Translated by Sally Seward
It is already becoming normal for groups of agitators to appear, embedded in peaceful demonstrations (or diverting attention so no one focuses on them), whose only objective seems to be confronting security forces, which, it must be said, has failed once and again with the labors of containment, leaving many doubts and questions. The public debate, therefore, is full of hypothesis and accusations around the determination of the "truly guilty ones", but the investigations are not getting to the bottom of the facts. The case is that many of those detained, as it happened on the first of December, in the end will be separate from those whose basic rights were violated, meaning that the repression leaves victims but it does not trap those who wreck windows and street furniture, who throw Molotov cocktails, pipes and dangerous objects at the uniformed police, as anyone can see on television or the internet.
Several circumstances coincide so that this is possible: the first is that, in spite of its reoccurrence, we do not know for certain who the so-called anarchists are, nor what their intentions are, apart from fighting with the security forces and looting what they can. The truth is that it seems incredible that we have gotten to the second of October without a serious report, not to mention effective action from the Commission on Human Rights of the Federal District, to show the "mechanics" of the ineffectiveness of the police, with the duplications and command errors that have been shown. This October 2nd we attended the "armoring" of the Historical Center, but we ended up not knowing anything more concrete about those causing the damage, the "anarchists", since the "information" given by the Secretary General of Government came from a page on the internet which offered a manual on making homemade bombs and told the reader the steps to follow to "play the victim" before justice. It is obvious that that is not enough.
At this point there is a coincidence, in that among the "hooded ones" there are "agitators", that is, people prepared to achieve, through violence, an effect that is convenient for other protagonists who do not show their face, although presumably they hide behind some authority. Nevertheless, in spite of the arrests and complaints that institutions such as the UNAM [National Autonomous University of Mexico] have presented, there are some who still refer to them as "activists" that are exercising their right to social protest, even though they do it tired of the forms of peaceful resistance used by other movements.
We can admit, with reluctance, that such individuals may act with their own "conviction", spontaneously, led by an ideological distortion that keeps them from registering reality, although with that they drag along the left that does not share their perceptions. According to that hypothesis, behind the direct action would be, more than a formal organization, a universal strategy -the so called "black bloc"-easily applied to different situations (whether it is Italy, Barcelona, or now Brazil), in which the same ideas and instructions are spread through social networks to fight capitalism.
Others think that we are up against groups created or encouraged by spurious interests that pay for the service. They are agitators capable of dragging naive people into it. It is maintained that the methods used do not correspond morally or politically to the left, a reason why they should be understood as "strikers" for the authority to weaken the true social movements. Unfortunately, on the left itself there are cases of "pure" movements that, nevertheless, used violence without needing police infiltrators, like Los Enfermos (The Sick Ones) of Sinaloa in the 1970s. We cannot dismiss that in some desperate splinter group professional agitators are acting, but it is already suspicious that, as it happens, their public presence is limited to violent acts, without greater social or political presence.
Therefore, it is inconvenient that the authorities of the Federal District still have not clarified who they are and how these groups act, which gives rise to people saying that there is complicity to not uncover the matter or, worse, that we are faced with a type of repression sustained by the manipulation of these modern "hawks" (the federal security organizations are not far from it either, and they are not clarifying what we are up against). If to the silence we add the lack of professionalism of the involved police agencies (the topic of the undercover police dressed as civilians testifies improvisation), it is natural that doubts will grow, even the most exaggerated ones.
Faced with these facts, as well as reporting police abuse, I think that the left has the political obligation of separating itself clearly from all the attempts to make pacific resistance go to "another level", that is, the preaching of violent tactics, whether it is done with faces hooded or with faces exposed. The provocations will not disappear without forceful rejection from the communities among which they act. But the investigation is the responsibility of the authorities, and it would be good for the Head of Government [aka "Mayor" of Mexico City, Miguel Ángel Mancera] to get to work, since he is, it appears, the enemy to be defeated, the victim in the medium-term (and later, regarding discredit...the [loser of] votes).
Given the severity of the matter, I think it is essential that we close ranks against the campaign in progress to restrict the marches, which can lead to catastrophic results. And I mention only two: the growing justification of the heavy-handed approach before the social expressions of discontent, and the reduction of liberties in the name of peace and order, which is asked for shamelessly by the right and the "liberals" that accompany them. Wouldn't it help if the Legislative Assembly were to open an investigation to determine responsibility, rather than offering sanctions off the cuff? Spanish Original
*Adolfo Sánchez Rebolledo (b. 1942) is both an activist and journalist. A delegate to the First Latin American Youth Congress in Havana (1960), he took part in the solidarity movement with Vietnam and other leftist causes. As a correspondent for InterPress Service he covered the 1968 student movement. A former communist and socialist, he was one of the founders of the PRD, but left shortly afterwards. A co-founder of the Institute for the Study of Democratic Transition (1989), he is a member of its governing board. Sánchez writes a weekly column for La Jornada.