Collective Memory and Violence in Mexico
Encounters of violence between the Mexican state and normalistas from Escuala
Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero.
(Photo: Palacio de Gobierno de Guerrero. Chilpancingo, Guerrero)
Name: Bert van Veen Student nr. 10110372
Email: bertvveen2001@hotmail.com University: University of Amsterdam
Study: Culturele Antropologie & Ontwikkelingssociologie Course: Bachelor Thesis
Assessor 1: Rachel Spronk Assessor 2: Oskar Verkaaik Date: 08-12-2015 Word count: 11992
1 Introduction
On the 26th of September 2014, teacher students from Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa,
Guerrero, or rather normalistas, were making preparations to attend the annual commemoration of the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City.1 They left Ayotzinapa in the early evening to commandeer buses
in Iguala, Guerrero. They needed the buses to make their trip to Mexico-City. The commandeering of buses is common practice for the normalistas. This time it was anything but common practice. While the normalistas were leaving Iguala they were stopped and attacked by a collaboration of the Guerrero state police and local police forces of Iguala and Cocula. After the initial shootings on different locations the police hand picked 43 normalistas and handed them over to the local drug cartel, Guerreros Unidos.2
In the end of the day, six people died and 43 disappeared. The government launched an investigation and federal officials claimed that the mayor of Iguala and his wife, Jose Luis Abarca and María de Los Ángeles Penida, ran cartel related practices from their positions in the city hall.3 Further investigation
by the government led to the confessions of suspected Guerreros Unidos members that the normalistas were disintegrated by fire on a dumpsite in Cocula, Guerrero. Their remains were bagged and thrown into the river from the San Juan Bridge. In short, the official statement was that the normalistas were killed and Mexican president Peña Nieto issued a police reform act to battle corruption in police forces.
In contradiction to the official story, the Grupo Interdisciplinario de Expertos Independientes (GIEI)4 and the Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense (EAAF)5 state that some bodies may have
burned at the site, but it would have been impossible to burn 43 bodies looking at the size of the site. In addition, the supposed eyewitness accounts of the Guerreros Unidos members whereon this evidence is built, is discredited by allegations of torture, which probably forced innocent people to confess to the crime.6 In other words, the official report of the government is discredited by several factors.
The attacks found place on four different crimes scenes and the GIEI expects that the attacks were carried out in coordinated fashion.7 The aftermath of the attacks were severe. Normalistas did not
shy away from confrontations with state forces. They used rocks, Molotov cocktails, gasoline, and other projectiles to make their voices heard. On the 13th of October they burned down the Government offices
1 On the night of 2nd of October 1968 between 44 and 400 students died or disappeared after the Mexican army
opened fire on a crowd of protestors on Tlatelolco square, Mexico-City. Official reports, followed by the media, stated that snipers on surrounding buildings shot at the army and that the army defended itself against an attack. Contradicted by witnesses, documented by foremost Elena Poniatowska (1999[1971]) in La Noche de Tlatelolco, the official story is disputed by a large part of Mexican society and many believe that it was an instigated massacre to crush the student movement. The snipers, from this perspective, were government security forces who consciously, or by accident, opened fire on the army; therefore, rather than an attack on the army, the event is better known as the Tlatelolco massacre followed by a government cover-up (Harris 2005).
2https://www.vice.com/video/the-missing-43-mexicos-disappeared-students-full-length-678 3https://www.vice.com/video/the-missing-43-mexicos-disappeared-students-full-length-678 4http://media.wix.com/ugd/3a9f6f_e1df5a84680a4a8a969bd45453da1e31.pdf 5http://static.telesurtv.net/filesOnRFS/multimedia/2015/09/24/comunicado_del_equipo_argentino_de_antropolog xa_forense_xeaafx.pdf 6 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mexico-missing-students-killers_55f87b5ae4b0d6492d63484e?cps=gravity_2684_-1684861483111681594 7http://media.wix.com/ugd/3a9f6f_e1df5a84680a4a8a969bd45453da1e31.pdf
2 of the Secretaria General de Gobierno and Finanzes in Chilpancingo, Guerrero;8 on the 22nd of October
they destroyed the Palacio Municipal de Iguala and looted a shopping mall in Iguala;9 and, on the 9th of
November they torched the offices of the Palacio de Gobierno de Guerrero in Chilpancingo.10 Although
the destruction of government and multinational properties was another kind of violence than killing, torturing, or wounding people, it showed us that normalistas take violent measures to confront the government. And, as I will show, the normalistas from Ayotzinapa and the government share a long history of cycles of violence.
In this thesis I show how both, the normalistas and the Mexican state, incorporate the symbolism of the Mexican revolution in their histories and ideologies; however, their ideologies contradict each other and their shared history is based on a continuum of violence. The question that I mean to answer is: “how do violent encounters between the normalistas and the state cause their ideologies to part further and why is the interaction of violence fundamental in this process?” This helps us to understand how past revolutions can be used in retrospect to delegitimize an existing order that established itself on the very foundations of the same revolution. Thereby, although the revolution is officially over, its revolutionary legacy can continue and support a continuum of violence between oppositional actors decades after the initial revolution.
In order to see how the normalistas from Ayotzinapa oppose the government’s legitimacy, it is useful to look at the difference between official history put forward by the state and collective memory of the normalistas. To understand the discrepancy between the two, I use a semiotic approach to explain the importance of sites of memories and how these are interpreted. These sites of memories are a monument put forward by the Mexican government and a collection of murals at Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos. They not only explain from different perspectives how the Mexican revolution shaped the country, but, especially in the case of the murals, they explain why state and normalista ideology part ways. These murals are of great importance to the creation of collective memory and I use them to show how an oppositional ideology is forged. The murals also explain why normalistas debunk the government’s origin myth that it is the legitimate heir of the revolution. In the process of diverting ideologies, the Mexican state and the normalistas wound up in a continuum of violence. This violence endures till this day and the attacks in Iguala and the way normalistas reacted are a prime example of this. The last part of this thesis, therefore, puts the focus on the interaction of violence and how this interaction contributes to the collective memory of the normalistas, and visa versa, how collective memory contributes to a continuum of violence. Now, we turn to official history and collective memory.
8http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/estados/2014/destrozan-palacio-chilpancingo-1045793.html 9 http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion-mexico/2014/impreso/marcha-por-ayotzinapa-termina-en-vandalismo-219636.html 10 http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion-mexico/2014/impreso/embozados-atacan-palacio-de-gobierno-de-guerrero-220135.html
3 Official History and Collective Memory
In this paragraph I elaborate the concepts of official history, collective memory and sites of memory. It is important to show the difference between official history and collective memory to understand how this contributes to opposing ideologies. The difference between official history and collective memory should be understood from the perspective of authority. Both are types of history, but official history is officialized by an authority while collective memory is not.
According to Brigittine M. French, collective memory is constructed by the circulation of sign forms. Following historian Pierre Nora’s concept (1989), French states that the sign forms from which the collective memories are interpreted are sites of memory (French 2012: 340). A memory site “breaks a temporal continuity,” transmits memories from one generation to the next, and it has the symbolic function to refer to past events that most of the people did not attend or experience (ibid.: 19). A site of memory thus bridges a gap of memory between different generations and makes the memory continuous. The interpretation of these sites of memory, however, depend on a person’s social position in society and the social interaction with their peers. They are collectively mediated representations. Collective memories are thus made and remade in hierarchical societies and can be contested by different social actors. An important aspect is that concerns of the present, and future, are a foundation to the interpretation of these sites of memory. People with different social positions in society have different experiences and concerns, and, depending on their social position, they construct their collective memory from a site of memory through collective mediation.
Collective memory turns into ‘official history’ when authorities claim a truth-value (French 2012: 340). And, according to Friedman “[collective memories] …take on a durable reality when they are successfully communicated” (Friedman 1992: 196). Friedman points out the importance of successful communication in here. In order to collectively mediate representations successful through a society a government is often more successful in the officializing process than other parties, because it can rely on standardized education, media, and propaganda. Academic authority can become part of this officializing process by the state or they can present a counter discourse on history.
Official history and collective memory depend on the same factors, but it depends on authority which collective memory becomes official history. Rather then searching the absolute truth about these collective memories, Friedman argues that we should ask “where the attraction lies in making such histories” (ibid.: 197). Origin myths are helpful to explain the differences of opposing histories. Following Luc de Heusch, Marshall Sahlins, and Pierre Clastres, Friedman states that “the origin myths… are discourses on power, or rather variations of a single discourse” (ibid.: 198). Instead of conquest, the origin myth shows how a ruling party becomes one with the people they rule (ibid.: 198). This logic is also followed by archeologists Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus. They argue that the active manipulation of the social logic of human groups, including the establishment of origin myths, are used to legitimize inequality and power by a ruling party (Flannery & Marcus 2012). This places origin myths
4 in the sphere of political discourses and, therefore, we should understand official history as a way to legitimize a certain social order or hierarchical society.
Official history can be contested by a collective memory that poses a counter-discourse on history. According to French and Friedman the contestation of official history is founded in present-day conflicts. This means that the past is used to place present conflicts into context. In as far as this counts for all collective memories, it serves to bring forth a continuum of historical inequality into present-day lives. Therefore, collective memories reinsert the past onto a social order, which legitimizes or delegitimizes the current socio-economic and political landscape for people in different kinds of social realities (French 2012: 339-340). For an anthropologist, however, it is important to understand how the past is reinserted in the present through the sites of memory and their collective mediation.
French (2012) uses a semiotic approach to uncover signification in sites of memory. Semiotics is “the study of signs and symbols and their interpretation.”11 Semantics, as a part of the field of
semiotics, focusses itself on the study of meaning.12 Semantics makes it possible to study sites of
memory and their symbolism with the purpose of attributing meaning to them. In symbolic signs the signifier is unrelated to the signified. The relationship between signifier and signified are actively constructed through social interaction.13 The meaning that is attributed to the symbolism in a site of
memory, thus, needs to be collectively mediated to make it socially meaningful. As stated, collective mediation depends on the social position of a group and interpretation of symbolism depends on the current circumstances those people live in. When interpreted by people with different socio-economic backgrounds, symbolic signs have a multitude of meanings.
As I will show below, the normalistas from Ayotzinapa articulate a counter discourse on history, which opposes official history put forward by the Mexican state. Their collective memory is a political discourse that is constructed and collectively mediated by memory sites at Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos. Besides the commemoration of past heroes and fallen companions, memorial murals in Ayotzinapa illustrate power relations and political confrontations. A semiotic approach to these memorial murals enable us to attribute meaning to the symbolism that can be find in them. This helps us to understand significant icons or events that construct the collective memories of the normalistas and how this eventually contributes to a continuum of violence between the normalistas and the state.
OPPOSING DISCOURSES AND HISTORIES
Now we understand the difference between collective memory and official history and how they are socially constructed, we can apply this to the Mexican case. In order to do this it is important to describe the ideal of the nation-state and the project of nation-building. First I describe what nation-building is and what it involves. Afterwards, I focus on the discourse of nation-building articulated by the Mexican
11http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/semiotics 12http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/semantics 13http://home.myfairpoint.net/iago.site/icon,%20index,%20symbol.html
5 state. This part involves the idea of public education and how the state incorporated the Mexican revolution and Zapata in their origin myth. Afterwards I turn to the normalistas and explain how they mediate their collective memory and construct a counter discourse on history. I deem it important to give a historic introduction of the normalistas and how they collectively mediate their memory. Afterwards, I interpret the sites of memory in Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos. Murals are the most significant sites of memory in Ayotzinapa and their meaning provides an explanation of their collective memory and ideology.
State Discourse and Official History
According to historian Alan Knight (1985), the current Mexican state has its roots in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917. A coalition of various revolutionary factions managed to overthrow the old regime of Dictator José de la Cruz Porifirio Díaz Mori. The current ruling party, Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), has its foundation in the faction of constitutionalists that took state power under the command of Venustiano Carranza. The rise to power of a new ruling party did not create a stable environment in Mexico. Many revolutionary factions kept fighting each other while they followed their own interests. The newly formed state of constitutionalists was not an exception to this ongoing conflict.
One of these other factions was the Ejército Libertador del Sur (ELS) led by Emiliano Zapata (Knight 1985: 8, Stahler-Sholk 2012: 259). The ELS and Zapata mobilized massive support from rural people in the South of Mexico. Their “mobilisation of the rural masses behind a genuinely popular programme involved a major confrontation with the state, and significantly helped in the dissolution of the state.” One of the most important demands that Zapata pushed forward was the right to land and self-determination. Thereby, the right to education for the formerly excluded popular classes stood high on the list as well (Knight 1985: 9-10). Zapata did not only contribute to the downfall of the old regime, he also posed a significant threat to the new regime till Carranza successfully ordered Zapata’s assassination in 1919 (Gilbert 2003: 129, 133, 137). Revolutionary leaders, like Francisco “Pancho” Villa and Álvaro Obregon were also assassinated and a new national revolution was attempted three times in the 1920s (Knight 1985: 15). In short, various factions fought for their demands and interests after Carranza came to power and this conflict of interests shows that the revolution was highly divided. This made the constitutionalists more a winning faction that took state control than an agreed upon faction that was chosen to.
The post-revolutionary Mexican state thus was highly instable till far in the 1930s. The revolution not only opened opportunities for Carranza to build a new political environment in Mexico, but it also caused economic disruption. Many haciendas were destroyed or lost their serfs to attend the land, and the economic infrastructure took a beating during the revolution and in the years after. In the context of political instability and rebuilding the economic infrastructure the government articulated a state discourse of nation-building and economic development. Although the government was not able to consolidate fully till the 1940s, nation-building was already a priority before the state consolidated its
6 power and hegemony. Economic development was less significant, because within the ruling party there were different political orientations before the 1940s. In the 1940s and afterwards, however, the economic policy became more and more liberal and, in the end, neoliberal (Knight 1985: 9-15). Putting the economic policy aside, nation-building was the primary project to unify the Mexican people under one legitimate government, which would contribute to political stability and economic development in the country. This project would make the Mexican state a modern one.
Anthropologist Carole Nagengast (1994) explains that modern states, like the Mexican post-revolutionary state, are characterized by “assimilation, homogenization, and conformity within a fairly narrow ethnic and political range, as well as the creation of societal agreement about the kinds of people there are and the kinds there ought to be” (ibid.: 109). The building of a nation-state is a project that involves the creation of consensus between the people living within its borders. Therefore, the state, as Nagengast puts it: “[…] attempts to ensure conformity to encompassing unitary images through diverse cultural forms and an array of institutions and activities that, taken together, help determine the range of available social, political, ethnic, and national identities” (ibid.: 109). Cultural forms and institutions, including state education, curtail a multitude of diversity through conformity, wherein one Mexican identity is the goal. The active creation of a Mexican identity for the people, ruled by a legitimate government, should decrease radical political opposition (ibid.: 109).
An important addition to the above is that the state has the monopolization of power and violence. Political opposition, in one way or another, becomes visible when a discrepancy between national consensus and the state’s monopoly on power is experienced by a certain social group (ibid.: 109, 110). In other words, when consensus on legitimacy is no longer reached by hegemony, the state can use its monopoly on violence to enforce it. This is not only important to eliminate opposition against the state, but also to curtail armed conflict between factions within the country. Nation-building is thus an important factor to consider when one tries to consolidate a new or post-revolutionary state. Important aspects of nation-building are a shared history, language, education, and media (Anderson 2006 [1983]). During the 1920s in post-revolutionary Mexico one of the institutions used for nation-building was the Secretaría de Educación Públic (SEP). The SEP was and is one of the regulating institutions of public education. After the Mexican revolution one of the primary goals of the government was accessible education for everybody. As stated, this was one of the demands from the popular masses as well. This project of nation-building would contribute to a national consensus in terms of ideology and language. In the 1920s it was said that the indigenous populations would benefit if they adopted mestizo culture and spoke Spanish as first language. Mestizo culture is a largely Spanish influenced culture that focusses itself, instead of on race, on the mixture of races and their adoption to a modern economic way of life. Mestizo culture resembled progress and unity. Public education, in this sense, would enable the rural masses, most of them from indigenous descent, to assimilate to a shared language and prepare them for mainstream schools and modern life. The rural teacher had a central role in this “moral conquest”
7 (Raby & Donís 1989: 310-312). Public education also brought forth the present-day normalistas, but this issue will be extensively explained in the next paragraph.
An official history is another important aspect of nation-building. The Mexican state did not differ much from other modern states when they made their history compatible with the current state of affairs. The origin myth, wherein the modern Mexican state has its foundation in the Mexican revolution after the defeat of Porifiro Díaz’s regime, plays an important role in this. In spite of contradicting evidence (Knight 1985, Hodges 1992, Gonzales 2009), the modern Mexican state constructed the myth that a unified movement overthrew the old regime. Their faction was merely a ruling candidate agreed upon by other factions. This makes the post-revolution ruling party a legitimate heir of state control (Knight 1985: 11, Overmyer-Velázquez 2002: 90, Blacker 2009: 191, Blacker-Hanson 2012: 104-105). One of the strongest symbolic statements for this unified revolution is el Monumento a la Revolucion in Mexico-City.
El Monumento a la Revolucion symbols a unified revolution through literally unifying the revolutionary leaders at the same location. The remains of Plutarcho Elías Calles, Francisco I. Madero, Francisco “Pancho” Villa, Venustiano Carranza, and Lázaro Cárdenas are preserved in the monument. Villa, allied with Zapata (Brunk 1996: 341), was a controversial revolutionary character and his remains were only reburied in the monument in 1976. The government also tried to move Zapata’s remains to the monument of the revolution, but Zapata’s family refused the government’s requests. According to Gonzales, the reason that the government requested Zapata’s remains was that they wanted to align themselves with Zapata’s legacy, which resembled “agrarian reform and liberty” (Gonzales 2009: 253). The unification of the revolutionary leaders in the monument to the revolution is contradictory to the fact that these leaders were in armed conflict with each other. For example, Zapata declared war on Madero in Plan de Ayala (Gilbert 2003: 132).14 Thereby, Zapata and Cárdenas fought each other during
the revolution and, as stated, Zapata was assassinated in 1919 the command of Carranza (ibid.: 129, 133, 137). In other words, the monument unifies the Mexican revolution and dismisses armed conflict between factions. The same happened in textbooks for public schools. Although there were many revisions, the armed resistance of Zapata against the state and his assassination by Carranza were never mentioned (Gilbert 2003: 136-141).
Through the years, the Mexican governing party, the PRI, had the ability to imprint an official story of history through official monuments, public education, and dominant discourse, to supply the people with a homogeneous concept of history and their origin myth as a modern unified nation. Zapata is used by the state in official history as unifying factor of the revolution. The state allied itself with Zapata and his demands through the rewriting of history; therefore, the government has the ability to maintain the illusion that they supported the destruction of haciendas and managed to reform land into ejidos (communal lands). With this origin myth the government claims legitimacy to state control
8 (Gonzales 2009: 253). Thus, through a discourse of unification, Zapata is aligned with the current government of Mexico. Zapata’s connection to land reform and as man of the people makes Zapata an ideal symbol for the state to legitimize their rule over the popular masses. The government of Mexico made a special place for the Mexican revolution, Zapata, and other revolutionary leaders in official history. However, Zapata is also symbolic for oppositional parties. One of the most severe oppositional parties is located at Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa. Ironically, nation-building through public education created this platform.
The Normalistas and Collective Memory
In the process of nation-building the government installed public education. With this project the government fulfilled the popular demand that education should be no longer only for the elites. Public rural schools would become the link between developing state education, providing access to education in the rural areas, realizing a project to enhance agriculture, rural development, and bind two important revolutionary promises together: education for all and access to land (Padilla 2009: 88). Las Escuelas Normales Rurales were founded in 1926 when the government combined two related institutions and their functions. The first, las Escuelas Normales Regionales, were designed to bring forth teachers to teach reading, writing, and new farming techniques. The second, las Centrales Agrícolas, intended to improve Mexican agriculture by the introduction of machinery and cooperative organizations to the rural communities. Education in Normales Rurales is a double edged sword. On the one side, it gives students an opportunity in an environment that is characterized by poverty. And, on the other, it introduces farmers that are familiar with the newest agricultural techniques and machines, which can contribute to the development of the region or even the country (ibid.: 88). Instead of promoting development, however, Normales Rurales created an environment for resistance.
From the beginning these Escuelas Normales typified a special kind of education. The philosophy of educational reformer John Dewey was incorporated into the Mexican school system in the 1920s. The philosophy put forward by John Dewey is learning by doing. Rural schools for teachers were a perfect place to combine action with learning (Padilla 2009: 88, 89, Raby & Donís 1989: 314). Another important aspect was that rural teachers became community leaders and integrate the community into the school and visa versa (Padilla 2009: 89, Raby & Donís 1989: 314). In addition, Dewey stated in 1926 that Mexico was in a critical stage and that the school system should pursuit “an ideal of creation and social transformation” and to be in “harmony with the demands of social life” (Padilla 2009: 89). The emphasis that he puts on creativity and social transformation is important to consider. Las Escuelas Normales Rurales, thus, combined a vision of action through learning with community outreach and social transformation. Social transformation, however, conflicted with the interests of clerical groups.
The post-revolutionary ruling party was in severe conflict with clerical groups till long after the revolution. Religious factions resembled the old regime and endured much anti-religious attacks from
9 the government (Knight 1986). Public education was also associated with anti-religious fanaticism, because it was an extension of state hegemony. In the early years of the Normales Rurales, therefore, teachers were in severe conflict with clerical groups. Public schools were boycotted and burned on the countryside where religion had strong roots. Teachers were physically attacked and sometimes killed by clerical groups (Raby and Donís 1989: 316, Padilla 2009: 87). Especially the Normales Rurales, with their vision of social transformation and breaking from the past were a threat to these clerical groups. Eventually in 1936, president Cárdenas put a stop to anticlericalism in public education, but hostility remained in some places afterwards. In this period education also became socialist inspired and landowners tried to fight this with anticlerical accusations against public education (Raby and Donís 1989: 318). The landowners, the new bourgeoisie in that time, knew very well what kind of consequences socialist education could have for their private property. This is why they sponsored these attacks on schools and teachers. Although many teachers held indeed anticlerical views following a policy of socialist education, many teachers also interpreted socialist education in terms of social struggle to achieve economic progress, social change and agrarian reform (Padilla 2009: 87-88). According to Raby and Donís (1989), the impact of socialist education on future development should not be exaggerated, but the ideological legacy of this type of education “promoted the direct participation of teachers in the mass popular movements, as leaders and activists in the political alliance that supported Cárdenas” (ibid.: 319). Although the government changed their trajectory in the 1940s, the legacy of political participation and social struggle is still very present in normalista ideology.
A requirement to enter these schools is that one needs to be a child of a campesino or a teacher; consequently, most of the normalistas come from poor families (Padilla 2009: 91). This means that most of the normalistas experience poverty daily. Rural teachers realize the irony of their teachings and activities. They teach “farming techniques to landless farmers” and play sports with undernourished students. The realization that the educational theory does not match the social reality resulted in, on the one hand, apathic teachers, or, on the other hand, radicalized or politicized teachers. Therefore, it is not unusual that Normales Rurales are frontrunners in social struggle (Raby & Donís 1989: 314).
Besides the teachers, student teachers also contribute to political activity. In the article of Padilla (2009), a teacher student said that he started to doubt his own convictions and the way he thought about property relations after he went to a Normal Rural. Older students took the responsibility of taking new students in and talked to them about issues that plagued most of them in life. Issues of poverty, landlessness, the economic system, and structural relations came to the fore, which made the new teacher students aware of their common experience and the social position they came from (ibid.: 91). Thus, in addition to the political awareness of rural teachers, the relationship between old and new students creates political awareness as well. Normalistas in Ayotzinapa construct their collective memory from highly politicized and low socio-economic positions. This is where the theory of collective memory meets the murals in Ayotzinapa.
10 It cannot be overstated that many of the normalistas, if not all, come from poor or campesino families. Most of the times it is a combination of the two: impoverished campesino families. Their background is the foundation from where sites of memory are interpreted. The collective mediation of murals in Ayotzinapa construct a collective memory that opposes official history in Mexico. A shared collective memory is very present in the circle of students and teachers at Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos. Through former life experiences and the close proximity of older teacher students, collective memory in Ayotzinapa is quickly adopted by new normalistas as it makes sense in their lives. Thus, the collective memory of these normalistas is carried on from one generation to the next. Every significant encounter between the normalistas and the government is incorporated into their collective memory, which opposes official history more and more. These additional memories contribute to a further believe that the current government is not the legitimate heir of the Mexican revolution. Since I showed how sites of memory are collectively mediated by the normalistas and from which perspective, I now turn to the murals and interpret their symbolism. The meaning of this symbolism helps us to understand where their collective memory comes from and why it is important.
(Figure 1: Zapata at Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos, Ayotzinapa)15
This mural of Zapata (figure 1) is important to understand how the normalistas interpret the symbolism of Zapata from a different perspective than the government. Putting aside the other people
11 in the mural the combination of Zapata with the phrase Tierra y Libertad (Land and Freedom), Plan de Ayala, and Plan de San Luis, pinpoints the aspects of Zapata that are remembered here. The countryside in the background resembles the importance of land and the eagle resembles the Promised Land for the Mexicans. A small detail is that Plan de Ayala is placed upon Plan de San Luis. The symbolism of this directly opposes any symbolism or discourse of the government and debunks the origin myth of a unified revolution. The Mexican revolution was highly divided and the current government has its roots not in a unified revolution, but in a faction that took state power while other factions missed out on this as I will explain.
The phrase Tierra y Libertad is borrowed from anarcho-syndicalist Ricardo Flores Magón. Zapata was influenced by Magón’s ideas and incorporated some of these in his Plan de Ayala (MacLachlan 1991: 76, Hodges 1992, Blacker-Hanson 2012: 105). It is worthy to say that Zapata did not have a blueprint for state control and development, but he did state that a ruling state was necessary. This is important to add, because Zapata did not follow the aspects of Magón that rejected a ruling state (Blacker-Hanson 2012: 105). Land and freedom stood central in the demands of the ELS. The issue of Tierra y Libertad is also very evident in Plan de Ayala. Plan de Ayala pressured the demands of land reform, which would put a stop at oppression and monopolies of resources in the time of haciendas. The right to ejidos for the people was of central concern. These ejidos, in combination with communal control, should contribute to the general well-being of the rural masses.16 Another statement in Plan de
Ayala was that the ELS defends the fulfillment of Plan de San Luis.17
Plan de San Luis was drafted in San Antonio, United States, by Madero on the 20th of November
1910. His call for action in Plan de San Luis was answered and the Mexican revolution started. Noteworthy is that it was specifically directed against Díaz and other dictatorial elements who enriched only themselves and a small group of people.18 Zapata supported Madero in the beginning, but little
more than a year later, on the 25th of November 1911, he called Madero a traitor of the revolution in
Plan de Ayala. Plan de Ayala was directed against a wider range of tyranny, oppression, and exploitation. What Zapata took from Plan de San Luis were the principles of the revolution and not who he followed. Zapata and the ELS did not fight for men, but for the people and the general well-being. They fought for land and freedom. They fought against tyranny, monopolization, and exploitation.19 The
symbolism of Zapata in normalista ideology is reenacted through social struggle. Zapata’s struggle is extended from the exploitation of landlords in the early 1900s to capitalist exploitation and the effects of free market policies in the present. This struggle of Zapata is further connected to present day normalistas through Lucio Cabañas.
16http://www.hist.umn.edu/~rmccaa/la20c/ayala.htm 17http://www.hist.umn.edu/~rmccaa/la20c/ayala.htm 18http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1910potosi.html 19http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1910potosi.html
12 (Figure 2: Lucio Cabañas at Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos, Ayotzinapa)20
The person on the left in this mural is Lucio Cabañas (Figure 2). He was a teacher at Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos and got involved in guerilla warfare against the Mexican government during the 60s and 70s. “Protestar es un Derecho (To Protest is a Right),” is written underneath his image. On the right side of this mural is an image of a police officer with riot gear who seems to be in the action of hitting a crouched person. In his hand he has a long object that looks like a baton and blood is painted around it. Under this image they wrote the text “Reprimir es un Delito,” which means “To Repress is a Crime.” In the middle of the mural we see the logo of the United Nations in the colors red and black and the lower ends of this logo are dripping. This mural pictures very well that Lucio Cabañas is an iconic figure in Ayotzinapa. The rifle in his hand reflects the armed struggle he fought against the state; however, before he rose up in arms together with Genaro Vázquez Rojas, peaceful protest and demonstrations were the preferred strategy of struggle. It was not until the government repressed the peaceful movement that Cabañas turned the struggle into armed conflict (Blacker 2009). The latter is illustrated by the image of repression on the right of this mural.
The case of Cabañas links the Mexican revolution, Zapata, ideology and violence to the collective memory of modern-day normalistas in Guerrero. What started out as a peaceful protest movement that focused itself on the principles of the revolution, turned eventually into guerilla warfare supported by a Marxist-Leninist ideology. The process from peaceful protest to guerilla warfare explains
13 how encounters of violence bring forth a continuum of violence between a government and subversive groups like the normalistas. This mural does not only commemorates Cabañas, but it also a memorial of victims of state repression. Both have a big impact on collective memory and how the Mexican government and the normalistas perceive each other.
During popular mobilization in the state of Guerrero, in the period that Cabañas came to the fore, people in Guerrero suffered the same conditions that led to the Mexican revolution of 1910. Endemic poverty, institutional instability and political corruption were rampant. In the context of market oriented policies commercial agriculture and foreign capital increased significantly in that time, which led to worsening conditions for the people. These conditions led to the failure of democratic institutions as elites took these over. The government favored an environment in which investment increased; thereby, many officials were personal involved in these investments. Development projects, such as a dam, tourism and commercial agriculture, caused monopolization of lands, which, in turn, displaced communities from their lands. In the end, self-sufficient communities disappeared and they became dependent on regional cities and industrial cities as Mexico-City. The people in Guerrero did not allow this to continue and organized protests and demonstrations across the state (ibid.: 184-186). Guerrero was not the exception of these circumstances and it shows how hacienda monopolization turned into capitalist monopolization. The failure or unwillingness of the federal government to intervene in these projects that displaced communities mirrors the economic policy of the government. This was the context wherein Cabañas and many others shaped their convictions. As Blacker states: “Frustration at the government’s failure to adequately mediate their perceived interests transformed popular demands from a focus on economic justice to democratic accountability” (ibid.: 188).
Raul Caballero Aburto (1957-1961) was governor in Guerrero and his family and colleagues were involved in a large part of the commerce in Guerrero. This explains also the repressive measures he took against the protests (ibid.: 189, 190). After the first waves of repression, a coalition of workers, teachers, and students, rallied under the banner of democratic inclusion. This included demands such as “democratic transparency, community decision-making, and an end to government-sponsored violence. The demands were shaped by nationalist language and the legacy of the revolution (ibid.: 190-191). Thus after the state government repressed the expression of socio-economic conditions the demands incorporated a more nationalistic and political inclusive language.
Cabañas became one of the central figures during these years of mass mobilization. Blacker says that Cabañas’ ideology was formed through the politicization in the school in Ayotzinapa in combination with his campesino roots (ibid.: 192). Cabañas found himself in more or less the same social position of Zapata. In both cases popular movements were violently repressed. One of the important factors in shaping the political views of Cabañas was when he witnessed “repression, the caciques, the poverty and misery of the people… the robberies, torture, disappearances, and incarcerations the army had done to the people” (ibid.: 192). The government’s participation in repression, poverty and misery were unmistakably central in the shaping of Cabañas’ viewpoint on politics. The government lost its
14 legitimacy while poverty and misery were signs that a certain economic system in combination with the ruling politics did not favor all the people. In both cases the government was met by armed insurrection.
When peaceful protests were repressed; first by Guerrero’s state authority; and, second, by the national authority, reform by government intervention became an illusion (ibid.: 191-192). During a protest in Atoyac in 1967, the hometown of Cabañas, government forces opened fire on a crowd of protesters, which resulted in the killing of seven people and many others were injured. Cabañas witnessed these events in person. Earlier attacks in Iguala and Chilpancingo and another attack in Acapulco three months later, caused Cabañas to flee into the mountains and join Vázquez. Inspired by the successful Cuban revolution, an armed guerilla movement seemed a better option during times of severe oppression than peaceful protests (ibid.: 198-200). In addition to Vázquez’s guerilla army, Cabañas became the leader of the guerilla army Partido de los Pobres (PDLP). The state and national governments cracked down on the two guerilla armies and their supporters. This involved “seizure, torture, disappearance, or murder” of guerillas or supporters. Communities that were suspected of aiding the guerilla armies were met by the tactic of razed earth or bombardments, which means that products and property were burned down (ibid.: 200-201). As a leader of PDLP, Cabañas thus raged a guerilla war against the state and national authorities after peaceful protests were violently repressed.
Another important aspect during that period was the incorporation of Marxist-Leninist ideology. As stated, the successful Cuban revolution verified the possibilities of guerilla warfare; however, it did not influence the campesinos, or Cabañas and Vázquez, in Guerrero to embrace international socialism completely. The addition of Marxist-Leninism to local demands, to the guerillas in the Sierras, started when activists from Mexico-City established themselves in Guerrero after the situation in Mexico-City changed radically after the Tlatelolco massacre on students in 1968 (Poniatowska 1999[1971], Harris 2005, Blacker 2009: 202) and the assault on protesters in San Cosme in 1971 (Blacker 2009: 202). According to Blacker, Cabañas managed to get teachers from the Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero (UAG) to the Sierras to teach “Marxist thought to his guerilla fighters” (ibid.: 204). Although international socialism and anti-capitalist ideology became influential in the guerilla army of Cabañas, it was still overshadowed by the influence of the nationalist character of the Mexican revolution and its heroes (ibid.: 207). However, the above explains why murals at Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos not only depict the character of Lucio Cabañas in combination with state repression, it also makes sense of the murals depicting Che Guevara, Marx, Lenin, other references to socialist revolution.21
Cabañas died in confrontation with the authorities in 1974, but his legacy is great in Ayotzinapa. During the struggle in Guerrero Marxist-Leninism was incorporated as revolutionary theory to the nationalist rhetoric already present. Guerilla warfare also made a reappearance during this time. When state repression became unbearable, peaceful protests made way for armed conflict. Cabañas represents all the above and, as a teacher of Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa, he is the direct link
15 between the Mexican revolution, Zapata, armed conflict, and international socialism as ideology in Ayotzinapa. An additional factor in the collective memory of the normalistas is violence. Armed conflict by Zapata and Cabañas are commemorated by sites of memory, but more recent violent encounters between the state and the normalistas are also visible in murals. The next mural illustrates this.
(Figure 3: 12 Diciembre at Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos, Ayotzinapa)22
Violence is very evident in this mural (Figure 3). It refers to a recent deadly confrontation between the normalistas and the authorities. It is difficult to decipher everything in this mural, but the important aspects are easily interpreted. The English translation of “Articulo 6. El Derecho a la manifestacion. 12 Diciembre no se olvido” is “Article 6. The right to demonstrate. 12 December is not forgotten.” Article 6 refers to the Mexican constitution and gives the right to freedom of expression. The right to protests is included in this article.23 The statement that 12 December is not forgotten refers to
the deadly confrontation between normalistas and the authorities on the 12th of December 2011. At that
specific day the police opened fire on the normalistas in Chilpancingo, which resulted in several people injured and two normalistas killed.24 The shooting and the death of a normalista are both pictured in this
mural. It is hard to indicate what the face in red on the left means, but on the right side of the mural it seems like people are mourning. The mural illustrates very well what is remembered from the 12th of
22http://masde131.com/2014/10/fotogaleria-los-murales-de-la-normal-raul-isidro-burgos-de-ayotzinapa/ 23https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Mexico_2007.pdf
16 December. That is: normalistas were protesting and two of them lost their lives after state authorities opened fire. With the graphic illustration of the former, in combination with the written references to the freedom to protest and that this day will not be forgotten, it is hard to misinterpret the meaning of this mural. The authorities repressed the right to protest with deadly consequences.
In defense of the authorities, the normalistas are known for their aggressive style of protests. During the protest in the south of Chilpancingo on the Autopista del Sol the normalistas attacked a gas station. The authorities fired warning shots to disperse the students, but instead of dispersing, the normalistas answered with projectiles and set fire to the gas station. At that point, fire was opened in a non-controlled fashion. Two normalistas were killed and several people in the accumulated traffic jam were wounded. In addition to the damage inflicted by the authorities, an employee of the gas station was severely injured by the fire caused by the normalistas.25 He later died of his injuries.26 While the
normalistas protested with direct action, which included blockades and the destruction of state or multi-national property, the authorities reacted with deadly force. Both types of aggression are understood to be violence, but it depends on ones perspective which kind is legitimate in this situation.
The legitimacy of the police attack was questioned by normalistas across the country, supporters,27 and several other actors. For example, Juan Alarcón Hernández, president of the Comisión
Estatal de los Derechos Humanos (CEDH), said that the shooting was illegitimate and that there should be an investigation to determine who authorized the shooting.28 Amnesty International also stated that
the response of the police in Chilpancingo resulted in serious human right violations.29 Although the
Mexican authorities denied that the shooting was an act of state repression, they issued an investigation; however, a year later there was still no progress in the investigation.30 Why the shooting occurred exactly
on the 12th of December remains a question.
Although many questions remain unanswered, the story of the violent confrontation on the 12th
of December lives on in the collective memory of the normalistas. The events that happened in Iguala in 2014 are no exception to this. A recently added mural in Ayotzinapa in memorial to the victims in Iguala verifies that.31
Zapata and Villa legitimized the use of violence. Cabañas and Vázquez Rojas also legitimized the use of violence when protests were repressed. As an extension of the former iconic figures, the normalistas are not uncommon to use violence against state or multi-national property. When they are met by state authorities they do not shy away to meet the police with force. As stated before, after the disappearance of their 43 companions the normalistas burned down several government buildings, they looted multi-national trucks and a shopping mall, and they confronted the police with projectiles many 25http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/815764.html 26http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/819953.html 27http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/buscar/ 28http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/815764.html 29http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/815890.html 30http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/estados/89047.html 31http://revistareplicante.com/la-ultima-noche-de-ayotzinapa/
17 times.32 To understand these past and present interactions of violence, and the contribution of these
encounters to collective memory, we now turn to the concept of violence.
Violence: From Poverty to Bloodshed The interaction of violence
“Violence is a slippery concept.” Anthropologists Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois start their book Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology (2004) with this phrase. What they mean to say is that violence cannot be grasped from one perspective. What violence means depends on who you ask. In our case, the way violence is perceived depends on the different perspectives of the normalistas from Ayotzinapa and the state authorities. It can be either “productive or destructive” and “legitimate or illegitimate” (Scheper-Hughes & Bourgois 2004: 1). For example, the guerilla tactics of Cabañas were, and still are, seen as illegitimate by the Mexican government. The normalistas, however, praise Cabañas for his armed struggle. From their perspective it was legitimate to confront the government with violence in an era of state repression.
There are many forms of violence. Although physical violence is the most visible and direct, violence should equally be understood in a wider range of terms (Scheper-Hughes & Bourgois 2004: 1). I follow three concepts of violence given by anthropologist Philippe Bourgois (2001) in The Power of Violence in War and Peace: Post-Cold War Lesson from El Salvador. Bourgois differentiates between political, structural, and symbolic violence. First, political violence is violence that is “directly and purposefully administered in the name of a political ideology, movement or state.” This includes repression of opposition by state authorities and, visa versa, armed resistance against a “repressive” government (Bourgois 2001: 7). According to this definition, Zapata, Cabañas, the pre-revolution regime of Díaz, and the post-revolution Mexican government, all used political violence to pursue their objectives. The normalistas should also be added to this list as I will show later on. Second, structural violence has its foundation in the macro- and micro-structures of society. As Bourgois puts it: “Structural violence refers to the political-economic organization of society that imposes conditions of physical and emotional distress” (ibid.: 7). Structural violence is “chronic, historically-entrenched political-economic oppression and social inequality” (ibid.: 8). This form of violence manifests itself in poverty, high dead rates, bad health conditions, and workplace exploitation. “Extreme inequality” decreases social well-being and causes structural violence (ibid.: 7, 8). Following Bourgois, the campesinos, landless and poor families in the surrounding communities of Ayotzinapa, or in Guerrero in general, are exposed to structural violence on a daily basis. The exploitative nature of capitalism and unequally imposed international trade agreements play a big role in structural violence. Third, Symbolic violence is an intimate form of violence. In this form of violence the dominated unconsciously consents with the power relations in society. It legitimizes inequality, class domination, and different kinds of discrimination.
18 The poor are able to blame themselves for their shortcomings through symbolic domination as they internalize the dominant discourse of society or the ruling-class hegemony (Bourgois 2001: 7, 8). In Mexico, the adoption to mestizo culture is seen as a way to prosperity and escape poverty, but this implicitly undervalues the lifestyle and culture of self-sufficiency and ejidos that is practiced by many campesinos. Symbolic violence legitimizes the misery and poverty that is experienced by people who do not adopt to mestizo culture. A cultural hegemony, thus, manages to legitimize an economic and political system that produces structural relations and blames the poor themselves for that.
The conceptual outline of violence above helps us to understand how violence and collective memory contribute together to a continuum of violence between the normalistas and the Mexican government. The Mexican government has a monopoly on violence and the law on their side. In the constitution it is written that public protest should not jeopardize public order.33 The strategy of protests
of the normalistas, which is know for direct action, does threaten the public order. Police can thus lawfully interfere when they deem this necessary. This is problematic, because it depends on the interpretation of events if it is legitimate to disperse the protesters. Is it legitimate for the government to use physical violence? Or is it legitimate for the normalistas to use physical violence to defend themselves from physical violence? Most of the times, both parties find their actions legitimate. There is thus a contraction in legitimacy when it comes to violence. This contradiction can best be explained through the interaction of different types of violence and how they are remembered. Collective memory, therefore, plays an important role in the legitimacy of violence.
As I have state before, structural violence is the result of social, economic and political power relations. People that are denied certain rights or needs often engage in protest. In the case of the Mexican revolution, these structural relations eventually led to a revolution when the pre-revolution government repressed mobilization efforts. The struggle against structural violence was implicitly carried out by Zapata when he demanded land, freedom, and an increased social well-being for all. After the revolution, however, power relations did not change for the better for the campesinos in Mexico. The relations of landlord and landless transformed into production relations between a newly arising bourgeoisie and landless campesinos. The campesinos thus remained in pretty much the same social position as before the revolution; therefore, structural violence did not disappear. For this reason, after the 1940s, when the economic policy became more capitalist and free market oriented, the encounters between the government and the normalistas became conflictual. Cabañas stretched the demands of the revolution and Zapata to the exploitative nature of capitalism in the 60s and 70s. During Cabañas time as teacher in Ayotzinapa the people in Guerrero mobilized against worsening conditions, which should be understood through structural violence. Poverty, displacement, and exploitation were increasing. When popular protests arose through the countryside, the normalistas, including Cabañas, were among the frontrunners. The legacy of the Mexican revolution and the constitution were among the rhetoric of the
19 popular masses. The government lost its legitimacy as heir of the revolution when their policies did not match the revolutionary promises anymore. When the national government failed to intervene and repression reached the height of political killings and mass shootings, popular mobilization decreased, and guerilla warfare against the government became legitimate. With the influx of Marxism, normalistas in Ayotzinapa raised their struggle against capitalism itself. Although demands became more international with the adoption of socialist theory during the Cold War, references to the Mexican revolution, its popular demands and the constitution, were, and still are, an important issue. In short, structural violence has been opposed for a long time. This opposition started for the indigenous people in Mexico since the beginning of the colonial era (Ceceña & Barreda 1998, Overmyer-Velázquez 2002).
The interaction of violence becomes obvious in the example of Cabañas. Structural violence promotes protest when people shift the blame from themselves to causes external to them. In many cases these are government policies or even economic systems. People become aware and break away from state hegemony and liberate themselves from symbolic violence. Whenever protests are met with state repression, the consequences can be that people resort to or support armed resistance. This was the case during the Mexican revolution, but also in Morelos in the 1940s (Padilla 2007), Guerrero in the 1960s and 1970s (Blacker 2009), and Guerrero and Oaxaca in the 1990s (Paulson 2000, Wrighte 2002). The same happened in El Salvador in the 70s and 80s (Bourgois 2001) and Northern Ireland in the 1970s (White 1989). As both Bourgois and White say, state repression enables former peaceful protestors to rationally adopt to violent means (White 1989, Bourgois 2001: 10). Why is this?
According to White, people support or resort to political violence when state repression is perceived as illegitimate. When the monopoly of violence is illegitimately used by the state, people can adopt a rhetoric that agrees with the fundamentals of “organized political violence”. In this stage the people involved shed their conviction that peaceful methods are the only legitimate way to confront their government. Further, people need to have the feeling that at least a part of the population shares the belief that political violence becomes legitimate. The last step taken by people to support or engage in organized political violence is a rational calculation of the costs and benefits. If peaceful methods do more harm then good, or when they have zero effect, political violence becomes a “viable and effective option” (White 1989: 1281-1282). White states that an increase of political violence is positively correlated with an increase in state repression; and, in contradiction to previous assumptions, there is no correlation with increasing amounts of economic deprivation (ibid.: 1288-1289). Following White, state repression triggers a process that leads certain people to rationally choose violent methods over peaceful methods when the former seems more viable and effective than the latter. This process involves both supporters and active participants. In short, political violence becomes an option that will bring political benefits, whereas peaceful protest does not. State repression also draws uninvolved people into the conflict as they associate themselves with the victims of repression (ibid.: 1289). In short, when state repression is perceived as illegitimate it starts a process which can lead people to resort to political
20 violence. This depends on their social environment, but also on a rational decision that balances the cons and pros of political violence in relation to peaceful protest.
There is one last factor to consider, which is a person’s social position. This is especially important to understand the involvement of the normalistas in political violence. A person’s social position is crucial in balancing the cons and pros of political violence. White states that there is no correlation between a decrease in social-economic circumstances and an increase in political violence in contradiction with other assumptions, but he does not deny the importance of somebody’s social position. This can be explained by the types of violence that people experience.
People with a lower socio-economic position in society experience the greater part of state repression, structural violence, and symbolic violence. They are also prone to experience harassment or discrimination by state authorities on a daily basis (ibid.: 1295-1296). In other words, people with lower social positions have a longer and richer history of economic and social oppression. This richer history of oppression and repression comes on top of the majority of state repression that they experience in relation to people with higher socio-economic positions in society. Consequently, people with a lower socio-economic position are more likely to share the same circumstances with their social environment than people from the middle-class or higher. Because of their “physical and ideological proximity to the people suffering from repression,” as White states, people with lower socio economic positions are more likely to perceive reality from the perspective of groups who use political violence (ibid.: 1296). This is relevant for the normalistas. As stated, the normalistas come mainly from poverty stricken campesino families. They personally experienced a history of political, structural, and symbolic violence. After the Mexican government adopted a market and capitalist oriented approach people in lower spheres of society, especially landless campesinos, remained in or returned to their socio-economic position before the revolution. Structural and symbolic violence effected their livelihoods significantly. The living conditions developing from economic and political systems represent the structural violence and the discrimination of their subsistence farming, self-sufficiency, and culture represent the symbolic violence. Normalistas in Ayotzinapa all share this history of violence.
White states further that these shared experiences and perspectives come to the fore through interactions with other people, including people who are politically active. Some people might already be involved in political violence. Through the collective mediation of present events and memories of structural and symbolic violence people become aware of their own position, which can lead to an awareness of economic or political structures. These interactions have the ability to liberate people from state hegemony and the institutionalized self-blame of symbolic violence. Additionally, these interactions shed light on failing parliamentary politics (ibid.: 1290-1293). Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos and other Normales Rurales, provide a platform for teacher students to mediate their experiences of structural violence, symbolic violence and repression. New students are in close contact with the older students and their past and present experiences of poverty and misery are easily understood through the lens of politicized normalistas in Ayotzinapa. New normalistas thus have a frame of reference that is
21 typified by violence, including poverty. From this perspective they also mediate collective memory in Ayotzinapa; however, they mediate collective memory with already politicized normalistas. Personal memories of violence are incorporated in the collective memory. Politicization is carried from one generation of teachers to the next and it refers back to the struggle of Zapata, Cabañas and other teachers from Normales Rurales. Through intensive interaction with politicized normalistas, new teachers are prone to adopt the same rhetoric as well. Whenever these new normalistas confront state authorities, it replicates the struggle of Zapata and Cabañas against injustice, which reaffirms and transcends collective memory into the present. They become part of a longer history of social struggle and violence.
The collective mediation of sites of memory, the politicization in Ayotzinapa through the intensive mediation of past and present circumstance between new and old normalistas, the illegitimacy of the government and its monopoly on violence, and reoccurring state repression of protests against structural violence, create an environment for political violence. The only spark that is needed in Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro is an act of state repression.
The repression of protests is a sign that a given state is not reformable by “legit” means; therefore, the state should not be reformed, but attacked. Engaging in political violence by means of armed conflict or severe rioting becomes legitimate by a rational, and/or political, decision. There is also an emotional factor involved, which is generated by memories of structural, symbolic and physical violence, but it does not make political violence an irrational choice. The Mexican case is more complicated than mentioned above after drug cartels took possession of official positions in the government and bribed state forces on local, state and federal levels from the 1990s on. Without going into detail, the infiltration of the government by cartel member further delegitimize the Mexican government. The fact that certain parts of the government are ruled or influenced by drug cartels makes the choice to embrace political violence probably less hard and more rational. A last remark should be made, because why do normalistas not resort to armed resistance as their predecessors or as the literature suggests is a rational decision? Well, they do, but as guerillas and not as normalistas.
An act of state repression in Aguas Blancas in Guerrero, in 1995 resulted in the establishment of the guerilla army Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR) in 1996. The guerillas of EPR follow a Marxist-Leninist ideology and are involved in the bombings of oil pipes and deadly ambushes on the police and army. To finance their struggle they also commit kidnappings of people from higher socio-economic spheres of society. The strongly hierarchic structure of the EPR led to splinter factions by people who opposed this strong hierarchy. Among these factions is the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo Insurgente (ERPI). This guerrilla army is believed to build a foundation for a guerilla uprising following the strategy of the Zapatistas in Chiapas (Paulson 2000, Wrighte 2002). Normalistas in Ayotzinapa are accused to be members of the EPR and this is not unjustified. Journalist Melissa del Pozo spoke with several normalistas in Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos. One of the student told her that he had contact with ERPI members for around a year. The quantity of ERPI, EPR, or other guerillas
