrived, before, from Vietnam and now from Iraq and Afghanistan?
Wikileaks’ revelations about high-ranking US officials’ opinions about the “deficiencies” in the Mexican repressive apparatus (its ineffectiveness and its complicity with organized crime) are not new. Not only amongst the people, but also in the highest circles of government and Power in Mexico, this is a certainty. The joke that it is an unequal war because organized crime is organized and the Mexican government is disorganized is a gloomy truth.
On December 11, 2006, this war formally began with “Joint Operation Michoacan.” Seven thousand soldiers from the army, the navy, and the federal police launched an offensive (commonly known as the “michoacanazo”) that, when the media’s euphoria passed, turned out to be a failure. The military official in charge was Gen. Manuel García Ruiz, and the man in charge of the operation was Gerardo Garay Cadena of the Ministry of Public Security. Today, and since December 2008, Gerardo Garay Cadena is imprisoned in a maximum security prison in Tepic, Nayarit, accused of colluding with “el Chapo” Guzmán Loera.
And, with each step that is taken in this war, the federal government finds it more difficult to explain where the enemy is.
Jorge Alejandro Medellín is a journalist who collaborates with various media outlets–Contralinea magazine, the weekly Acentoveintiuno, and Eje Central, amongst others–and he’s specialized in militarism, armed forces, national security, and drug trafficking. In October 2010 he received death threats because of an article where he pointed to possible between drug traffickers and Gen. Felipe de Jesús Espitia, ex-commander of the V Military Zone and ex-chief of the Seventh Section–Operations against Drug Trafficking–during Vicente Fox’s administration, and in charge of the Drug Museum located in the offices of the Seventh Section. Gen. Espitia was removed as commander of the V Military Zone following the tumultuous failure of the operations he ordered in Ciudad Juarez and for his poor response to the massacres committed in the border city.
But the failure of the federal war against “organized crime,” the crown jewel of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s government, is not a destiny that the Power in the USA laments: it is a goal to reach.
As much as corporate media tried to present resounding successes for legality, the skirmishes that take place every day in the nation’s territory aren’t convincing.
And not just because the corporate media have been surpassed by the forms of information exchange used by a large portion of the population (not only, but also the social networks and cell phones), also, and above all, because the tone of the government’s propaganda has passed from an attempt to deceive to an attempt to mock (from the “even though it doesn’t appear as though we’re winning” to “a ridiculous minority,” which pass as barroom boasting for the president).
About this other defeat for the written, radio, and television press, I will get back to that in another missive. For now, and regarding the current issue, its enough to remind people that the “nothing’s happening in Tamaulipas” that was extolled by the media (namely radio and television), was defeated by the videos shot by citizens with cell phones and portable cameras and shared on the Internet.
But let’s get back to the war that, according to Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, he never said was a war. He never said it, right?
“Let’s see if this is or isn’t a war: on December 5, 2006, Felipe Calderón said: “We work to win the war on crime…”. On December 2007, during breakfast with naval personnel, Mr. Calderón used the term ‘war’ on four occasions in a single speech. He said, “Society recognizes in a special manner the important role our marines play in the war my Government leads against insecurity…”, “The loyalty and the efficiency of the Armed Forces are one of the most powerful weapons in the war we fight…”, “When I started this frontal war against crime I stated that this would be a long-term struggle,” “…that is precisely how wars are…”
But there’s more: on September 12, 2008, during the the Commencement Ceremonies of the Military Education System, the self-proclaimed “president of employment” really shined when he said war on crime a half a dozen times: “Today our country fights a war that is very different from those that the insurgents fought in 1810, a war that is different from that which the cadets from the Military College fought 161 years ago…” “…it is the duty of all of Mexicans of our generation to declare war on Mexico’s enemies… That’s why, in this war on crime…” “It is essential that all of us who join this common front go beyond words to acts and that we really declare war on Mexico’s enemies…” “I am convinced that we will win this war…” (Alberto Vieyra Gómez. Agencia Mexicana de Noticias, January 27, 2011).
By contradicting himself, taking advantage of the calendar, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa neither corrects his mistakes nor corrects himself conceptually. No, what happens is that wars are won or lost (in this case, lost) and the federal government doesn’t want to recognize that the central focus of this administration has failed militarily and politically.
Endless war? The difference between reality… and videogames.
Faced with the undeniable failure of his warmongering policies, will Felipe Calderón Hinojosa change his strategy?
The answer is NO. And not just because war from above is a business, and like any other business, it is maintained as long as it is profitable.
Felipe Calderón de Hinojosa, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the fervent admirer of José María Aznar, the self-proclaimed “disobedient son,” the friend of Antonio Solá, the “winner” of the presidential elections by a half a percentage point thanks to Elba Esther Gordillo’s alchemy, the man of authoritarian rudeness that is close to a tantrum (”Get down here or I’ll make them bring you down here!”, he who wants to cover up the murdered children in the ABC Daycare Center in Hermosillo, Sonora, with more blood, he who has accompanied his military war with a war on dignified work and just salaries, he who has calculated autism when faced with the murders of Marisela Escobedoand Susana Chávez Castillo, he who hands out toe tags that say “members of organized crime” to little boys and girls and men and women who were and are murdered by him because, yes, because they happened to be in the wrong calendar and the wrong geography, and they aren’t even named because no one keeps track, not even the press, not even the social networks.
He, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, is also a fan of military strategy video games.
Felipe Calderón Hinojosa is the “gamer” “who in four years turned the country into a mundane version of The Age of Empire–his favorite videogame–,(…) a lover–and bad strategist–of war.” (Diego Osorno in Milenio, October 3, 2010).
It is he who leads us to ask: Is Mexico being governed videogame-style? (I believe that I can ask these sorts of controversial questions without them firing me for violating an “ethics code” that is determined by paid advertising).
Felipe Calderón Hinojosa won’t stop. And not only because the armed forces won’t let him (business is business), but also for the obstinacy that has characterized the political life of the “commander-in-chief” of the Mexican armed forces.
Let’s remember: In March 2001, when Felipe Calderón Hinojosa was the parliamentarian coordinator of the National Action Party’s federal deputies [in Congress], that unfortunate spectacle took place when the National Action Party (PAN) did not let a joint Indigenous delegation from the National Indigenous Congress and the EZLN take the podium in Congress during the “March of the Color of the Earth.”
Despite the fact that he was making the PAN out to be a racist and intolerant political organization (which it is) by denying the Indigenous people the right to be heard, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa stood firm. Everything told him it was an error to take that position, but the then-coordinator of the PAN deputies refused to cede (and he wound up hiding, along with Diego Fernández Cevallos and other distinguished PAN members, in one of the chamber’s private halls, watching on television as the Indigenous people spoke in a space that the political class reserves for its comedy sketches).
”No matter the political cost,” Felipe Calderón Hinojosa would have said at the time.
Now he says the same, although now it’s not about the political costs that a political party assumes, but rather the human costs that the entire country pays for that stubbornness.
At the point of ending this missive, I found the statements of the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, speculating about the possible alliances between Al Qaeda and Mexican drug cartels. One day prior, the undersecretary of the United States Army, Joseph Westphal, declared that in Mexico there is a form of insurgency lead by the drug cartels that could potentially take over the government, which would imply a US military response. He added that he didn’t want to see a situation in which US soldiers were sent to fight an insurgency “on our border…or having to send them to across the border” into Mexico.
Meanwhile, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa was attending a rescue simulation in a simulated town in Chihuahua, and he boarded an F-5 combat plane and he sat in the pilot’s seat and joked with a “fire missiles.”
From the strategy video games to the “aerial combat simulation” and “first-person shots”? From Age of Empires to HAWX?
HAWX is an aerial combat video game where, in a not-so-distant future, private military companies have replaced governmental militaries in various countries. The video game’s first mission is to bomb Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, because the “rebel forces” have taken over the territory and threaten to cross into US territory—.
Not in the video game, but in Iraq, one of the private military companies contracted by the US State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency was “Blackwater USA,” which later changed its name to “Blackwater Worldwide.” Its personnel committed serious abuses in Iraq, including murdering civilians. Now it has changed its name to “Xe Services LLC” and is the biggest private security contractor the US State Department has. At least 90% of its profits come from contracts with the US government.
The same day that Felipe Calderón Hinojosa was joking in the combat plane (February 10, 2011), and also in the state of Chihuahua, an 8-year-old girl died when she was hit by a bullet from a shoot-out between armed people and members of the military.
When will this war end?
When will “Game Over” appear on the federal government’s screen, followed by the credits, with the producers and sponsors of the war?
When will Felipe Calderón be able to say “we won the war, we’ve imposed our will upon the enemy, we’ve destroyed its material and moral combat abilities, we’ve (re)conquered the territories that were under its control”?
Ever since it was conceived, this war has no end, and it is also lost.
There will not be a Mexican victor in these lands (unlike the government, the foreign Power does have a plan to reconstruct-reorganize the territory), and the defeat will be the the last corner of the dying Nation-State in Mexico: the social relations that, providing a common identity, are the base of a Nation.
Even before the supposed end, the social fabric will be completely broken.
Results: the War above and the death below.
Let’s see what the federal Ministry of the Interior reports about Felipe Calderón Hinojosa’s “not-war”:
“2010 was the most violent year during the current administration, accumulating 15,273 murders linked to organized crime, 58% more than the 9,614 registered during 2009, according to statistics published this Wednesday by the Federal Government. From December 2006 up to the end of 2010 34,612 murders were counted, of which 30,913 were reported as “executions”; 3,153 are listed as “clashes” and 544 are listed as “homicides-attacks.” Alejandro Poiré, the National Security Council’s technical secretary, presented an official database created by experts that will show, beginning now, “monthly disaggregated information at the state and municipal level” about violence in the whole country.” (Vanguardia, Coahuila, Mexico, January 13, 2011)
Let’s ask: Of those 34,612 murders, how many were criminals? And the more than one thousand little boys and girls murdered (which the Secretary of the Interior “forgot” to itemize in his account), were they also organized crime “hitmen”? When the federal government proclaims that “we’re winning,” against which drug cartel are they referring to? How many tens of thousands more make up this “ridiculous minority” that is the enemy that must be defeated?
While up there they uselessly try to tone down this war’s murders with statistics, it is important to note that the social fabric is also being destroyed in almost all of the national territory.
The Nation’s collective identity is being destroyed and it is being supplanted by another.
Because “a collective identity is no more than an image that a people forges of itself in order to recognize itself has belonging to that people. Collective identity is those features in which an individual recognizes himself or herself as belonging to a community. And the community accepts this individual as part of it. This image that the people forge is not necessarily the persistence of an inherited traditional image, but rather, generally it is forged by the individual insofar as s/he belongs to a culture, to make his/her past and current life consistent wit the projects that s/he has for that community.
So identity is not a mere legacy that is inherited, rather, it is an imagine that is constructed, that each people creates, and therefore is variable and changeable according to historical circumstances.” (Luis Villoro, November 1999, interview with Bertold Bernreuter, Aachen, Germany).
In a good part of the national territory’s collective identity, there is no (as they wish us to believe) dispute between the national anthem and the narco-ballad (if you don’t support the government you support organized crime, and vice-versa.
No.
What exists is an imposition, by the force of weapons, of fear as a collective image, of uncertainty and vulnerability as mirrors in which those collectives are reflected.
What social relationships can be maintained or woven if fear is the dominant image which which a social group can identify itself, if the sense of community is broken by the cry “Save yourself if you can”?
The results of this war won’t only be thousands of dead… and juicy economic gains.
Also, and above all, it will result in a nation destroyed, depopulated, and irreversibly broken.
III. NOTHING TO BE DONE?
To those who make their petty electoral additions and subtractions in this mortal account, we remind you:
17 years ago, on January 12, 1994, a gigantic citizen mobilization (note: without bosses, central commands, leaders or leaders) stopped the war here. Faced with the horror, the destruction and the deaths, 17 years ago the reaction was almost immediate, forceful, effective.
Now it is paralysis, greed, intolerance, vileness that minimizes support and calls for immobility and… ineffectiveness.
The laudable efforts of a group of cultural workers (“NO MORE BLOOD”) was disqualified from the start because it did not lend itself to an electoral project, because it did not comply with the mandate to wait for 2012.
Now that they have war over there, in their cities, on their streets, on their highways, in their homes…what have they done? I mean, besides “yield” when faced with who has “the better project.”
Ask people to wait for 2012? So what, again one is told to go vote for the least worst candidate and this time the votes are going to be respected?
There’s been more than 34 thousand deaths in four years, that’s more than 8,000 deaths a year. That is, we have to wait for another 16,000 deaths to do something?
Things are going to get worse. The leading candidates for the presidential elections in 2012 (Enrique Peña Nieto y Marcelo Ebrard), govern over the most populous regions. Shouldn’t we expect that “the war against organized crime” with its tally of “collateral damage” will increase?
What will they do in the face of this? Nothing. They will continue on the same path of intolerance and demonization that they took four years ago when in 2006 everything/everyone that didn’t support Lopez Obrador was accused of being a handmaiden to the right wing. Those who attacked us and slandered us, and continue to do so now, follow the same path when faced with other movements, organizations, protests, and mobilizations.
Why doesn’t that great national organization that is supposedly being prepared for the next national elections, so that this time an alternative national project can ‘really’ win, do something now? I mean, if they think they can mobilize millions of Mexicans to vote for someone why don’t they mobilize them to stop this war and save this country? Or is it simply a matter of vile and selfish calculation, hoping that the sum of death and destruction will be subtracted from their opponents and tallied up by the person elected?
Today, in the midst of this war, critical thought is once again postponed. First things first, 2012 and answers to the questions regarding the new and recycled “cocks” [in this fight], for a future that is already crumbling today. Everything should be held captive to that calendar and to its lead up in the local elections in Guerrero, Baja Calfornia Sur, Hidalgo, Nayarit, Coahuila, el Estado de Mexico.
And while everything crashes down, they tell us that what really matters is analyzing the electoral results, the tendencies, the possibilities. They tell us to grin and bare it until it’s time to check off the electoral ballot, and repeat the wait to see if things get better, and to see if once again that fragile house of cards known as the Mexican political class can rebuild itself.
Remember how they attacked and laughed at the fact that since 2005 we called on people to organize themselves according to their own demands, identities, and goals, and not to bet on the likelihood that someone up there was going to solve everything?
Who got it wrong? Us or them?
Who in any major city can today dare say that they can go out with peace of mind, not in the early morning, but as soon as it gets dark?
Who endorses the “we are winning” of the federal government and views soldiers, sailors and police with respect, and not with fear?
Who are the ones who wake up not knowing if they are going to be alive, healthy, or free, by the end of the day?
Who are the ones who can’t offer the people an alternative that doesn’t consist of waiting for the next elections?
Who are the ones who can’t put into practice any initiatives that really takes hold locally let alone nationally?
Who are the ones who were left alone?
Because in the end, those that will survive are those who resisted; those who did not sell out, those that did not stop fighting, those that did not give up, those that understood that solutions don’t come from above, they are built from below, those that never bet on, and never will, the hopes and dreams sold to them by a political class that for some time now reeks like a cadaver, those who didn’t follow the calendar of those above and didn’t reorganize their geographies to that calendar by converting a social movement into a list of electoral voting card numbers, those who in the face of this war were not immobilized, waiting for the next tight wire act in the circus tent of electoral politics, but instead decided to construct a social, not an individual, alternative, made up of liberty, justice, work, and peace.
IV. ETHICS AND OUR OTHER WAR
We have said before that war is inherent to capitalism and that the struggle for peace is anticapitalist.
You, Don Luis have also said, “social morality constitutes only a first, precritical level of ethics. Critical ethics begins when the subject separates itself from the forms of morality that are in force and actually questions the validity of its rules and actions. From this angle it can be seen that social morality doesn’t live up to the virtues it claims for itself.”
Is it possible to bring Ethics to war? Is it possible to make it break through military parades, military ranks, checkpoints, operations, combats, deaths? Is it possible to bring it to question the validity of military rules and behavior?
Or is the mere thought of this possibility just an exercise in philosophical speculation?
Because perhaps the inclusion of that “other” element in the war would only be possible in a paradox. Including ethics as a determining factor in a conflict would bring about a radical recognition: the opponent knows that the result of its “triumph” will be its defeat.
And I am not referring to defeat as “destruction” or “abandonment” but rather to the negation of its existence as a fighting force. That is, a force makes war and if it wins it will mean its disappearance as a force. If it loses the consequences will be the same, but no one makes war with the idea of losing it (well, Felipe Calderon does).
And this is the paradox of Zapatista war: if we lose, we win, and if we win, we win. The key here is that ours is not a war that intends to destroy our opponent in the classical sense.
It is a war that attempts to eliminate the grounds for its realization as well as the possibility for the existence of the opponents (us included).
It is a war so that we may cease to be who we are so that we can be who we should be.
This has been possible because we recognize the other, the others, who in different lands of Mexico and the world, and without being the same as us, suffer the same pain we do, carry on a similar resistance, that struggle for a multiple identity that won’t annihilate, dominate or conquer, and who desire a world without armies.
Seventeen years ago, on January 1, 1994, the war against the originary peoples of Mexico became visible.
Looking at our national geography from the point of view of this calendar, we remember:
Weren’t we, the Zapatistas, the violent ones? Didn’t people accuse us of trying to divide our national territory? Wasn’t it said that our objective was to destroy the peace, undermine the institutions, sow chaos, promote terror, and put an end to the well being of a free, independent, and sovereign nation? Didn’t people say, to the point of nausea, that our demand for the recognition of our rights and cultures as Indigenous people would destroy the social order?
17 years ago, on January 12, 1994, a civilian mobilization, without any clear political affiliations, demanded that we attempt the path of dialogue in order to have our demands met.
We lived up to our part.
Again and again, despite the war against us, we insisted on peaceful initiatives.
For years we have resisted military, ideological and economic attacks, and today we resist the silence about what is happening here.
Under the most difficult conditions not only did we not surrender, nor sell out, nor give up, we actually created better living conditions for our peoples.
At the beginning of this letter I said that war is an old acquaintance for the Indigenous peoples, the Indigenous Mexicans.
More than 500 years later, more than 200 years later, more than 100 years later, and now with that other movement that claims its multiple communal identity, we say:
Here we are.
We have identity.
We have a sense of community because we neither wait nor sigh for the solutions we need and deserve to come from above.
Because we do not subject ourselves to walking to those who look up.
Because, maintaining the independence of our proposal, we relate equitably with the other that, like us, not only resists, has also been building its own identity that gives it social belonging, and now also represents the only solid opportunity for survival to disaster.
We are few, our geography is limited. We are no one.
We are originary peoples dispersed among the most distant geographies and calendars.
We are something other.
We are few and our geography is limited.
But in our calendar, fear doesn’t rule.
We only have we ourselves.
Perhaps that is not a lot to have, but we are not afraid.
Vale Don Luis. Health to you and to critical reflection opening new paths.
From the Mountains of Southeastern Mexico.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
January–February 2011
A Lesson and a Hope
LUIS VILLORO’S RESPONSE TO SUBCOMANDANTE MARCOS’ FIRST LETTER
For Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
From Luis villoro
February 2011
I have accepted this exchange of writings with great pleasure and interest. I share the concern about the situation our country is going through and I have long admired what the Zapatista movement is doing.
In 1992, two years before the Zapatista uprising, I had the opportunity to write a little book entitled Modern Thought. Philosophy of the Renaissance, edition of the Economic Culture Fund. When I reread it now, I confirmed great affinities with what the EZLN would say and do later, which confirms our coincidences from the beginning. What I thought then has become more pertinent and urgent today than ever: ethics and justice must be at the center of social life. We must not allow politicians from across the ideological spectrum to expel them from there and turn them into mere phrases of speech.
I will begin first by mentioning the current situation: the dominance of world capitalism. This controls, with some exceptions, the economic policies that determine the lives of the vast majority as well as the media that seek to justify them. It expresses, in short, a thought of domination.
It is, in effect, a war established by power. It is supposedly directed against drug trafficking and organized crime, but it is a war of those who hold economic power with no other project than to increase capital profits.
War from above, death below, as you say. It is expressed in a thought of domination that could effectively lead to the destruction of the social fabric, the essence of every society.
That is, in summary, the world situation. However, we can point out places where we can glimpse the beginning of a path towards a better world. That is one of the main reasons why your experience continues to be so important. There, in Chiapas, based on ancient Indigenous roots, your own worldviews and your particular ways of naming the world, you have demonstrated the possibility of realizing even opposing values. While in capitalism individualism governs (the sacrosanct individual rights), in this alternative another type of values emerges: community values that respect the person in their individuality and are realized in a community. Thus, an “ethics of the common good” is clearly manifested.
In these small communities, in the Mexican southeast, there is a new political organization: the so-called “Good Government Councils” (JBG) that try to realize ethical values that are different and even opposed to those of capitalism. They are collective values based on the idea of community or communality. In the face of modern Western individualism, it promotes common property that flourishes in the face of private property.
In the legal order, it also gives us a lesson: in the face of prison punishment, it opts for the assignment of a job for the benefit of the community to serve the sentence, unlike confinement in our societies.
In short, against modern individualism, one could appeal to another previous tradition subsisting in Indo-America, the community tradition. This is an example that another world is possible in the face of Western modernity.
Another example that marks a substantial difference with the West, as far as values are concerned, is its handling of contrary concepts such as winner-defeated, good-bad, etc. It explains very well the paradox of the Zapatista war that you, Sup Marcos, point out at the end of your writing and that makes it clear that the objective is not to win by destroying the enemy, since, in reality, in wars one cannot speak of a winner. or defeated since, from a human point of view, the deaths, the blood shed and the material destruction, both sides are losers.
And this is without talking about the survivors. As you clarify: “The key is that ours is a war that does not aim to destroy the opponent in the classic sense. It is a war that tries to nullify the terrain of its realization and the possibilities of the opponents (including us).”
With reference to the issue of the Nation-State, whose crisis had already been noted for decades, – as I stated on page 153 of my aforementioned book – “it was clear that the planetary problems of that time exceeded its capacity to resolve them and, on the other hand, could not face the complex diversified demands of particular communities, such as the growing activity of nationalities, ethnicities, communities and social groups that affirmed their identity and demanded the right of diversity within equality” (words, the latter, that show an undoubted affinity with the Zapatista postulates).
“This announced a profound change in the way of considering man’s position in the social order, which would no longer be configured as a result of the majority will of equal individuals but of the complex interrelation between communities and heterogeneous groups. “Political power would be justified if it consecrated, at the same time as equality, difference.” (Idem)
Regarding the oft-repeated issue of “human rights that encapsulate the right of each person to fully realize themselves, they seem to ignore that the person cannot realize themselves alone; then they imply the recognition of the specific values of each group and community; They imply, for example, the right of ethnic groups to the autonomous development of their culture and their ways of life” (p.154), precisely the reason that gave rise to the historic march of the color of the earth in 2001, whose unfortunate and shameful outcome you also mention in your letter.
However, the indisputable advances that we have been able to see in our various visits to the Zapatista Caracoles (headquarters of the JBG) since 2003, fruit of the exercise of their autonomy applied to the fields of education, health and self-government, show that another type of human relationship is possible where brotherhood, respect and trust prevail. And where it is possible to exercise another, more authentic type of democracy: participatory, which is so far from the representative democracy that we know.
Regarding the electoral processes and political parties, I can say that I have no confidence. Since it is about ethics and justice, since what is necessary is to embody the values that sustain us, I cannot place my hope in those who endlessly dispute for their small plots of power and abandon all serious efforts to care for the common good.
The aforementioned achievements in the Zapatista zone, and especially among the youth, show a reality that is absolutely different from what the media tries to convey with its silence about this movement that has awakened impressive international solidarity. We already know well the continuous distortion with which they report and with which they hide the constant harassment directed against communities and support bases, in order to shape public opinion and erase their critical capacity.
Fortunately, with modern technology, alternatives have emerged that are changing this reality: from social networks to community radio stations, committed to bringing to light what is silenced and manipulated by the mass media, which promises the recovery of the critical thinking that today seems relegated to a state of exception.
Finally, I can say that there is a lesson and hope left for those of us who have had the opportunity to closely follow the Zapatista resistance over the last 17 years as well as the transformation they have achieved in their territory based on their autonomy by building communities. fraternal communities where fear, which today invades the entire country, has no place. This constitutes a voice of hope in times like these when degradation and violence seem to have clouded our outlook.
Greetings and forward
Luis Villoro