Part VII of A Tractor in Common and the Case of the Crazy Parakeet
“… there’s no point in complaining; no one cares that you don’t eat, that you’re malnourished, that you eat dirt, that you’re always ravenous, or that you have nowhere to bury your children—whether dead or miscarried—because of hunger; their remains lie at the bottom of the lake, among spiders, ants, flies, and minnows.”
José Cueli.
An “Enlightened” Right?
Ayuso and Cayetana? Seriously? Aren’t there any right-wing women in Mexico who are even remotely intelligent and can articulate their views? Well, at least she knows how to make photocopies, Margarita. Huh? Malu? Honestly, it’s just unbelievable. Or is it that there few women left who let themselves be manipulated by the executioners? Come on, guys, prove that, within your ranks, gender equality isn’t just limited to ignorance, stupidity, and cynicism. The heirs of “Sir” Diego Fernández de Cevallos should step into the media spotlight. Come on!
The Alitos, Fox (who, following his Hispanic sponsors, should go by “Foj”), Calderón, and the pencil pushers who accompany them find fertile ground in ignorance and are in their natural element. The blessing comes from Spain above, with Vox (“Voj,” if they’re consistent), amid psalms and hysterical screams. But the right, in Mexico and around the world, is suffering. And that’s because they can’t agree on who gets to take the stage.
In Proceso magazine, Ximena Arochi published (August 5, 2025) an interview with Raúl Tortolero, a member of the National Action Party (PAN) and “leader” of the “National Council of the New Right.” Concerned about the fragmentation of the right in Mexico, he declares that the “enemies” of the far right are well defined: “They have to do with LGBT supremacy, feminist supremacy, Black supremacy—especially in the United States—indigenous supremacy, and eco-animalist or environmentalist and animal rights supremacy.” Whoa! That’s more than half of Mexico’s population. And it seems he’s right: murders, disappearances, imprisonments, and beatings are all too common among, among others, environmental defenders, Indigenous people, those with dark skin… and women. The “National Council of the New Right” includes members of the Citizens’ Movement.
Even though they’re rowing against the current. Antonio Salgado Borge, in an article published two years ago (June 18, 2024) in Proceso magazine, points out that the far right in Mexico is being sidelined because the 4T—that is, López Obrador fanbase—has “snatched away” its natural social base, some of its arguments and excuses, and… its history. The notion of a natural social base can be understood in terms of social programs (which, in reality, are clientelistic and constitute a social and financial time bomb); as well as a supposed opposition to and criticism of “the institutions” (AMLO presented himself as an “outsider,” even though he has been a member of at least three political parties—the PRI, the PRD, and MORENA); “populist” rhetoric; and the denial of facts and rational arguments (the “other data”). These elements, the analyst notes, are common to far-right “populist” governments and politicians around the world: Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, and Giorgia Meloni.
I would add hatred toward human rights NGOs, environmental activists, Indigenous people who refuse to bow down, women who resist and rebel, anyone who refuses to submit and obey… and non-artificial intelligence.
The author points out that, just like the European right, a golden age is being touted here as something to which we must return: the second half of the 20th century (“when God Almighty was omnipotent and Miguel Alemán was president,” my grandmother used to say sarcastically). And the nostalgic PRI supporters (inside and outside Morena) used to say and still say: “Back then, dogs were tied up with chorizo… and they didn’t eat it” (of course, changing it to “my dogs”). But the Morena party, in its current phase, has gone even further: all the way back to pre-Hispanic times. Mexico’s “golden age” is when Mexico wasn’t Mexico, and the oppressor in the territory was… the Aztec Empire.*
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The Heirs of the Aztec Empire.
Thanks to the “clever” strategy of López Obrador’s camp to ally with the PRI—which never really went away (a strategy so highly praised by those who now criticize it as “a mistake”)—what was once its strength (ha!) is now its weakness. For decades, the PRI—let’s call it “secondary” or Mesozoic (the Tertiary or Paleozoic PRI era was with the PAN)—became the promoter and manager of crime in municipalities and states. Crime evolved; the PRI did not—it merely transmuted, first into the PAN, then into the PRD, PVEM, and PT (the Quaternary-Pleistocene PRI), and now into Morena (the Quaternary-Holocene PRI).
Alito Moreno, the current president of the Mexican PRI, when he accuses the ruling party of ties to organized crime, is actually accusing it of plagiarism. Corrupt governments hold the copyright. The “copyright” dates back to the Primary or Cenozoic period: the National Revolutionary Party and the Party of the Mexican Revolution.
Enlightened López Obradorism, without the slightest shame, champions the legacy of the Aztec Empire. They speak of “the” Aztec “empire,” … yet call themselves “anti-imperialists.” Perhaps because they act just like their spiritual historical guides: plundering, disparaging, exploiting, and repressing other indigenous peoples. The ethical dilemma—convictions or a paycheck—is resolved in favor of defending a spot in the budget.
That business of wrapping oneself in the national flag while, at the same time, intoning the requisite patriotic chant, is so Díaz Ordaz, so Echeverría, so López Portillo, so… shameless. But, for practical purposes, for the 4T, sovereignty lies in the U.S. visa to go shopping. “Yes, the CIA and Rocha Moya business is bad, but revoking visas—now that really heats things up, young man. That’s why we’re going to amend Article 39 of the Constitution, and it must read: ‘National sovereignty resides essentially and originally in the U.S. visa.’ For the good of all, visas first.”
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Fragmentation.
In “modern” or current wars, the goal is to control territory—either by controlling those who hold power or by controlling key parts of the whole.
The model the U.S. State Department is following for Mexico is one of fragmenting the territory. It has already marked the states that interest it (for now): Tamaulipas, Nuevo León (which has long followed the frivolous U.S. model), Coahuila (already in the hot seat), Chihuahua (a CIA affiliate), Sonora, Sinaloa (though not a border state, it is of interest due to its strategic location in the Gulf of California), and Baja California. Oh, that’s almost the entire northern border. Oh, oh, Texas in the future? Wake up, friends.
“Whoever controls the key parts controls the whole”—this maxim of political-military theory was understood (and applied) by the various cartels. Now it’s Trump… well, the Trump cartel. To this end, he has the enthusiastic and open complicity of the National Action Party and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (a remastered version of the Mesozoic-era PRI). Huh? Yes, and of the 4T.
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Virtual Reality and Real Reality.
If big business is now interested in “combating organized crime,” it is not because it cares about people’s well-being. It is because it believes it has already done its job (destruction and depopulation), and it is time to move on to the next stage: reorganization.
SEMARNAT, through its head Alicia Bárcenas, tells the residents and environmental defenders in Mahahual, Quintana Roo, that they don’t need life, but tourism. And that the supreme government (of proven efficiency and honesty, ha!) will ensure that there is “Shared Prosperity.” That is to say, that invading businesspeople and dispossessed residents will prosper.
Mahahual might see itself reflected in the mirror held up to it nearly 3,000 kilometers away:
On Mexico’s west coast, in Topolobambo, Ahome, Sinaloa, residents and activists have mobilized to protest the construction of an ammonia plant. The megaproject threatens to destroy Ohuira Bay and the Mayo-Yoreme indigenous community.
Following the “come rain or shine” approach with which AMLO pushed through the misnamed “Maya Train,” the federal government is imposing the project despite technical studies, protests by the indigenous population and environmental defenders (“Not Here!”), and warnings about environmental impact (that is, against reality). SEMARNAT declares, as the plant is being installed, that it “will continue to provide personal oversight.” It is unclear whether this refers to the ongoing destruction or to the $860 million in foreign capital “investment.” The Germany-based KfW IPEX-Bank is financing Gas y Petroquímica de Occidente (GPO), a subsidiary of the Swiss-German company Proman AG (note by journalist Itzallana López Castillo. Infobae. June 4, 2026). A summary of the situation can be found in the article by journalist Rubi Martínez in Milenio Diario (June 3, 2026)
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A conservative perspective? Do extremes converge?
Ilán Semo (“The Microphysics of the Ominous,” La Jornada, June 4, 2026), reflecting on the compendium (edited by Jairo Antonio López Pacheco and Libertad Argüello Cabrera) Internal Forced Displacement and Violence in Mexico: Causes, Trajectories, and Effects (UNAM, 2026), in which an interdisciplinary group of scholars analyzes three six-year terms (Calderón, Peña Nieto, and AMLO), warns: “the collusion between transnational and national capital, organized crime, law enforcement (the police, the Army, the National Guard…) and countless members and officials of the federal and local governments to turn part of the country into the territory of a necroeconomy—that is, a form of hyper-savage capitalism—which bases the deployment of its mechanisms on dispossession, murder, disappearances, and forced displacements without law, the rule of law, or any authority to contain it.” (…) “… it is nothing more than the eradication not of communities’ resistance to this process, but of the communities themselves.”
The researcher has a name for this: holocaust. The evidence? It’s all over the country.
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Modern War.
Destruction and depopulation: the first step in the new war of conquest. In today’s world at war, what is at stake is not the survival of “civilizations,” but rather models of exploitation, repression, dispossession, and contempt.
War is not merely destruction; it also serves to conceal other wars within the targeted regions. The war in Ukraine hides the resistance and rebellion in that region and in Putin’s neo-tsarist Russia; in Islamic Iran, it crushes the struggle of “as the women that we are.” And in all three cases, it is the most rancid nationalism that is brandished to cover up what is fundamental: the struggles from below.
Capital has now fully entered a phase as brutal as it is foolish, not without a touch of nostalgia for the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. But instead of the Enlightenment, we have Artificial Intelligence. There is no Newton, but a Musk. Instead of the rise of reason, the dominance of the algorithm. Instead of freedom, neoliberalism. Instead of nation-states, financial globalization. Instead of governments, boards of shareholders. And among the self-proclaimed “left,” instead of consistency, cynicism.
The accusation of “terrorism,” which Big Capital uses to justify its wars, is not unique to Trump. His counterparts in the Israeli government are now accusing Spanish humanitarian aid NGOs—without any evidence—of financing Hamas! The organizations named are Peace with Dignity; Rumbo a Gaza—an initiative part of the Global Sumud Flotilla—; the Malaga-based Al Quds Association for Solidarity with the Peoples of the Arab World; and the Spanish branch of the British Islamic NGO Human Appeal (with information from the EFE news agency). For Capital, supporting efforts to improve the living conditions of vulnerable populations—the struggle for life, in other words—is “terrorism.”
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But there is resistance, there is defiance, and resignation will be overcome by organization. Because what is missing is yet to come.
(To be continued…)
From the mountains of southeastern Mexico.
The Captain.
Mexico, June 2026.
Original text published at Enlace Zapatista on June 5th, 2026.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.