Democracy Ateneo Announcement 10-11-14

Compañer@s

We will convene the Universidad de la Tierra Califas' Democracy Ateneo, Saturday, October 11, from 2 - 5 p.m. at Casa de Vicky (792 E. Julian St., San Jose) to resume our regularly scheduled reflection and action space and to explore some of the questions and struggles mentioned below. Please note we have altered the schedule of the Democracy Ateneo so that it falls on the second Saturday of the month.

News of the assassination of six protestors and the disappearance of forty-three students just outside of Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico on September 26 has rightfully begun to garner national and international attention. Details of the events continue to surface including news of how over twenty-two municipal police attacked a busload of students, leaving six dead and removing the remaining survivors in official vehicles to what is believed to be the narcofosa, or mass grave, where they were escorted, killed, and then dumped. Other details about the suspected involvement of "drug cartels" and local and regional officials have also emerged. Jen Psaki of the U.S. State Department declared that the events in Guerrero are "crimes that demand a full and transparent investigation" into what most are convinced is the excess of a "drug state." (see, "La masacre de Iguala, ante el escrutinio mundial," La Jornada ) Other international organizations such as the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have demanded Mexico address the political corruption that makes what many are calling a "crime against humanity" possible. While the U.S. mainstream media has virtually ignored the horrendous news from Guerrero, small progressive media outlets and solidarity organizations aware of Mexico's political decomposition have begun to circulate details about the attack against the Escuela Normal Ayotzinapa students. (See, Mexico Voices Blogspot, Oct. 8) The EZLN issued a communiqué and organized a silent march on October 8 in San Cristóbal de las Casas in solidarity with the students and their families.

The events associated with the disappearance of the forty three students of Escuela Normal Ayotzinapa follows a series of attacks that underscore how police and military operate with impunity, as in the execution of over twenty-two people earlier this summer in Tlatlaya, State of Mexico. The declarations by Enrique Peña Nieto to investigate the recent incident in Guerrero inspire no one. Even though this horrendous event has received national and international scrutiny of municipal, regional, and national officials complicit with police, military, and narcos, few believe anyone involved will be pursued in any serious way. Thus, the narrative that emerges is a tale of drug corruption and the crisis it brings to everyday political and social life as already witnessed in Michoacán, Tamaulipas, and Chihuahua. Unfortunately, the narrative of the "failed drug state" overlooks a critical element made observable by the on-going struggle of the comrades from the Escuela Normal of Ayotzinapa, namely that the bloody and tragic events of September 26 are the result of the convergence of a number of wars.

To be sure the attack on the students is partly the result of the U.S. led War on Drugs that invariably has created a level of political decomposition in Mexico, Central America, and the rest of South America. (See, Americas Program, "Drug War") This has been achieved through a combination of the application of U.S. backed counter insurgency strategies along with the imposition of political demands to stem the flow of drugs into lucrative U.S. markets that show no signs of diminishing. The attack against the students shocked those unfamiliar with the struggles of young people in the Escuela Normal and their efforts to complete their education in order to serve their impoverished communities despite the Mexican Federal government's failure to fulfill the political mandate of the Escuela Normal system. Undaunted youth from Escuela Normal Ayotzinapa strategically commandeer buses and appropriate resources from corporations to compensate for the government's failure. Their efforts in fighting the class war found them confronting the very same corporations ruthlessly extracting subsoil resources in states like Puebla, Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas. It's most certainly a race war since these ambitious young students hail from rural often Indigenous communities that fight to stay on their lands and fulfill their role as stewards of Mexico's patrimony. More to the point, it's a war on the social factory –the attacks and disappearances forced families of the missing youth to spend what little resources they have to travel from their rural communities to remind everyone that they have not given up hope in finding their sons. But, sons and daughters go missing all the time in Mexico. Many are forced to leave in the migrant stream with Guerrero and Oaxaca losing thousands of their young people to San Jose or Chicago as well as other cities of the Global North where they must cross a militarized border and evade increasingly harsh detention and deportation measures as part of a war on migrants. Still others disappear in the maquilas as in the case of the persistent crisis of the feminicides of the Export Processing Zones on both of Mexico's borders and in Central America.

But what are the challenges we face as we contemplate the solidarity demands placed on us struggling inside the U.S. as we manifest our anger for the denial of education and our outrage for the taking of young life? Do we join the many protests already underway in the streets of D.F. –protest marches from the Ángel de la Independencia along the Avenida Reforma to the Zócalo or demonstrations at the Mexican consulates in cities across Califas? How do we register our outrage at the daily violence produced through the convergence of multiple wars that disproportionately impact Mexico and the Global South? What is our response to the intersections of class, race, and gender war? Amidst the patriotic clamor during WWI, W.E.B Du Bois warned the international Left and progressive forces in the U.S. that the causes of world war, indeed all subsequent wars, was the plunder of the resources of "the Darker nations of the world," a looting motivated by not only greed but a need to placate the white working class. (See, Du Bois, "African Roots of War") Du Bois warned in 1913 that the Global North was groping towards a "new imperialism" where those able to claim the privileges of whiteness can maintain their lifestyle content in the special benefits of citizenship and this made possible by the violent expropriation of the “social majorities” of the Global South. How do we confront U.S. military adventurism executed in the form of targeted, “surgical” counterinsurgency taking place across the Globe when political elites refuse to name it war?

South Bay and North Bay Crew

NB: If you are not already signed-up and would like to stay connected with the emerging Universidad de la Tierra Califas community please feel free to subscribe to the Universidad de la Tierra Califas listserve at the following url<https://lists.resist.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unitierracalifas>. Also, if you would like to review previous Democracy Ateneoand Social Factory Ateneo announcements and summaries as well as additional information on the ateneo in general please see<http://ccra.mitotedigital.org/ateneo>.

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