On May 2, students from a number of schools and student organizations across Mexico City launched a Palestine solidarity encampment in the heart of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), within view of the Okupa Che, a 24-year-running anarchist squat that once served as the UNAM’s largest auditorium. They established the encampment as an expression of solidarity with the wave of university encampments taking place in the United States against the Israeli state’s genocide in Gaza. By the end of the encampment’s first day, it already involved fifty tents, a free kitchen, and the visual redecoration of the space around it with messages of solidarity with Palestine.
\n\nWe conducted this interview in person with a well-connected participant.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/05/05/11.jpg\")
Tents in the Palestine solidarity encampment in the center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The banners read “Stop the genocidal imperialism in Gaza—long live the struggle of the Palestinian people—break off relations with Israel!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/05/05/12.jpg\")
Outside the Okupa Che, a longstanding anarchist squatted social center in the heart of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
\nQ: Let’s start with the basics. How long has the encampment been here?
\n\nA: It started today, at noon.
\n\nQ: Oh shit, today?
\n\nA: Today. The original decision that we took in assembly was to camp out until Sunday, but now my understanding is we’re going through until at least next week. We’re going to have another assembly to take stock of how it’s going and decide whether to extend the encampment longer or continue along another course of action.
\n\nI feel like there were more people in the assembly than came to the encampment, but lots of people passed by today and found out about it, and went home to gather supplies, so I expect more people will come to spend the weekend here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/05/05/10.jpg\")
Tents in the Palestine solidarity encampment in the center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/05/05/9.jpg\")
Tents in the Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM.
\nQ: How did it start?
\n\nA: Well, I can tell you how I found out about it: I saw a flier posted by various collectives—I think Juventud Anticapitalista (anti-capitalist youth) made it—calling for an inter-university assembly about how to take action in solidarity with all the Palestine solidarity camps happening in the United States. The idea was for the camp here to be a center of organizing that other actions can emerge from, as well as a space to talk about what’s happening in Palestine. The assembly involved students from different high schools and universities, even schools on the outskirts of the city, and also art collectives, political collectives, a little of everything.
\n\nThe goal is to pressure the university to break its ties with pro-Israel entities, because UNAM has a certain degree of political weight on the national level. Also, the presidential election is in June, so its electoral campaign season right now, and we thought we could extend our demand to the national level: that the government should break its ties with Israel too. However, it’s not like there’s a single political line here, there are many, and at some point, we may have disagreements about what actions to take to achieve our goals.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/05/05/3.jpg\")
A banner at the Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM. The text reads “Until what is essential becomes visible,” a reference to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, and likely to graffiti that appeared during the uprising in Chile in 2019 depicting the Little Prince with the inscription “What is essential is invisible to the state.”
\nQ: So the camp isn’t only for UNAM students?
\n\nA: Right, no one’s checking your student ID here. It’s mostly students, but we intentionally wanted it open to the public in general because we think that’s part of this being a public university. Personally, I’m in the philosophy department and majoring in Latin American studies, but I’m not here just as an individual. I’m participating with my direct action-based activist film collective.
\n\nQ: Can you speak to the specific location of the encampment and the meaning and history of this location?
\n\nA: To the north, we have the central library of the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) system. It’s the symbol of the school: people take their graduation photos here because of the enormous Juan O’Gorman mural on the building.
\n\nOn the other end of the encampment is the main administrative building of the university, including the chancellor’s offices, which also features historic and widely recognized murals. By planting our encampment between two of the most emblematic buildings of UNAM, we’re projecting our message right from the symbolic heart of the university.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/05/05/4.jpg\")
Tents in the Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/05/05/2.jpg\")
The Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM.
\nQ: And the Okupa Che is, like, right there [gestures]. Does the fact that there’s a 24-year-running anarchist squatted auditorium next door make the encampment more viable?
\n\nA: Since the student movement in 1968, which has a whole history and context of its own, the law has given universities autonomy from police—they’re not allowed to enter. Even so, it’s peculiar to have a squat in the middle of a university, and Okupa Che is an unusually protected space for the amount of activity that comes out of it. On the other hand, Okupa Che doesn’t define itself as an exclusively student space, and it rejects certain forms of what can be understood as “student activism.” However, even if what we’re doing doesn’t emerge directly from working with the Okupa Che, there’s that sense that they have our back because we’re also occupying space autonomously.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/05/05/14.jpg\")
Outside the Okupa Che, a longstanding anarchist squatted social center in the center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
\nThe unpermitted street market outside of the squat is another extension of those values and practices, even if it’s not directly tied to the Okupa Che. During the pandemic, students needed a way to cover their costs without abandoning their studies, and the Tianguis street market was born. There were attempts to establish a street market before the pandemic, but it wasn’t until COVID-19 that there were organized, mass calls to have people set up and sell their goods. There were conflicts over whether it should just be for students, but personally, I think it’s better for it to be open to the whole public. This is a “public” institution, after all.
\n\nSo having these two unpermitted, collective uses of university territory next to us offers a kind of informal network of protection, because we know that if something happens to the encampment, there are people who will fight for us—not even because they are involved in our movement, necessarily, but because what we have in common is the collective occupation of public space.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/05/05/13.jpg\")
Artwork calling for solidarity with Jorge “Yorch” Esquivel, an anarchist prisoner targeted for his involvement in the Okupa Che squat.
\nQ: From what I can tell, what’s happening in the United States is an explosion of ad hoc student organizing. In contrast, the student movement here seems to have a more consistent tradition of struggle. As someone involved in student activism in Mexico, are there any lessons for the students taking action now?
\n\nA: If there’s one important difference I would highlight, it is the fact that what is happening in the United States is capturing the attention of the public. The student rebels there should take advantage of that. One of the privileges of the United States is that when something noteworthy happens there, it’s news for the whole world. In that sense, while I know there is persecution happening against the encampments, there is also a kind of unique protection in the United States, because the whole world is watching.
\n\nThere’s a tension there: the importance of not losing that attention, but also of connecting it to international networks. That’s the kind of support that can make a meaningful difference for international movements and struggles, because imperialism and racism are not just limited to Palestine. Now is the time, so push—push with everything you’ve got.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/05/05/1.jpg\")
The Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/05/05/8.jpg\")
Graffiti at the Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/05/05/6.jpg\")
Graffiti at the Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/05/05/7.jpg\")
The Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM.
\nOn January 2, 2024, members of the Weelaunee Solidarity Collective—an ad hoc group of US-based forest defenders and revolutionaries—presented a play about the history of the movement to Stop Cop City at the encuentro celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising. The play recounts the recent history of Weelaunee Forest and the struggle to defend the vision of life it embodies against the militarized world of police and prisons represented by Cop City. The play was creative, playful, and amateur: all endearing qualities that characterize the cultural productions that Zapatistas presented throughout the gathering, at which collective participation in narrating history was valued as an end in itself.
\n\nIn the following account, participants in the Weelaunee Solidarity Collective describe their experiences at the gathering and their reflections about what the ongoing Zapatista project can teach aspiring revolutionaries elsewhere around the world. We also share footage of the play they performed at the encuentro in memory of Tortuguita, who was murdered one year ago today.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/18/8.jpg\")
\nIn 1994, the Zapatistas refuted the claim that humanity had reached “the end of history” by carrying out an uprising in response to the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The proponents of neoliberal market economies had prematurely declared victory over the last remnants of the worker’s movement, hoping to consign the dream of a dignified life in common (which Zapatistas refer to as Lekil Kuxlejal) to the dustbin of history. The Zapatista uprising and the decades of autonomy it secured are living proof that history itself is not over—that the present, like the past and the future, remains a site of contestation and struggle.
\n\nIn 2023, in defiance of a society bent on destroying life itself—a society that is responding to the crises produced by capitalism by redoubling investment in police, borders, plantations, prisons, extraction, and militarized control—a group of militants traveled to Chiapas from the so-called United States of America to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the 1994 uprising.
\n\nNearly a year after Georgia State Patrol murdered our friend and comrade Tortuguita, we arrived in the Lancandon jungle with Tort in our thoughts. While Tort was murdered far from the cloud forests of southern Mexico, they inhabited a landscape of revolutionary possibility that the Zapatistas had helped to create. Tort often spoke of the Zapatistas. We placed a portrait of Tort on the memorial altar lining the front of the stage at the encuentro, alongside photographs of murdered Zapatistas and other freedom fighters.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/18/2.jpg\")
“We placed a portrait of Tort on the memorial altar lining the front of the stage.”
\nWhile not all of us knew Tort, we have all been involved in the struggle to defend the forest over the past several years. We did not travel to Chiapas as passive observers, but as active revolutionaries who find ourselves on the same side of the global civil war as the Zapatistas, striving to defend a dignified collective life. We know that for a revolution to be possible, we will have to weave together our struggles across the Americas, recognizing each other as combatting different heads of the same capitalist hydra.
\n\nIn the movement to stop Cop City, we have come to a point at which we are facing serious repression: the murder of Tortuguita, comrades facing charges that could mean decades in prison, the loss of the forest as a space of life, assembly, and experimentation. All of these have contributed to a state of stagnation and disorientation, posing challenges to those who aspire to see the movement develop a mass character. In attending the encuentro, our intention was to share the stories of our struggle and to learn whatever lessons the Zapatistas could share with us on the basis of decades and centuries of resistance. We arrived curious about recent Zapatista communiqués describing the difficulties caused by narcoviolence and announcing a new reformulation of their structure of autonomous government. In the face of total devastation—”the great storm,” as they call it—we must not succumb to resignation.
\n\nOver the past few years, Zapatista communities have begun to contend with narcotrafficking, a new regime of violence in Chiapas’s already contested terrain. This has led to necessary reconsiderations regarding how the Zapatistas can maintain their way of life against the incursions of the state and wealthy landowners, which are now deeply entangled with the area’s competing cartels.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/18/7.jpg\")
\nMany of us living in the United States have been impacted by crises caused by some of the same forces. There is a crisis along the US border, justified by a police state that has no intention of doing anything to diminish the violence resulting from a criminalized drug trade that it has contributed to creating. At the same time, a crisis has emerged out of the criminalization of drug use in the United States, involving a wave of overdoses intensified by unsafe supply, alongside cyclical and racialized incarceration. Some reduce this to an oversimplified formula: narco violence in the Global South is fueled by the consumption habits of the Global North.
\n\nSpeaking to those facing the threat of narcoviolence in their territory, we found it important to present an alternative framework emphasizing the interconnected nature of these crises and the repressive forces that purport to engage in “crisis management.” If we are to forge paths toward an internationalism that is capable of connecting struggles across ever more militarized border regimes, it is especially important to unearth the links between our unique contexts.
\n\nAfter a long, crowded ride from San Cristobal in a combi, during which we passed military bases and the silent streets of towns struggling with the incursions of the cartels, we were greeted by banners welcoming us to the Caracol of Dolores Hidalgo. An autonomous enclave in the heart of Zapatista territories, Dolores Hidalgo is in a large valley surrounded by breathtakingly beautiful mountains and cloud forests. This valley had been a hacienda until the Zapatisatas redistributed it after the 1994 uprising. Dotted throughout the valley are many Zapatista communities, each with parcels of land being worked communally.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/18/13.jpg\")
“Welcome to the Caracol of Dolores Hidalgo.”
\nThe Zapatistas built an entire village to host the encuentro, welcoming thousands of strangers and neighbors. In the center was a massive field where plays and performances took place daily. As we arrived and looked for a spot to rig up our massive tarp, we passed Zapatistas from the caracol of Oventik who were reenacting the centuries of servitude on the hacienda, the indignities of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Such plays function as a form of storytelling and political participation for the Zapatistas, enabling their communities to engage in historiography and to pass on shared memory. Coming from a land where the memories of struggles barely last a single generation, we bore witness to these acts of collective retelling, inspired by the struggle to wrestle the memory of the past and the rebellious lessons it contains from those who would prefer to consign them to oblivion.
\n\nPerformances of many kinds filled the days, both on the field and elsewhere around the site. Music rang out continuously throughout the encuentro, with brief silences between 4 and 6 am. Even in that silence, one could still hear the low hum of daily life: conversation, the cries of a baby, laughter, animals stirring.
\n\nSurrounding the central field were thousands of bicycles carefully maintained, covered, and guarded by EZLN militants. One could not get within a few feet of the bikes without being asked to back up. Why there were so many bikes and what they are going to do with them remains a mystery to us. Even the EZLN guards seemed at a loss regarding the purpose of the bicycles. Were they a demonstration of their increasing focus on hyper-localism? A feminist praxis? An environmentalist gesture? There is an entire communiqué dedicated to a video of their new bicycle fleet so you can wonder for yourself.
\n\nBeyond the bikes, on the edges of the site, were spaces to eat, receive medical treatment, sleep, wash your clothes, shower, and more.
\n\nThere were many little worlds within the world of the encuentro. The world of the Zapatista-run restaurant for visitors, where people from all over stood in line for over an hour to order from a large menu that was almost always limited to a single item; the world of the cocina para visitantes, a free kitchen, if you could find it, where there were no lines; the world we created under our large tarp, where twenty of us slept on the hard and slanted earth, sliding into each other, staying up late into the night talking about revolution and discussing our situation in the United States while EZLN militants silently marched past us in lines, carrying bowls of beans and cups of coffee up to their camps on the hill above; the world of play, involving us and children and even the dogs; the world of the encounter we shared with a group of Germans who asked us to be in a photo with a banner reading “Freedom to those underground and on the run,” in solidarity with a group of anti-fascists who have recently gone underground to evade the charges brought against them after a fascist gathering in Budapest. Our discussions with them illuminated parallels between the RICO charges in Atlanta and paragraph 129, a similar law increasingly used in Germany to prosecute political organizing as criminal conspiracy.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/18/5.jpg\")
\nAll of these worlds were worlding together in a robust ecosystem, on the basis of shared life and land in common—a defining element of Zapatismo. Indeed, if there was one word that was repeated over and over again, it was commons. The Zapatistas understand the commons as sites of insurgency. The foundation of revolution must be the commons—to share life in common is to revolt together, and to share work in common is to refuse alienation and the isolating effect empire has on life. The commons are an interruption of capitalism. As sites of insurgency, they are antagonistic to capital’s rapid flows. Insofar as time itself has become a function of capital flow today, the commons slow down time. Where time is slower, one can attend to intention—in laughter and joy, discovery and death, play and performance.
\n\nTo us visitors, this intentional, communal action was apparent everywhere: the infrastructure and arrangement of the site, the way ordinary tasks were carried out, the breaking of a piñata. A swarm of children formed a large circle around the piñata, which was decorated as a Yankee monster with an American flag hat, terrifying eyes, and a monopoly spirit. The master of ceremonies let the children take turns swinging as the piñata bounced up and down. Eventually, it cracked open—but to our surprise, no candy fell out. We Americans were accustomed to a downpour of treats and the ravenous race to get what you can—”you better be quick, or it will all run out.” What we saw, instead, was the opposite of competition rooted in a false sense of scarcity and an accelerated temporality. After the piñata broke, the kids were all handed candy in an egalitarian manner; there was enough for everyone, and the kids understood this.
\n\nThis moment illustrated how every ritual conceals the possibility of changing worlds. At the encuentro, it felt as if every action was directed at the development of a historical consciousness as the resilient unfolding of life. This awareness and intentionality is necessitated by the commons and the commons necessitate it. The people and the earth have become reified as opponents alien to each other. The commons represents the reunion of the two in reciprocal liberation.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/18/4.jpg\")
\nIn the worlds sustained by the bad government, children are relegated to school, away from the serious adults who are focused on the details of their own exploitation. The elderly are imprisoned in senior centers or else often left homeless, deteriorating in the abyss of isolation, taking with them memory and potential wisdom. This makes it difficult to intentionally shape a collective consciousness according to aspirations that are informed by a time frame that extends deep into the past and future. Likewise, when children are not able to participate in memory-making, it is easy to forget about fantasy and possibility. The processes of making history and making memory are intertwined.
\n\nIn Zapatista territory, the youthful and the old are not excluded from social life. A healthy forest includes both old growth trees and saplings, which often grow out of decaying logs alongside their mycelial relations. In this regard, Dolores Hidalgo felt like a healthy forest, creative and alive.
\n\nAs visitors, we borrowed some of the imaginative practices that the Zapatista children shared with us and put on a play of our own. The Zapatistas have always incorporated an internationalist framework. They performed the stories of their struggle for us because they want us to know them, but they also invited all visitors to share in our own ways so that we could learn from each other. We decided to share our struggle via the same mode of communication they were using to share their struggles with us. This meant stepping outside our comfort zones. It challenged us to construct a performance involving a large group of people.
\n\nIn writing the play, we rediscovered how easy and spontaneous collaboration and art making can be. One does not need to be a professional playwright, director, or actor to put on a play. Anyone can do it by maintaining a childlike playfulness and focusing on the most crucial elements of the story. At first, when we were brainstorming, we wanted to include every detail of the struggle: the spiraling of offensive time with weeks of action, the strategy of targeting contractors, and all the different ways people exerted pressure, including home demos, office demos, call-in campaigns, and sabotage.
\n\nWe eventually simplified our narrative to a few key points: we fought the police and protested for Black lives, then we lived communally in the forest to protect it from destruction, then the police raided, ripping a forest defender from their tree house and murdering Tortuguita. At this point in our performance, we lifted up Tortuguita’s body, representing the carrying on of their spirit, and then they walked with us on the path forward. Our bodies, cloaked in black t-shirt balaclavas and carrying branches, became the trees, the animals, the forest defenders, our fallen comrade, and eventually, the fire that burned down the beginnings of Cop City on March 5, 2023. We became the living memory of history, oral history against specialization. Our play ended with everyone, arms linked, in a tight circle facing outward to represent our solidarity in the face of repression. As we slowly moved outward and apart, we beckoned the audience to join us, as our narrator concluded, “This is not an end to our story. The movement continues.”
\n\nFootage of the play that the Weelaunee Solidarity Collective performed at the Zapatista encuentro.
\nTwo nights before we performed our play, we celebrated New Year’s and the 30th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising with the thousands of Zapatistas and others who had gathered in Dolores Hidalgo. Shortly before midnight on New Year’s Eve, over a thousand EZLN fighters in full army fatigues marched in formation, tapping along to the beat of Como Te Voy a Olvidar by Los Ángeles Azules. This time, they were marching with sticks, not guns. Thousands of spectators watched. Most had traveled many hours to be there; many of them were recording on their smartphones.
\n\nThe demonstration was serious yet playful, something the Zapatistas have become known for over the years. The women of the EZLN marched in first, and the men followed, facing towards them. Then the women militants broke out of formation into a skipping dance, waving their arms in invitation, spiraling all around the open field. The performance ended with the men moving simultaneously outward, linking arms to create a perimeter surrounding the entire crowd.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/18/10.jpg\")
“The women with rebel dignity—EZLN.”
\nThe procession did not display military power, per se. Rather, it attested to the Zapatistas’ continuing ability to organize.
\n\nAs the Zapatistas advanced in their not-so-military formation, we reflected on their saying: lento pero avanzo. Paso a paso, step by step, slowly but advancing, so we can continue our struggle for another ten, twenty, thirty, fifty years.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/18/1.jpg\")
Lento pero avanzo. Slowly, but we advance.
\nSome of us left the Lancandon jungle with more questions than answers. However, we left with the faith that we had helped to foster deeper connections with the Zapatistas and others around the world. For the friends who had the time to stay, more intimate conversations will be possible in the days following the encuentro.
\n\nThe Zapatistas are able to offer access to land, food, healthcare, education, and a justice system as immediate existential benefits for participating in life in common. This is the recruitment pitch. Sustenance, education, continuity in collective memory, a dignified and communal life.
\n\nThis challenged us to reflect: What are we able to offer? Friendship, cultural events, adventure, collective purpose? If the most that a struggle can do is to temporarily counter our loneliness and alienation, this may not be sufficient to sustain it. If that is all we have to offer, we are only competing with other subcultures to play the same role. On the other hand, we are living in a time when obtaining housing, food, and health care is once again becoming a real struggle for many of those who live in America. Perhaps making some of these necessities available was an important element of what the Weelaunee forest occupation offered. While there are strategic disadvantages to holding space that is vulnerable to attack from all sides, and at worst, occupations may hinder the broadening of a movement beyond a specific location, the loss of the forest as a commons leaves us with the task of creating a commons elsewhere. The question is how.
\n\nThe “how” will necessarily be messy, complicated, and contradictory. That’s the nature of struggle, of operating within a field of forces pushing and pulling in different directions. Zapatista territories are territories in struggle; they are not free of market influence. Zapatistas drive cars, drink Coca Cola, operate roadside stores, use smartphones and social media; we suspect that there is a corner of Facebook where one can find long threads of comments in Tsetal beneath videos of young EZLN men dancing with internationalists. Autonomy is not a question of purity; it is an ongoing practice. It means making breaks from capital and becoming the collective authors of our shared destiny, starting now.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/18/6.jpg\")
\nThe Zapatistas began this process forty years ago in clandestinity, drawing on decades of consciousness raising and cultural practices that predate capitalist systems altogether. Sometimes these breaks may not look clean. The Zapatista network is not entirely severed from capitalist networks and supply chains; it is a constellation of liberated territories, collective projects, support bases, and flows of information, people, and materials. All the elements of the constellation have varying degrees of relation to capitalism, yet they nevertheless form part of the constellation of struggle. The liberated communal lands, the health clinics, the Zapatista stores in San Cris selling Zapatista-made goods, the pizza restaurants, cinemas, and bars operated by support bases, all of these form part of the constellation that is a community in struggle. This is the reality of the struggle today, in a world in which capitalist relations have colonized every part of the planet.
\n\nBecause struggle is dynamic, and the terrain on which we struggle shifts according to the strategies of our enemies and our own accomplishments and failures, any enduring struggle must be capable of transforming itself. It must be fluid, mutable, flexible, modular, and non-dogmatic. This has been one of the most inspiring elements of the Zapatista fight for life: their continuous ability to reinvent their struggle. This does not mean refusing to set attainable concrete goals, nor does it mean declaring an effort a success when it fails to achieve its goals. Strategies should be falsifiable. It does, however, mean being flexible, always thinking about how to turn each situation to the advantage of the movement, even when it may represent a failure by the original metrics.
\n\nDuring the encuentro, we struck up a conversation with an older Zapatista man, likely in his seventies. He told us he had been involved with the organization since the days of clandestine activity. We asked him how he got involved. “At that time, they were just going door to door, one by one,” he said. Someone came to his door asking if he wanted to join the organization and he agreed. He shared that he has a wife and six children, none of whom wanted to become Zapatistas. The rest of his family are partidistas—they vote for and support the political parties in Mexico’s electoral system. His decision to join the struggle remains a point of contention in his family. He told us that this kind of division is common in Zapatista families. We asked him if, after everything he has been through, he is happy with the state of things for the Zapatistas today. “I’m very sad,” he answered. He explained that for him, the days of being clandestine never ended—that he still cannot go into the city because he is a known Zapatista organizer, that he still sees himself as clandestine.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/18/12.jpg\")
\nThis was just one conversation, but it illustrates something that many internationals don’t realize: for many, the aspirations of the 1994 uprising were much greater than what Zapatismo has become today. Subcomandante Moises echoed this in his speech on New Year’s: “We are as alone now as we were thirty years ago.” When the Zapatistas rose up in 1994, they asked others to get organized and rise up with them, but no one did. While they received a great deal of support and solidarity in the following years, both nationally and internationally, no one took up arms alongside them to overthrow capitalism. Consequently, they did the best they could with the situation they found themselves in.
\n\nIn many ways, this very situation led to the new and creative forms of autonomous organizing that continue to inspire many internationals today. It provides us with an example of what it means to think strategically and dynamically, adapting to changing conditions without losing sight of our goals or setting aside our convictions. It also makes us wonder how things might have turned out if other people had risen up with them, and what hopes and aspirations were never realized by those who fought and died for their revolution. (For further reading on Zapatista organizing and aspirations before the uprising, we recommend John Womack’s Rebellion in Chiapas.)
\n\nThrough the trials and tribulations, across the shifting terrain of struggle, the Zapatistas continue to attract new participants by relatively simple means. They offer a real alternative to the existing capitalist and state systems. They offer people land and health, the fundamentals for a dignified life. Questions of land have always been at the heart of the Zapatista struggle. They recovered large amounts of land after the 1994 uprising, which provided fertile soil for growing crops.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/18/9.jpg\")
\nIn addition, the Zapatistas offer a communal form of organization to manage the land and formal processes for dealing with land disputes. They also operate autonomous health clinics in each of their caracoles. These clinics are often the closest place to get healthcare in rural areas, for Zapatistas and non-Zapatistas alike. This care is free, apart from the cost of any medication prescribed, which is sold at cost. This means that, especially for rural people, Zapatista autonomous health clinics are often the most affordable option accessible.
\n\nThe way they attract new people to their ranks, then, is by offering alternatives to the life that capitalism can provide. This challenges us to ask ourselves: what do we have to offer people? How can we provide viable alternatives to the ways of living offered by the capitalist system?
\n\nWe recommend reading the entirety of the newest series of Zapatista communiqués, all of which can be found here. You can read a foundational primer on the Zapatista rebellion here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/18/3.jpg\")
\nIn the following account, a CrimethInc. agent describes a series of adventures on the road to the 2024 Zapatista Encuentro, a gathering celebrating thirty years since the uprising that established an autonomous zone in Chiapas.
\n\nTomorrow, we will follow up with more reporting from the encuentro itself.
\n\nThe banner in the above photograph welcomes people to the Zapatista encuentro, reading, “Land belonging to no one. Land belonging to all. Here we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the armed uprising against forgetting, against death, against destruction.”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/16/3.jpg\")
\n“It would be safest if you went with the caravan.”
\n\n“The caravans always fall apart.”
\n\nWe were asking about how to get to the Zapatistas’ New Year’s encuentro. Whether we asked at the anarchist social center, around the autonomous Panchos1 neighborhood in Mexico City, or by emailing the contacts listed on the Zapatista website, we always received one—or both—of these replies.
\n\nA gathering in rebel territory is always something special, but this year marked the 30th anniversary of the debut of the EZLN [Zapatista Army of National Liberation] in an armed uprising against NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994] and, more broadly, against capitalism itself.
\n\nMuch has changed for the Zapatistas since those days. The charismatic Subcomandante Marcos has stepped away from both lens and pens. While they still defend their territorial autonomy, the armed aspect of the EZLN’s military operations has been outshined by the construction of schools, clinics, and a new politics for their people.2 In November, to the shock and dismay of radicals worldwide, the Zapatistas announced the dissolution of their autonomous municipalities, leading many to speculate that narco-capitalism and paramilitaries have become as much of an obstacle for the Zapatista project as the Mexican government and neoliberal megaprojects. However, one thing has not changed: their welcoming internationalism towards those in solidarity with their struggle for the land to be held in common by all who work it.
\n\nThe GPS routes me through Mexico City’s glorietas and bulevards to what I’m told is the office from which the caravan will leave.
\n\nExcept it’s not exactly an office. It’s not really a social center, either. Wait—I remember you! The Convergence Center? Is it really you??? It has to be—the snack station at the front, the registration tables for the buses, “Comrade, where’s the bathroom?” I knew it was you! It’s just been a minute. How long has it been? Since Seattle? Prague? Genoa? Cancún? J18, A16, J20? Too long, that’s for sure.
\n\nAnd you’re still full of backpacks. Look at all those backpacks! A recently landed extraterrestrial—this is an intergalactic encuentro, after all—here to register her UFO in the caravan might easily misunderstand the Zapatistas as a movement of 40-liter hiking packs that use humans as their workhorses.
\n\nOh, I remember this part, too—my affinity group’s weird plan doesn’t fit in with the public-facing structure. That’s okay. Time to do what I always do: step into the densest mass of comrades standing around and shout my question into the void: “Is anyone else taking their own car?”
\n\nCrickets.
\n\n“…so we can, uh, coordinate?”
\n\nUncomfortable stares.
\n\nEven the alien knows what this means: it’s just me and the tour buses. Like a giddy, oblivious puppy in a parade of elephants.
\n\n“So, like, how often will the buses be stopping for gas?”
\n\n“Gas? We filled up. We won’t need to stop for gas.”
\n\n“But like, bathroom breaks?”
\n\n“There are bathrooms on the bus…”
\n\nThe trip is 14 hours long. Mostly highway. I will need to stop for gas, and for relief. Will I lose the caravan?
\n\n“…but there is a truck stop where we will regroup because the caravans always fall apart. After that point, the highway can get a little hairy, so it would be safest if you went with the caravan. I’ll text you the name. They’re open 24 hours and have tamales and coffee.”
\n\nI gather the affinities and we’re off. I’ve never thought of the van as fast, but between our head start and the sloth with which the massive buses grind into gear, I figure we’ll make up for our refills and rest stops.
\n\nBesides spewing the road with all of my fancy LucasOil additive because I neglected to tighten down the oil pan screw, the first leg of the drive is fairly uneventful.
\n\nThere are five of us from four different countries, so there’s a lot to talk about, whether up front with the pilot and the jam box or in the back lounging on the bed. The stories about revolts that have reached us across national borders. Secrets, traditions, and magic from our respective territories. This song, that movie. It’s a road trip.
\n\nThere’s silence, too. The silence is good for a cigarette. And after the smoke, “There’s this other thing I don’t know if you know about…”
\n\nIt’s 2 am, truck stop o’clock. About half of the tour buses pull in right after us. The other half are stuck behind an accident a hundred kilometers away, so we wait.
\n\nAfter a couple more hours, the sun is rising and I’ve drunk way too much coffee.
\n\nWe’re still here.
\n\nThey’re still stuck behind that accident.
\n\n“The caravans always fall apart.”
\n\n“I think we should just go on ahead. It’s light now, and I know somebody we can crash with in San Cristobal de las Casas. Who knows how long we’ll be stuck here waiting?” says an affinity who knows the route. Now the plan is to go to the registration site outside of San Cris on our own and wait for the caravan there.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/16/8.jpg\")
\nOn my phone:
\n\n\n\n\n“Hey, I’m with the human rights observers at Puente Chiapas. When you cross the bridge, stop and say what’s up. I’ve got some information for you.”
\n
In the harsh light of day, our chatterboxes have wound down. It’s not unfriendly, but there’s a lot more grunting. We’ve been on the road for twelve hours now. The lack of conversation is offset by the gorgeous tropical wetlands, rivers, and majestic vistas that we zoom through while rounding the hills and valleys of Veracruz and Chiapas. Foggy clouds stretch over the canopies like the hammocks of God.
\n\nWill we make it to a gas station before we run out of fuel? There hasn’t been anything but road and jungle for a long time.
\n\n“Oh shit, look, it’s Puente Chiapas.”
\n\n“Nah, that’s not the bridge your friend meant,” says the affinity who knows the route.
\n\n“What do you mean? It says Puente Chiapas right there.”
\n\n“Yeah, but there’s another Puente Chiapas, closer to San Cris.”
\n\nIt’s easy to convince me to give up looking for the human rights observation team and let my gaze wander back to the lush islands in the middle of the river crossed by the bridge. An hour later, my phone signal kicks in and I get a message from an hour earlier:
\n\n\n\n\n“Dude, I just saw your van cross the bridge. Why didn’t you stop?”
\n
It was that Puente Chiapas. Opa.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/16/7.jpg\")
\nNow it’s noon. We’ve been driving for 16 hours. Originally, we were supposed to arrive two hours ago, but instead, there are still a few hours left before we get to San Cris.
\n\nWhen we finally arrive, we spill out of the van and zombie crawl, each in a different direction: food, cigarettes, pharmacy. I take advantage of the solitude to siesta in the back of the van. My phone vibrates and I’m back:
\n\n\n\n\n“Hey, can you fit my two friends from Mexicali? The buses just left Puente Chiapas. The Mexicalis know where the buses are meeting up in San Cris.”
\n
It’s time for an affinity group meeting.
\n\n“Can we fit two more in the back?”
\n\n“Shouldn’t we go crash at my friend’s? You’ve been driving forever.”
\n\n“Comrades, I too can drive. We should at least see what the buses’ plan is, because from here on, it’s small, rural roads and it would be safest if we went with the caravan.”
\n\n“If you can drive, then I’m OK cramming in the back with two more punks. I can also make another seat up front out of the jam box.”
\n\n“But the jam box!”
\n\n“OK, I can make it out of the snack crate.”
\n\n”But the snacks!!!”
\n\nWe pick up the additional passengers and they tell us where to park. As soon as we pull in, the tour buses start arriving. Hundreds of backpacks trot out atop their human steeds. Out come the tortillas, the bagged beans, the queso and avocados and oranges. People pass around tobacco and ibuprofen along with the details of the sternly hashed-out meeting between the coordinators and the drivers.
\n\n“They’re waiting for one more bus to arrive.”
\n\n“The drive is only four hours, so we’d get there by 10.”
\n\n“They don’t know if it’s safe because there were reports of shooting between two communities on either side of the road we’d be taking.”
\n\n“It’s either drive up tonight or find somewhere for everyone on the buses to sleep. That’s a lot of people.”
\n\n“Is that even fair to the drivers? They’ve been at it for almost 24 hours now.”
\n\nIn our group, we reach a consensus. We’re exhausted—but if the buses go, we go.
\n\nThe last bus arrives and we’re off.
\n\nRight away, at the first turn off of the road out of town, a Mexican military checkpoint photographs each vehicle in the caravan, including our out-of-place eyesore of a van. This happens again twice over the following hour. The sun is setting and as we hit the 24-hour mark from the time of our departure, we’re smack in the middle of the buses at a steady 10 miles an hour. Lento, pero avanzamos.
\n\nWe pass through tiny remote villages on roads with potholes big enough to be hot tubs. It’s poor here, really poor, and I try to wrap my head around what kind of profit margin could possibly make it worth the gas, let alone the wear on the vehicle, to deliver basic goods to these sparsely populated distant reaches. These areas are clearly not served by capitalism. As I’m calculating gas prices and soda sales for villages of a hundred, a crisp, clean sign with balloons attached to it catches my eye. But it’s no birthday party—it’s a meeting for someone’s Herbalife club, the food supplement pyramid scheme.
\n\n“Oh yeah, those are everywhere in Mexico.” One of the affinities tells me, responding to my audible gasp.
\n\nBut this isn’t just Mexico. We’ve already passed signs for one Zapatista caracol: “Territory in rebellion against the Mexican government.” And Herbalife isn’t the same as Pokemon, BTS, or whatever the latest capitalist consumer fad may be—it’s a pyramid scheme that turns the exploited and desperate into agents extending the profit-driven logic of their own exploitation. Sure, there are countless capitalist evils you could plug into this equation. But we are talking about the juxtaposition of one of humanity’s longest-standing current examples of anti-capitalist struggle with an industrial supplement scheme that rewards whoever can most effectively prey on those around them by recruiting them to be salespeople—here on the very land that the Zapatistas fight to hold in common and whose lush, bountiful, organic harvest sustains their autonomy from the capitalist marketplace. I know which side of that conflict I’m on, and my allegiance is anything but casual.
\n\nAs the contrast between the half-finished cinderblock buildings and the cheery Herbalife promotional materials recedes out of sight, I vow my own private war on Herbalife. I am a Vandal, and Herbalife is my Roman Empire.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/16/5.jpg\")
A mural reading “It is preferable to die with honor than to live with the shame of having our lives dictated by a tyrant.”
\nIt’s midnight. 28 hours since we departed Mexico City. We must be close, right?
\n\n“We were supposed to be there two hours ago. Que pedo guey.” Under her breath, barely louder than a whisper.
\n\n“Oh good, another checkpoint.” I grunt.
\n\nThis time, the soldiers are caught off guard, scrambling to get out the cameras and stop the buses. They must have been napping.
\n\nThe soldiers take one look at our little van and urge us to get out of their way so they can document the caravan, which they assume consists of buses alone. Why would there be a single van in the midst of a convoy of buses, anyway?
\n\nI cackle deliriously. Fine then! Hasta la vista, baby!
\n\nWe pull over down the road and wait for the buses to get through whatever bullshit the military is subjecting them to.
\n\nAfter the buses pull up and park, it’s time for another meeting.
\n\n“So, how far are we now?”
\n\n“Four hours.”
\n\n“Four?! How???”
\n\nI debate in my head whether to double the four hours to eight or to add fourteen to four, making it eighteen, since our supposedly fourteen-hour trip has already taken twenty-eight hours. I split the difference and figure that we’re thirteen hours out.
\n\n“There’s a caracol just outside of town that can host us. We’ll keep going in the morning.”
\n\n“OK, we’ll follow you.”
\n\n“It’s only 20 minutes away.”
\n\nIt takes an hour, but that’s all right. I’m on my fourth wind from the euphoria of evading the military control and I’m fully saddled in the seat of time’s curves. Giddy-up.
\n\nAs we pull into the caracol, signs inform us that we are entering rebel territory in defiance of Mexico’s bad government. Murals of masked guerrillas welcome us, declaring “it is preferable to die with honor than to live with the shame of having your life dictated by tyrants.” The residents spring into action, barely even wiping the sleep out of their eyes, opening up the bathrooms, dormitories, and the collective store known as “the seed of the rainbow.” One of our hosts recommends the very parking spot under a tree that I was eyeballing when we pulled in. I like it here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/16/6.jpg\")
The collective store known as “the seed of the rainbow.”
\nApparently, a tumultuous storm followed the aforementioned events. Everyone is talking about it in the morning, but I seem to have slept right through it. In a shadowy, muddy shack, a team of women are cooking up the tastiest coffee I’ve ever had in the largest cauldron I’ve ever seen. It’s free.
\n\nWe pull out with the buses and bounce over four more hours of speed bumps before pulling in through lines of Zapatista soldiers standing at attention on either side of the road. Each soldier is suited in boots, green cargo pants, a brown long-sleeve shirt, a red bandana, a black balaclava, and a green cap. This goes on for at least a kilometer—either an impressive welcome or a sophisticated security system to deal with unwanted arrivals. For the final few hundred meters, we’re surrounded by bright, colorful murals on either side of the road, depicting Zapatista life, history, and values.
\n\nWe pull in near the entrance of the caracol and park the van.
\n\nI exhale. We made it.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/16/4.jpg\")
\nThe first thing we have to do is register. At the registration table, they ask what collective I am with. The compas in charge of registration have heard of CrimethInc.; they ask if I am there to provide counterinfo coverage of the event. I’ve thought about it, even discussed it with the podcast collective, but after they told me I would have to attend an orientation, the 36 hours of driving caught up with me. “No, that’s alright.”
\n\nNext, we have to find a place to park and rest. We are told that the internationals have dormitories in another caracol, 20 minutes away… “20 minutes.” I have not come all this way to go on driving. We snag a parking spot between the buses and Zapatista family camping. Over the following days, soldiers in balaclavas will guard my van every night. It doesn’t need guarding, but it’s a generous gesture. Thank you!
\n\nThe caracol hosting the encuentro is relatively new—only three years old. But in only three years, the compas have made a lot of progress. The caracol has ten kitchens—again, with the largest pots you’ve ever seen—that stay busy cooking beans and rice over wood fires. There is an autonomous healthcare building, dormitories with bunk beds, all the showers you could possibly hope for, and bathrooms. I don’t remember ever waiting in line for the bathroom at any point during the whole encuentro.
\n\nThe land is on a hilltop nestled among other Lacandon peaks. In the morning, mist settles into the trees like cotton candy strung between your fingers. It is green everywhere, and at night the sky glitters with stars. The center of the festivities is a field, about the size of four football fields side by side in a row. The field is surrounded by benches and hundreds of brand new bicycles under tarps. On one end of the field, there are basketball and volleyball courts, and on the other end of the field, a stage.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/16/9.jpg\")
In front of the stage, there is a memorial for martyrs who died in struggle.
\nIn front of the stage, there is a memorial for martyrs who died in struggle. It’s adorned with branches, flowers, candles, and messages. To the side of the stage is an area for musicians, with a 1970s-Jamaican-style gaggle of speakers frankensteined together by Chiapas’ most brilliant and resourceful sonidista. During the day, the field is filled with theater—mostly morality plays conveying warnings about selling the land to speculators, the honor of rebellion against the bad Mexican government, and stories about the legacy of resisting colonialism and capitalism. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen theater performed on a stage that is so many times larger than the area for the audience. The scale alone gives pause.
\n\nToward sunset, there are speeches from the stage and military formations on the field. The soldiers are not displaying firearms, however—each is equipped with two batons and a machete.
\n\nThe largest military ceremony takes place on January 1, marking thirty years to the day since the EZLN launched their first military operation, seizing San Cristobal de las Casas, proclaiming territorial autonomy and declaring war on the Mexican government. After the military ceremonies, there is music! Cumbias, rancheras, mariachis. The soldiers dance all night long, a sea of bobbing green caps.
\n\nI only saw one EZLN soldier partially raise his balaclava to smoke a cigarette. Most smoked through their masks.
\n\nAs the encuentro proceeds, I hear more and more Mayan spoken. The speeches and theater pieces are in Spanish, but all the conversation around me is in Maya. It drives home that the anniversary encuentro isn’t just a commemorative event. The caracoles and Zapatistas communities may all be located within the same state of Chiapas, but, as our journey showed me, they are in remote pockets of the mountains that are difficult to reach. The encuentro is a rare chance for the participants in the Zapatista project to gather as a whole—to share, to encounter each other, to commune.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/16/2.jpg\")
\nAfterwards, someone tells me that the Mexican media focused on how small the gathering was in comparison with previous years. Perhaps this is a result of waiting to publish the invitation until just a week before New Year’s. On the other hand, by any measure, it was a huge event. Thousands of people from dozens of countries attended. Worried speculation surrounds the recent Zapatista communiqués about their civil-political reorganization. I can’t shed any light on what this process will bring—I promised that my conversations in Chiapas would stay in Chiapas.
\n\nBut I can tell you this: the Zapatista project is far from over, and a new year has just begun.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/01/16/1.jpg\")
\nLos Panchos (Francisco Villa (Pancho Villa) Popular Fronta, FPFV) is a sort of urban corollary to the Zapatistas. Named after the other famous Mexican revolutionary, the Panchos also launched their project in 1994, taking over land on the outskirts of Mexico City and establishing territorial autonomy in which police are excluded, collective economics comprise a significant part of life, and people practice horizontal politics. While not anarchists, they have shown solidarity to anarchists in heightened episodes of struggle, like the 2006 siege on autonomously held Atenco. For more information about Los Panchos in English, you could start here. ↩
\nThe Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona summarizes the events via which the Zapatistas burst onto the world stage: “We grew tired of exploitation by the powerful, and then we organized in order to defend ourselves and to fight for justice. In the beginning there were not many of us, just a few, going this way and that, talking with and listening to other people like us. We did that for many years, and we did it in secret, without making a stir. In other words, we joined forces in silence. We remained like that for about 10 years, and then we had grown, and then we were many thousands. We trained ourselves quite well in politics and weapons, and, suddenly, when the rich were throwing their New Year’s Eve parties, we fell upon their cities and just took them over. And we left a message to everyone that here we are, that they have to take notice of us. And then the rich took off and sent their great armies to do away with us, just like they always do when the exploited rebel—they order them all to be done away with. But we were not done away with at all, because we had prepared ourselves quite well prior to the war, and we made ourselves strong in our mountains. And there were the armies, looking for us and shooting their bombs and bullets at us, and then they were making plans to kill off all the indigenous at one time, because they did not know who was a Zapatista and who was not. And we were running and fighting, fighting and running, just like our ancestors had done. Without giving up, without surrendering, without being defeated.” ↩
\nOn January 26 and 27, during the first International Gathering of Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarian Practices against Borders in Tijuana, Mexico, the CrimethInc. Ex-Worker Podcast will present a curated series of anarchist films from around the world. In addition to showing our own published shorts and debuting some new material, we will curate a series of anarchist features, dramas, video propaganda, oddities, and experiments.
\n\nIf you want to submit a film for us to share at the gathering, email\nus! The deadline to receive submissions is January 20, 2024.
\n\nWe will give priority to films whose producers or participants can attend in person to speak about the project or the subject of their video.
\n\nPlease make sure your movie has English or Spanish subtitles—ideally, both.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/12/17/6.jpg\")
Your invitation to the first International Gathering of Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarian Practices against Borders in Tijuana, Mexico, January 25-27.
\nWhile anarchists around the world oppose and resist borders, this is a rare opportunity to join with anarchists on both sides of the US-Mexico in order to comprise a single movement. We can look back on a few precedents.
\n\nFrom 1910-1912, anarchists crossed into northern Mexico to join forces with the Magonistas in their military campaign to liberate towns like Ensenada, Tijuana, and Tecate from the state, clergy, and capital. Dozens of anarchists and Wobblies took up arms in this struggle. In\nCoahuila, they did away with the constitution and declared anarcho-communism.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/12/17/8.jpg\")
A century ago: revolutionary dreamers in arms.
\nSeveral years later, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman organized legal support for Ricardo Flores Magón when he was in exile in California, persecuted by the counter-revolutionary victors of the Mexican Revolution.
\n\nIn the 1990s, the anarchist federation Love & Rage included a Mexico City section, Amor Y Rabia, which published a newspaper of the same name and organized a variety of anarcho-punk activities. The federation\nattracted a few hundred members and played a crucial role in revitalizing anarchism in North America at the end of the 20th century.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/12/17/1.jpg\")
Amor Y Rabia, March 1995.
\nIn 2006, the anarchist videographer Brad Will participated in the months-long uprising in Oaxaca, Mexico. Paramilitary supporters of the government murdered him on October 27 of that year, and the state used his death as an excuse to send thousands of military police to invade the city. Brad’s documentary work played a crucial role in supporting liberation struggles all around the so-called Americas.
\n\nIn 2007, anarchists and other anti-border activists established a week-long No Borders Camp at an unwalled portion of the US-Mexico border between Mexicali and Calexico. These two cities essentially comprise a single metropolis divided in two by the wall. Under the blinding floodlights of US Border Patrol, anarchists on both sides of the border shared food, watched presentations and movies, planned actions, and forged lifelong friendships.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/12/17/3.jpg\")
The 2007 No Borders Camp.
\nPerhaps the last event comparable to the upcoming International Gathering of Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarian Practices Against Borders was the Jornadas Informales Anárquicas in Mexico City in December 2013,\nwhich drew anti-authoritarian comrades from Italy, Greece, and Chile as well as the United States and Mexico. The speakers included Gustavo Rodriguez, Wolfi Landstreicher, and Alfredo Bonanno.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/12/17/5.jpg\")
The 2007 No Borders Camp.
\nFor over a century, anarchists have sought horizons of liberation in defiance of the US-Mexico border. The International Gathering of Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarian Practices against Borders is a chance\nto kindle the flames that forge connections of international solidarity.
\n\nWe’ll be there to tell stories and show the scenes\nthat corporate media seeks to conceal.
\n\nWe hope to see you there, too.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/12/17/4.jpg\")
The 2007 No Borders Camp.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/12/17/2.jpg\")
The 2007 No Borders Camp.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/12/17/7.jpg\")
\nWe present a Portuguese-language zine collecting accounts from two tours in which participants in CrimethInc. projects traveled to launch publications and promote discussions on anarchism and anti-capitalist struggles in various parts of the world. Altogether, we visited 72 cities in the United States, Mexico, and Brazil.
\n\nThe first tour brought together participants from struggles and social movements from six countries talking about their local experiences to audiences in 59 events, passing through 57 cities in the United States and Tijuana, Mexico in the course of 65 days. The speeches accompanied the launch of the pamphlet and campaign To Change Everything—An Anarchist Appeal. In the second tour, three people visited 15 cities in seven Brazilian states to launch and publicize the book Da Democracia à Liberdade, promoting 21 events with discussions on the topic and its relationship with current revolutionary struggles.
\n\nEdited by Brazilian comrades, this publication expands on reports previously published here in 2015 and 2019, reporting on our experiences with social centers, occupations, cooperatives, popular movements, and organizations that work to build a world free from the oppression of patriarchy, racism, capitalism, and the state, and to extend solidarity beyond all imposed borders.
\n\nVisiting those spaces and communities and learning from the life experiences of the participants can be inspiring for anyone seeking alliances and reference points regarding how to organize both locally and in international networks to confront this degrading system.
\n\nIn order to build an international network that extends across borders, we must seek collective, bold and ambitious ways to work together, keeping our connections alive and active and always seeking and exchanging new challenges and solutions.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/08/08/1a.jpg\")
Click the image to download the PDF.
\n\n\n\n“The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.”
\n\n–Marjane Satrapi
\n
The reports in this collection aim to reverse a common trend in the exchange between the global north and south, which privileges the flow of information and knowledge from the north—Europe and the USA—towards the global South and the peripheries of capitalism. These reports describe the places of struggle we visited and that mark the history of the struggle of oppressed peoples around the world, such as Haymarket in Chicago, which gave rise to May Day, and the street of the Stonewall Inn bar, where the Stonewall uprising in 1969 marked the LGBTQI+ pride day.
\n\nWithout a doubt, it is incredible to be able to enter those spaces and be entered by those stories. But we also have to talk about the memory of territories and traditions such as the Quilombo dos Palmares in northeastern Brazil or the Día de la Juventud Combatiente in Chile. How many dates and territories of our struggles should symbolize something greater not only locally but globally? It is possible that this debate will not end any time soon—if it should end. Perhaps it will only change with the struggles yet to come, the struggles that will decide the future of the oppressed classes, capitalism, and life on the planet as a whole.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/08/08/5a.jpg\")
Click the image to download the PDF.
\nAs Marjane Satrapi states, the differences between peoples and their own governments are much greater than the difference between the American people and the Brazilian people. We must start from the similarities between peoples in struggle if we are to build international collaboration towards the end of society divided into classes, nations, and governments along with all forms of oppression.
\n\nWe edited this collection while we were still living in a world dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic with no vaccines on the horizon—when traveling and face-to-face gatherings were off the table and spaces like the ones we had visited were focusing on organizing solidarity efforts to keep their communities active and healthy.
\n\nWe hope that these modest travel reports can inspire you and your community in your projects—whether those include a social center, a cooperative, a collective, a union, a day of action, a book, a documentary, or a tour seeking ways to collaborate with others to build a different life and a new world from the rubble of this one.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/08/08/4a.jpg\")
Click the image to download the PDF.
\nIn times when more and more people are focused on producing content for the internet, relying chiefly on corporate social media for reach, to say that we spoke to audiences comprising a total of 2000 or 3000 people on these tours may convey the impression that we were content with little. Although the accounts of our movements and collectives have tens of thousands of “followers,” we rarely have face-to-face and real contact with a number of people close to that.
\n\nIt is essential to study the struggles of other times and places. But going there to experience these stories and these beautiful and scary places firsthand, taking a bit of our homes with us to offer something of our own in return, cannot be compared to the spectacular world that is offered to us by corporate media, social media, school courses, or books.
\n\nIf we hadn’t hit the road, we wouldn’t have heard the song of the O’odham people to welcome us to their territory, we wouldn’t have heard the first-hand accounts of immigrants facing the terror of borders anonymously, we wouldn’t have witnessed the forests, deserts, mountains, nor the interior of the social centers that offered infrastructure for the uprisings in Baltimore and Ferguson. We wouldn’t have met Eronildes or learned that Brad Will is honored by the community for which he risked his life when he recorded the horror of an eviction carried out by the military police.
\n\nThe virtual world that is expanding steadily into our lives, into our subjectivity, is shaping the way we see the world and act in it, so that we seek an image of what does not exist, an abstract representation. This is conditioning us to the idea that our actions themselves have meaning chiefly as images of struggle—not as change itself. We can use media as a tool to publicize events or protests, share books or articles, circulate photos or videos. But it is a mistake to imagine that this is enough. Only daily, collective, real work can guarantee us any progress: rolling up our sleeves and stepping on the ground, looking our comrades in the eyes. Immediate yet mediated global communication, digital and print media, can only complement concrete struggles.
\n\nThat explains what we were looking for on those tours. We forged real connections that enabled us to return home to our movements—to our occupations, our collectives, our communities—and build another life.
\n\nWe hope that this report motivates you not to be satisfied with the text, with the map, with the image—to seek real struggle in real worlds. See you on the road… or at the barricades!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/08/08/3a.jpg\")
Click the image to download the PDF.
\nHere follow two videos from our 2019 tour of Brazil, in English with Portuguese subtitles. You can also hear a live audio recording in English from our 2015 tour of North America here.
\n\nAnarchist Resistance in Trump Era - Part 1/2.
\nAnarchist Resistance in Trump Era - Part 2/2.
\nFrom Democracy to Freedom - Part 1/2.
\nFrom Democracy to Freedom - Part 2/2.
\nTo get a sense of how anarchists and other rebels have been responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and the authoritarian power grabs that accompany it, we have collected pictures of posters, stickers, and graffiti from Austria, Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, Greece, Mexico, Slovenia, Spain, and the United States. We present them here with translations and notes. Look through these to find new slogans and imagery that you can adjust for your own context.
\n\nIn clearing the streets, the pandemic has made every city a bit more like Pripyat, the Ukrainian ghost town next to Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Pripyat has long been a destination for graffiti artists who take advantage of its empty streets to create vast murals. Similarly, over the past two months, we have seen daring artists defy curfews to decorate the walls of their cities, re-enchanting the physical world at a time when many of us are marinating in low-bandwidth virtual reality via our cell phones. May we all follow their example.
\n\nYou can find another international collection of radical street art about the pandemic starting here.
\n\n\n\n\n“Repression, propaganda, prohibitions, and confinement are not medicine. These are the solutions the state trots out for every ‘enemy.’”
\n\n-an anarchist sticker critiquing the state response to the pandemic in Greece
\n
As should go without saying, we oppose the governments and colonial narratives of all of the countries listed below. We use this taxonomy solely for the convenience of identifying the various repressive national contexts in which people are taking action and to note the different analyses and emphases that are emerging in response.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/19.jpg\")
“Rent strike now!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/27.jpg\")
A sticker: “Rent strike now!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/21.jpg\")
A sticker: “Rent strike now!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/26.jpg\")
A flier from Rent Strike Salzburg: “Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are now losing their income, or at least part of it. While the government promises billions in aid packages for the economy, we have to help ourselves: Let’s declare a rent strike now!”
\nIn addition to the rent strike group in Salzburg, there is now a similar group in Switzerland.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/13.jpg\")
“Coward 17”: 17 was the party number of Brazil’s explicitly fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro, though he has since been forced out of that party and formed another.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/15.jpg\")
A poster: “For a long time, we have recommended the use of masks. Organize solidarity and direct action!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/16.jpg\")
“We refuse to pay!” with a collection of bills including rent, water, electricity, and gas. From a page promoting rent strikes and the non-payment of bills.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/18.jpg\")
“We will not go back to normality—normality is the problem.” A poster.
\nWe will not go back to normality—normality is the problem.
\n\nDestruction of ecosystems, deforestation, pesticides, diseases. For centuries, the rampant exploitation of people and the planet has caused the multiplication of new epidemics, pandemics, and catastrophes. Despite the evidence, governments tied to the private interests of multinationals have never done and will never do anything to change that. Our strength is in our actions.
\n\nLet’s discard capitalism before it destroys us.
\n\nA video from the collective Antimídia: “Brazil is going to stop.”
\nBrazil is going to stop.
\n\nFor the 40 million workers with no rights, documentation, or any safety,
\nBrazil is going to stop.
\nFor the street vendors, the small businesses, and teachers without pay,
\nfor the cleaning workers still working when they should be home
\nor at home without payment, Brazil is going to stop.
\nFor the 31 million people with no tap water in the country,
\nfor all the people squatting or living in favelas, subject to floods and landslides,
\nfor those threatened with eviction, unable to pay rent, Brazil is going to stop.
\nFor all those in prisons and their families,
\nfor all sex workers, twice exploited,
\nfor all the threats of layoffs, for everyone living in the streets,
\nBrazil is going to stop.
\nFor the millions of wage workers and their families,
\nfor the young ones with no hope of a job or a future,
\nBrazil is going to stop.
\nFor the healthcare workers taking risks on the front line to hold off the pandemic,
\nfor all the employees who refuse to shut off water or electricity to the poor,
\nfor the garbage collectors and those who provide essential services
\nwho did not hesitate to work even facing all the risks,
\nBrazil is going to stop.
\nAnd to the bosses who can stay at home and participate in car protests
\nwhen we are the ones who have to take crowded public transit,
\nrisking our lives and those of our families,
\nand to the investors who keep profiting,
\nto the banks receiving more than a trillion reais of rescue funds from the Central Bank,
\nto all those who depend on the exploitation of others,
\nwe say: Brazil is going to stop.
\nAnd to those who defend the privileges of the elite,
\nwhile we are humiliated
\nthreatened with police and military repression when we dare to organize and rebel,
\nso that we don’t have to sacrifice ourselves once more for the “sake of the economy”
\nthat was never intended to keep us safe, that always treated us as disposable,
\nforcing us to choose between survival or shitty jobs
\nor to die waiting in line in the hospitals
\nBrazil is definitely going to stop.
\nStay at home! Organize!
\nKeep your rent and resist evictions!
\nFederal government: the politics of death.
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/17.jpg\")
“Colonialism is a plague—capitalism is a pandemic.” This Spanish-language poster appears here with an indigenous anti-futurist manifesto about the pandemic. The original photo of the subject of this poster, a person from the Mebêngôkre people (sometimes referred to as Kayapo), a group indigenous to the land brutally colonized by Brazil, appears here.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/96.jpg\")
“Strike until both the state and the coronavirus perish.” Santiago, Chile.
\n“The Other Battle of the Primera Linea,” a video from the streets of Santiago, Chile.
\nIn Chile, the primera linea refers to the front-line demonstrators who fought the police in weekly clashes from October 19, 2019—when demonstrators burned and looted Santiago—until the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile. Since October, many Chilean anarchists have expressed amazement at how swiftly militant combat against police came to be widely seen as legitimate, with the primera linea celebrated on t-shirts, by pop culture celebrities, and even by congressional representatives. However, every victory presents new challenges. Getting past the debates about nonviolence that have beleaguered anarchists for years has not sufficed to impart a thoroughgoing anarchist vision to the general public.
\n\nFor example, in the above video, we briefly see a masked primera linea demonstrator who later invokes the need to physically fight back against police handing out electoral propaganda and describing the primera linea as the “people’s army,” a concept that, despite all noble intentions, is stained with the blood of millions. As the Spanish language anarchist journal Kalinov Most put it, “[Romanticization of the primera linea should] be viewed with a certain amount of caution, given the tendency towards heroic exaltation of certain roles within the uprising that can lead to fetishism and militaristic mentalities.” Of course, the young rebel in this video doesn’t represent the views of everyone who identifies as primera linea. No one does—like the black bloc, it is an anarchic tactic, not an organization or political ideology.
\n\nWhat is exciting about the validation of the primera linea is simply that it puts people who didn’t previously have the experience of fighting against state oppression into contact with anarchists and others who do. At best, this has equipped many of those on the primera linea to understand how authority structures our society and to see, as the subjects of this video do, how fighting the police in the streets goes hand in hand with fighting the ways that capitalism impoverishes and demeans almost every aspect of our daily lives and public spaces.
\n\nThe following pictures are taken from la rue ou rien, a twitter account collecting radical political messages seen in the streets of France.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/61.jpg\")
“Jogging is too risky, but working without protection is OK.” - Macron
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/62.jpg\")
“And what if we never go back to work?”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/64.jpg\")
“Confronting COVID-19 is like confronting the cops—we help each other.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/65.jpg\")
“Confinement is a liberticidal political choice.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/66.jpg\")
“Cops, coronavirus, let us breathe!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/67.jpg\")
“Coronavirus everywhere. Justice nowhere. Fire to the prisons!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/68.jpg\")
“Coronavirus or not, we are against this world—die capitalism, die.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/69.jpg\")
“COVID-19…84.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/70.jpg\")
“The economy or life?”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/72.jpg\")
“FFP2 masks 0.70€, LBD40 1240€. ‘We are not on the same side.’ - Didier Lallement [police prefect of Paris].” The LBD40 is a stun grenade launcher purchased for the notoriously violent French police at great expense to the public against whom it is to be employed.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/94.jpg\")
“Who knows, maybe the LBD40 [the aforementioned expensive riot control device] is effective against the coronavirus?”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/73.jpg\")
“Fire fighters, nurses, garbage collectors, people on strike, I love you!” And, in another hand: “We do too!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/74.jpg\")
“Freedom is a scourge for rulers. At the end of this confinement, let’s become their black plague.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/75.jpg\")
“Less cops, more hand sanitizer.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/76.jpg\")
“Let’s not forget anything, ever!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/77.jpg\")
“Long live the prisoners’ revolt. Let’s destroy what imprisons us.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/78.jpg\")
“More masks, less cops on our backs.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/79.jpg\")
“No return to normal—normality is the problem.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/80.jpg\")
“On my official form, I wrote, ‘Engaging in an individual sport activity.’” A reference to the forms people must fill out in France to explain what they are doing when they leave the house.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/63.jpg\")
Bat + pangolin = financial collapse.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/81.jpg\")
Pangolin vs. capitalism.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/93.jpg\")
“When the fool points to the pangolin, the wise man sees deforestation.” (An adaptation of a French saying.)
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/82.jpg\")
A poster calling for the five emergency measures expressed in English on this poster.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/71.jpg\")
Stickers calling for the aforementioned measures.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/84.jpg\")
“Staying at home, OK. Not seeing friends, OK. Filling up an official form to go out, not OK!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/85.jpg\")
“COVID-19 is not an excuse to snitch. Fuck the 17.” (17 is the phone number for dialing the French police.)
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/86.jpg\")
“The government means well—April fools!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/87.jpg\")
“The illusion of safety. The unfamiliarity of freedom.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/88.jpg\")
“The revolution will go viral.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/89.jpg\")
“The virus is the state.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/90.jpg\")
“The worst kind of virus is the state.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/91.jpg\")
“Today social distancing, tomorrow barricades.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/92.jpg\")
“It is utopian to believe that everything can go on as it is.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/95.jpg\")
A gnomic pronouncement: “You are the pandemic!!!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/20.jpg\")
“The crisis shows what was already a problem before.” Berlin, in the neighborhood of Neukölln. Photo by Syndikat.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/22.jpg\")
A sticker distributed by Black Mosquito: “Solidarity and awareness instead of authoritarian measures; if the stock market counts more than human lives, we should overcome that.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/23.jpg\")
“He who hoards is too lazy to loot. Solidarity, not panic.” In German, this slogan can be read two different ways: as a way to compare hoarding to robbery—or as a way to endorse collective looting and redistribution over hoarding.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/24.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/25.jpg\")
“He who hoards is too lazy to loot.” Sticker from Black Mosquito.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/28.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/29.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/30.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/31.jpg\")
“Coronavirus into parliament.”
\nWe also note the efforts of coview.info in Germany: “An initiative to respond to the political and social impact of COVID-19 and the accompanying measures.”
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/161Schlotle/status/1254627932397547520\n\n\n
The graffiti reads “Capitalism is dying. Have no fear!”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/37.jpg\")
“Against the death policy of the state—solidarity to the struggles and the revolts of detainees in prisons and migrant camps.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/39.jpg\")
“For some, home is not a safe place—there is also the virus of sexual violence.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/47.jpg\")
“We are not heroes, we are hostages of the bosses and the state. Solidarity to workers in the time of quarantine.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/40.jpg\")
“It’s better to kiss and hug for one hour than to have 40 days of Netflix and Chardalias.” Chardalias is the government minister responsible for the press briefings about COVID-19; every day at 6 pm, corporate media broadcasts a public announcement from him. This slogan is a reference to a traditional Greek song.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/38.jpg\")
“Exam lesson: biology; exam content: religion. We don’t assign our bodies to any god, to any science.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/41.jpg\")
“Let’s resist the virus of submission, let’s spread the virus of revolt.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/42.jpg\")
“Medicine is magical—it makes meetings prohibited.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/43.jpg\")
“Pandemic of labor exploitation and exhausting working schedules. War against the war of the bosses.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/44.jpg\")
“Quarantine is the hygiene counterpart of military curfew. Life not survival!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/45.jpg\")
“Technology is magic cyber-control and repression.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/5.jpg\")
“For the virus of totalitarianism, the therapy is meeting in the streets.”
\nMany of these sticker designs can be found here along with other stickers from Greek anarchists.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/48.jpg\")
“Tax the rich—freeze military expenditures—hire and protect healthcare workers—close unnecessary factories—amnesty and pardon for all prisoners—seize all privatized healthcare resources—’incompletes’ for all students—freeze rents—quarantine income—closer immigrant detention centers—control of production to the workers!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/50.jpg\")
A billboard modification by nomissis entitled “Money First.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/51.jpg\")
“Our health against their profit. #wecantprotecourselves #wedontwantmartyrs”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/52.jpg\")
“We won’t go back to normality, because normality was the problem! When the lockdown is over, let’s meet in the streets.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/9.jpg\")
“We won’t pay for the crisis!” “1 government car = 100 patients.” “No to militarization, yes to public healthcare.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/49.jpg\")
\nWe also note a poster series entitled #RicordaiResponsabili, “Remember the ones responsible,” including such texts as the following:
\n\nOn the outside, six feet apart—In Italian prisons, there are about 10,299 people over capacity. On March 7, riots broke out in 40 Italian prisons. The cause—due to an already exasperating situation—was the suspension of talks with family members, a measure to reduce the infection. Yet prison guards continue going in and out, infecting those inside, as has already happened in a dozen prisons.
\n\nThey keep factories overcrowded—Decrees insist on quarantining the nation, but they oblige workers to keep on making profits for factory owners. That’s why many workers went on strike in many factories.
\n\nThey blame a stroll—What’s more dangerous? A stroll in the open air with proper precautions… or working in factories and call centers, in a confined space and without suitable protection?
\n\nThey fill the streets with the army—Today, to control anyone who moves without “justified reason,” but in the future, to cope with social unrest and protests that will spread from the financial crisis to come. Militarization and surveillance maintain the state of fear, the fundamental apparatus of social control.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/_savox/status/1250441756694343681\n\n\n
\nhttps://twitter.com/JigginoRuss/status/1243079400087867394\n\n\n
\n\n \n\n\n\n \n\n \n
“There is no virus worse than fear, selfishness, ignorance, and individualism.”
\n\n\n \n\n\n\n \n\n \n
“Welcome to the struggle of the faceless.”
\n\n\n \n\n\n\n \n\n \n
“Immediate suspension of payments and rent—If those who pay stop those who collect.” A much more realistic way of framing the situation than toothlessly making demands of those in power.
\nAll of these posters and many more about the pandemic are from the prolific Gran Om studio of visual arts.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/53.jpg\")
“After the virus, revolt.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/54.jpg\")
“Fascism beneath the mask of quarantine.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/55.jpg\")
“Government is a virus.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/56.jpg\")
“Masks on, this is a revolution.” The additional graffiti reads “The academic college to the students!”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/57.jpg\")
“Pay the workers, quarantine the government.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/58.jpg\")
“Quarantine the military.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/59.jpg\")
“Quarantine the government.”
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/60.jpg\")
English-language rent strike graffiti in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
\nPhotographs of a wide range of other anarchist graffiti in Ljubljana about the pandemic can be found on the facebook pages of Komunal.org and the Infoshop in the longstanding squatted autonomous neighborhood Metelkova. Slogans include “I #stayed home and I lost my home,” “They are finished” (a reference to a slogan from the uprising of 2012–2013), “We are not all the same—the poor person will only be alive as long as the system can benefit from him,” and one disarmingly simple expression: “I really don’t feel comfortable.”
\n\nSeveral of the above photos are from Komunal.org as well.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/12.jpg\")
Punk art about the pandemic from a Venezuelan artist in Barcelona.
\nIn this charming guide, the longstanding anarchist labor union CNT encourages workers to “wash their hands without extinguishing the flame of revolt,” measuring the proper amount of time for hand-washing by singing the classic song from the Spanish Civil War, “A Las Barricadas”:
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/cntsindikatua/status/1238770787676499968?s=21\n\n\n
Mutual aid—only the people help the people:
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/el_lokal/status/1244337135546765313\n\n\n
Rent strike, Catalunya:
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/el_lokal/status/1249409792092839943\n\n\n
Rent strike call from the anarchist federation of the Canary Islands:
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/fagc_anarquista/status/1242056078675906562\n\n\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/1.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/2.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/3.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/4.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/6.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/7.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/8.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/10.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/33.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/34.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/35.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/36.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/11.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/04/28/14.jpg\")
Welcome to the new era.
\nTrump has announced that he will declare a state of emergency to fund his border wall. The proposed wall and additional security measures will be devastating for migrants and border communities. During the last shutdown, federal employees and federal contractors were forced to work without pay or to scrape by on furlough, while people relying on government assistance were forced to seek out limited community alternatives and refugees were trapped in bureaucratic limbo. Make no mistake—a grassroots movement ended the shutdown. Trump gave in only when air traffic controllers and flight attendants stopped clocking in and airlines across the east coast began to close down.
\n\nWe refuse to choose between Trump’s openly racist wall and the Democrats’ implicitly racist “smart border.” The differences between Trump’s border wall and a soft-power smart wall are minor variations on the same deadly theme. We will block the border wall. We choose another way: freedom of movement, solidarity, and mutual aid.
\n\nWe can combat Trump’s policies that greet asylum seeking families with tear gas at the southern border, that leave Haitian people to die in boats coming to the United States and 58,000 Haitians in legal limbo, and that criminalize whole communities. We will uplift the inspiring work by black and brown migrant support organizers like the UndocuBlack Network, Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project, NorCal Resist, and more, who defend black and brown migrant communities most targeted by ICE harassment, deportation and the police. Together, we can defend refugees, migrants, and government workers. We can re-imagine community safety, and support federal workers and communities under attack. We can demonstrate through solidarity and mutual aid that we can build a world without borders or state violence.
\n\nOn February 15, we call for a movement from below. It is time to act courageously—together. We need a bold, positive vision of the future in contrast to Trump’s white supremacist fantasy. We need to create a world in which people can move freely, where families can find refuge from danger, and communities are brave enough to welcome newcomers and create a shared sense of belonging. Where refugees now encounter hostile border guards, where black immigrants face the dual threats of deportation and incarceration, they should find communities coming together to welcome them with food and shelter. Where federal workers and contractors find themselves unable to pay their bills, they should find communities acting in solidarity to meet their immediate needs.
\n\nWe call for a “Block the Wall” mobilization on February 19 and 20 against the border wall and against the state of emergency. We can march, take over public space, and organize sick-outs in the nation’s capital. We can block every ICE detention center, field office, and ICE contractor around the country with the occupation of the public space around the facilities. Each of these offices are maintained by working class people in support staff, couriers, cleaning crews, tech services, and social workers. We invite all of these workers to call in sick and join the occupations on the sidewalks and streets.
\nWe call for the organization of mutual aid to support the federal workers and subcontractors who remain uncompensated for 34 days of unpaid labor, and to support those who rely on government assistance. We call for cooperation to pool and distribute resources immediately to ease the daily struggles of those most affected. We commit to taking care of one another as the state gambles with the lives of millions.
\nWe call for direct support for migrants and border struggles. There are multiple initiatives already demonstrating hospitality to migrants and physically defying the border that separates the United States from Mexico, from autonomous kitchens in Tijuana to indigenous-led anti-border camps in Texas. We will build the capacity to undermine the border, welcome refugees, and demonstrate that free movement can be beautiful, safe, and beneficial for all—so long as the police and la migra stay out of the way.
\nShare your marches, actions, and mutual aid initiatives with the hashtag #BlockTheWall, or tweet updates to @BlockTheWall on twitter or BlockTheWall123 on Instagram
\n\nIn solidarity,
\n\nCrimethInc.
\nIGD
\nResist This
\n202 Antifascists
\nCentral Ohio Street Medic Collective
\nHaymaker Gym
\nThe Breakaway Social Center
\nBlack Queer & Intersectional Collective
\nBlack Lives Matter DMV
\nSanctuary DMV
\nThe Peace House DC
\nByp100 DC
\nAll Out Atlanta
\nIndigenous Anarchist Federation
\nFree Lunch PDX
\nChannel Zero Podcast Network
\nZakk Flash
\nHopkins Coalition Against ICE
\nFront Range WILD
\nSouthern Illinois YDSA
\nCarbondale Solidarity Network
\nLove Has No Borders
\nBay Area Harm Reduction
\nPoor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign
\nRefuge Tampa Bay
\nRevolutionary Caucus of Tampa Bay
\nRevolutionary Road Radio Show
\nAntifa Seven Hills
\nNo Atlantic Coast Pipeline (NoACP)
\nInterfaith Alliance for Climate Justice
\nSW Solidarity
\nRevolutionary Left Radio
\nLiberation Project, Philadelphia
\nToughie Prints
\nMetropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council (MACC)
\nHoller Network
\nNorCal Resist
\n574 Antifa
\nSouthern Maine IWW
\nInternational Red Front
\nOlympia Assembly
\nOlympia Solidarity Network
\nPM Press
\nNo More Deaths
\nDirty Hands Collective
\nDSA Libertarian Socialist Caucus
\nBlack Rose Books, St. Louis
\nsubMedia
\nDenver Anarchist Black Cross
Please endorse and circulate this statement! To add your endorsement or inform us of an event planned in solidarity with this call, email us.
\n\nFull updated list of actions here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/posters/together-we-can-block-the-wall/together-we-can-block-the-wall_front_color.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF
\nMap of ICE Offices and Contractors
\n\nList of Border Wall Contractors
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/02/15/february-15-halfsheet.jpg\")
Organizing handbill with list of initial endorsements; click the image above to access the PDF. For a version that offers space to include information about local organizing, use this version.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/02/15/block-the-wall--social-media-upload.jpg\")
\nBlack Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI)
\n\n\n\nBlack LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project (BLMP)
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHaitian Workers Fight Racist Deportations
\n\n58,000 haitians in legal limbo
\n\n“Dozens of Haitians Drown After Boat Sinks off of Bahamas”
\n\n“Don’t replace wall with ‘invasive surveillance tech,’ say civil liberties groups.”
\n\nAmerica’s Immigration Policy at the Border is Literally Killing People
\n\nCongress’s spending deal doesn’t include back pay for federal contractors
\n\nBlack Resistance: No Cages No Borders No Walls, hosted by Black Lives Matter DC and Stop Police Terror Project DC, on Monday, February 18, 12 pm, in a the Park at City Center, Washington, DC. In spite of the abuse, criminalization, deportations, and surveillance… our joy, our anger, our survival is resistance. Join us on anti-presidents day as we gather to protest Trump and the criminalization of all black people.
\nFree Lunch PDX, an autonomous collection of anarchists whose program exists at the intersection of the Black Panther Survival Programs and Food Not Bombs, is holding a community feed and zine distro event on Tuesday 2/19 in solidarity with the #BlocktheWall call to action. From 11 AM until the food runs out, we intend to take space adjacent to Portland Community College’s Cascade campus in the historically black neighborhood of Albina in so-called Portland, OR. We’ll be offering up delicious vegan food and distributing a range of zines covering everything from work theft to “Designed To Kill.” We endorse the call to action and look to be inspired by the autonomous actions popping off across Turtle Island.
\nBlock the Wall Solidarity March, Wednesday February 20, 4 pm, Seattle Central College—Against Trump’s wall, in support of migrants and their comrades facing repression at the hands of Mexican and US authorities, and in support of emergent mutual aid that fights to bring shelter, medicine, food, and freedom of movement to all.
\nTrump ha anunciado que declarará un estado de excepción para financiar su muro fronterizo. El muro propuesto y las medidas de seguridad adicionales serán devastadores para los migrantes y las comunidades fronterizas. Durante el último cierre (shutdown), los empleados y contratistas federales fueron obligados a trabajar sin paga o a arreglárselas durante días y semanas de descanso (sin paga), mientras los que dependen de la asistencia del estado eran obligados a buscar alternativas comunitarias limitadas y los refugiados quedaron atrapados en el limbo burocrático. No se equivoquen: un movimiento de base terminó el cierre (shutdown). Trump se rindió solo cuando los controladores de tráfico aéreo y los asistentes de vuelo dejaron de ir al trabajo y las aerolíneas de la costa este empezaron a cerrar.
\n\nNos negamos a elegir entre el muro abiertamente racista de Trump y una “frontera inteligente” (smart) implícitamente racista de los demócratas. Las diferencias entre el muro fronterizo de Trump y el poder blando de un “muro inteligente” (smart) son variaciones menores en la misma clave de muerte. Bloquearemos el muro fronterizo. Elegimos otro camino: libertad de movimiento, solidaridad, y ayuda mutua.
\n\nPodemos combatir las políticas de Trump que reciben a las familias que buscan asilo con gases lacrimógenos en la frontera sur, que dejan morir a haitianos en barcos en ruta hacia los Estados Unidos y dejan 58,000 haitianos en limbo legal y que criminalizan a comunidades enteras. Elevaremos el trabajo inspirador de los organizadores morenos y negros que apoyan a migrantes, como UndocuBlack\nNetwork, Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project, NorCal Resist y más, quienes defienden a las comunidades migrantes negras y morenas más afectadas por el acoso de ICE, la deportación y la policía. Juntos podemos defender a los refugiados, migrantes, y trabajadores del gobierno federal. Podemos reimaginar la seguridad comunitaria y apoyar a los trabajadores federales y las comunidades atacadas. Podemos demostrar a través de solidaridad y ayuda mutua que podemos construir un mundo sin fronteras ni violencia estatal.
\n\nEl 15 de febrero, llamamos a un movimiento desde abajo. Es la hora de actuar valientemente juntos. Necesitamos una visión del futuro audaz y positiva en contraste con la fantasía supremacista blanca de Trump. Necesitamos crear un mundo donde la gente pueda moverse libremente, donde las familias puedan refugiarse del peligro y las comunidades sean lo suficientemente valientes como para dar la bienvenida a los recién llegados y para crear un sentido de pertenencia en común. Donde los refugiados ahora encuentran guardias fronterizos hostiles e inmigrantes negros encuentran las amenazas duales de deportación y encarcelamiento, deben encontrar comunidades unidas para darles la bienvenida con comida y refugio. Donde trabajadores y contratistas no pueden pagar sus cuentas, deben encontrar comunidades en solidaridad para satisfacer sus necesidades inmediatas.
\n\nLlamamos a una movilización de “Bloquea el Muro” el 19 y 20 de febrero contra el muro fronterizo y el estado de excepción. Podemos marchar, apoderarnos del espacio público y organizar ausencias por supuesta enfermedad (sick-outs) en la capital de la nación. Podemos bloquear todos los centros de detención, oficinas de campo y contratistas de ICE en todo el país con la ocupación del espacio público alrededor de las instalaciones. Cada una de estas oficinas es mantenida por personas de la clase trabajadora como personal de apoyo, mensajeros, equipos de limpieza, servicios de informática y trabajadores sociales. Invitamos a todos estos trabajadores a ausentarse por enfermedad y unirse a las ocupaciones en las aceras y calles.
\nLlamamos a la organización de ayuda mutua para apoyar a los trabajadores federales y subcontratistas que permanecen sin compensación por 34 días de trabajo no remunerado, y para apoyar a aquellos que dependen de la asistencia del gobierno. Hacemos un llamado a la cooperación para recoger y distribuir recursos de inmediato para aliviar las luchas diarias de los más afectados. Nos comprometemos a cuidarnos unos a otros mientras el estado juega con las vidas de millones de personas.
\nLlamamos a apoyo directo para los migrantes y las luchas fronterizas. Existen múltiples iniciativas que ya demuestran hospitalidad a los migrantes y desafían físicamente la frontera que separa a los Estados Unidos de México, desde las cocinas autónomas en Tijuana hasta los campamentos contra la frontera liderados por indígenas en Texas. Desarrollaremos la capacidad de minar la frontera, dar la bienvenida a los refugiados y demostraremos que la libre circulación puede ser bella, segura y beneficiosa para todos, siempre y cuando la policía y la migra permanezcan al margen.
\nComparte tus marchas, acciones e iniciativas de ayuda mutua con el hashtag #BlockTheWall, o envía actualizaciones a @BlockTheWall en twitter o BlockTheWall123 en Instagram.
\n\nEn solidaridad,
\n\nCrimethInc.
\nIGD
\nResist This
\n202 Antifascists
\nCentral Ohio Street Medic Collective
\nHaymaker Gym
\nThe Breakaway Social Center
\nBlack Queer & Intersectional Collective
\nBlack Lives Matter DMV
\nSanctuary DMV
\nThe Peace House DC
\nByp100 DC
\nAll Out Atlanta
\nIndigenous Anarchist Federation
\nFree Lunch PDX
\nChannel Zero Podcast Network
\nZakk Flash
\nHopkins Coalition Against ICE
\nFront Range WILD
\nSouthern Illinois YDSA
\nCarbondale Solidarity Network
\nLove Has No Borders
\nBay Area Harm Reduction
\nPoor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign
\nRefuge Tampa Bay
\nRevolutionary Caucus of Tampa Bay
\nRevolutionary Road Radio Show
\nAntifa Seven Hills
\nNo Atlantic Coast Pipeline (NoACP)
\nInterfaith Alliance for Climate Justice
\nSW Solidarity
\nRevolutionary Left Radio
\nLiberation Project, Philadelphia
\nToughie Prints
\nMetropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council (MACC)
\nHoller Network
\nNorCal Resist
\n574 Antifa
\nSouthern Maine IWW
\nInternational Red Front
\nOlympia Assembly
\nOlympia Solidarity Network
\nPM Press
\nNo More Deaths
\nDirty Hands Collective
\nDSA Libertarian Socialist Caucus
\nBlack Rose Books, St. Louis
\nsubMedia
\nDenver Anarchist Black Cross
¡Por favor respalda y circula esta declaración! Para respaldar la declaración o informarnos de un evento planeado en solidaridad con este llamado, envíanos un correo electrónico.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/02/15/febrero-15-halfsheet-en-solidaridad.jpg\")
El panfleto para organizar actividades comunitarias incluye una lista de los endosos iniciales; por favor haga clic en la imagen de arriba para acceder al PDF. Para una versión que tenga espacio para información sobre las actividades locales, utilice esta versión.
\nRefugees Welcome from Sub.Media.
\nUndoing Border Imperialism with Harsha Walia.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/posters/borders-the-global-caste-system/borders-the-global-caste-system_front_color.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF. You can order these posters in bulk here.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/posters/immigrants-welcome-poster/immigrants-welcome-poster_front_color.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/07/06/borders-equal-global-apartheid_front_black_and_white.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF.
\n![](\"https://itsgoingdown.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/trumpwar.png\")
![](\"https://itsgoingdown.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/rising-fascism-tabloid-1-sided.jpg\")
Anti-Fascist Zone: Many Colors, One Working Class
\n\nDesigned to Kill: Border Policy and How to Change It imposed PDF for printing
\n\nSyrian Underground Railroad: Open Border Activism in the Modern Landscape imposed PDF for printing
\n\nRebellion and Possibility: Voices in the Anti-ICE Struggle, Volume I: online reading version, imposed PDF for printing
\n\nRebellion and Possibility: Voices in the Anti-ICE Struggle, Volume II: online reading version, imposed PDF for printing
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/books/no-wall-they-can-build/no-wall-they-can-build_front.jpg\")
No Wall They Can Build: A Guide to Borders and Migration across North America— Drawing on a decade of solidarity work in the desert between Mexico and Arizona, this book uncovers the goals and costs of US border policy, and what it will take to change it. Order it here or click the image above to access the PDF.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/09/2.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF in English and Spanish. You can order these stickers in bulk here.
\nThe following photos are from a demonstration today in Tornillo, Texas opposing one of the prisons in which children are being held. After holding an encampment outside the Tornillo youth detention camp since December 23, a coalition has called for people of conscience to join in a national weekend of action February 14-18 to disrupt migrant detention, deportation, and murder.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/02/15/1.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/02/15/2.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/02/15/3.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/02/15/4.jpg\")
\nThis morning, Mexico City government officials used police to evict the migrants that were on the street outside of the shelter at Estadio Palillo. There is a group of approximately 1500 people that arrived at\nthe shelter between Sunday night and Monday. Those who arrived on Sunday were given a green bracelet; those who arrived on Monday were given a purple one. When they arrived, they were told that they could stay 10 days in the shelter, but the policy was changed without warning and now they are allowed only three days. Yesterday, the migrants were denied food and those with green bracelets were kicked out. They stayed outside on the streets nearby, because they had come with their family members and friends who had purple bracelets, and they have been waiting to leave together tomorrow.
\n\nAt 9 o’clock in the morning, government officials arrived and told the migrants that they had to get on their way and they could not wait for the rest of their companerxs; they threatened to send them to immigration control and to the riot police, even though those same people have visas. Several people have been beaten, and those who were taking photos and video had their bracelets taken away even if they had purple ones. Those who were inside and wanted to come out to help their compas were not allowed to leave and were locked inside.
\n\nFootage of Mexico City police attacking participants in the second migrant caravan. More footage here.
\nAll the way from the southern border, officials have been pressuring people “not to wait for their families,” saying those with visas have to continue on and not wait for their compas that don’t have their visas yet.
\n\nThey have been threatening them with police every place they enter, saying “continue on,” even though they are giving them one-year visas to stay in the country. They don’t want to see large groups and they don’t want people to wait. Right now, the same thing is happening in Mexico City, even though the local government boasts about having an Intercultural Law and an “inclusion” policy that is very “advanced” in regards to human rights.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/02/15/5.jpg\")
\nLast night, the state police in Chiapas accompanied a group of 20 people as they walked between Ciudad Hidalgo and Tapachula. They told them that they were “protecting” them, and that they should rest and stop to go the bathroom and drink water. That’s when the National Institute of Migration (INM) arrived with 10 police holding vans and started to detain them. Many people ran away onto the road at night and today many families are separated and lost, and many people have been detained and beaten up.
\n\nWhile Trump declares a national emergency in order to build his wall, this government is doing the same, and probably worse than those before, because they are not only doing the work of the US but they are also disguising their actions behind a “progressive” discourse while they repress migrants.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/02/15/6.jpg\")
\nHoy por la mañana el gobierno de la Ciudad de México llegó a desalojar a las personas migrantes que se encontraban en las calles de afuera del albergue en el Estadio Palillo con policía. \nEn el albergue se encuentra un grupo de 1,500 personas aprox., que llegó entre el domingo en la noche y el lunes. A quienes llegaron el domingo les pusieron un brazalete verde y a los del lunes uno morado. Cuando llegaron les dijeron que podían estar 10 días en el albergue pero cambiaron la política sin avisar y ahora solo les permiten estar 3. Ayer negaron alimento y sacaron a la gente de brazalete verde. Estas personas se quedaron en las calles de afuera pues vienen con familiares y amigxs que tienen brazalete morado, y les están esperando para salir mañana juntxs.
\n\nA las 9 de la mañana les llegaron a levantar y decirles que siguieran su camino y no esperarán a sus demás compañerxs, les amenazaron con mandarles a “migración” y granaderos, a pesar de que es gente que ya tiene visa. Hay varixs golpeadxs y a quienes estaban tomando foto y video, aunque tuvieran brazalete morado, se los quitaron. A la gente de adentro que quería salir ayudar a sus compas no la dejaban salir y la tienen encerrada.
\n\nDesde la frontera sur han estado presionando a las personas para que “no esperen a sus familias”, que avancen quienes tienen visas y no esperen a sus compas que todavía no la tienen. Les han estado amenazando con policías en cada lugar que llegan “que sigan su camino”, a pesar de que les están dando visas para permanecer un año en el país. No quieren ver grupos grandes y no quieren que la gente se espere. Ahora está pasando lo mismo en la Ciudad a pesar de que el gobierno local presume tener una Ley de Interculturalidad y políticas “de inclusión” muy “avanzadas” en materia de DDHH.
\n\nEl nuevo gobierno “progresista” repite y repite que respetará los DDHH de las personas migrantes y en la práctica se ha dedicado a hostigar y criminalizar a lxs migrantes. Ya van 5 detenidos y deportados arbitrariamente por ser identificados como “organizadores”, cuando son migrantes que vienen ayudando lxs demás. Los han sometido a interrogatorios sobre “por qué ayudan” “quienes les financian” porque para el gobierno es ilógico que lxs migrantes se organicen para ayudarse entre ellxs, es ilógico que alguien que ha perdido todo y solo le queda irse “al norte” quiera cuidarse y cuidar de lxs suyxs en el camino. Les parece un comportamiento “raro” que merece ser “investigado” que un migrante reclame sus derechos y el respeto de su dignidad, que se enoje cuando los policías les amenazan y golpean a sus familias.
\n\nAyer en la noche policía estatal de Chiapas acompañaba a un grupo de 200 personas que caminaban entre Ciudad Hidalgo y Tapachula, les dijeron que les iban “cuidando”, que descansaran y se pararan para ir al baño y tomar agua, cuando llegó el INM con 10 perreras y empezaron a detenerles, muchxs salieron corriendo por la carretera en la noche y hoy hay muchas familias separadas y pérdidas, muchxs detenidos y golpeadxs. Así que mientras Trump declara emergencia nacional para construir su muro, este gobierno sigue haciendo lo mismo, y probablemente peor, que los anteriores porque no solo hace la chamba para EUUU, sino que se lava la cara con un discurso “progre”, mientras reprime a las personas migrantes.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2018/11/02/turning-the-army-against-the-people-border-militarization-and-the-migrant-caravan", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2018/11/02/turning-the-army-against-the-people-border-militarization-and-the-migrant-caravan", "title": "Turning the Army against the People : Border Militarization and the Migrant Caravan", "summary": "We all have a stake in resisting the militarization of the border, the latest precedent for turning the military against civilian populations. Here's an array of options for what you can do about it.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/11/02/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/11/02/header.jpg", "date_published": "2018-11-02T16:30:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:37Z", "tags": [ "Trump", "direct action", "borders", "Mexico", "Honduras" ], "content_html": "Several thousand migrants have fled Honduras, hoping to escape poverty, violence, and repression. Donald Trump and his fellow nationalists and racists have been fearmongering about this so-called “migrant caravan” in hopes of mobilizing their base to vote in the November 6 election; their efforts have triggered a wave of fascist violence including last week’s massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Still more troubling is Trump’s order to send thousands of US troops to “defend” against the caravan. This sets yet another precedent for the use of the military against civilian populations. Here, we explain why everyone who is not a racist ideologue has a common stake in resisting the militarization of the border, and offer an array of options for what you can do about it.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/zines/there-is-no-migrant-crisis/there-is-no-migrant-crisis_front.jpg\")
Click above for an imposed PDF version of this article for printing.
\nFirst things first: why are people leaving Honduras for the US in the first place? Honduras is still suffering the consequences of a US-backed coup that took place in 2009 on the heels of centuries of resource extraction. In short, Hondurans are trying to come to the United States because the natural and financial resources of Honduras have already been looted and brought across the US border.
\n\n\n\n\nWe have met an enormous number of Hondurans crossing the border in the years since the coup, out of all proportion to the size of the country… We heard different versions of the same story from countless people: grinding poverty, chronic hunger and malnutrition, widespread violence and insecurity (much of it an extension of El Salvador’s gang problems), a rampant HIV/AIDS epidemic, appalling levels of violence against women and LGBTQ people, assassinations of environmentalists, union organizers, and human rights advocates, and a lack of the most basic services or opportunities…
\n\nIf Honduras is in shambles, it is not because Hondurans are any less resourceful or fundamentally decent than anyone else, or even because its rulers are any more wretched and callous than our own. It is because the structure of the North American economy has made any other outcome impossible.
\n\n-No Wall They Can Build, July 2017
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/11/02/2.jpg\")
\nThe conditions that are forcing refugees to flee Honduras are part of a much wider pattern. In the quarter of a century since the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), globalized capitalism has inflicted grievous damage on the biosphere, indigenous populations, and workers’ rights. Industrial production has shifted to the parts of the world where labor is cheapest, while structural adjustment programs have made it impossible for governments to maintain any sort of social safety net; from the United States to Honduras and Bangladesh, this has created a race to the bottom.
\n\nThe combination of globalized financial speculation and militarized borders has increased the pace at which capital flows while exacerbating the ways that citizenship functions as a caste system limiting who can move freely, dividing the world into zones of exploitation and zones of accumulation. This benefits capitalists who aim to maximize their profits, but it doesn’t benefit the majority of workers—not even the ones in the wealthiest countries, because they still have to compete with workers in other parts of the world to see who can sell themselves the cheapest. In this context, it’s no longer possible for laborers to gain leverage by organizing on the level of a single factory, or even a single country; the global market simply routes around resistance to find a more exploitable population. If we want to defend our interests as workers, we have to make common cause with everyone else around the world who is exploited.
\n\nThat means that labor organizing has to begin by opposing the border—not just as a line on a map, but above all as a social division that cuts through the population of every country, segregating those with citizenship and travel privileges from those who are denied them. Just like racial divisions, the border serves to prevent workers from uniting to defend their interests against those who exploit them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/11/02/3.jpg\")
\nTrump has pretended to be critical of neoliberal free trade, but in practice, he has just introduced a more xenophobic and oppressive version of the policies of his predecessors. This is the one-two punch of the complementary Democratic and Republican agendas: the Democrats have paved the way for the neoliberal order that is steadily concentrating wealth, while the Republicans are intensifying the violence that preserves that order. The Democrats introduced NAFTA, forcing millions to flee financial collapse in Mexico to seek precarious work at illegally low wages in the United States, and the Republicans are escalating police and military operations against those precarious undocumented workers—ensuring that they are divided from the other workers who would have to organize with them in order for anyone’s conditions to improve.
\n\nThe caravan from Honduras is nothing new—people have been fleeing to the US from Honduras and other parts of the world for decades. In fact, the undocumented population of the US reached its peak over a decade ago and has been declining ever since. What’s more, a great part of those staying in the US “illegally” are not sneaking through the desert in the middle of the night, but coming into the country via legal work visa programs, then remaining afterwards. Of those who do cross illegally through the desert, roughly half of them are longtime residents of the United States who are simply trying to return to their jobs and families. And, as has been widely documented, immigrants engage in less criminal activity than the rest of the population.
\n\nSo there is no migrant crisis. If anything, the fear of mass deportations has impacted the US economy, as agricultural industries that rely on migrant labor are experiencing difficulty recruiting enough workers. Trump’s rhetoric about an “invasion” requiring military intervention is blatantly dishonest. It’s obvious to his supporters as well as his critics that his real agenda here is not economic but ideological.
\n\nDespite his laughable campaign promises to bring factory jobs back to the United States, Trump knew from the start that he could not build a time machine and transport the white working class back to 1950. Nor did he intend to do anything to redistribute wealth to the white working class; thus far, all his financial policies have only served to speed the pace at which capitalists like himself are plundering them along with everyone else. What he can do to placate white male workers, however, is adjust the distribution of violence, focusing it even more against people of color, undocumented people, women, and queer and trans people than it already is today.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/11/02/4.jpg\")
\nThis is how we must understand Trump’s promises to “build the wall,” block the caravan, and strip citizenship from the children of the undocumented. All of these are intended to buy the allegiance of white people, even desperately poor white people, by giving them scapegoats at whom they can channel their frustration. The #MAGAbomber attacks and the massacre in Pittsburgh are not unwanted side effects, but an essential part of this program.
\n\nFascists, white nationalists, and nativists desperately need an enemy to rally people against; their false notion of community only makes sense when they can define themselves by contrast with an Other. They are pushing for “strong borders” as a way to revive identities such as whiteness and patriotism that are fundamentally based on exclusion. If the caravan did not exist, they would have to find another threat to mobilize around.
\n\nTheir project is not particularly popular with the majority of the population. This is why the lone-wolf killers, militias, and paramilitary outfits are necessary—not just to terrorize the opposition, but above all to shift the Overton window regarding what sort of discourse is acceptable. For his part, Trump’s strategy is always to push the envelope to see how much he can get away with.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/11/02/1.jpg\")
\nAnd this brings us to his order to deploy thousands of troops at the border. This signals the enlistment of the US military in Trump’s strategy to preserve capitalism by inflaming the divisions within the population that suffers from it.
\n\nIn the 21st century, the chief role of the military has not been to fight wars, but to carry out counterinsurgency measures. This was already clear in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which chiefly pitted the US military against the civilian populations of those countries. It became clearer still when US military personnel and private contractors who had patrolled Kabul and Baghdad were brought back to the United States to occupy Ferguson and Baltimore.
\n\n\n\n\nJust as it has been necessary to deploy troops around the world to secure the raw materials that keep the economy afloat, it is becoming necessary to deploy troops in the US to preserve the unequal distribution of resources at home. Just as the austerity measures pioneered by the IMF in Africa, Asia, and South America are appearing in the wealthiest nations of the first world, the techniques of threat management and counter-insurgency that were debuted against Palestinians, Afghanis, and Iraqis are now being turned against the populations of the countries that invaded them. Private military contactors who operated in Peshawar are now working in Ferguson, alongside tanks that rolled through Baghdad. For the time being, this is limited to the poorest, blackest neighborhoods; but what seems exceptional in Ferguson today will be commonplace around the country tomorrow.
\n\n-“The Thin Blue Line Is a Burning Fuse,” November 2015
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![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/next-time-it-explodes/images/imposing1370.jpg\")
\nIf it becomes normalized for US troops to occupy unruly cities within the territory of the United States and to intervene at the border against unarmed civilians, it will be only a matter of time before those troops are deployed against other populations as well. First they came for poor Black communities—then they came for the Muslim immigrants—then they came for the undocumented immigrants… this list will continue to grow, eventually even including white liberals, if things go far enough. The less backlash there is about the deployment of troops at the border, the faster this process will proceed.
\n\nTrump and his supporters are trying to put the precedents in place for a future in which their notion of order will be maintained by open, brutal force involving every weapon and every institution of the state. Even if you don’t identify with refugees on the receiving end of colonialist oppression, even if you don’t recognize opposition to the border as a necessary step towards updating the labor movement for the 21st century, you have every reason to recognize this as your own fight. Words and sentiments are meaningless here—we have to act in solidarity with those on the other side of the border.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/mitchellreports/status/1058106652182765568\n\n\n
Trump and his cronies are hoping that people will disapprove of his administration’s activities, or perhaps just vote against them, without taking any concrete action to make it impossible to implement them. But only direct action can be effective against an administration that views protests, negative press coverage, and “speaking truth to power” simply as opportunities to rally Trump’s base. We demonstrated the efficacy of direct action with the airport blockades at the opening of his term—and again, to a lesser extent, with the ICE occupations over the summer of 2018. Both served to force Trump to abandon at least a part of his agenda. We have leverage, should we dare to use it.
\n\nWhat does it look like to resist the militarization of the border? Some may travel to the border to be there when troops are deployed, or when the caravan arrives. But the border is everywhere—everywhere that an ICE facility operates, everywhere immigrants live in fear of being snatched from their families. Even if you can’t travel, you can take meaningful and effective action wherever you are. Here are some points of departure.
\n\n No Wall They Can Build: A Guide to Borders and Migration across North America— Drawing on a decade of solidarity work in the desert between Mexico and Arizona, this book uncovers the goals and costs of US border policy, and what it will take to change it. Order it here or click the image above to access the PDF.
\n Click the image above to access the PDF in English and Spanish. You can order these stickers in bulk here.
\n Click the image above to access the PDF. You can order these posters in bulk here.
\n Click the image above to access the PDF.
\n Click the image above to access the PDF.
\n Anti-Fascist Zone: Many Colors, One Working Class
\n\nDesigned to Kill: Border Policy and How to Change It imposed PDF for printing
\n\nSyrian Underground Railroad: Open Border Activism in the Modern Landscape imposed PDF for printing
\n\nRebellion and Possibility: Voices in the Anti-ICE Struggle, Volume I: online reading version, imposed PDF for printing
\n\nRebellion and Possibility: Voices in the Anti-ICE Struggle, Volume II: online reading version, imposed PDF for printing
\n\nRefugees Welcome from Sub.Media.
\nUndoing Border Imperialism with Harsha Walia.
\nNovember 8-11: Call for International Day of Action Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism. Called by anti-fascist Jews, this is an opportunity to link antifascist struggle against white nationalism and anti-Semitism, including recent far-right attacks across the US, with Trump’s push to attack the caravan. More information here.
\n\nNovember 16-18: SOA Watch Border Encuentro. Called by School of the Americas Watch, this will be a mobilization against border imperialism. More information here.
\n\nDecember 17: Meet the migrants at the border.
\n\nDonate or volunteer with No More Deaths
\n\nNativism and the Foundations of US Xenophobia
\n\nThe ICE Age Is Over: Reflections from the ICE Blockades
\n\nOccupy ICE Portland: Policing Revolution?
\n\nOccupy ICE Portland: Lessons from the Barricades
\n\nDispatch from Occupy ICE Philly
\n\nWhat Would It Take to Stop the Raids?—At the outset of Trump’s presidency, this article presciently proposed targeting ICE facilities as a pressure point in the struggle against the violence of the border.
\n\nThe White Nationalists That No One Protested—On white nationalist influence within the Trump administration.
\n\nThis text was produced in collaboration with our comrades at It’s Going Down.
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