What happened in Ukraine after the country’s government effectively declared war on an entire region inside its own borders, and took on a Nazistic hatred towards the Donbass Russian speakers? The country couldn’t be kept together, and this breakup wasn’t even a reactionary type of balkanization; it was a victory for the revolutionary forces. As the Trump wing of the U.S. ruling class pursues a war with Mexico, and intensifies the persecution of Mexican-Americans, we’ll keep seeing more parallels to the mass backlash which Ukraine’s Nazi regime provoked. And like the communists across Russia have come to the aid of the Donbass people, communists across the United States must now assist the Mexican nation in fighting off imperial aggression—both outside and inside U.S. borders.
The historical contexts behind these two civil conflicts are distinct, but the outcomes of these conflicts may end up being the same. In Ukraine, the present period of discrimination and aggression towards the Donbass people didn’t start until Washington carried out a coup in 2014 (though the coup regime’s actions were inspired by the atrocities of Ukraine’s Nazi collaborators). In the USA, Mexicans and Latinos have always been targeted, and prior to when Trump took office Biden had been deporting people at an even greater rate.
This revolt from Latino communities is not a response to something new within our lifetime. It’s an effort to seize upon revolutionary energy within these communities, which has happened to reach great levels at this moment. The pressure has been building for generations, at this point practically centuries. And now that it’s gotten so intense, there is an unprecedented opportunity to gain a just solution to the USA’s Mexican land grab.
We can’t yet tell what this solution will look like. After the U.S. masses overthrow their capitalist dictatorship, maybe part of what’s now the United States will go back to Mexico, or maybe the land question will be settled differently. My goal is not to make unfalsifiable speculations, but to help clarify where communists (both Latino and not) stand within this conflict. The correct thing for us to do is aid the Mexican-American resistance, and this must go along with our efforts to stop the empire from invading Mexico. It’s only when we’ve committed ourselves to this task, and done so in the correct way, that we’ll fall on the right side in this fight.
In the last week, liberal forces that claim to be on the side of the resistance have aggressively inserted themselves into the anti-ICE protests. The DNC has used its NGOs to send in protesters who aren’t part of the communities from which the resistance originated, and who are largely motivated by desire for adventurist activities. Not all adventurist actions are necessarily harmful to the revolutionary struggle, as Luigi Mangione has shown; but in the case of these actors, the adventurism has the effect of aiding the police state.
That’s what the PSL, another one of these false allies, has been doing to an even greater extent than the DNC has. The extent of the violent activities in L.A. has been wildly exaggerated by the media; in the places where PSL has been instigating confrontations, the harmful adventurism is even more present. The PSL just endangered an entire Latino neighborhood in DC by holding a protest that was not next to an ICE facility, or anywhere else strategic; but by holding it in the proximity of an outdoor market space. This will only provoke ICE to retaliate against numerous bystanders, who did not ask for the PSL to bring the fight into where they live. These are the things the NGO-backed left orgs do: funnel momentum away from the organic resistance efforts, and take actions that objectively assist in the state’s violence.
Like in the case of Palestine, or the other victims of imperial aggression, a real solidarity movement for Mexico will be one that avoids these white saviorist ways of operating. The movement we’re building must take example from the Mexican resistance, and must be led by it. This means that everything we do in relation to the Mexican resistance needs to have the purpose of strengthening the resistance itself.
There’s already widespread understanding within our movement that this is the correct practice on Palestine. Much of Gen Z supports the armed coalition within Gaza, because it’s clear to these young people that whatever ideological differences they have with Hamas, the important thing is to unify against the occupation. And though PSL nominally shares this view on Palestine, it’s evident that it doesn’t want to take on a subordinate role within actual solidarity movements it enters into. Which has made it harm both the anti-ICE struggle and the Palestinian struggle; these recent adventurist actions parallel the PSL’s road blockages, which were supposed to assist Gaza but objectively helped alienate the masses from the movement. As we build the Mexican solidarity movement, we must avoid these errors, or equivalents of these errors.
There are plenty of ultra-leftist ideas that undermine the Mexican solidarity cause. There are the “decolonial” dogmas that say Mexico needs to be abolished because it’s supposedly a settler state; there are attitudes within certain radical liberal circles that promote hostility towards Latinos because they aren’t indigenous enough, or other race essentialist logic. These kinds of leftist ethnic purity-testing arguments are strange and niche by design, so most people can’t relate to them; but it’s because they’re so alienating that they have real backing from the NGO-industrial complex. This is part of a strategy to isolate and divide the anti-imperialist struggle; to make it no longer even about anti-imperialism, but about waging some sort of radlib identitarian war.
For non-Latinos like myself, it’s not necessary to wade too much into these cultural debates, because that’s not in our sphere. What we need to do is construct true power for the struggles against ICE, and against the drive towards war with Mexico. We must create organizational forces in our local communities that can sustain themselves, and keep building on the strength they’ve already gained. A movement that’s overwhelmingly focused on protests isn’t capable of this; that’s a key part of why PSL’s practice is harming both the Palestinian and Mexican struggles. If we base our practice in what the conditions require of us, and in what these communities actually need from us, we will tangibly weaken this campaign of aggression.
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