La Otra Campaña – VancouveR – The Other Campaign

John Gibler’s first book, Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, recently hit book stores.  Gibler’s book is drawn from two years of on-the-ground reporting in Mexico.  Narco News’ Kristin Bricker interviewed Gibler about his new book as he prepared to embark on a West Coast book tour in the US.

Narco News: What was the inspiration for this book?

John Gibler: The idea was born of the experience of covering the [Zapatistas'] Other Campaign[1] during the first four months of 2006.  When the Zapatistas issued the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle and announced the sixth-month listening tour that would be the first phase of the Other Campaign, they made a special call out to the alternative media to accompany this tour and use that as a way into all the untold stories of Mexico’s struggling peoples, of Mexico’s underdogs–los de abajo in Spanish.

During the first four months of the Campaign, Delegate Zero–as Subcomandante Marcos was called–would often point to the motley crew of alternative journalists who hadn’t shaved or showered or changed clothes for long stretches of time and he would say, “Don’t get worried about those mugrosos [filthy people] out there on the fringes.  They’re actually the alternative press, and they’re here to take your words out to other places.”  Day after day he would mention that as part of his call for people to participate in the Other Campaign. That was something I seriously felt as a commitment, as a responsibility, and during that time I tried to fulfill it by writing articles, getting stuff out online, launching with friends a small zine that we published on the caravan, and doing radio work with community radio stations in the United States.  But I felt as if that was only a part of trying to fulfill that commitment.

And then 2006 exploded: the police repression in San Salvador Atenco, the electoral fraud, and then the sixth-month-long unarmed uprising in Oaxaca.  These are all things I covered for the alternative press.  It kept fanning the flames of this desire to go deeper into the stories of los de abajo.  That was where the idea for writing this book came from.

Narco News: The original title for this book was Ungovernable.  Why did you decide to change the name to Mexico Unconquered?

John Gibler:  “Ungovernable” was a quotation from the 2006 Oaxaca conflict.  That quotation is very specific to a certain time and place: Oaxaca in late summer and early fall of 2006.

One of the strategies of the Oaxaca’s peoples movement was to force the Mexican Senate to declare Oaxaca “ungovernable.”  And by declaring the state “ungovernable” the Senate would have the ability to dissolve the powers of the state.  That is the only legal constitutional way in Mexico for a federal authority to remove a state governor from office.  This is part of the Oaxaca Peoples’ Popular Assembly’s strategy, to force the federal government into a checkmate, forcing this legal constitutional move to depose Ulises Ruiz and oust him from the Oaxaca governorship.

I wanted to take that word “ungovernable” and quote it as a way of tapping into that spirit of resistance in Oaxaca.  But I thought upon reflection that as a title that word would be taken so far from the context of Oaxaca in 2006 and make it seem as though Mexico as a land is ungovernable or the Mexican people are ungovernable.

That gets away from the political point that I try to make in the book, and that people in Oaxaca were making in their demand, forcing the federal government to declare the state ungovernable.  That political point is the spirit of rebellion, the spirit of protest in Mexico, which is an intensely anti-imperialist spirit and a spirit that compels people to risk everything, to put their lives on the line, to engage in action that defends their land, their autonomy, and their dignity.  In thinking about how to best and try and touch at that spirit in one or two words, I decided upon “Mexico Unconquered,” this idea that after centuries of invasion, foreign and later internal colonialism, and the constant threat of the boot of military and economic imperialism from the United States, that in spite of all of this repression and violence, so many sectors of Mexican society have never fully given in and have never allowed themselves to be fully conquered.  Continue reading “Interview with John Gibler about his new book, Mexico Unconquered”