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Light from the Island of Refuse:
A Story of Resistance
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By Samuel Spitz ’13
Scenes from La Polvorilla, the oldest of the seven FPFVI collectives in Iztapalapa. Left: Sam Spitz ’13 at the entry gate.
Center: Single-story dwellings line a street. Right: During
his month in La Polvorilla, Spitz lived in one of the two-story
houses on this block. His hosts were among the community’s
first residents; the husband is a taxi driver in Mexico City and
the wife a stay-at-home mom. In addition to observing the
collective’s activities, Spitz remembers many moments of everyday community life, from working out at their outdoor gym
to “playing monkey-in-the-middle with kids in the street.”
“The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don’t listen to it,
you’ll never know what justice is.”
—Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States
An FPFVI protest in Mexico City. Frente
Popular Francisco Villa Independiente is a
social movement that builds autonomous
housing collectives for the poor on
reclaimed government lands.
We arrive at 1 a.m. There are five of us. Our van rolls
toward a heavy metal gate. It’s 8 feet tall. The letters
FPFVI are spray painted in silver. The brakes squeak. A
small side door opens, and the guard asks for our papers.
Half an hour passes, and finally the van lurches forward.
The gate slams behind me. I wonder, where am I going?
I would never have spent a summer with social
movements in Mexico had it not been for Professor
Heather Roller. Her classes The Making of Latin America,
Race and Ethnicity in Latin America, and Colony and
Conquest whetted my interest in Mexican history and
prompted me to inquire deeper into the legacies of
colonialism. Our focus on individual agency, collective
resistance, and hybrid societies allowed me to see
indigenous peoples as historical actors, rather than
the passive recipients of European political, social,
and economic structures. Professor Roller’s approach
inspired me. And I became fascinated with groups in
resistance, historically and contemporarily.
I read about revolutionaries like Túpac Amaru,
Francois-Dominique Touissaint L’Ouverture, Emiliano
Zapata, Francisco “Pancho” Villa, and Ernesto “Che”
Guevara, and studied their influence on late 20thcentury social movements. I wanted to understand what
their struggle looks like today. After writing a term
paper about the Zapatista Revolution in Chiapas (1994),
it became clear that I would have to go down there. How
could I understand a “people’s movement” if I didn’t listen
to the people who started it? That was December of
2011. By February 2012, I had submitted my application
for the Mexico Solidarity Network (MSN) summerabroad program.
The MSN was the logical choice. Well, actually, it was
the only choice. MSN is unique in the level of political
solidarity they’ve built with the Zapatistas over the
past 15 years. The organization distributes artisanry
produced by indigenous communities in Chiapas, runs
Photos courtesy of Mexico Solidarity Network
an autonomous community center for mostly Spanishspeaking immigrants in Albany Park, Chicago (my
hometown), supports dignified housing and immigrant
rights groups also based in Chicago, organizes speaking
tours with Mexican activists around the United States,
and leads a study-abroad program that gives college
students the opportunity to live with and learn from
Mexico’s most important social movements.
You might have noticed that I wrote, “live with and
learn from,” not “help” or “assist.” That’s an important
distinction. The MSN doesn’t take students to Mexico
to build houses or teach English. They take them there
to listen. The program is designed for organizers — so
the hope is that students will apply what they learn to
their own communities, not the ones they encounter in
Mexico.
When I left last June, I expected most of those
lessons to come from the Zapatistas. At the time,
Chiapas was the only place in Mexico I had ever heard
U.S. activists talk about. There have been dozens of
books written about the Zapatistas, many of which I
thumbed through in Case Library. I had read that they
declared war on the Mexican government in 1994, that
they occupied five regions of Chiapas (including the
capitol, San Cristobal), and that many of those regions
remain autonomous still. I knew that their spokesman,
Subcomandante Marcos, had become legend in Latin
America, much like Zapata, Villa, or Guevara, and that
their political theories had spread far beyond Mexico,
beyond Latin America, even.
Turns out I was wrong. Not about the Zapatistas or
Marcos — all that’s true — but about which movement
I would learn the most from. In the end, it wasn’t the
famous one that inspired me; it was the one I had never
heard of, the one with a struggle I could relate to, the
one from a city like my own.
It’s the story of that movement that I share with you.
Iztapalapa, Mexico City – The bright green, pink,
purple, and blue apartment buildings of La Polvorilla
housing collective rise like an island from the sea.
Perched atop a rocky mesa, the community is
surrounded by poverty. Mounds of garbage bags roll
like black waves over the gullied landscape below,
casting shadows over tin-roof shanties, chickenwire coops, and food carts that bob between the
heaps. Moldering piles of fouled diapers, burnt-out
appliances, and broken DVDs line narrow streets.
The region is home to Mexico City’s largest waste
dump — and its most powerful social movement.
Frente Popular Francisco Villa Independiente
(FPFVI), or Los Panchos, creates alternatives for
the poor of Iztapalapa. The movement builds
autonomous housing collectives on government
lands reclaimed by the people.
Los Panchos squat and build.
They do not ask permission.
They do not wait for loans.
Residents clear rubble and garbage by day and
put up fences by night. Everyone helps build each
other’s homes. Half a dozen community members sit
near the entrance to the gate at all times — usually
sharing coffee, cigarettes, and laughs. They are the
vigilance committee, and their job is to protect their
land from intruders. Each patrolman carries a red
FPFVI flag, a truncheon, and a whistle.
The weapon is the whistle.
One shrill can mobilize the neighborhood in
seconds. The State is an adversary, so if police
or military intrude, the streets will swarm with
supporters. The threat of a surge cows even the
brashest politicians.
FPFVI has more than 300,000 supporters.
The organization can shut down the Federal
District of Mexico City. They have videos of their
demonstrations. Taxi drivers block intersections
along march routes. Their cabs channel tens of
thousands of people into El Zocalo, the center of the
city, the political heart of Mexico. Each protester
carries a red FPFVI flag and a chant sheet.
The cries have echoed through the streets here
before. Now, with inequality on the rise again,
the thunderous voice of the People shakes the old
colonial buildings of El Zocalo once more.
Ya Basta! (Enough Is Enough!)
Iztapalapa is not a tourist destination. Its
neighborhoods are accessible only by bus. The
borough lies just beyond Estación Constitución
de 1917, the last stop on the Metro train. It is the
poorest borough in Mexico City. Most residents
earn $4 to $6 a day, experience hunger, and attain
low levels of formal education. Few have adequate
shelter or transportation. Iztapalapa has become
an industrial pond of progress, where the dregs
are dumped for the sake of “sustained growth
and prosperity.”
Every morning that pond drains into the city.
In La Polvorilla, laborers flow through the gates as
early as 3 a.m. For many, this marks the beginning
of a daunting two-hour commute. Estación
Constitución de 1917 is a 40-minute bus ride from
the community, and unless you have a car, it is
the only way downtown. The station serves a
population of 1.8 million people, most of whom
do not have cars. All of the district’s buses
converge there.
The station is a chokepoint.
Crowds cram buses so tightly during rush hour
that men hang onto each other five deep from the
doorways, and pray they are not scraped away as
the bus hugs narrow roads.
The train is just as bad. Cars get so packed that
mothers carry their children on their shoulders.
The humidity is stifling — windows steam and
rills of sweat sprout from every forehead.
The train deposits residents of La Polvorilla all
across the city — in sweatshops, textile mills, and
factories; in thoroughfares and street markets.
Many work for foreign corporations (few of which
pay taxes). Others drive taxis or buses, push food
carts, fix ATMs, hawk food in mobbed markets,
or sell oversized sombreros and “I [heart] Mexico
City” T-shirts.
No one makes much money.
Children as young as 7 ride the rails for their
living. They squeeze through the muggy cars with
candy bars, cellphone cards, and packs of chicle
(gum). They scream “Compras! Compras!” as loud
as they can, with faces a brilliant red, straining
every chord in the backs of their throats so by the
end of the day they will be fed. It is difficult for
a child to make a living this way. Competition is
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fierce and margins razor thin. A vendor sells only
when his voice sits atop the din, so at every stop, the
child’s shouts are drowned beneath the men.
In the end, the torrent of cries matters little.
The rumble of the train swallows the vendors’ calls
all the same. It is deafening. Those who stand cling
to what they can as the ground shakes beneath
their feet.
Mexico has been on the march toward “economic
modernization” for the past three decades. The
project began in 1982 when Harvard-educated
President Miguel de la Madrid accepted loans from
the International Monetary Fund and the United
States in exchange for implementing U.S.-designed
structural adjustment programs (SAPS).
One could argue that the president and his
cronies did not have the public interest at heart.
The programs were designed to attract foreign
capital, but investments were mostly speculative.
To keep them, Mexico had to cultivate a friendly
business environment. In the coming decades,
President Madrid and his successors would sign
free trade deals with lender nations, auction off
public enterprises and resources to multinational
corporations, slash subsidies and social programs for
working people, raise interest rates, crush unions,
devalue currency, and prioritize debt repayment
over every other domestic interest.
Even disaster relief.
In fact, when the Mexico City earthquake
struck in 1985, President Madrid waited 39 hours
to respond. In his earliest addresses, he informed
the nation that Mexico would neither accept
international aid nor divert any of its debt payments
toward the recovery effort.
Instead, his government deployed 1,800 troops
to protect private property from “looters.” Historian
Burton Kirkwood writes in his History of Mexico that
soldiers “assisted factory owners in retrieving their
machinery rather than in removing the bodies of
dead factory workers.”
The government’s negligent response symbolized
a radical redefinition of the relationship between
citizen and state — one that came entirely at the
expense of the poor.
Mexico once boasted the most progressive
constitution in the Americas. It guaranteed
education, land grants, and livable wages for all. It
promised that the state would keep control over
its natural resources (so that Mexico would never
again be colonized by foreign corporations). Its
constitution was the product of a bloody, decadelong revolution, and the document for which
General Francisco “Pancho” Villa and his soldiers
gave their lives. Now, the government promises to
protect private property, a guarantee of little help
to those with no property to protect. And, despite a
three-decade–long campaign for “sustained growth
and prosperity,” that’s still most citizens.
Today, 53 million Mexicans live at or below the
poverty line, while one, Carlos Slim, controls an
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scene: Spring 2013
On summer days in La Polvorilla, children chase
each other through broad, welcoming streets,
cackling as they race between rows of shimmering
cabs. At night, their parents and grandparents gather
beneath a tent at the center of the community,
where they discuss a progress all their own. A silver
whistle dangles above the entryway of every home.
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These things embody the collectivist spirit of Los
Panchos. But those qualities are not unique to
Iztapalapa. FPFVI represents just one autonomous
movement — there are dozens across Mexico, Latin
America, and beyond.
For “developing” countries, neoliberal modernization is a race to the bottom, a competition between
former colonies to determine which can provide the
cheapest labor. Autonomous social movements like
The residents of La Polvorilla come together about twice a month for local governance
and organizing activities. The man standing with his back to the camera is one of the
settlement’s main organizers; his son became Spitz’s best friend there.
empire worth more than all of them combined.
Twenty-seven million work three or more jobs,
and U.S. remittances are the second-largest source
of hard currency. Real minimum wage, 62 pesos
per day ($4.70 U.S.), has not increased in 30 years.
In 2006, the Centro de Análisis Multidisciplinario
estimated that the average minimum-wage earner
had to work 13 hours and 19 minutes to purchase
the basic recommended daily food requirement.
That figure reached 22 hours and 55 minutes in 2011,
despite 19 percent growth in Mexico’s GDP and a
New York Times article that celebrated the country’s
growing middle class. (The number of people living
at or below the poverty line rose by 6 million during
President Felipe Calderon’s administration, 2006
through 2012.)
Economic modernization devastated Mexico.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA,
1994), President Salinas de Gortari’s signature deal,
subjected millions of Mexican farmers and smallbusiness owners to the ravages of the global market.
Transnational corporations and wealthy capitalists
— foreign and domestic — gobbled up public
enterprises and resources, pushing middle-class
workers outside the boundaries of state unions and
into freshly deregulated labor markets.
Mexico’s only comparative advantage was cheap,
exploitable labor. The agreement forced millions
to abandon their lands and livelihoods for the
strawberry fields of California, the sweatshops of
Juarez, and the informal markets of Mexico City.
Many of those people ended up on the streets of
Vigilance committees.
General assemblies.
Whistles.
Iztapalapa, where 30 percent of the buildings remain
damaged from the quake.
And still, the refuse of modern Mexico rise like buoys
from beneath the swells.
Whether victims of economic or environmental
misfortune, Iztapalapans, like their indigenous
ancestors, refuse to disappear. They will not sink into
the depths of history as “necessary sacrifices” for
the middle-class American lifestyle. They will not be
buried beneath unmarked graves for a progress they
have never known nor had the opportunity to define.
The people have a knack for survival. They
always have. FPFVI is just one of their more recent
collaborations. But, unlike a number of other
movements over the past few decades, this one will
not demobilize for paltry concessions. Instead, the
members of Los Panchos are pursuing autonomy
from the State. The organization works desde abajo y
a la izquierda (from below and to the left) to ensure
the poor need never rely on small government again.
In FPFVI collectives, the people do everything for
themselves.
Residents build and maintain houses, schools,
offices, cultural centers, radio stations, electric and
plumbing systems, gates, soccer fields, workout
facilities, and sidewalks; grow food for those who
need it; organize vigilance committees to keep police
and military away; and develop laws that fit the
wants and needs of the people, not the country.
FPFVI members tap into the Mexico City drainage system
to connect the drains from a new community of apartments
they built for 98 families. Had the authorities tried to stop
them, they would have deployed their whistles to call other
FPFVI members and their allies — such as taxi drivers who
could congest the streets in moments — to foil them.
Frente Popular Francisco Villa Independiente refuse
to participate. They will not take part in a system
that treats them as waste, so they organize for a
brighter future.
Their resistance emanates from a 500-year-long
tradition of struggle.
The vibrant green, pink, purple, and blue
apartments of La Polvorilla are not cosmetics for a
blighted district. A masterpiece of the human spirit,
they rise like a torch from the darkest corner of
Mexico City to lighten a path toward more hopeful
shores. They stand amidst a sea black as pitch,
fronting furious tides as if to say, Otro Mundo
es possible/Villa Vive, La Lucha Sigue! Sigue!!
(Another World is Possible/Pancho Villa Lives, the
Struggle Continues!)
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