Let us recommence, then with some aphorisms from decades ago. See if what was said then, helps or not to understand what is happening now.
I
The aim of critical thinking is not to find the truth (and, therefore, to build a new alibi for the arbitrariness of the moment), but to question “truths”, confront them, dismantle them and show them for what they are: the idiotic opinion of one or several idiots (of course, not forgetting gender parity -) and with many or few followers. Critical thinking is not only a theoretical position. It is, above all, an ethical position in the face of knowledge and reality.
II
That which they call “History” (with capital letters) is only a corpse clumsily made-up by politicians and their scribes. However, at the table of the politician in power, a skeleton does not sit. Just a mirror. The frame can be embellished, but the mirror will continue to reflect the same decomposition of reality. The difference between caskets does not change the similarity of their contents. When governments accuse the mirror, because it is concave, of distorting reality, they pretend to hide the fact that it is their gaze that excludes distortions. The same gaze in which HE is the one who illuminates and colors everything.
The past history, with small letters, is nothing more than the antecedent of the present nightmare. Today the death and destruction of tomorrow are being wrought.
III
The idea does not precede the matter. On the contrary. It is not a social or philosophical theory that gives rise to capitalism as the dominant system. Nor to its different stages. Social theory is a gigantic shelf of ideas to which the different political proposals turn in search of reasons that give sense to senselessness. The dominant systems are but one and the same body with different garb in their presentations, but the same in their hypocrisy.
The fashionable social theory is only a momentary bestseller, which coexists with theories of self-help, of how to win friends (“followers” as they now say), and of justifications that the end justifies the means depending on whether it is conservatism or progressivism (which is nothing more than a soft conservatism).
What gives rise to capitalism is a crime. And each stage of its development resembles that of a serial killer — each time it acquires more and more experience. The work of the officialist theoreticians is to embellish this crime with some romanticism, adventure and, of course, frivolity.
In social theory, more often than not, the aim is not to understand in order to revolutionize, that is, to change the material bases of a system. What the “theoreticians,” yesterday of the opposition and today pro-government, are looking for is a change in the confraternity. That is why yesterday’s attachés are today’s cartoonists. The names and offices change, but the defense is the same. And, of course, the pay. The reaction of the enlightened right is that of a couple scorned, indignant because others were chosen. And those others, what they aspired to was to take the place of yesterday’s chosen ones. They share the same intellectual anemia, so there is no problem.
Today’s historian adapts the historiography to the taste of the boss. He goes to the bookshelf of ideas looking for characters, either to create villains or to construct heroes. That female villains and heroines are now included is a benevolent concession to a feminism that settles for little or nothing. The greatest fear of an historian today is to find groups, collectives or entire peoples responsible for a period. Who can sell a book with the biography of a non-individual? Because that is a community.
Today’s historian sells alibis and is the promotional support of the papier-mâché cartoon of Power. For him, history is only the set design that adorns his luminous present. The literary equivalent of the lavish scenes about the indigenous peoples are the biographies and the investigations cultivated in the circles of Power. Thus the calendars are adjusted to their convenience and the defeats of one empire against another are converted into victories.
The confusion is such that there are those who think, sustain and argue, that the Aztec Empire was the panacea of the indigenous peoples before the Spanish conquest, that Russia is the USSR and that China is a geography with communism as the dominant system; that the people are wise if they vote for Lula, Kirchner, PSOE, Macron, and Harris; and ignorant if they vote for Bolsonaro, Le Pen, Milei, Trump. Few things are as prostituted as “democracy,” but none is more expensive.
In the unknown history of the capitulations, those who keep silent and mature (this is how it is taught in the school of cadres of the Party), go to the shelf of ideas to buy something that will serve them. It is futile: the betrayal of principles and convictions is a capitulation, even if it is dressed up as Poulantzas 1. The nickname “leftist” does not change the essence of a fact: it is complicity with a crime, the worst of all: that of a system against humanity.
V
In politics there are no dead people, only recidivist corpses.
As Pedro Infante used to say: the PRI is not dead, it lives on in the heart of all political parties. That is why professional politicians change their acronyms as they change their underpants without any problem. And even if they wash their underpants… or maybe not even.
There is no difference between progressive and right-wing politicians, just as there is no fundamental difference between good and bad bosses. Both administer a plundering.
The political options do not change in their objectives (to have the government), nor in their tasks (to serve the economic Power). Only the alibis change.
VI
In its current stage, the system carries out a new war of conquest, and its objective is to destroy / rebuild, depopulate / repopulate. Destruction / depopulation and reconstruction / redevelopment of an area is the destination of that war.
The government of Israel is not avenging the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, it is destroying and depopulating a territory. The business is not only in destruction and mass murder, it will be in reconstruction and redevelopment. That is evident in the complicity of the Nation States of the world. When the “nations” send military supplies to Israel they are not only supporting the genocide against the Palestinian people. They are investing in that crime. The dividends of this business will come later.
VII
There is no “good” or “bad” destruction. The excuses and colors change, but the result is the same. There are no substantial differences between Porfirio’s Isthmus Train, Fox’s Plan Puebla-Panama and Moreno’s Transisthmus Corridor. Some failed and the other will fail as well. Their objective is not welfare (other than that of big capital), nor the Porfirian modernization of dispossession: it is simply one more border among those that already exist. And, like its counterparts, it will also be perforated. And not because of the thousands of migrants, but because of the corruption and cynicism that, centuries later, today’s neo-enslavers discover: human trafficking is a business with an immense source of raw material (obtained through wars and the policies of the different governments). And the capital investment is minimal: all you need is bureaucracy, cruelty and cynicism. And there is an abundance of that in Capital and in the State.
The so-called mega-projects do not result in development. They are only commercial corridors opened for organized crime to have new markets. The dispute between rival cartels is not only for the trafficking of people and drugs, it is above all the dispute for the monopoly of the “Tren Maya” and “Corredor Transístmico” (Transisthmian Corridor). Trees and animals cannot be charged fees, but the communities and companies that settle on this other useless border in the Mexican southeast can.
This ensures the growth of wars for territorial control, in which the hologram of the Nation State will be absent.
To start from the premise that the violence of what is called “Organized Crime” is an anomaly of the system is not only false, but also prevents us from understanding what is happening (and acting accordingly). It is not an irregularity, but a consequence.
The objective is consensual: the State wants an open market (“free” of intruders -i.e. native peoples-), and the others want control of a territory.
In the image and likeness of what was called State Monopoly Capitalism, in which Capital waited for the State to create the conditions for its implementation and development, now it is what the military call a “pincer maneuver”: both – State and Organized Crime -, they hold a territory, destroy and depopulate it, and then big Capital enters to rebuild and reorder.
Those who say that there is an alliance between governments and organized crime are lying. Just as there is no alliance between a company and its clients. What there is is a simple – albeit costly – commercial operation: the State offers an absence and the cartel in question “buys” that absence and replaces the presence of the State in a locality, region, zone, country. The gain is mutual between seller and buyer, the loss is for those who survive in those places. “He who pays or loans, rules,” is the old aphorism that analysts and “social scientists” “forget.”
As for what is called “Organized Crime”, the State and Capital make a miscalculation (as usual): they assume that the employee will subject themselves to the agreement. And not that he will operate on his own account.
As happened with the encouragement and creation of paramilitary groups, which, as they were made up of indigenous people, it was thought that they could be controlled. After all, they were ignorant and manipulable people. And then Acteal. The Abejas are right, the Acteal massacre in 1997, with its cruelty and consequent impunity, was only the prelude to the current nightmare. The State thinks that those of the so-called Organized Crime are its servants and come and go as instructed or forced. It is because of this belief that they receive the surprises they suffer.
Now, try to answer this question: Why is it that in a federal state militarized for 30 years, cartels and their clashes now flourish with the governmental approval of those who invaded the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, claiming to avoid the “balkanization” of the republic? Yes, it seems that the Mexican territory is more fragmented than ever.
(To be continued)
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
The Captain
August 2024.
Original text published by Enlace Zapatista on August 15th, 2024.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.