The guerrillas into a black hole
Interview with Fritz Glockner
Ariel Ruiz Mondragón is generally considered that the last armed uprising that confronted the regime of the Mexican Revolution of General Saturnino Cedillo in 1938, quickly stifled. Thereafter it appears that the political peace and social stability was guaranteed by the government in the long stage authoritarian PRI pax, just shaken by some civic movements of different types (teachers, railroad, medical student).
However, alongside various social struggles (even more: as products of some of them) appeared radical groups considered inadequate, insufficient and misleading ways that the Mexican political system offered to channel their demands, so they decided to take up procure arms for a revolution that straighten the prevailing injustice and inequality. Several of these attempts have taken place since the forties of last century, and despite the country's democratization, has not yet ceased. About
several of these revolutionary attempts Fritz Glockner has just published his book Red Report. History of the guerrillas in Mexico (1943-1968) (Mexico, Ediciones B, 2007), which indicates the actions of the major guerrilla groups in that period.
About this book talk with author, conversation in which the following themes: the reasons and difficulties in performing her historical research, the state of the discussion of historical memory in Mexico, the closure of peaceful means to resolve conflicts, the role of PCM, Cuba and the United States in the development of Mexican guerrillas, the efficiency of intelligence and ingenuity of the armed groups, the failure of the assault on the Barracks Wood and the student movement of 1968.
Glockner is a historian and novelist, author of 6 books and has been publisher and bookseller, and collaborator of various media. He has also taught at the Universidad Iberoamericana and at Dartmouth College and was a major press officers of the presidential campaign of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in 1994.
Ariel Ruiz (AR) : Although the first part of your book deals with the subject, I ask: Why write a book like this, especially after fictionalized books that had a lot of memory, such as copper Twenty and Cemetery paper?
Fritz Glockner (FG) : Not that has left suddenly and Twenty Cemetery, or rather, the original draft report red. On the way to investigate, to be writing this book, is how come those two children not provided. But the original draft 25 years ago was to write the history of guerrilla movements in Mexico.
Suddenly these two novels came out very good fortune; but the idea from the beginning was to rescue the memory hidden underground, that the Mexican government has been denying since its foundation as such. Then it
way to deliver a first memory chronologically red since 1943, with the emergence of Ruben Jaramillo, until 1968, with the logic of what was popular student civic movement. The story does not end there, of course, because, as I've said, is a ghost story rather than bodies, because they are acting in the present. There are currently, according to National Defense, 19 armed groups, which is known for the EZLN, ERPI, the EPR, but there is one that takes the name of Ruben Jaramillo, one that takes the villismo, and are acting today.
Next year will be another book called wounded Years, comprising from 1969 to 1978 narratively speaking, and from 1979 to 2007 will come an annotated chronology. Did not get to 2007 because it is not my intention to be the counterattack of these torturers of history (I mean Hector Aguilar Camin, Carlos Tello Diaz, Enrique Krauze, at the same Sergio Aguayo, who have rented your computer, it's not your pen because now we all write on computer-and your fingers obviously propagandistic interests and not looking for the history of this country.)
This not to say that my work is infallible, on the contrary, I think there are still many gaps to fill and there are many contrasting data. I think it is a first approach to what has to do with the hidden history of our country or denied, the result of a job of 25 years of research.
AR: What were the main difficulties you had to do the research?
FG: Of course the sources. Any historian will have an underlying problem with their sources, whether you're investigating the nineteenth century, Mesoamerica or whatever you want. In this case note that I'm trying a history denied, in principle, of course, by the Mexican government, which is reducing the armed movements of social or ideological grassroots to the sensationalist journalism.
Those activists, those fighters were in underground circles, therefore, also its own underground education confined them to a discipline of not talking, even after having spent ten, twenty or thirty years. Fortunately many of them agreed to speak with me by the surname that I have, to my origin, my family and blood covered his share of not only numbers but gender (my Aunt Julie and my dad no one can claim anything.)
Another aspect which had to be was very cautious journalistic information. As mentioned, you can not go with the logic of the information published in the sensationalist press of the late sixties and seventies (such as Excelsior , El Universal, La Prensa , The Herald ), nor can marry the vision of the magazine pamphlet Why? of Policy magazine or journal events (even in its best moments). These newspaper sources must also be taken with caution by the researcher. Even
oral testimony, subjecting all participants armed groups to which I narrate their experiences, is a form of torture as well. The memory has its twists and turns, not of treason but to accommodate the facts, the data with a cold and out of passion, then this memory can be a little distorted, can be accommodated at different times of your life, and that happens to us all: "Tell me you did ten years ago, carnal, when I stopped." What you tell it differently the next day, and you tell it differently every year, and when it has been ten years what you tell it differently because you are a different person. Then the oral deposition is a source you have to take with tweezers
Another element: the limited literature on the subject, I think the more informed might be Lucio Cabañas, but it remains to be a bibliography that must be GET WITH rapier.
Finally, the written testimonies of many activists, many members of the repressive forces. Is the famous book-witness who was a prosecutor that it was the 65, 68, and even the interrogation of those who participated in the attempted abduction Garza Sada. It is a testament that we must also have.
Everyone craved, by 1998, access to police files celebrity politics of Mexico, the Federal Bureau Security (a bit morbid, and like to know what was said of one.) When to Zedillo opened in that year the famous three thousand and boxes, and then in 2002 to Vicente Fox some more, it generates a wave of unnecessary credibility to what is written there. What am I referring? There is an archive, but a police file. There should be very cautious, because the 2002 to date have been born fungus called experts of the misnamed "dirty war", which based its information on the statements in a detainee who was being tortured (many of these seudoespecialistas of the so-called "dirty war" are those who believe as torturers of history). This information police must handle with caution, because there is the net of the planet.
insist historical research: sources per se have a number of limitations and precautions to be taken into account in this case more so, assuming you are talking about a history denied. Political advertising and how to distort the facts has been shed on the success of the campaign of the Mexican state, and even the Left who rejected, who denied or disagreed with the ultras who chose the weapons also Latin American exiles, who saw no reason for the existence guerrillas in Mexico, because they were received with great fanfare after they ran out of the Latin American dictatorships or call English Republic from 1939 (of course, for them life was little mother, rose, and saw no reason for an armed movement whose origins are related to social injustice).
Then I meet a number of witnesses, sources you need to know question, seduce, sift and check to be allowed to fall in drafting a final text.
AR: Now, is not now, but for many years in several South American countries there are intense debates about historical memory of the dirty wars of dictatorial regimes. What about the intellectual and moral debate we are in our country?
FG: We have not come to that discussion in this country because there is no story, I repeat, is a story that we're just giving birth. It is obvious that since 1994 the spotlight not only focused on the existence of the EZLN and guerrillas in Mexico, but also threw light shadows (contradictory metaphor, and not released but shades of light to the immediate past before 94). But it remains an issue that has been well managed and controlled by the media on the orders of the state governments, municipal and federal government.
Vicente Fox wanted to take a bit of openness and its main intent of demarcation of the PRI governments had to do with the famous so-called "dirty war." Remember that Fox, when he was running for President of the Republic, opened his speech in the debate of 2000 specifically acknowledges the political disappearances, the struggle of Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, the abuses that the Mexican government had exercised for decades on those civilians who chose the weapons as a way to modify the structure of this country. It was a hollow political discourse: political institution created a void of justice (the famous Attorney Special Political and Social Movements of the Past). Opened the files to be written a story light, as the hypothesis of Sergio Aguayo in The tray : guerrilla never existed, or existed but never threatened the safety of the Mexican state, but on the contrary, they were law enforcement which enhanced the existence of the guerrillas to win political and economic dispensations. But without the guerrillas had not been an electoral reform promoted by Jesus Reyes Heroles in 1978. The existence of 3 000 political disappearances during the period from 1969 to 1978 tells of a human tragedy sized bitches, not minimize it. That did not call
most of the national debate (as if it happened in Colombia, Argentina or Guatemala) and was the media's ability to deny the Mexican political system, not because the causes are lower in Mexico than in Colombia. But raised concerns in law enforcement, and say who could make a fool Luis Echeverria Alvarez, who was senior officer, deputy and secretary of the Interior and President of the Republic? If anyone knew, was in the basement of the historic underworld Mexican political system was him. Who could do asshole? "Fernando Gutierrez Barrios, Nazar Haro, Zorrilla? Mame not Aguayo your stupid theory that he invented Gutiérrez Barrios reports Echeverria, who knew how to be involved telephone lines, the way they intercepted the mail and telegraph Mexicans know what kind of spies infiltrated the peasant movement union, association, guerrilla, popular student.
What happened? Echeverría obviously handled every aspect of the puzzle of black politics in Mexico. Therefore, in this logic knew how to deal with the guerrillas and how to destroy them, how to generate a low intensity war. Never put in check the Mexican State but there was a surprising shock that generated political and economic instability (the murder of Garza Sada was not a party to the Echeverria). If the assassination of top leader of this country's business did not generate instability for national security, then what? That leaves me with no bullshit.
What the guerrillas did not call the masses that came to the capital with pitchforks, sickles, hammers and guns? Well, obviously, were in the seventies, they were in 1910. So do not tell me that there was no check Aguayo to stability and national security with the examples just given. There are documents, files, statements.
What? Vicente Fox incubated a number of intellectuals, also linked to the Zedillo and Salinas (to which catalog as "torturers of history"), to minimize the effects of a history that is in force; just happened, just a few months ago , attacks on Pemex pipelines, successful military action that did not cost even a small drop of blood, with firepower than ever before. To minimize this you have to minimize the past.
What happened? We have not even reached the moral debate, if they did well or not Ruben Jaramillo and Lucio Cabañas, we have not reached the historical reckoning for So we have not reached the reckoning of justice as such. What happened to the arrest warrants against Nazar Haro, Echeverria?
So we're in the delay of delay compared with the processes of Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Uruguay.
AR: Now Going the content of the book: I think what goes through the book is the tension of social struggle and popular movement to march through legal channels, institutional and peaceful, and appeal to the fight armed. Do you think that if they had closed all peaceful means that many decided to continue the armed struggle?
FG : closed course. Not that they have closed but never opened. Close means that was open all the time, and no. There was no opening.
Wins Mexican revolution, which is a story of traitors (and their logical treason betrays Obregón to Carranza, Carranza Zapata, Cárdenas Streets, although all are on the same wall of the Congress and all are buried under the symbol of the Mexican Revolution) that generates a media stability from 1920 to Obregon, with the parentheses of the "Cristero war." This country was up the ass of war: we were the nineteenth century, which had war every third day. We needed a break, which gives the beginning of the twentieth century, under a rule and a logic of revolutionary achievements that never lands: the land will never reach those to come, the democratic opening is never in the labor unions, corporatism established from the Mexican state of Lazaro Cardenas in a perfect bastard media control of the Mexican proletariat (the proletariat headless Revueltas). This caused no doors were closed, but were never open.
What happened when they began to enforce the law? Nothing. There are lies, what I'm saying Jaramillo parade at the office of Agrarian Reform; Gámiz parade and Pablo Arturo Gómez Ramírez, supported by Gaytan, to fulfill the agreements they had agreed to the petty landlords and peasants, did not serve. Besides, what did Lucio Cabañas on 18 May 1967, Alvarez? The removal of a director. It was the seizure of power. What called Genaro Vazquez, the railroad in 1958, teachers in 1948? In the list of demands, 1968 National Strike Council never called for the overthrow of the president or the establishment of socialism. All are basic demands were not asking the pearls of the Virgin.
are arrogance, insensitivity, corruption, cooptation, chayote, no degradation of the political system but of the revolution itself, which is a story of betrayal. How can we expect someone honorable if the history of the Mexican Revolution is "Today and tomorrow I salute you murderer? Our foundations are screwed because our revolutionary discourse is fucked up, and that comes from betrayal. This led to arrogance and never would have opened legal channels, they were always closed.
AR: Even turnout.
FG: Well, there was no turnout. Candidates had straw, as Vasconcelos and Henriquez.
AR: But the book shows examples like those of Jaramillo, who participated in the OMAP or Pablo and Raul Gomez and Arturo Gámiz in PP ...
FG: But such attitudes are well-intentioned belief in the legality when it does not exist. I repeat: we are home traitor. Clear that they want to participate legally in a fucking choice, and do Gámiz and Gomez in Chihuahua, and does Jaramillo, Lucio does Chilpancingo. They think the discourse of innocence, when the system has its own interests assholes of treason: if the generals and leaders of the Mexican revolution betrayed each other, what betray not a fucking peasant (do not say it disparagingly)? His vision was patarrajadas farmers. If I screw the next general, "then how I will not betray a patarrajada bastard? Sure, others had the illusion of legality, but the law has no illusion that treason (which I just throw words: it's rump and it is very strong).
AR: On this I liked the part where she tells the discussion between Heberto Castillo and Genaro Vázquez about the legal way and as a method of armed struggle.
Now, what do you think the general position in the Communist Party took Mexican in all these episodes? Jaramillo Gámiz and criticized him, for example. FG
: accommodating. The PC was the big scab of the Mexican left. He played the role of representing the interests of the proletariat does not exist: it was never linked to the proletariat. It was in a fucking bubble receiving instructions (which became sentences) of the First, Third, Eighteenth, Thirty-Ninth International USSR and Stalin. To him was worth the Mexican working class mother, but rather had its world geopolitics.
is the same with Cuba, with all the pain of my heart, with all that appreciation and respect for the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro played of scab. It must be said, not because it is a myth or an icon not going to say. The friendship between Fernando Gutierrez Barrios and complicity scabs caused Fidel Castro's accusation. There were young people who came to the Cuban embassy to pretend to be trained, like other young people who received it in Latin America, Asia and Africa. He gave birth Cuba to Mexico from the Mexican guerrilla movements, so the Mexican guerrilla is the most isolated, beaten, puteada, spit, scrubbing, ignored. Ignores the enemy, which is the Mexican government, the group ignored the election, the party that represents the Mexican working class, which is the PC, it ignores the bastion, paradise revolutionary icon of the liberation of Latin America, Cuba, that betrays and batters. And the ending Latin American guerrilla comrades in exile in Mexico also ignored, because it was fucking on the risk, after running out of Stroessner, Pinochet and Videla, a link to Mexican guerrillas, because they had suffered torture rather than wanted the tortured here. Pobre pendejo
Mexican guerrilla, got on an island but not a black hole in the universe. Fucked up, so I write this costs an egg and explain. It is the story that moves me is the memory, is to give a little light on that hole. But the PCM
played
scab paper not only in the history of the guerrillas, but in the history of the Latin American left, but that is another issue.
AR: What I have narrated in the book is framed by the Cold War era, but find few references to the United States. In that sense, what influence did the anti-American policy in the fight against armed groups in Mexico?
FG: I am very roe imperialism. The reactionaries, the conservatives in Mexico and the Mexican government and red meant "comeniños" communist monster. Also for the Mexican left a hamburger, a Kit Kat or John Lennon meant imperialism, no mames. This does not mean that the U.S. did not influence the low-intensity war that is set in Mexico's own professionalism and training of police and military, as well as, obviously, in the exchange of information. Especially Mexican governments functioned in CIA, it was more what brought Mexico to the global anti-communist campaign waged by the United States, the U.S. global campaign to Mexico. Here the chairs were on the payroll of the CIA, not that imperialism came to dominate, although there were domain via advertising, such as Reader's Digest (after the Soviets released their Sputnik, which spawn each other).
There are things more important, so I do not put what you're saying. Roe also gives me tremendous left to assume that, because it will grab a burger and a Coke at a Mexican restaurant, accused of imperialism.
That was in the sixties and seventies. Was Stalinism. There was McCarthyism, there were no censored authors, but almost. If you look at the case of José Revueltas, suffered the same as American writers with McCarthyism, but from the left. That gives me roe, and, above all, the complicity of the Mexican State CIA, which is not that we needed their agents here (which also had them), but it was the Mexican government itself that was on the payroll.
AR: On the intelligence of the Mexican state points to the professionalization of the Federal Security Directorate. Do not you think they were very good at the time of your writing?
FG: No need to weigh the danger of armed groups, as asshole Aguayo says. They were so efficient that they knew and had the technology to interception of telephone calls, had the performance to infiltrate farmers, students. Obviously were efficient eficientísimos.
Cuando acudes al Archivo General de la Nación y ves los documentos, te das cuenta de que no transcurrían 24 horas de que apareciera una pinta en el último rincón de la Sierra Mixteca poblana o hidalguense, en pinches pueblitos a los que para llegar tienes que caminar 12 horas, para que ya estuviera reportado en la Ciudad de México. Si eso no es eficiencia, no sé qué chingados lo es.
El Estado mexicano tenía una red policíaca implacable. Pero la propia corrupción, cuando llega el narco, genera que sea ineficiente. Pero fue eficientísima, y también los propios grupos guerrilleros eran muy inocentones.
AR : Como ocurrió muy claramente with the group of Victor Rico Galán.
FG: The Trouser Rico, September 23 itself (as we will discuss in Years injured), including his own Jaramillo you were very innocent; Arturo Gámiz even wanted to be a deputy for the PP. MAR students, studying at the Patrice Lumumba University. Are acts of revolutionary innocence that cost them their lives, days of torture and a house of terror never imagined.
That innocence, against the wickedness of the political system, created the house of terror.
AR: One of the part that I liked about the book is where he tells the assault on the barracks of wood.
FG : Do not you hear Carlos Montemayor because you will hate.
AR: You will leave the interview.
FG: Well, that skunk Carlos Montemayor. Is more chingón that weapons dawn (laughs).
AR: You argue that, when Gámiz and people are going to the mountains, was the correct decision resulting from his analysis: take up arms. They had some political successes, had the theoretical justification and were given the objective conditions, as indicated by analysis. Only missing the date for the great socialist revolution. What's what failed?
FG: I am convinced that the famous Captain Cardenas Barajas was an infiltrator, I do not know if the Mexican government itself, but perhaps the Cubans, and triangulated. Do not forget that this dude took part in the training of Fidel Castro and Ernesto Guevara de la Serna. Left much to be desired; was a shady character who appears in other safe houses, if not, how the fuck I ever knew who was willing to take up arms? All those stories allow me to pose the obvious treason and had tipped off the military squad (if not all of the soldiers, the military commands of other wooden barracks). This generates (and Lugo tells it very well, a survivor, in his testimony) that they were waiting. For me, basically happens. Whether there
Salvador Gaytan arrived, or had not flooded the fucking river, were waiting. There were 30 soldiers, as they thought, but almost 130. While other farmers had arrived, the soldiers were quartered.
Besides, who had had military training? Only Gaytan, Gomez and Gámiz. The others were soldiers and had a military education.
Once again it was the innocence. Also, if that jerk had studied Fidel Castro had failed in its attempt assault on the Moncada Barracks, fuck Pa'que repeat the example of a failure! (Laughs). I'm not making fun of revolutionary martyrs, in a good plan. They were repeating a successful guerrilla armed action, but emulating an action failed, the Moncada, where Castro was jailed.
AR: You conclude with regard to the student movement of 1968, and mention that some of it went toward the guerrillas, as happened with so-called Lacandones, which resulted in the League after 23 September. Confront two views of 68: one, that says that the move was a vaccine against the guerrillas, and another that says that it made possible the guerrillas. What of the two views do you prefer?
FG: For any two. Out on a tangent: both are right, but I disagree with them. What am I? Members of the Mexican guerrilla pos68 are the character's sister in Red Dawn, the teenager. One of the great graces of this film is the generational history: the grandfather who participated in the Mexican Revolution, the father and mother, products of the "Mexican miracle", the youth sesentayocheros in the euphoria, utopia, dreams, Che , Lennon. Then there is a girl, a sister who is in high school, and is Carlitos. The indignation of the character of the girl secondary is the Plaza de las Tres Culturas (or is there because he lives in Tlatelolco, but does not understand what their brothers fools are doing) and see the slaughter, leading to the guerrillas. Carlitos, who are we, who left a country carpeted with corpses, and just have to jump, it's like Red Dawn ends. Evidently
active urban guerrilla warfare in the seventies, but not just for 68, but also by 71. Matches also in Guadalajara FEG had dominated the city, and went unnoticed, as in 71. But there the repression generated by Carlos Ramirez and his henchmen Ladewig I already had it up the ass people. The conflict of interest between the family and family Zuno Ramirez, great chieftains of Jalisco, generates the activation of those famous "Viking", which are not common criminals, who are not band, but there is a story of a social fabric: a neighborhood popular on the outskirts of Guadalajara which generates complicity and rolls very badass. They all knew as children, but were not band students, and political participation were in college. With all these elements formed a little soup mother exploded in cities: Monterrey, Guadalajara, Sinaloa, some of Puebla, Mexico City. These are the major cities where it is going to move be the urban guerrilla, not a product of 68, who was not in many of these cities. Raúl Ramos Zavala and brought the worm, and Carlos Martín del Campo brings gusanote, like Diego Lucero in Chihuahua. Reduce
vaccine or motor analysis seems absurd to me, is neither one nor the other, but both are right. Was shot and engine, but there is no connection between them.
is clear that the electoral reform of 1978 is the product of the guerrillas in Mexico. The two moments of amnesty recognition that there was guerrilla warfare: if they were criminals, why the fuck the amnesty? That analysis has not been done to take advantage from the Left. The amnesty is tacit recognition that the weapons were for social reasons.
