In permanent struggle against the State and its control
Down with the law on internal security!

The approval of the Law on internal security (LSI) in Mexico is a symptom of the need for global capitalism to renew its power sources and to expand its economic progress, to the advantage of class society and its anthropocentric vision of the world. In regard to the repression of expressions that oppose or don’t support global domination, which goes along with expropriation and seizing of lands, winds and waters and the exploitation of ‘energy resources’ and human and animal bodies, the State is working on changes in important laws in order to attain its goals. Even if LSI is a dormant expression on a juridical level of industrial technological progress through totalitarianism and militarization of the country and of its established activity against forms of resistance, as the army is actually deployed in social or other missions in almost all instances of political and economic tension in Mexico, historical examples where this practice emerges abound:
— 1968, the historical massacre of Tlatelolco, where thousands of students were killed
— Hunt for guerrilla fighters and communists in the 1960s, when practices of torture were consolidated
— Militarization and armed conflict in Chiapas in the 1990s against the indigenous and Zapatist insurrection
— We must remember a not well known case which came to light following the earthquake that destroyed Mexico City in 1985, when rescue operations undertaken among the debris of the Federal District Power of Attorney brought to light several secret prisons where personae non grate were tortured and killed
— The massacre of Acteal in 1997, when the military shot the Tzotziles indigenous population and opened up pregnant women’s wombs to fill them with stones

This tendency is not decreasing, the violence perpetrated by the state forces has increased, the security forces have acquired and updated their equipment and infrastructures, they have expanded their sophistication to other sectors of control forces, by giving military training to ex-policemen and creating new police corps, such as gendarmerie, civil force, state police and military police, by deploying the navy in certain areas and forging pacts and alliances with the government of the United States. More precisely, one of the pacts that allowed quantitative and qualitative development of repression apparatuses was Iniciativa Mérida, a measure of international collaboration against organized crime realized during Felipe Calderón’s presidency in Mexico and George Bush’s presidency in the United States, a precedent that can’t be overlooked if we want to trace a historical line of the current state of control and repression.

We can’t either overlook the fact that drug smugglers have been presented as ‘political enemy subjects’ in order to justify militarization; but from an antiauthoritarian perspective with the addiction of anti-state critique, drug smuggling and so called organized crime shouldn’t be considered enemies, or we would embrace the citizenist and simplistic vision of insecurity; these are groups that act outside legal frameworks, but they are actually looking for power by using the same instruments, paths and goals thus contributing to social domination and earth exploitation in the same way; it’s not by chance that these groups have to be linked to governments and be a part of them in order to maintain power, and they serve as para-military or para-police hands to attack various protests and their participants, to arrest them, make them disappear and kill them. One of the most known government tactics in Mexico is that of attributing links with drug smuggling to rebels so as to persecute and discredit the struggle.

The brutality of state repression has never decreased; on the contrary it has remained constant and occasionally it has increased, as demonstrated by the following more or less recent examples:
— In 2006 Mexico experienced the beginning of so called ‘war against drug smuggling and organized crime’, which served as a pretext to repress, imprison and kill various kinds of social activists; up to now we count about 200 thousand dead, 39 thousand disappeared persons and 350 thousand displaced people, as links with ‘organized crime’ were attributed to many of these cases
— Still in 2006, during the people’s insurrection in Oaxaca, disappearing and torture of insurgents were daily routine; many of the disappeared ones were taken on helicopters and then thrown down, or to secret prisons where they were tortured and murdered
— In 2014 the disappearance and murder of 43 students from Ayotzinapa in Guerrero, a case where the responsibility of the national army was demonstrated with several instruments
— In 2015 in Ostula, Michoacán, the military opened fire on a block spot set up by comuneros in response to an arrest following an episode of self-defence and the murder of a 12-year-old child; the community had organized themselves in self-defence to recuperate the lands monopolized by cacique and drug smugglers
— Still in 2015 there was the Narvante case, when photo journalist activist Rubén Espinosa and social activist Nadia Vera were killed along with another three people in unclear circumstances, from where signs of rape on the woman and bullet wounds on the victims’ heads emerged and the governor of Veracruz, Javier Duarte, was held responsible
— In 2016 in Huajuapan, Oaxaca, anarchist punk comrade Salvador Olmos García was tortured, run over and finally killed by police, as he had been involved in the Radio Comunitaria Tu Un Ñuu Savi and had always collaborated with several autonomous projects and of solidarity with various regional causes and activities concerning the anarchist punk movement
— In 2018 it was reported that inside a police training centre in Veracruz techniques of torture were practiced on people kidnapped by elite police corps; subsequently the arrested people were taken to a place where there were tigers and crocodiles in order to be executed or they were buried under installations
— Still in 2018, in February, in Santa María Huatulco, Oaxaca, three members of the indigenous organization CODEDI Oaxaca were killed by a group of judicial hitmen, as they were organizing a caravan. One of the caravan members, Abraham Rodríguez, was imprisoned for 7 years for his involvement in the struggle and in the organization; in this area in Oaxaca people have been resisting for years the annihilation and collaboration of indigenous populations, the destruction of its natural areas and the occupation of national and foreigner companies to run production and mega-industrial projects.

Technology always aims at control

To all these facts we add technological progress in terms of spying and surveillance, which the State and its companies have been using against opponents, activists, journalists, and also anarchists; we had a proof of this in 2016, when some comrades got spyware messages on their phones. In 2011 Mexican Federal Agencies spent about 80 million dollars for a spying programme run by the Israeli company Pegasus, a programme that accesses computers and phones with viruses and fake links in order to monitor their activities and to obtain information. Personal date filing carried out by facebook and Zuckenberg’s appearance at US courts shouldn’t go unobserved; these facts demonstrate the vulnerability of this kind of instruments. The exponential increase in video surveillance in the streets continues to give us indications of the future of technological control, which we are approaching; for all the comfort they offer us these complex technologies are created by Power, capitalism and their needs, and therefore they never stop aiming at control and consumerism. That’s why, as we are immersed in a reality of technological domination, it becomes of paramount importance for all those who dare challenge the constituted order, to keep updated on the mechanisms of internet security in this era of digital Big Brother and/or to limit their influence on our lives. We hope these words won’t sound new to comrades.

Against the State itself

In conclusion, far from reformist positions that ask the State for an excellent use of uncorrupted armed forces linked to legality and protest against the unconstitutionality of the military in the streets – so that the latter is only deployed in case of threatened national sovereignty or things like that, we anarchists must remain firm on our antiauthoritarian positions and therefore against the State and its military apparatus, no matter its colour. The fact that LSI legally approves warrants or judicial acts without the need for a specific judicial order is a fact that exasperates the totalitarian situation towards which Mexico is heading, but as a matter of fact it was already a historical practice of the Mexican State. It is important to highlight that this situation, as we said before, is a local symptom of a global question: another turn of the screw of capitalism, which doesn’t limit to a merely administrative question, whether the left, the centre or the right is in power; regardless of its political and ideological programmes, the techno-industrial project holds an unchangeable logic, according to which the national States activate military, para-military and police forces when the market requires so, and always in favour of national and multinational companies, in a legal way or an illegal one, with the intent to realize extraction projects to generate more energy (be it ‘clean’ or not clean) and more production of goods with which to continue the expansion of capitalism, technological progresses aiming to make life artificial and to plan mass consumerism and the enrichment of the rich; and with all this, also to keep various forces of opposition at bay, as they oppose dominion’s plans in different ways.

To acknowledge these problems we look at facts: increasing and selective imprisonments, murder and torture of activists, indigenous people and campesinos set to defend seas, woods, forests, mountains, deserts and rivers, and the selective repression against other anti-system or social movements; we can say this is a tendency on a global level, accompanied by the increase in racist, xenophobic, nationalist and sexist demonstrations and in various kinds of authoritarianism widespread in society.

As we’re talking in general about activists and not only anarchist comrades, it doesn’t mean that we support the forms and ideologies that generate their ways of struggle, which are normally framed in the idea of State rights, human rights, constitutionality and good governance, and which are often managed and accepted by the State, thus limiting revolt and the possibilities of self-management of the struggle. We must bear well in mind that repression doesn’t only touch us anarchists, but it touches any other social obstacle. That’s why we believe in taking a permanent stance against the dynamics of authority. To mention different episodes and protagonists helps us trace a historical line about the State, which reaffirms and nourishes our stance, and gives us real arguments and concrete facts to expand antiauthoritarian critique and practice, thus preparing us to face new conditions, while always bearing in mind that regardless of the State’s transformations and law reforms, they always have a temporary character and can be transgressed at any time, as always happened; the States have a congenital illness, that is the hypocrisy between what they say and what they do. For us freedom, autonomy, self-determination and the respect for nature and the wilderness can’t be found in law codes, but in our hands, consciences and will to act. As they well say: ‘Those who make the law make a trap’.

Mexico, June 2018.

Chaya Tlilli