Update 2: After receiving further advice, I replaced the word “puritan” with “puritanical”. Thanks!

Update: I received a mail pointing out that Catholicism and Puritanism do not have anything to do with one another. While that is true,and the comment made by Dehm might look odd especially to US American reader’s, it has to be understood in the context that there “Puritans” have no history in Germany and that catholics are generally seen as being more “hard core” Christians — “relative puritanical” you might say.

I remember how a few years ago, when Diether Dehm, at that time running for reelection of vice leader of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), was speaking at the Solid summer camp and commented on the view many radicals have of how a socialist party should be – faultless right from the start: “There is this view, this puritanical view, among many on the left — and with that I don’t only mean among Catholics.” Everybody chuckled, and of course expected that this was nothing more of a excuse for him having been a member of the social democratic party before.

Well, and the same thing applies to revolutions or movements. Although I was aware of it before, I really got to see it here in Mexico. If you look at a lot of the US radical press (various indymedia sites), you-ll mostly find a celebration of the events in Oaxaca (anything the protesters have been doing), while the actions by the Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD) on a national scale are renounced as being reformist. The fact that many of the current PRD tops are former members of the Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI), the party that ruled Mexico during the entire cold war, got an American socialist I met at the university to renounce it right to start with: “that tells you right there who the PRD is.” Another activist I met held that the EZLN (Zapatista) movement is anarchist, while the APPO (Oaxacan People’s Popular Assembly) has to be counted as socialist — because “they are a union.”

Young leftists are often asking themselves why there are so many former leftists who turn to the (far) right once they hit a certain age or have experienced a certain amount. I think I may have found part of the answer to that: some day you-ll find that there is no puritanical revolution. And then you get cynical.
Let me try to exemplify: In Oaxaca, the APPO as well as those activists who are sitting in the university are only supported by a part of the population. While it is natural that bourgeoisie sectors of the population would not support them, the same seems to apply to a number of other people that I talked to, like teachers, taxi drivers, hostel staff and students. The thing that they mostly point out is that the protesters are not really true to the ideal of Benito Juarez, of respecting other people’s dignity when they do things like spray paint the entire inner city. Although I made sure those asked were not directly affiliated with a political group (according to themselves), it is of course hard to tell whether they represent the majority or the minority, and it must be said that at demonstrations, they usually got support from some people who by coincidence happened to drive by.

But I must agree, I can not see how graffiti painting the entire historical center is helping anything — it seems counterproductive to gaining support from wider sections of the population. Further, many suspect those who stayed at the university and the barricades of not really being students and as robbing stores to their own advantage. And it is true that I did not meet a person who claimed to be a student at the university (although another activist said she had talked to some), most instead being students or other political activists having been bused in from the city of Mexico.

About a week ago, I met one of them, a 20 year old punk rocker from the city of Mexico, in front of the Santa Domingo church in central Oaxaca around six or seven, I believe. He claimed to just have been drinking 1 liter of Mescal and was interested in what my background was. “Ah, the first world! Yeah you guys are all from indymedia — how creative!” he started when realizing where I was from. He then continued to talk on about how bad the first world was: “you don’t have any fights there. Only we have real struggles.” However, he believed that Mexico, with the exception of Mexico city, was behind in terms of punk rock music. “Tonight we will fight, throw molotovs,…” I countered saying that the entire situation was really quiet right now, but he claimed that the fighting “are not here, but in the barricades.” After trying to convince him that there were no huge battles in the barricades currently either (although I have later been told that the barricades were actually shot at at night) for a while longer, it turned out that he did not really know where the barricades were at. So I ended up walking him there, accompanied by constant protests that I, from the first world, could not possibly know where the barricades nor the university were situated.

The next few days I met him again, mostly drinking beer around the barricades or preparing himself for throwing Molotov cocktails (although I do not think he ever got to throw anything). A clear ideological conviction other than that he “wouldn’t work for anything” he did not seem to have, nor was he nor his friends very much updated on whatever the APPO had decided. While many others at the barricades had various leftist convictions, they mostly proved to have in common not to know exactly what the APPO had decided on anything. So when several of the APPO leaders went into the press announcing that the government would have a deadline until midnight the same day to show various prisoners or else barricades all over town would be re erected, the activists either did not know about it or knew just what the pro-APPO newspaper had said. As late as 9PM, a lawyer positive to the APPO and hanging around the university or Santa Domingo most nights told me that the deadline would be in place. At ten, I then met another one, with close relations to the APPO leaders effectively in charge who cleared up that nothing was going to happen.

I am very naive in concerns of narcotics, and as a male I do not notice machoist behavior as fast as women do and so I did not notice anything more than that the males generally were extremely keen on talking to any western female activist around. But as one girl who had stayed at the camp for a while told me, there was quite some consumption of crack among those at the barricades and she felt rather molested by the majority of male activists, as they were talking about who would have sex with her or warning her that one of the others would put something in the drink. Also, apparently they were robbing “random people”.

l number of people at the university I would estimate at a maximum of 150 at any given time. Many of those there I spoke to actually agreed with the US American anarchists in that PRD only represented reformism and was not anything to be counted with at all. However, amongst those involved at a higher level, the connection to the PRD was much more apparent.

For example, Flavio Sosa, mostly cited as spokesperson for the APPO, was long time PRD member, before he turned to support Fox of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) in 2000. The Zapatistas, the supposed anarchists in the whole game, called for a national stoppage on November 20th — the anniversary of the Mexican revolution and the day that PRDs AMLO had his inauguration ceremony planned in Mexico city. With it the Zapatistas wanted to support the APPO — the group claimed to be socialist (and thereby not anarchist). AMLO then called for the resignation of the PRI governor of Oaxaca and the withdrawal of the federal police during his inauguration. This is exactly what the APPO calls for and the outcome, an interim governor and shortly after new elections, would with all likelihood end with a PRD governor gaining office in Oaxaca given the election results in Oaxaca for federal deputies from July 2nd (9 PRD + coalition partners, 2 PRI, 0 PAN). And if the PRI governor of Oaxaca is to br kicked out by the federal parlament, it would require that PAN would vote in favor of removing him. The PAN is therefore locked in a position where they can either choose to remove a highly unpopular PRI governor with blood on his hands, thereby loosing the PRI as a coalition partner at the federal level, or they can choose to not remove him and thereby rather directly being connected with whatever atrocities he might commit. For the PRD it is a win/win situation; for the PAN it is the opposite.

So through the APPO, PRD (and it’s coalition parties) and Zapatistas are connected indirectly. However, also more directly the Subcommandanto Marcos (EZLN) has been in contact with AMLO “discussing ideas” and although the EZLN is currently not outright supporting the PRD, it is a rather interesting thing to do for a supposed anarchist group, completely separated from any kind of socialist tendency…

And all this is of course only what one can see on the surface. And if you start out with the political view that everything has to be as “puritanical”, it is easy to get disillusioned and cynical. And of course on the other hand, it is true that if you go as far as accepting murder or really dictatorial regimes, such as when the Norwegian Maoists supported Pol Pot, you are out in really deep waters.
The answer, I believe must be to realize the fact that any kind of change of this society will need to built on people who have been socialized in all the wrong ways in our current capitalist society, at the same time as setting clear boundaries how far things can go off track. Murder is where I draw the line. And of course, just because things are not perfect as they are today does not mean that they can not be improved upon. The fact that a lot of politically active people in Mexico today earlier have been members of the PRI, or even have been supporting the PAN, should not mean that they are “too dirty” to ever have any positive impact.

Further, no matter what radical ideological current one is member of oneself, one has to realize that the chances are minimal that any single current ever will gain a majority. On top, most currents have something or another to contribute that the others do not. Even Stalinists can for example tell you how doctor houses in East Germany were more efficient sharing their equipment that single doctor clinics in the west as well as that NATO really only had the purpose of turning the Soviet Union into saw dust. Anarchists have an important point in that elections — without any kind of movement that is willing to turn to civil resistance if governments or private businesses do things clearly against the interests of the majority of the people — are completely useless. Trotzkyists can tell you all about having to be internationalists, Maoists can tell you all about “adopting” the culture of everyday people, Luxemburgists can tell you about the need not to suppress the capitalist press or recognize odd nationalist movements when trying to be successful. Any of the currents taken alone, however, is just obscure.

Sitting in a very cold Mexico city, this is Johannes Wilm, who will return to Oaxaca about tomorrow…