A look into the territory of the Community Police in Guerrero1
Changes in expression of the movements of the poor
For most of the twentieth century, social movements and organizations accustomed the majority of the population to massive and perceptible methods of struggle, since much of North America had the same forms of struggle: occupying public squares to hold rallies, marches, strikes, etc. In Latin America, most movements of the time had a common denominator: they were massive irruptions, often violent confrontations that directly faced the ruling regimes, and along with that, of course, was a combative, energetic, and transforming discourse within the prevailing system(s). Two strong examples are the Bogotazo in Colombia and the Cordobazo in Argentina, on April 9, 1948 and May 29 and 30, 1969, respectively—the last one, during a military dictatorship.
These events were watersheds for the movements of the region; they made the population aware of active revolutionary organizations. It should be remembered that many Latin American countries of this period were governed by military dictatorships, which exercised total censorship and repression.
The continent has been a frequent scene of struggles built by the poor with the intention of improving their existing living conditions; however, following the events already mentioned (the Bogotazo and Cordobazo), there was a shift in the logic of the movement. Beyond improving the living conditions of the population, a revolutionary sensibility also advocated for a change of the hegemonic political-economic system. In Mexico, as in all of Latin America historically, the population had to organize to meet their demands and needs; we have seen women struggle for the right to vote, railroad workers fight for wage improvements, students in the 1960s and 1970s agitate for the democratization of the country, peasants fight for land, and so on in almost all sectors of the country. For a long time, the spirit and methods of resistance continued. But, often, once organized sectors won specific demands, many resistors demobilized. There were few organizations that, after gaining a victory, were prepared for a new battle.
This pattern continued until January 1, 1994, a day that changed the perspective and the horizon of many social movements and organizations in Mexico and in Latin America. On that day, the world learned of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), which carried out an insurrection and took control of some municipalities in the state of Chiapas; the majority of its members were indigenous. The EZLN arose in arms to fulfill the most heartfelt demands of Mexican society: democracy, health, food, and justice. The dignified rage for a dignified life included demands that addressed the diversity of problems of people who until then had been silenced.
The EZLN, which was unknown to many at the time, with no important role at the national level, announced themselves as no other organization had in contemporary Mexican history.
Thousands of armed men and women took municipal property, declaring war on the Mexican state, without any demands of the government, but with support from the Mexican people. The EZLN seemed not to exist, since it was not visible, did not give interviews, did not send press releases, did not march or organize rallies—they were unconventional compared to other social movements on the continent. Since 1983, they experimented with a very different way of doing politics and fighting. This novel approach did not seek the seizure of power but the control of a territory in which to apply self-government, democracy, justice, self-defense, and solidarity—what the Zapatistas call autonomy. By observing and analyzing this test of autonomy in the Zapatista communities, little by little a change in the form and methods for building resistance began—a new form of resistance from the poor in the face of oppression was nurtured and assumed a territorial character in Mexico.
The Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities—Community Police (CRAC-PC) from Guerrero
The Community Police (PC) of the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities—Community Police (CRAC-PC) in the municipality of Troncón in the state of Guerrero is where the effort to promote the training of community health builders began. Where did the PC’s idea to train health workers come from? What is the role of health in the field of domination and power? Do trained health workers mean to promote popular power? How can a community health worker respond to the current conditions of marginalization and resistance in Guerrero? We’ll get to those questions, but, first, some history and context.
The PC as “a carrier of indigenous insurgency of a worldview different from the Western”2 in matters of security and justice, of which the PC group of the Troncón community is part, is an ethnic phenomenon that first emerged in 1995 in Santa Cruz del Rincón, Costa Chica, which since 1998 “imparts justice through an oral process, immediate, simple and expeditious, based on the indigenous worldview and community compensation process. It is governed by the principles of impartiality and independence.”3 Since their founding as Regional Coordinator of Indigenous Authorities (CRAI), and later as Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities-Community Police (CRAC-PC), it was a benchmark in security and justice for other communities due to the discrimination and racism of the legal class system in Mexico:
Racism and arbitrariness in the exercise of justice is embodied in corruption. In the action of the agents of the Public Ministry, the main problem denounced by the population is the custom of demanding money in exchange for investigation and prosecution, which benefits the wealthy (merchants or landlords) and excludes from the system of law enforcement the majority of the population that lacks economic resources.4
Communities such as Troncón have sown distrust in the specialized institutions of the State to impart justice in an “impartial” way. Finding themselves abandoned by these security mechanisms and by the classist state in the administration of justice, they have chosen to construct and integrate alternative models of security that respond to the needs of communities where violence, insecurity, and injustice are a constant:
In Santa Cruz del Rincón, municipality of Malinaltepec, on October 15, 1995, in a Community Assembly with the participation of thirty-eight communities, the Community Police was founded. “Its fundamental objective was to restore the security that was threatened in the hands of criminals.” Its members are called “community police” because they arise from the communities themselves and give them their services without receiving a salary. They do not discriminate, but promote the idea that it is a service for the life of the people.5
Although the PC originated in the areas of the Costa Chica and Montaña, due to increasing insecurity from 2012 to 2013, communities in the central region began to think about being part of the CRAC-PC as a means to address the problems of drug trafficking, criminal violence, kidnappings, assaults and robberies, and because legal support for the organization was available through international conventions, through initiatives such as 169 of the International Labor Organization (OIT), a pair of articles of the Mexican constitution, and the 701 Recognition Law, Rights and Culture of Indigenous Peoples and Communities of the State of Guerrero.
This is how the CRAC-PC project started four years ago in the central area of Guerrero where the community of Troncón is located. Backed by over twenty years of experience from their colleagues from the Costa Chica and Montaña, where crime decreased by up to 90% where the PC operates in the territory, members of the PC in the downtown area have remained firm in their role as bulwarks of security and justice, despite the increasing repression against them—repression in the form of murder, imprisonment, threats, and division and fragmentation among its members, fomented by state cooptation. CRAC Commander Nahum Santos Bartolo describes the struggle of the communal police:
The work we are doing is important. It is an example for all people to join the fight. There are times we feel tired of so much struggle, when a community member approaches with a problem, difficulty, and we are tired, they know we worked all day. However, at night we have the patrols, we put on the uniform, and change our attitude. We’re rejuvenated when we wear our uniforms and grab the gun. Once in the meeting, we forget all the problems we have, we focus on the work we do. It feels nice when we all get together and make plans, if peers are very disciplined...6
The Construction of Health in Conjunction with Security and Justice
Making progress in terms of security and justice, the PC of the downtown area looked to new horizons and sought answers to other neglected problems in the community. So they focused on health care. It is necessary, when building popular power, to identify that capitalist rule covers all aspects of life, including health. For many, “health is politics by other means”7 and health policies are a clear window into how a society (or at least the people who implement the policies of society) conceives of life.
Power relations have been exercised in a variety of ways in medicine, and we rely on the reflections of Michel Foucault when he analyzes biopower—the nature of power, its mode of constitution, and its type of diffusion in the articulations in society.8
The Mexican health system is governed by the rules of capitalism. In a capitalist society in which people are reliant on state structures, with labor on one side and consumers on the other, health care is a product that is sold to those who can buy it. Far from considering health as a fundamental right and an integral part of life, the concept of health in capitalist states, such as Mexico, is based on the idea of “soundness,”9 that is to say, they look at health care only as a means for working people to reproduce, obey, and be submissive. Care is most often only available to insured employees.
For those who lack health insurance, there are the public services overseen by the Ministry of Health. However, according to the inhabitants of urban and rural areas in Guerrero and other states, attention to their needs is almost nonexistent, and although the government speaks of “universal” and accessible services, the patients or their families often pay for education, drugs, materials, and equipment. Among other complaints, people have told us during consultations and workshops that they are discriminated against when seeking medical care, that there are not enough staff, no drugs, that indigenous women have reported suffering forced sterilization, and so on. Access to health services is extremely difficult for much of the Mexican population, especially those doing informal work, working in the fields, or those simply unemployed.
In the municipality of Tixtla, a part of Troncón, official statistics show that in 2010 71.2% of the population lived in poverty and more than 40% of the population was without access to health services. There is also intense pressure to privatize government institutions. There is not enough focus on disease prevention and no holistic health care, in which the spiritual, emotional, and mental aspects of well being are considered. Clearly, the health care system in Mexico provides the minimum necessary to ensure the survival of the working population in order to facilitate the smooth functioning of capitalism. Through the health care structures in Mexico we see that the vast majority of people are considered disposable bodies. In the case of indigenous communities, colonization increasingly separates people from their identity, their traditional knowledge and practices, and so on.
The community health care network in Guerrero knows that capitalism generates relations of dominators and dominated, exploiters and exploited. We reflect together on how the field of health is dominated by capitalist oppression and the contemporary colonial/imperial and patriarchal system; and so we theorize how this community project can function differently.
In January of 2015 with these reflections and questions in mind we started the Community Health Brigade 43, which was the first training workshop for women and men interested in becoming community health workers. The goal with this project is to build and maintain the health field that the neoliberal government has neglected in the community, and to avoid reproducing the capitalist model of health with its profit motive and dehumanizing features.
The goal of community health care is to make people aware of the work of security, justice, and community health, which involves the construction of popular power in communities and laying the foundation for the collective empowerment of men and women initially in these three fields. We have noticed that among the major problems that the rural communities regularly face are forms of security, education, health, and work. Building popular power weakens the ability of the government to exercise control over the community:
It involves understanding that power is not a set of institutions to take, but a complex web of social relations that we need to radically change, hence the need to build a counter power of the subaltern classes, a popular power. This is a more difficult and expensive way, much more complex in terms of the factors involved.10
Developing the community health project strengthens the community police center, a relationship that is not coincidental given the current conditions of life in Guerrero and Mexico in general. Insecurity, killings, and forced disappearances have become an everyday reality, causing profound effects on both the physical security of the inhabitants and their mental and emotional health. This, coupled with decades of economic and social marginalization, is part of the reason Guerrero is one of the “poorest” states.
Guerrero, Scene of Decades of Repression, Impunity, and Resistance
In Guerrero, crimes against humanity and terror sown by the State and criminal groups is not new, neither is the daily resistance and social organization of the marginalized, nor the repression brought about by the collusion of the government, the army, and the drug gangs. In September 2014, the world was shocked by the mass disappearance of the 43 normalistas (students) from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teacher’s College in Iguala, Guerrero. In Guerrero, the Dirty War of the 60s and 70s is still present in the minds and hearts of its inhabitants:
Declassified official documents reveal that 227 military commanders with their troops ransacked houses of popular colonies and of towns in search of their enemies, for which they also established checkpoints on roads, dirt roads, and in the entrances of cities and towns of the center regions, Costa Grande and Costa Chica de Guerrero. Military commanders detained, without warrants, between 500 and 1,500 students, teachers, activists, peasants, indigenous people, women, infants, and the elderly. In their official reports, they were named “packages for review.” They transferred the “packages” in helicopters and trucks to military installations to torture them, and the vast majority were disappeared... That is to say: the Army is the main institution responsible for 512 cases of enforced disappearances documented by Comverdad [Guerrero Truth Commission]. The figure rises to 1,500 cases of enforced disappearances only at the military base of Pie de la Cuesta, Acapulco, according to the testimony cited by one of the perpetrators, former military police Gustavo Tarin, who says that the victims were thrown from airplanes to the sea.11
Physical evidence and testimony also make it clear that the Dirty War crimes were carried out through a coordinated effort between government institutions and criminal groups.
Another contribution of the report disclosed for the first time how the Army and Governor Rubén Figueroa Figueroa used former soldiers, policemen, and criminals to crush half a dozen guerrillas and the political opposition that appeared in Guerrero at the time. One of these paramilitary groups, known as Blood Group, was in charge by Captain Francisco Javier Barquín.12
Human rights violations and attempts to break the organizations of the poor were not limited to the Dirty War. Guerrero, even in the 80s and 90s, continued to suffer massacres, directed particularly against social organizations. One of the most notable was the Aguas Blancas in 1995 in which en route to a protest, seventeen farmers of the Campesino Organization of the Southern Sierra (OCSS) were killed and another twenty one injured in a planned attack carried out by police forces under the command of the governor. Another was the community of El Charco in 1998 in the area of the Costa Chica, where, at dawn, hundreds of military troops besieged farmers, students, and members of the Revolutionary Army guerrilla group, the Insurgent People (ERPI), who had gathered in the community school to discuss social and economic problems in the area. The attack left eleven dead (several of them killed by coup de grace), five injured, and twenty two arrested.
All these historical antecedents are still present in the minds of many poor people in Guerrero and elsewhere—in the hearts of the children of the disappeared, in the footsteps of tortured former political prisoners, in communities that have been and continue to be hotbeds of army raids because they are concentrated areas of popular movements, etc. Partly for the same reasons, the clear and direct involvement of the police forces and the army in the murder and forced disappearance of normalistas of Ayotzinapa has not been a surprise for the people of Guerrero; but the people also harbor indignation and distrust of the state, and seek justice.
While long periods of strenuous repression have never been able to completely prevent mobilizing by the marginalized in Guerrero, they have had an effect on the focus of the popular organization and its methods. Organizers had to adapt to the specific conditions of the terrain. In recent years, moreover, another factor has been added to the difficult social and political realm: that of organized crime.
Neoliberalism, between the dispossession of territory and structural violence
In the state of Guerrero, at least eighteen organized crime groups are currently operating, but the violence has been concentrated in Iguala, Acapulco, Chilpancingo, and Chilapa.13 Guerrero is the largest producer of the poppy plant in the country, which has led Mexico to become the third largest producer of heroin in the world, most of which is sent to the United States, representing a market of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.14 The economic importance of the production of narcotics has increased despite the devastating consequences the so-called “war on drugs” has brought to the population of Guerrero. Between 2005 and 2011, homicides increased by 310% in Guerrero.15 In March 2016, a note from La Jornada Guerrero states that Guerrero “has practically the highest malicious homicide rate in the country with 9.09 cases per 100,0000 inhabitants.”16 And that, says the journalist, despite a contribution of more than 200 million pesos annually since 2012 by the Fund for Public Security Contributions to fight crime. While there are no exact figures, it is believed that 50,000 people or more have been displaced by violence.17
While these statistics appear as cold numbers in an essay, in real life they translate into horrifying images of mutilated bodies in newspapers, casualties discovered with regular frequency in the countryside and urban neighborhoods, and relatives who have armed brigades searching for their missing loved ones due to the lack of response by the judicial institutions in the most “egregious” cases (such as the forced disappearance of 43 students). These events disintegrate the social fabric in the state, allowing fear to penetrate all spheres of life. As Dr. Carlos Beristain, an expert at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and member of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts, which investigated the attacks against the normalistas of Ayotzinapa, said:
There are impacts on collective behavior, impacts on the remaining victims of marginalization, on the children who have problems with the management of rage, hatred, fear. There is also a dehumanization that becomes insensitive to violence, and the capacity for empathy is lost.18
In her paper entitled “Social Violence in Mexico: Its Impact on Citizen Security,” Professor Aída Imelda Valero Chávez stresses that:
The perception of insecurity and fear leads people to seek safe spaces by taking refuge in their own homes, isolating themselves, locking themselves in individualism and distrust, in anger, in resentment, and in the desire for revenge. A vicious circle is established: violence ends communal life, and when this happens violence is encouraged. Violence is intimately linked to the vulnerability of the population. As community life deteriorates because of the climate of insecurity that causes fear, isolation, and discouragement to participate in public life, the social fabric that provides security to members of the community weakens.19
Of course, the extreme level of violence is an essential tool of capitalism. Guerrero, although considered a poor state, is one of the richest in natural resources including gold, titanium, and uranium. Therefore, the state is covered in mega projects—most mines are owned by Canadian companies such as Goldcorp, Newstrike Capital, Alamos Gold, and Torex Gold Resources.20 According to journalist Dawn Paley, who has extensively researched the relationship between neoliberal projects, the drug war and repression in Latin America,
In Guerrero these crime groups operate in a highly militarized environment and each one will often have various kinds of relations with state forces.… Over and over again, the same forces that are supposedly protecting these transnational corporations have also been found to be working closely with these criminal groups.21
Other research supports Paley’s observations. In an article in El Financiero in December 2015, the author recounts how “masked gunmen often come to the mountainous enclave near the Los Filos mine to assassinate and kidnap, while demanding a fee from the royalties generated from the mine in exchange for the captives’ lives.”22 The Los Filos mine, owned by Goldcorp, is one of the country’s most important gold mines.
According to journalist Francisco Cruz, one of the authors of the book La guerra que nos ocultan (The War that We Hide), in which the role of the Mexican government and military in the killings and forced disappearance of normalistas of Ayotzinapa is evidenced,
We find that in this country there is a process of historical decomposition, and Guerrero is the clearest example ... Guerrero, the poorest state and one of the richest states, is littered with gold... The investigation found that organized crime works with mining, serves to evict the people ... the narcos control part of the mining business, such as transport...23
Territorial construction of life: a new expression of the movements of the poor
Amid the historical decomposition process referred to by Francisco Cruz, the health care workers make up what we can call “social self-defense.” That is, with security and community justice, an anti-capitalist orientation is helping to achieve the strengthening of communities that is crucial in the territorial struggle between neoliberal forces, on one side, and the popular power of the people, on the other. Creating territories free of crime, kidnapping, murder, disappearance, dispossession, environmental devastation, and other crimes, from a community perspective that incorporates indigenous worldviews, goes hand-in-hand with bolstering community health, which enhances the full life of the people against a background of so much death and terror.
Health is more than the treatment of disease or injury, it’s also the construction of new ways of relating to each other, in a healing environment, strengthening horizontal links, sharing knowledge, rescuing traditional forms of healing, etc. This holistic approach is used in the training and tasks of health workers, who study anatomy and physiology along with the importance of listening, traditional knowledge, care for the environment, the importance of history, mental health and healing, and about the power and the importance of acting for the benefit of the community.
The PC health workers are a resource for those marginalized due to the social, economic, and political conditions that exist in the Guerrero, and particularly where this new phase of capitalism has reduced human life itself to a new kind of commodity—evidenced in the increasing practice of human trafficking, disappearances, turning young people into disposable drug dealers, and extreme violence. In return, the work of both the PC and its health workers supports the principle that the integrity of each individual life is necessary for the integrity of the community, and vice versa. In this way, the health initiative is a strategic “project” that allows for organization and therefore autonomy. The process of organization and strengthening of the community members and their relations are fundamental pillars in achieving and maintaining emotional, mental, and physical health, resulting in collective forms of recovery. We recover what Zibechi has called “the healing power of the community,”24 a front of struggle for the poor, which is extremely important in this era of territorial struggle.
While these actions do not represent a systemic challenge to capitalism, they are micropowers to crack the hegemonic power of the state in affected communities. You have to understand the “power reflected between dominance and resistance as a dialectic of contradictions between power to power, including the power of the people and the bourgeois power, which is the history of class struggle in our America.”25 The peasants and indigenous people show that they are collective actors integral to social transformation. In Tixtla and in their communities, farmers with rifles in hand are assuming these responsibilities and organizational tasks of social transformation. The peasants and indigenous peoples are becoming more visible, and responding to current conditions with resistance. The communities remain firm in the conviction of continuing the struggle and safeguarding security in their territories for a complete defense of the right to a safe and healthy life for all of us.
Endnotes
1 The editors would like to thank Mandeep Dhillon, for her collaboration on this chapter.
2 Raúl Zibechi, Autonomías y emancipaciones, América Latina en movimiento (Lima, Perú, Fondo Editorial de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, 2007), 21.
3 Centro de Derechos Humanos Tlachinollan, “La justicia del pueblo y para el pueblo: un año turbulento,” en Matías Alonso Marcos, Aréstegui Ruiz Rafael, Vázquez Villanueva Aurelio (compiladores) La rebelión ciudadana y la justicia comunitaria en Guerrero, Instituto de Estudios Parlamentarios “Eduardo Neri” del Congreso del Estado de Guerrero. (México, D.F., FECHA), 35.
4 Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Montaña Tlachinollan, Digna Rebeldía, “Guerrero, el epicentro de las luchas de resistencia,” Informe XIX, Junio 2012–Mayo 2013, (Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero, México), 16.
5 De la Torre Rangel Jesús Antonio, Justicia comunitaria: resistencia y contribución “una visión desde el sistema comunitario dela Montaña y Costa Chica de Guerrero en Sistema de Seguridad e Impartición de Justicia Comunitaria: Costa-Montaña de Guerrero, Coordinadores Medardo Reyes Salinas, Homero Castro Guzmán, Edit. Plaza y Valdés, 2008, 102.
6 Santos Bartolo, Nahum. Entrevistado por Polco Gatica, Daniel. Entrevista personal. El Troncón, 16 de enero, 2016.
7 Alondra Nelson, Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), ix.
8 Valls Llobet Carme, Mujeres, Salud y poder (España: Universidad de Valencia, Instituto de la Mujer, 2009), 29.
9 Sharla M. Fett, Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 15–35.
10 Luciano Fabbri, Apuntes sobre feminismo y construcción del poder popular, Edit. Puño y letra (Rosario, Argentina, 2013), 58.
11 Castellanos, Laura, “‘Guerra Sucia’. Ejército la ordenó” El universal, January 26, 2015. Available online: archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion-mexico/2015/impreso/-8216guerra-sucia-8217-ejercito-la-ordeno-222551.html.
12 Ibid.
13 El Sur, July 10, 2015, “Año veintitrés, quinta época,” Número 6359, p 5, Acapulco Gro. Consultado el día 14 de Julio del 2015.
14 Laura Woldenberg, “La guerra perdida: México es ya el tercer productor de heroína en el mundo y primer proveedor de EU.” Vice News, May 3, 2016. Available online: http://www.sinembargo.mx/03-05-2016/1655896.
15 INEGI. Boletín de Prensa Núm. 310/12.20 August 2012. Available online: http//www.inegi.org.mx/inegi/contenidos/ español/prensa/ Boletines/boletín /Comunicados/Especiales/2012/comunicado 29.pdf.
16 Fabiola Martínez, “Guerrero, número uno en homicidios, pese a recibir más recursos para abatir crimen.” La Jornada Guerrero, March 26, 2016. Available online: http://www.jornada .unam.mx/2016/03/26/politica/006n1pol.
17 Woldenberg, Laura, “La guerra perdida: México es ya el tercer productor de heroína en el mundo y primer proveedor de EU.”
18 Aída Imelda Valero Chávez, “Violencia Social en México: su impacto en la seguridad ciudadana.” Available online: http://www.umdcipe.org/conferences/DecliningMiddleClassesSpain/Papers/Valero.pdf.
19 Ibid.
20 Joseph Czikk, “Canadian Mining Companies are Destroying Latin America.” Vice News, Feb. 12, 2015. Available online: http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/canadian-mining-companies-are-destroying-latin-america-924.
21 Ibid.
22 Editores, “Oro y narco aumentan violencia en Guerrero.” El Financiero. Available online: http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/nacional/oro-y-narco-aumentan-violencia-en-guerrero .html.
23 Maribel Gutiérrez, “En el caso Ayotzinapa hay un manejo institucional para encubrir al Ejército, señalan periodistas.” El Sur de Acapulco. Availalable online: http://suracapulco.mx/2/en-el-caso-ayotzinapa-hay-un-manejo-institucional-para-encubrir-al-ejercito-senalan -periodistas/.
24 Zibechi, 39.
25 Fabbri, 29.