Constructing and Navigating Autonomous Self-Organization: Notes and Experiences From Community Struggles in Mexico A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN POLITICAL SCIENCE AUGUST 2018 By: Ryan A. Knight Dissertation Committee: Kathy E. Ferguson, Chairperson Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua Jon Goldberg-Hiller Njoroge Njoroge Craig Howes © 2018 by Ryan A. Knight All rights reserved. Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………..…IV Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………V Notes on Citations, Interviews and Translations………………………………………………...VI Chapter 1: Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...1 Chapter 2: Located Autonomies…………………………………………………………………31 Chapter 3: Community Assembly: The Case of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca………61 Chapter 4: Community Radio: Spaces and Networks of Self-Organization and Resistance……91 Chapter 5: Community Self-Defense and Autonomous (Il)Legalities…………………………133 Chapter 6: The Ins and Outs of Autonomy……………………………………………...……..170 Chapter 7: Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...……..192 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………200 Abstract This dissertation explores autonomous politics as political resistance, through an engagement with various processes of communal self-organization being carried out in Mexico. Resisting the approach to “autonomy” as a static and separate space that is fully self-determined, this dissertation seeks to explore the complexities and tensions that characterize struggles for autonomous self-organization through their ongoing construction and navigation of internal and external forces. Through a look at the struggle of the community assembly in Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca, armed forces of community self-defense and justice in the states of Michoacán and Guerrero, and the community radio milieu that crisscrosses much of the country, this dissertation explores the diversity and located-ness of autonomous processes and struggles in the context of Mexico. It seeks to show how autonomous struggles are located in historical, political, cultural and social contexts that influence their character, thus making autonomy better understood in the plural as “autonomies.” Simultaneously, this dissertation investigates the manner in which autonomous struggles of self-organization are constantly working beyond their material locations, in processes of cross-communal and cross-struggle organization. There, between the located-ness and movement of autonomous processes of self-organization, this dissertation seeks to understand autonomous struggle as ongoing processes of construction and navigation that both rupture yet reinforce their insides and outsides. Through a focus on what might be called the borderlands of autonomies, we can begin to understand the multiple layers of complexity that animate resistance politics and animate autonomous struggles of self- organization specifically. Keywords: anarchist, Indigenous, autonomous Acknowledgements Researching and writing a dissertation is inherently a collective process. It would be impossible to recognize everyone who has made an impact on my thinking and life over the years, let alone on this project itself. I am indebted to you all, whether you know it or not. I want to directly thank my dissertation committee for providing the support in seeing this dissertation to its timely end: Dr. Kathy E. Ferguson, Dr. Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua, Dr. Jon Goldberg-Hiller, Dr. Njoroge Njoroge and Dr. Craig Howes. I also want to give massive thanks, and un abrazo fuerte, to all of the friends and comrades in Mexico who have shared their struggles with me, and who have taught me so much. ¡La lucha sigue! Note on Citations, Interviews and Translations All names of participating subjects have been changed that weren’t already public. All translations done by the author are marked accordingly in the in-text citations. All internet sources have been cited separately in the bibliography. All quotes from interviews have been cited as footnotes within the text. Chapter 1: Introduction Prelude: In the early morning of January 18th, 2016, a comrade and fellow university student from Mexico City and I made the journey by public transportation to the community of San Lorenzo Huitzizilapan in the municipality of Lerma in the State of Mexico. We traversed two metro lines in Mexico’s capital city before embarking on the two-hour bus ride from the Western “Observatorio” bus station in route toward Huitzizilapan. The trip temporally coincided with the daily commute of the millions of people in and around Mexico City going to and from work, causing extreme crowding in the metro trains and stations, and making the bus ride a slow one at best due to the stop-and-go traffic. That day, the Indigenous Otomí-Ñatho community of San Lorenzo Huitzizilapan had a scheduled community assembly to elect a new comisariado de bienes comunales, or commission of communal lands, to represent the interests of the community assembly regarding issues of land tenure. A series of assemblies and organizational initiatives had emerged in the community as part of the ongoing resistance struggle against a highway project seeking to connect the two urban centers of Mexico City and Toluca. San Lorenzo Huitzizilapan was one of the communities whose water and nearby forest was directly under threat from the highway construction project and thus had become active in resistance to it. I’d previously been involved in the neighboring community of San Francisco Xochicuautla, another one of the communities in the proposed route of the highway project—a community that had been in struggle for some ten years exhausting almost all legal means of halting the project. In response to the lack of efficacy of the legal routes, and as a gesture toward 1 their willingness to use direct action to stop the project, in July of 2015 the community convoked an encampment in their territory on the proposed path of the highway project. As the machines had already come through the forest once, slicing like a blade leaving a path of dead and fallen trees, community members saw it necessary to build a semi-permanent structure on the route, inviting those in solidarity to participate, remaining alert to any further encroachment from the machines or riot police. I was one of the various people, made up mostly of solidarity activists from Mexico City along with local community members, who spent time in the encampment in support of the community struggle in San Francisco Xochicuautla. The neighboring community of San Lorenzo Huitzizilapan, while struggling against the same project, was engaged in a different battle, trying to oust the political party sponsored comisario ejidal, or ejidal commissioner, who had approved the project to pass through the community’s territory without the consent of the majority of the community members. After nearly a year and a half of conflict between the community and the ejidal commissioner, Luis Enrique Dorantes, La Procuraduría Agraria del Estado de México, or Agrarian Office of Mexico State, agreed to be present and recognize the results of a community assembly on November 20th, 2015. After insufficient quorum arrived to the first assembly, a second assembly was scheduled for December 7th, 2015. On December 7th, 2015, the Agrarian Office of Mexico State, who had originally convoked the assembly and was to be overseeing and legitimizing authority to certify the assembly’s decision did not arrive. Representatives from the Agrarian Office had been involved in a supposed automobile accident, and hence were not able to reach the event. This information was found out later to be false, and just one of many examples of state authorities attempting to obstruct and delegitimize the movement of the community. On that day, despite the lack of 2 presence of the overseeing and officiating body, community members decided to hold the assembly nonetheless, where they elected a new agrarian commission that represented the interests of the community against the highway infrastructure project. As the Agrarian Office wasn’t present, and thus unwilling to certify the results from that day, they convoked another assembly for the day we were present, January 18th, 2016. We arrived by taxi colectivo, or collective taxi, from the neighboring town of San Francisco Xochicuautla, some twenty minutes away. After leaving the taxi behind, we descended the hill on foot toward the office of communal lands where the assembly was to be held. There, from above on the hill, we could already see some five hundred people had gathered within the general area in anticipation of the event. The road was blockaded by a combination of cars and large stones, forcing those present including us to arrive on foot. Behind the blockade below the government building sat a small group of police cars and other police vehicles, waiting for orders from their superior command and following the community action from a distance. Some six other trucks full of riot police were on call nearby, in an intimidation tactic used against the community’s movement toward self-organization. As we entered the plaza in front of the office of communal lands, the majority of the people were standing around sharing conversation and botanas, or snacks, from the food carts and vendors present. Different vendors were selling cups of mango, mixed fresh fruits, hats to block the sun, and fried potato chips