translated from Spanish: Burn it all, live in ashes – Benjamin Mendoza’s Opinion

The empty street, an atypical morning, little vehicular traffic, few corridors, was March 9, the empty city. Today, many months away, Jessica’s supposed femicide is caught. There are many things to say, many things to shout, trying to be brief, accepting that it is not entirely legitimate for me to comment on it, without giving or removing permissions (since I am no one to do it), without ordering or not, I will share my assessments.
Talking about a feminist “movement” becomes somewhat generalizing and offensive, as well as vulgar, talking more about feminist movements would be the right thing to do, at least on the political spectrum and within the convulsion that the country suffers recently. An apathy mass of militants from various parties, women of all ages without clear political affiliation, activists, masses of collectives, teachers, workers, conductors, housewives, daughters, wives, mothers, take to the streets under a single slogan, with only one goal, with widespread demand, to end gender-based violence; since 8 March and intermittently, feminous people have taken to the streets, without a joint tactic, without a consensual strategy, without an organic structure, with the impulse of anger and only outrage.
The proof of the enormous plurality concentrated by the March calls to date is extremely palpable within the contingents, a diversity of slogans and ideas walk side by side, from those who paint buildings and monuments in their path to those who embrace female policemen and blue handkerchiefs, from those who throw impropers at the president to those who claim him as the most feminist in history, however, after the historic day of March 8 and 9 and the recent post-pandemic demonstrations due to Professor Jessica’s femicide, the Global Action Day for a legal and safe abortion and the occupation of the CNDH facilities, it is necessary to ask ourselves several things, expose others and denounce some.
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Most feminist movements lack a delimited agenda, the range of “gender-based violence” is too wide to expect concrete “solutions” in the short and/or medium term, lacking a petition spread, they expect a response from the Executive to diluted demands that are rather perceived as abstractions. From the I do burn everything to the one who his mother López Obrador and offenses classists and racists to women policemen, the mass nourished by different social extracts exposes its lack of structure and direction by reducing the gender problem to the vulgar simplism of the sex war, the president is a male for being a man, women must fight him for being women, without an official voice, plan of action or an ideology defined as a whole, movements converge as far as they can, that is, under the argument of being women.
Opportunism becomes present, not only panistas, priistas and associates issue comments and make presence in the rallies, however there are also organizational nuclei of all kinds, some with laudable political work, some others invoking chaos, the truth is that, at the end of the day, the balance is always painted monuments, burnt police, external contained rage, freedom of expression, discussions between attendees of the march. Living the honeymoon as the romance sustained with a mirage offer, women today return to the same place they were yesterday; unity does not pass through the genitals, but by the characterization would be of the country’s problems in structural terms, identifying the enemy also identifies the ally.
Gender issues are presented to us in isolation, as one of a kind and in one direction, almost as a dogma, which prevents the generation of serious analyses based on study, reflection and criticism; by raising this as a fundamental contradiction despite having its foundations in cultural and non-material parameters, it automatically excludes, while being lost in enormous terrain. As an identity, “feminism” becomes a kind of unquestionable current of thought that divides humanity into victims and victims, any minimal difference or exception with this creates rejection, only women, only women, only women who accept the guidelines of the “movement”, only they, others can burn.
Much of the misunder understanding with the Federal Government lies in the absence of self-criticism, tolerance, the apology of violence and the lack of concrete requests, in the face of the news of theof a prosecutor’s office specializing in femicides, what else can the Executive require? And if you can, why haven’t you demanded it? What proposals do you have? Suffragettes called for the right to vote in an election, colleagues today call for a cessation of gender-based violence, and then how do we achieve this? You think the president doesn’t work on it every day? What are we looking for, that there is no impunity or that there is no gender-based violence? Is the under-the-bottom problem really found in the presidential indress or in the sexist and Judeo-Christian acculturation that capital encourages day by day?
Following the presentation of the request specifications after the occupation of the CNDH facilities in past weeks, we can conclude that the generality of the claims and the null and void proposal for mechanisms for finalizing them, with the exception of a pattern of beneficiaries, further reinforces the questions rather than answering them. The arrest of the alleged feminicide Diego Urik in Morelia promptly gives resolution to the main slogan of the mobilizations of recent days and the reminder of the media related to the old regime about the legality of abortion in Mexico City referring to the confrontation between protesters and policemen in the heat of classist insults such as “cat are at my service” “mugrosa is not enough for you to wash your uniform” from some protesters towards some policemen of the city , bare the cluster of contradictions of its own and at the same time aberrant of a badly called movement that is rather many movements and which therefore, its political confusion is evident.
On the other hand, one of the main absurds is to simplify this feminine cry to a polylabelling struggle, the cry transcends, even if the opposition strives to capture it. Not confusing things is the task of colleagues of clearer political thought, for sexist oppression is not measured in physical and biological terms, but in historically rooted attitudes and behaviors that reproduce and cultivate in a political and economic system that puts a price on everything, that denigrated and cosifies, where the poorest are the most violent and money continues to dictate agenda. At the end of the day, the March unemployment showed a forceful fact, but only on the same day, back to everyday life will women live, again, exploitation and harassment, again returning to the uncertainty that comes to them to stand between denunciation and unemployment, between silence and poverty.
The lack of program and homogeneity in the criteria leads feminist movements not to consolidate into one and in turn not to conceive of the problem of gender-based violence as a structural problem, hence that many of their supporters and activists are unable to understand that outrage, anger, sadness and anger , despite being genuine and purely legitimate, are not enough to eradicate the problem, that at the end of the march women are violent again, that protest, pints, clashes with the police, damage to government buildings and patriotic symbols, their occupation and fires are only the medium and never the end and that for the first time in the modern history of our country , you have a government that invites you to dialogue and lets you express yourself freely, which, for obvious reasons, is not your enemy.
As long as the national political geometry does not end up settling and the capitalist contradictions do not end up sharpening, we will continue to wander in the clearings where Gramsci accuses, the monsters are born, so it is the task of labor and the left to contribute to dialogue and understanding between allied expressions, we on our part, we must respect our companions until it becomes normal to do so , take care of each other and always keep in mind, that if we allow them to burn everything right now, that if we burn everything ourselves, in the absence of a nation project, we will live among the ashes, and no one likes, in full clearness, to live in ashes.
“Throwing a stone is a punishable action. Throwing a thousand stones is a political action. Burning a car is a punishable action, burning a hundred cars is a political action. Protesting is denouncing that that or that is not fair. To resist is to ensure that what I am not happy with does not happen again.” Ulrike Meinhof
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Original source in Spanish