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Mexican Dirty War
Part of the Cold War and Operation Condor
Mexican Army soldiers in the streets in 1968
Date 1964–1982 Location Mexico Result Government victory Continued rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party Most leftist guerrilla groups disbanded After the conflict Several acts of violence have not yet been clarified. Political defeat of the PRI in the 2000 presidential elections before the National Action Party (PAN). Grouping of the political left and formation of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Dissolution of Dirección Federal de Seguridad for crimes committed during Mexican Dirty War and for having alliances with Guadalajara Cartel and drug lords like Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Rafael Caro Quintero
Belligerents
Left-wing groups People's Guerrilla Group Party of the Poor National Revolutionary Civic Association Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre National Liberation Forces Various other social and armed movements in the country	Mexico Institutional Revolutionary Party DFS - Security Directorate (Intelligence) Armed Forces (Military) Judicial Police (Law enforcement) United States (small arms, ammunition, and explosives)
Casualties and losses
Estimated at least 3,000 people disappeared and executed, 3,000 political prisoners, and 7,000 tortured

The Mexican Dirty War (Spanish: Guerra sucia) was the Mexican theater of the Cold War, an internal conflict from the 1960s to the 1980s between the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)-ruled government under the presidencies of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría and José López Portillo, which were backed by the US government, and left-wing student and guerrilla groups. During the war, government forces carried out disappearances (estimated at 1,200), systematic torture, and "probable extrajudicial executions".

In the 1960s and 1970s, Mexico was persuaded to be part of both Operation Intercept and Operation Condor, developed between 1975 and 1978, with the pretext to fight against the cultivation of opium and marijuana in the "Golden Triangle", particularly in Sinaloa.

The operation, commanded by General José Hernández Toledo, was a flop with no major drug-lord captures; however, many abuses and acts of repression were committed.

The judicial investigation into State crimes against political movements was not opened until the end of the 71-year long PRI regime and the accession to power of Vicente Fox in 2000, which created the Special Prosecutor's Office for Social and Political Movements of the Past (FEMOSPP). However, despite revealing much about the history of the conflict, the FEMOSPP has not been able to finalize prosecutions against the main instigators of the Dirty War.

In the early 1960s, previously schoolteachers, Genaro Vázquez Rojas and Lucio Cabañas, created their own “armed rebellion” in Guerrero’s mountains. Rojas and Cabañas’ rebellion group would work together to attack other groups for their own gain, rob others, and kidnap for ransom. Wherever there was an attack meant for the Mexican government or military, Mexican civilians suffered the consequences of being robbed, kidnapped or having their homes overthrown. An example of these events occurred in 1971 with three major kidnappings which produced “millions of pesos” through ransom for the rebelling forces.

In March 2019, the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, publicly released the archives of the defunct Federal Security Directorate, which contain a great amount of previously undisclosed information about the Dirty War and the political persecution by the PRI governments in the 20th century. López Obrador stated that "We lived for decades under an authoritarian regime which limited freedoms and persecuted those who struggled for social change" and issued an official apology on behalf of the Mexican State towards the victims of the repression. López Obrador further stated that judicial action will be taken against the surviving perpetrators of the repression, and promised that the surviving victims will be able to claim compensation under the law.

Events

Poster denouncing the forced disappearance of Felix Barrientos Campos, arrested on July 5, 1975 in Acapulco (Guerrero, Mexico) and whose whereabouts are unknown until the date of the poster's placement in 2010. The announcement was placed in the Alameda Central of Mexico City.

The war was characterized by a backlash against the active student movement of the late 1960s which ended in the Tlatelolco massacre at a 1968 student rally in Mexico City, in which 30 to 300 (according to official reports; non-governmental sources claim death toll in the thousands) students were killed, and in the Corpus Christi massacre, another massacre of student demonstrators in Mexico City on June 10, 1971.

There were several mostly independent groups fighting against the government during this period. Among the most important, the September 23 Communist League was at the forefront of the conflict, active in several cities throughout Mexico, drawing heavily from Christian Socialist and Marxist student organizations. They carried out confrontations with Mexican security forces, several kidnappings, and attempted to kidnap Margarita López Portillo, the sister of the president. In Guerrero, the Party of the Poor, fighting against landholder impunity and oppressive police practices in rural areas, was led by the ex-teacher Lucio Cabañas; they carried out ambushes of the army and security forces and the abduction of Guerrero's governor-elect.

Cessation of hostilities

The legalization of left-wing political parties in 1978 along with the amnesty of imprisoned and at large guerrillas caused a number of combatants to end militant struggle against the government. However, certain groups continued fighting, and the National Human Rights Commission states the hostilities continued into 1982.

In June 2002, a report prepared for Vicente Fox, the first president not from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 71 years, detailed the government's actions from 1964 to 1982. The report states, according to BBC News, that the Mexican army "kidnapped, tortured, and killed hundreds of rebel suspects" in the period and accused the Mexican state of genocide. The Mexican Special Prosecutor claimed the report was overly biased against the military and that it failed to detail crimes committed by rebels, including kidnappings, bank robberies, and assassinations. However, general consensus is that the report accurately assessed the government's culpability. Instead of ensuring the security of innocent civilians, it victimized them and killed them alike.

Guerrilla groups

The year 1960 marked the beginning of a decade of terror in the region of Guerrero as the state slowly began to deal with the citizens and peasants there ever-more violently. The state enacted the acts of suppression on Guerrero to keep the numerous different political reform movements stifled, as the local people over time grew agitated with the way the government was wielding its power and meddling with their rights. As the citizens grew more determined to speak out against the government in the 1960s, the PRI continued to increase its terror tactics in the region. While that was done to keep the populace under its control, the constant stream of violence pushed many guerrillas to consider raising up arms against the PRI.

The rising of guerrilla groups in the 1960s and 1970s provided the state an excuse to focus its resources on suppressing the armed activities of the guerrillas. The army would become infamous for its tactics in repressing the rebels in the rural areas of Mexico, where such practices such as the death flights were initiated.

This period of state violence in the state of Guerrero helped to bring about numerous guerrilla organizations. One of the groups was the Party of the Poor (PDLP), which was influenced by Marxism and people like Che Guevara. That group tended to be focused more on the rural regions like Guerrero, where they would be more likely to find support among the peasants there. The PDLP actions become more violent towards the rich after events such as the 1967 Atoyac massacre, where leaders like Lucio Cabañas tried to use the peasants anger to bring about true revolution.

As the 1960s and 1970s would go on, the PDLP would gain attention around the nation for acts like its kidnapping of Ruben Figueroa who was a prominent leader of the PRI. While this act inspired those downtrodden by the government, this also marked the decline of the organization as the government began to focus more on taking out this guerrilla group. Eventually the army found and killed Cabañas on December 2, 1974 in an attempt to cause his movement to fall apart. Another school teacher turned revolutionary, Genaro Vázquez Rojas, founded the National Revolutionary Civic Association (ACNR) as a response to the governments actions in Guerrero. These two leaders and their movements emerged as the armed phase of this social struggle against a corrupt government, which would continue long after the deaths of the leaders.

Torture

Torture was one of the many tools used by the PRI-run state in its drive to keep the numerous guerrilla groups and political dissidents repressed. While torture was illegal in many countries during this time, the numerous authoritarian regimes that sprung up from the Cold War used it to great effect. The Mexican state used torture to get information from captured rebels and guerrillas about attacks and plans. This torturing would be done at any number of clandestine detention centers, where guerrillas would be sent to before arriving at a legal prison so as the state's activities would be kept secret from outside sources. Typically both male and female guerrilla prisoners would be tortured at these areas. It was more common for women to be sexually assaulted by their guards. This, combined with other forms of physical and psychological gender-based transgressions leads some to believe that the state employed this form of gender policing to try and deter women from breaking the regime's social and political norms.

The detaining and torturing of political prisoners became more systematic after the student uprisings in 1968, for the government decided that heavy-handed responses were necessary to deal with the unrest. This stage of violent and public repression of differing ideals was similar to the regimes of the Southern Cone governments, such as Argentina.

Aftermath

While Mexico's Dirty War has been over for a number of years, not much is known of the extent of the number of victims the war claimed, due to its elusive nature throughout its length. Part of the reason for this problem is that since there was no large-scale truth commission to bring justice to the perpetrators and closure for the victim's families, Mexico never had its "Pinochet moment" in regards to the war. From the early 2000s onward, some local investigations have been carried out by NGOs, providing some insight into the tactics and dynamics of the war, as well as the scale of crimes. One example, conducted by the Association of Relatives of Victims of Disappearance, Detention and Human Rights Violations in Mexico (AFADEM) documented over 470 disappearances at the hands of state forces during the 1970s just in the municipality of Atoyac. Another problem was the lack of response in the wake of the 2006 report by Carillo Prieto, which documented some of the atrocities inflicted by the PRI regime. Despite this evidence of numerous crimes that violated human rights, ex-president Echeverria and several other PRI officials had their cases dismissed and became free men. The failure by the government to address these problems of the past has been a cause of tension at times in Mexico, as citizens become distrustful of a state that does not address the old regime and its reign of terror.

Further reading

• Aviña, Alexander. "A War Against Poor People: Dirty Wars and Drug Wars in 1970s Mexico". In Pensado, Jaime M. and Enrique C. Ochoa. Mexico Beyond 1968, pp.134-152.
• Herrera Calderón, Fernando. "Working-Class Heroes: Barrio Consciousness, Student Power, and the Mexican Dirty War". In Pensado, Jaime M. and Enrique C. Ochoa. Mexico Beyond 1968, pp. 155-174.
• Herrera Calderón, Fernando and Adela Cedillo. Challenging Authoritarianism in Mexico: Revolutionary Struggles and the Dirty War, 1964-1982. Routledge 2012.
• McCormick, Gladys I. "Torture and the Making of a Subversive During Mexico's Dirty War". In Pensado, Jaime M. and Enrique C. Ochoa. Mexico Beyond 1968, pp. 254-272.
• McCormick, Gladys I. "The Last Door: Political Prisoners and the Use of Torture in Mexico's Dirty War". The Americas 74, no. 1 (Jan. 2017): 57-81.
• Pansters, Wil G. "Zones and Languages of State-Making: From Pax Priista to Dirty War". In Pensado, Jaime M. and Enrique C. Ochoa. Mexico Beyond 1968, pp. 33-50.
• Pansters, Wil G. ed. Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico: The Other Half of the Centaur. Stanford: Stanford University Press 2013.
• Pensado, Jaime M. and Enrique C. Ochoa. Mexico Beyond 1968: Revolutionaries, Radicals, and Repression during the Global Sixties and Subversive Seventies. Tucson: University of Arizona Press 2018. ISBN 978-0-8165-3842-3
• Ulloa Bornemann, Alberto, and Arthur Schmidt. Surviving Mexico's Dirty War: A Political Prisoner's Memoir. Philadelphia: Temple University Press 2007.

September 23rd Communist League
Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre
Madera, newsletter of the LC23S
Leaders	Ignacio Arturo Salas Obregón (1973-1974) † David Jimenez Sarmiento (1974-1976) † Luis Miguel Corral García (1976-1977) † Miguel Ángel Barraza García (1977-1981) † Coordinación Nacional Provisional (1981-1982)
Dates of operation	1973–1983
Headquarters	Guadalajara, Jalisco (1973-1974) Ciudad de México (1974-1982)
Ideology	Marxism–Leninism
Political position	Far-left
Status	Inactive
Allies	Unión del Pueblo (UP) Fuerzas Revolucionarias Armadas del Pueblo (FRAP)
Opponents	Mexican Army Institutional Revolutionary Party Dirección Federal de Seguridad Brigada Especial
Battles and wars	the Dirty War (Mexico)

The Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre (English: September 23rd Communist League), or LC23S, was a Marxist-Leninist urban guerrilla movement that emerged in Mexico in the early 1970s. The result of the merging of various armed revolutionary organizations active in Mexico prior to 1974, with the objective of creating a united front to combat the Mexican government; the name was chosen to commemorate an unsuccessful guerrilla assault on the barracks of Ciudad Madera in the northern state of Chihuahua led by former schoolteacher Arturo Gámiz and the People's Guerrilla Group on September 23, 1965. The LC23S' militancy was made up mainly of young disenfranchised university students who saw any opportunity of a peaceful political transformation die in the aftermath of the 1968 student movement and then to be buried in the violent crackdown of 1971. Its long term objective was the “elimination of the capitalist system and bourgeois democracy, which would be replaced by a socialist republic and the dictatorship of the proletariat”.

Labeled a terrorist organization by the Mexican authorities, the LC23S engaged in numerous violent attacks, both against what they considered their "class enemy" (the bourgeoisie) and the authoritarian government of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). At that point, this party had held the presidency for more than 40 years since the end of the Mexican Revolution and, through acts of political corruption, co-opting of opposition and violent repression, had eliminated most political dissent. Although the League saw itself as the vanguard of the proletariat, it never really penetrated the minds of the workers or peasants. Hundreds of young militants died during that time, with many more still considered missing. Without having a social base in the workers' sphere and with a disbandment of militants who saw an opportunity of activism in the aftermath of the new legal framework, the September 23rd Communist League disappeared at the beginning of the eighties.

Massacre of Corpus Christi

Main article: El Halconazo

From his earliest days in office, President Luis Echeverría Álvarez announced intentions to reform democracy in Mexico. Students were excited and thought they would have the opportunity to return to the streets to demonstrate discomfort against the government. A conflict at the University of Nuevo León gave them an opportunity to test this new freedom. The National Autonomous University of Mexico and National Polytechnic Institute immediately responded and the students called for a massive rally in support of Nuevo León on June 10, 1971.

The march started at the Casco de Santo Tomás, and proceeded through Carpio and Maestros Avenues so the protesters could take the Mexico-Tacuba Causeway, and eventually end up at Zócalo. The streets leading to the Maestros Avenue were blocked by police officers and riot police, who did not allow the students to pass. There were tankettes parked along Melchor Ocampo Avenue, near the military school, and riot police trucks in a large police contingent at the intersection of the Melchor Ocampo and San Cosme Avenues. A shock group trained by the Federal Security Directorate and the CIA, known as "los Halcones", who came in grey trucks, vans, and riot trucks, attacked students from streets near Maestros Avenue after the riot police opened their blockade. The shock group first attacked with bamboo and kendo sticks so the students easily repelled them. Los Halcones then attacked the students again, with high-caliber rifles, while students tried, unsuccessfully, to hide. Even though the area was surrounded by police officers, there was no intervention in the clashes. The shooting lasted for several minutes, during which some cars gave logistical support to the paramilitary group. The death toll is controversial, but it is considered to be close to 120 people, in a moderate calculation.

Local repression

Even though, in Mexico City, the social unrest and the following repression that started back in the fifties and sixties greatly influenced the development of subsequent popular movements, in the rest of the country this was not the case. Each state had, in varying degrees, its own expression of authoritarian politics and repression of dissent. While in the northern states, like Sonora and Chihuahua, the government's strategy (in a joint effort with the news media) was that of politically discrediting any form of opposition, in some southern Mexican states like Guerrero, Oaxaca, Michoacán, the unsatisfied population had to deal with police repression, kidnappings and death squads. This is the main reason why two of the most important guerrilla organizations of the late sixties appeared in the hills and jungle of Guerrero: the Partido de los Pobres (Party of the Poor, PdlP) and the Asociación Civíca Nacional Revolucionaria (National Revolutionary Civic Association, ACNR). The first one was led by Lucio Cabañas Barrientos while the latter was led by Genaro Vázquez Rojas, both of them with a background in rural elementary school teaching (maestros normalistas rurales). By the late sixties and early seventies, there were dozens of armed socialist groups in most of the states of the republic, each created by its own local conditions.

Coordinadora Nacional Guerrillera and the Organización Partidaria

The first person to develop the idea of the unification of the armed organizations at the national level was Raúl Ramos Zavala, who since 1969, by means of texts such as "El Proceso Revolucionario en México, el tiempo que nos toco vivir" (The Revolutionary Process in Mexico, the Time We Live), criticized the Mexican Communist Party, considering that it had not been consistent with the political needs of the youth in the face of the 1968 movement, since no formal condemnation was made after the events of the bloody October 2 massacre. Moreover, he argued that socialism would not be achieved through a peaceful means or through collaborations with the State, which was the strategy that had been followed by the PCM, as instructed by the Comintern since the times of the Second World War. Ramos was at that time the national leader of the Juventudes Comunistas (Young Communists) and decided to break with them in 1969. His break with the PCM led many of the young party militants to leave alongside him and create their own political groups. Many of them became armed groups. Ramos Zalava, for his part, founded the group known as "Los Procesos" (the Processes) from which he sought to integrate the new groups that shared the need for a joint struggle. In one of his trips to his former college, the Autonomous University of Nuevo León, he met Ignacio Arturo Salas Obregón "Oseas" who was a student leader and, after abandoning the Movimiento Estudiantil Profesional (Professional Student Movement) which followed the lines of Liberation Theology, turned to communism and worked with Ramos in the merging project. With this new organization, briefly called Coordinadora Nacional Guerrillera (National Guerrilla Coordination), they sought to end ideological dispersion and begin joint actions with other organizations to provide "political education" to the Mexican proletariat in order to construct a revolutionary party and army. However, Ramos was assassinated in February 1972 in Mexico City during a police confrontation.

After the death of Ramos Zavala, Ignacio Arturo Salas Obregón founded the Organización Partidaria (Partisan Organization) in 1972, and wrote texts known as the Madera Viejos, (which are called Madera I, II, III and III-Bis), which developed Ramos Zavala's proposals on unification in a single organization at the national level, systematizing the political approaches that should begin to govern proletarian politics in Mexico. To this end, "Oseas" made an analysis of the conditions of the workers' struggle in Mexico, as well as the level of the existing relations of production, with the purpose of constructing a theory that would explain and sustain the actions of the organization to which they aspired. These documents were personally delivered by him to the various leaders of existing organizations in Mexico and a first National Meeting was convened on March 15, 1973 in Guadalajara, Jalisco for discussion and analysis. This first National Meeting lasted about 12 days. From this discussion arose the “Manifiesto al Proletariado: Questiones basicas del Movimiento Revolucionario, 1973” (Manifesto to the Proletariat: Basic Issues of the Revolutionary Movement, 1973). This document is better known as "Cuestiones" (Issues) and is the fundamental document of the League, where it theorizes about its actions, its political position, its strategy, among other things. With this document the ideological foundation for the September 23rd Communist League was set.

Founding organizations

The idea behind the concept of a communist "League" was to agglomerate all the armed socialist organizations that were active in Mexico. While it was successful in doing so with many small, newly formed and beaten out organizations, it wasn't able to convince bigger organizations like that of Lucio Cabañas, the Partido de los Pobres (PdlP). Some of the organizations (in no particular order) are the following:

• Los Lacandones: Formed from the remnants of the 1968's student movement in Mexico City. They first started acting as an armed organization during 1969, making "expropriations" in order to maintain their weapon supplies, as well as to pay for food and housing. After a series of successful assaults, six members of the organization were detained, on the 21 of February, 1972. By November of that year, most of the members of the armed group had been detained by the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS). By February 1973, only three members were still free. After hearing of the unification proposal of Los Procesos, they joined the Organización Partidaria.
• Los Macias: With a Spartacist (Mexican Marxist school of thought created by Mexican poet José Revueltas, not to be confused with the German spartacist movement or the American Trotskyist organization) background, the organization was created in 1968. It was a splinter from the Movimiento Espartaquista Revolucinario, MER (Spartacist Revolutionary Movement) led by Mónico Rentería Medina and active in the state of Durango. After a few "expropriations", Rentería left the organization and the rest of the group, now led by Eduardo Medina Flores, decided to join the Organización Partidaria.
• Los Guajiros: Originally known as the Grupo N (N Group), conformed, mainly, by young people of northern origin (Baja California, Chihuahua, Durango, etc.) and started performing military actions in 1970. They were one of the first organizations to get in touch with other national groups (like the PdlP and the Procesos). They were named "Guajiros" by Lucio Cabañas. After a series of successful "expropriations", by 1972 the armed group suffered huge casualties, including that of their leader, Diego Lucero. The remnants of the organization joined the LC23S.
• Los Procesos: A splinter from the Juventudes Comunistas (Communist Youth), its main leader was Raúl Ramos Zavala, a student from the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León. It was the first group to come up with the idea of creating a "federation" of armed groups that would work in coordination throughout the country. Like the Guajiros, they had a series of successful "expropriation" actions, which later resulted in enormous casualties. Ramos Zavala was executed on February 6, 1972.
• Grupo 23 de Septiembre:
• Los Enfermos (The Sick Ones): The radical wing of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa’s Students Federation. Its aims and goals shifted from academic objectives to more broad, social issues.
• Los Vikingos (The Vikings): Sometimes described as a gang, los Vikingos was a group of young people from a neighborhood in Guadalajara who, through the influence of liberal politicians, socially conscious Catholic priests and communist sympathizers, got involved in social and university activism. They would join the LC23S and become one of their main suppliers of guns and ammo.
• Movimiento 23 de Septiembre:
• A splinter section of the Movimiento de Acción Revolucionaria, MAR (Revoluctionary Action Movement): Created in 1969 in Moscow, by students affiliated to the Mexican Communist Party. They got military and political education in North Korea. After being crushed by the security forces, a small splinter section would later join the LC23S.
• MAR-23 de Septiembre: Some of the surviving members of the MAR organization decided to separate from their main group, and join forces with the Movimiento 23 de Septiembre. They later joined the LC23S.
• A section of the Movimiento Estudiantil Profesional, MEP (the Professional Student Movement): A group of radical Catholic students who, at first, were active in different social causes and later became convinced that real change would only be achieved through revolutionary actions.
• A section of the Frente Estudiantil Revolucionario, FER (Student Revolutionary Front): First appeared in the Universidad de Guadalajara in 1972, as a response to the political violence that was taking place. It disputed the political control of the university with the Federación de Estudiantes de Guadalajara (Guadalajara's Students Union).

History

Many researchers give the existence of the LC23S a timeline that goes from the early months of 1973 to later months of 1974. This first proposal is one of the mostly widely accepted and characterizes the LC23S for their proactive offensive strategy, where expropriations (bank robberies), police killings, propaganda distribution and clashes with the security services were common. It is also marked by the death of many of the top founding commanders, including their main leader, Ignacio Arturo Salas Obregón (a.k.a. Oseas). Others place 1976 as the final frontier of the organization, in an attempt to provide an alternative to the first timeline. This timeline places the end of the League after the failed kidnapping attempt of the sister of the Mexican president-elect, Margarita Lopez Portillo, and the death of Oseas successor, David Jiménez Sarmiento (El Chano). A third position says that its historical horizon reaches the year 1982 when Miguel Ángel Barraza García (a.k.a. El Piojo Negro, The Black Louse), the last national leader of the Liga, falls in combat and the last number of the newsletter Madera is published. This is due to the fact that even though, by 1976, casualties were high and the persecution by the Mexican government was at its strongest point, there was never a complete crackdown of the National Directive (Coordinadora Nacional). According to records by the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS, Mexican secret police), as well as interviews with former members of the organization, by 1981 recruitment of new militants was still taking place throughout the country, especially at university campuses and rural teacher schools (Escuelas Normales). This last timeline is marked by a more defensive and reactive strategy than the more proactive and offensive one which they started with in 1973.

Formative and offensive stage (1972–1974)

On May 15, 1973, as part of a joint effort by several armed organizations in the country, the September 23rd Communist League was formed. It is the only guerrilla organization in Mexico, created in the seventies, which came to be considered as an actual internal threat to national stability, due in part to the large number of militants they had, as well as to the extent of the territory in which they had presence. Despite being made up of workers and peasants, the largest part of its members belonged to the student sector. Their short term objective was divided in two: First, the formation of a national union of armed organizations, which should work around the ideological and political ideas that National Directive established. The second part, once the homogenization process was completed, consisted of the creation of a vanguard party (in accordance with Leninist theory), which should be strong enough to guide the workers and peasants through the revolutionary process. In this sense, the LC23S never considered itself a full fledged party, but a transitional step towards it. Several groups, from different places and with different backgrounds, decided to join the project: Los Lacandones; Los Macias; Los Guajiros; Los Procesos, part of the Student Revolutionary Front (Frente Estudiantil Revolucionario, FER) of Guadalajara; the radical wing of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa's Students Federation, known as Los Enfermos (the sick ones); MAR-23; the Professional Student Movement (Movimiento Estudiantil Profesional, MEP); Grupo 23 de Septiembre; as well as several small groups without previous partisan organization or militancy. Through prints, pamphlets and the distribution of its own publication, Madera, periódico clandestino, they intended to make visible their political program, as well as to recruit new members. The organization was present in at least twenty of the thirty-two states that form the United Mexican States. It was during this period, on September 17 1973 that LC23S murdered Monterrey businessman Eugenio Garza Sada in a failed kidnapping attempt. This event further prompted President Luis Echeverría to intensfify its crackdown of the organization.

Defensive stage (1974–1976)

Even before the death of Ignacio Arturo Salas Obregón, the internal divisions within the League had started to show. After the disappearance of their main leader following a shootout on April 25, 1974, the process of polarization and division within the LC23S exacerbated, leading to accusations of infiltration, treason, revisionism, bourgeois opportunism, militarism, etc. The accusations escalated to a point where executions of supposed police infiltrators were carried out. Many of the militants separated themselves from the organization and continued working either within the legal political system or through new armed organizations. David Jimenez Sarmiento picked up the leadership of the organization during this time.

This stage is marked by a more militaristic approach, which left the political activity on a secondary plane. It ended with the failed kidnapping attempt of the sister of the Mexican president-elect, Margarita Lopez Portillo, on August 11, 1976. The purpose of this action was to gain leverage, catch public attention and request the liberation of political prisoners. The failed kidnapping attempt provoked many casualties, including Sarmiento, and left the leadership of the organization in the hands of the editorial committee of the Madera newsletter.

Survival stage (1976–1979)

After the death of David Jimenez Sarmiento, the increased violence put forward by the security forces, and the changing political landscape, the LC23S went through a restructuring and self-criticism process. During this time, their military activities diminished, focusing mainly on political actions and propaganda distribution. Great numbers of the newsletter Madera were distributed around the country. The main leader of the organization during the first half of this stage (1976–1979) was Luis Miguel Corral García, El Piojo Blanco (The White Louse).

During this time, the government, in a joint effort by the DFS, Departamento de Investigaciones Politicas y Sociales (DGIPS, Political and Social Investigations Department), the army and Mexico City's police, created the Brigada Especial (Especial Brigade) or Brigada Blanca (White Brigade) as was known by the population. Created June 7, 1976, under the project Plan de Aniquilamiento de la Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre (Plan of Annihilation of the Communist League September 23) the BE worked essentially as a paramilitary organization. Its main objective was to physically and politically destroy the League and, in order to do so, it came up with two strategies: The Campaña de orientación al público contra la Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre (Public orientation campaign against the Communist League September 23) and the Plan de Operaciones No.1 Rastreo (Operations Plan No. 1. Tracking). The first one consisted of psychological warfare, while the latter one was in political violence.

Extinction stage (1979–1982)

While on the one hand the LC23S was suffering casualties thanks to the BE, on the other side, the Political Reform (Ley Federal de Organizaciones Políticas y Procesos Electorales, LFOPPE) of 1977 was the final blow to the organization. Said law opened a small political space to the opposition, as well as permitted once again the legal participation of the Mexican Communist Party in national and local elections. This, effectively, destroyed the foundation on which the League had built its militancy: the lack of democracy and political competition in Mexico. During this time Miguel Ángel Barraza García (El Piojo Negro) was the main leader. Although the political and military activity (propaganda distribution and “expropriations”) were still taking place, they were in a much smaller size than years before. This did not mean a diminishing in the activities of the Especial Brigade, who intensified their annihilation strategy. The Especial Brigade had started an infiltration strategy, which consisted of getting jobs at factories and waiting for members of the LC23S to go there and hand out propaganda. At that point, the BE would start shooting at the brigade, without any attempts to make an arrest. On January 24, 1981, near Ciudad Universitaria (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México), Barraza was killed, leaving the National Directive directionless. The last issue of Madera was published later that year. Without its main leader, the LC23S slowly dismantled, with some of its members joining the legal activism, while others remained clandestine.

Members

• Mario Álvarez Cartagena (died July 2021)

Aftermath

On September 23, 2019, speaking on behalf of the Presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero apologized to Martha Camacho Loaiza, the wife of a leader of the Liga Comunista 23 de septiembre, who was tortured in 1977. The apology took place in the Centro Cultural Tlatelolco, scene of the October 2, 1968 student massacre. This followed a previous investigation by the Presidency of Vicente Fox which ended in charges of genocide against former president Luis Echeverría being dropped.

Popular culture

• In Alejandro González Iñárritu's 2000 film Amores perros, the guerrilla is indirectly mentioned as 'El Chivo' (portrayed by Emilio Echevarría) was a guerrilla fighter.

See also

• Mexican Dirty War
• Zapatista Army of National Liberation
• Party of the Poor
• People's Guerrilla Group
• People's Revolutionary Army
• Dirección Federal de Seguridad

Further reading

• Cedillo, Adela. "The 23rd of September Communist League's Foco Experiment in the Sierra Baja Tarahumara (1973-1975)". In México Beyond 1968: Revolutionaries, Radicals, and Repression during the Global Sixties and Subversive Seventies. Tucson: University of Arizona Press 2018.

External links

• LC23S entry in the Terrorism Knowledge base
• Colegio de México's archive on Mexican armed organizations

This page is about the 1994 revolt in Chiapas, Mexico. For the overarching conflict in Chiapas, see Chiapas conflict. For Emiliano Zapata's faction in the Mexican Revolution, see Liberation Army of the South.

1994 Zapatista uprising
Part of the Chiapas conflict
Reporter photographing a rebel shortly after the uprising.
Date 1–12 January 1994 (1 week and 4 days) Location Chiapas, Mexico Result Ceasefire between Mexican Military and EZLN Insurgency contained but unable to be destroyed Zapatistas granted rights to self-government and autonomy Founding of Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities.
Belligerents
Mexico Mexican Armed Forces	EZLN
Strength
30,000–40,000 (government claim) 60,000-70,000 (EZLN claim)	3,000
Casualties and losses
153 deaths

On 1 January 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) coordinated a 12-day uprising in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, in protest against the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The rebels occupied cities and towns in Chiapas, releasing prisoners and destroying land records. After battles with the Mexican Army and police, a ceasefire was brokered on 12 January.

The revolt gathered international attention, and 100,000 people protested in Mexico City against the government's repression in Chiapas.

Background

Following the Tlatelolco massacre in 1968, the Mexican government continued to suppress instances of political mobilization and social organization as part of the Dirty War. Despite the threat of government persecution, campesino organizations as well as small armed groups began to form in Chiapas in the 1970s. In efforts to suppress Indigenous resistance in the region, farm and land owners created paramilitary forces sponsored by the Mexican government designed to violently retaliate against potential Indigenous defiance. At the same time, many Indigenous individuals formed small armed militant groups in response to persecution, one of which became the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).

Prior to the Zapatista Uprising, indigenous Chiapans typically employed legal means of protest, such as demonstrations and marches. Typically, protests were met with little to no bureaucratic response. Petitions were also used to urge the Mexican government to regrant access to seized indigenous lands. Even when successful, the state met these petitions with administrative delays and were reluctant to take power away from rural elites.

Carlos Salinas of the Institutional Revolutionary Party was elected president of Mexico in 1988, and while he promised to utilize government funding to assist poor states like Chiapas, it was ultimately unfulfilled. In 1991, to both encourage foreign investors in Mexico and guarantee inclusion in NAFTA, President Salinas amended Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917. Previously, Article 27 ensured protection of "lands and waters within the boundaries of national territory" and forbade corporate ownership of these natural spaces. Salinas' 1991 amendments removed these protections. The constitutional change resulted in a shift from indigenous agrarian ownership of the land to foreign corporate ownership.

In the year before the rebellion, the EZLN designated Subcomandante Marcos (Spanish for "Subcommander") as the ideological leader of the movement and also made plans to declare war on the state of Mexico. Marcos was unique in his leadership because unlike most of the uprising's participants, his ethnicity was mestizo instead of indigenous. EZLN declared war on the Mexican state on 1 January 1994, the day NAFTA was to go into effect, to protest NAFTA's implementation.

Events

On the day of the uprising, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolab'al, and Ch'ol individuals attacked civic centers such as city halls in many towns in Chiapas including San Cristóbal de las Casas, Altamirano, Las Margaritas, Ocosingo, and Chanal. Rebels wore ski masks and used furniture and other office materials to barricade themselves inside of buildings once they had taken them over. During the occupation of the city, rebels also painted pro-Zapatista statements on the walls of buildings. While raiding San Cristóbal de las Casas, the Zapatistas released 230 predominantly Indigenous prisoners from jail and also demolished land records in protest. The EZLN abandoned San Cristóbal de las Casas hours later. When 600 Zapatista rebels overtook the town of Altamirano, a battle with government forces ensued. In Ocosingo, rebels were met by police forces who retaliated violently against Zapatista occupation. The Mexican army also responded to the attacks and by the end of that week all rebels had been driven out of occupied towns and into the Lacandon Jungle where some fighting would continue for five more days. A ceasefire was finally called by the Mexican government on 12 January 1994.

During the uprising, the State used mass media outlets such as radio and television to suppress news concerning the Zapatistas. In response, supporters of the Zapatistas employed the internet to circulate information not only on a local level but to international news organizations. The internet became a resource for on-the-ground reports from those in Chiapas to document what was happening. At the time, internet access, telephone access, and electricity were inaccessible to the poor, rural Zapatista communities. Therefore, all of the spread of cyber-based information came from international solidarity networks. Reports from EZLN were handwritten and distributed to reporters.

Aftermath and support

Post-ceasefire and San Andrés Accords

After the ceasefire, Manuel Camacho was designated the government representative for peace relations between the Mexican state and the Zapatistas. On 21 February 1994, members of the EZLN, Manuel Camacho, and intermediary bishop Samuel Ruiz met in San Cristóbal de las Casas to discuss peace agreements. However, the EZLN rejected government propositions on 12 June. Peace discussions were also further interrupted by the Mexican army's invasion of the land that Zapatistas had occupied in February 1995. The San Andrés Accords peace agreement was finally signed by the Zapatistas and Mexican government in February 1996.

Long-Term Aftermath

The Zapatista Uprising has been attributed to long-term changes in Mexico, including the state's increasing democratization, as a result of the strengthening of Mexican civil society. After the uprising, civilians continued to mobilize for further inclusion and expansion of human rights, democracy, healthcare, and education in Mexico. The militarization of Chiapas increased by over 200% from 1994 to 1999, likely in an effort of the state to suppress indigenous resistance, such as the Zapatista uprising.

However, the Mexican Government failed to fully meet the call for indigenous sovereignty and the demands of the Zapatistas. From 1994 to 2003, members and supporters of the movement continued to march in protests, block roads, seize land, and organize strikes. Originally negotiated between the Zapatistas and Mexican government in 1996 but not passed until 2001, the Indigenous Rights Bill of 2001 made great promises to meet many of the Zapatistas' demands to improve indigenous autonomy and rights. However, last-minute changes to the bill watered down the promises, and some indigenous leaders saw it as another mitigation technique used by the government to stop indigenous protests and offer no long-term systemic change. Many within the EZLN and supporters of the Zapatistas compared it to the San Andres Accords for not fulfilling the demands of the indigenous peoples.

Current state of Indigenous peoples in Mexico

Despite the progress made by the Zapatista Movement, effects of colonization—disease, enslavement, and exploitation—have historically harmed (and presently harm) Indigenous communities in Mexico. As of 2021, Indigenous people make up about 15% of Mexico's population. A 2015 United Nations Report asserts that 80.6% of Mexico's indigenous population is extremely impoverished, experience significantly higher maternal mortality rates than non indigenous Mexican populations, and have a 50% higher mortality rate among indigenous children than non indigenous children. In 2020, about a third of people in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas identified as indigenous on the census. The state has the second highest poverty rate following the state of Guerrero. About half of the Indigenous population in Chiapas reported no income in the 2010 census with another 42% of individuals earning less than $5 a day.

Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities

The EZLN established Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities in the state of Chiapas. Five caracoles, or organizing regions, were established in 2003, and seven new caracoles were established in 2019. The municipalities focused on implementing popular democratic infrastructure, collective control of the land, health care, education, and the promotion of women's rights.

International solidarity movement and feminism

The Zapatista Movement has extended beyond the uprising in 1994 as both an international solidarity movement and a source of lessons and inspiration for grassroots social movements across the world, including the U.S. Occupy Movement in 2011, and the protests in 2014 after the disappearance of 43 students from a rural teacher's college in Mexico. The Zapatista Movement, empathetic and active in fighting for women's rights, posited dismantling the patriarchy as a primary goal, which has become increasingly more important in their philosophy as time goes on. The Zapatistas have inspired movements seeking to dismantle the patriarchy through their revolutionary inclusion of women in mobilization efforts. In March 2018, the Zapatistas coordinated an inaugural international gathering in the autonomous region of Caracol of Morelia in Chiapas called “International Gathering of Women Who Struggle.” Women from over 50 countries attended the gathering. Over three days, the women focused on building solidarity, strength, and educating each other on topics such as climate change, mass incarceration, gender-based violence, labor movements, and indigenous rights. The gathering is an example of an international popular grassroots education and solidarity inspired and coordinated by the Zapatistas. These networks and displays of international solidarity and mutual aid between activists are sometimes referred to as “International Zapatismo”.The movement represents a fight for justice, autonomy, and freedom from State, political, and economic oppression. And globally, the Zapatistas have become a symbol of indigenous sovereignty.

See also

• Mexican Dirty War