Una lucha más / Another Struggle
Some inspiration for the current political moment.
In this political moment, I've been finding great comfort in the fact that Mexican civil society found ways to survive and even thrive while existing under an authoritarian one-party regime for the better part of a century.
Freedoms were curtailed, social and political activists were persecuted, often disappeared and many killed, yet people kept organizing and adapting and persevered. That resilience gives me a lot of hope in this political moment.
And it's worth remembering that PRI rule was but the most recent in a long history of oppressive regimes that Mexicans have had to cope with. In reality, we're talking about surviving hundreds of years of oppression.
This political history isn't just Mexican: it's also American history, and certainly California history. Millions of people here were born under the Mexican PRI regime, while even more have parents and grandparents who lived through it. Decades later, across international borders, I want to believe that the lessons learned still hold relevance.
I hope we can all collectively learn from these lessons and know how and when to apply them.