La guerrilla recurrente (review)

La guerrilla recurrente consists of six essays by the late Carlos Montemayor, one of Mexico's outstanding scholars on armed movements, the Mexican security services and indigenous cultures. The essays, written between 1996 and 2007, address and connect the political and military approaches to rural armed movements, the reform of the intelligence services since 1994, militarization, the evolution of the concept of terrorism since 2001, the massacre of Tlatelolco in 1968, and the work of the Femospp and the impunity of the perpetrators of the Mexican dirty war. The collection is held together by thematic issues that recur throughout the essays, and by the attempt to counter the imposition of one homogenizing interpretation of events on reality, as Montemayor states explicitly in the Preface.

In the first essay, 'La guerrilla recurrente', Montemayor addresses the persistence of rural armed movements in Mexico, the reasons for their persistence, the ways in which they construct – and interact with – their social base, and the strategies employed against them. Montemayor argues that rural armed movements are always embedded within local communities and could not survive without their support. Therefore, their emergence has to be understood in social and political terms. However, the government refuses to acknowledge the social conflicts that are the origin of rural armed movements; instead, it implements a strategy based on a military reading of the situation. The result is a strategy of violent repression, which is then applied against all members of the local population.

The second essay, 'Los servicios de inteligencia', contains an analysis of government strategies employed against armed and social movements since 1994. Montemayor traces the connections between various actors and federal agencies that have been founded, have dissolved, and have merged since 1994. Of particular interest are two points he makes insistently and repeatedly: that the war against the Partido de los Pobres and the inhabitants of the Sierra de Atoyac in the early 1970s was the first instance of the concerted application of mechanisms of repression that later on became characteristic of the dirty wars in South America, and that the repressive strategies employed against movements in Oaxaca and Atenco in 2006 indicate a return to the dirty war.

In the essays on militarization and on the evolution of the concept of terrorism Montemayor develops several points made in 'Los servicios de inteligencia'. This leads to occasional thematic overlap; however, the two later essays develop rather than repeat the previously made arguments. Montemayor analyses a change of US strategy regarding possible interventions in Latin America and the impact that the 'war on drugs' has on Mexican institutions such as the army and the police force. This is of particular interest in the context of the imminent implementation of the 'Plan Mérida'. Montemayor's analysis of the concept of 'terrorism' frames the Mexican case within the global context. He argues that the Mexican government attempts to justify the introduction of the offence 'terrorism' by referring to the global situation. This offence would substitute for the former 'disolución social', which played a major role in the oppression of the student movement and in the dirty war.

The last two essays – 'Rehacer la historia' and 'La Fiscalía Especial' – revisit the massacre of Tlatelolco and address the aftermath of the massacre and the dirty war. 'Rehacer la historia' contains an analysis of recently released visual material that sheds new light on the massacre of Tlatelolco and on the government's involvement in it. 'La fiscalía especial' analyses the fate of Mexico's equivalent of a truth commission, the Fiscalía Especial para Movimientos Sociales y Políticos del Pasado. The essay exposes the ways in which the commission was sabotaged and finally dissolved. Importantly, Montemayor provides important contextual information on the Femospp's final report: the commission was forced to make significant changes in terminology and to omit an entire chapter.

Unfortunately, La guerrilla recurrente is published in a basic edition. The book has no index or bibliography, even though the titles of Montemayor's sources are...