By: Juan Reardon & Nils McCune

November 2025

“Formation must be linked to a strategic political project for the transformation of society. This very project is constantly under development and formation must be part of the process. For this reason, formation cannot be dogmatic nor spontaneous but instead should be prepared, planned and combined with the development of the strategic objectives of the organization.” 

– La Via Campesina

Introductory Note

Across a vast Latin American landscape, the imperialist project of past and present runs up against a plurality of organized resistance. Be they extractive mining conglomerates and the dams they need built, corporate agribusiness and its endless expansion of the agricultural frontier, or the financial capital behind it all, the incursions of capital into Latin America – with the collaboration of corrupt local elites – are almost always met by an extraordinary diversity of worker-, student-, peasant-, Indigenous-, Black-, LGBTQIAPN+- and women-led movements defending their lived, lands, waters, territories, peoples, histories, and horizons. When one looks specifically to the countryside, Latin American social movements stand firm in the recuperation of ancestral knowledge, the defense of multiple ways of life, and the popular construction of food sovereignty – the right of all peoples to define, develop and defend their own food systems through the exercise of rights to land and territory, agroecological production systems, and an end to free market neoliberal impositions. In contrast to the amnesia characteristic of imperial ‘America’ [See: Monroe to Trump], the place known as Nuestra América (Our America) is the carrier of a historical memory rich in organizational experiences and approaches towards collectively building social justice, sovereignty, rights and self-determination. In the face of military dictatorships, fascism and armed extractive industries, the struggle for democratic transitions towards just societies has developed a creative maturation of strategies and tactics among popular movements, with political education at the heart of many.

The Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo, or Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC), is a “movement of movements” that includes all Latin American member organizations of the global peasant movement La Via Campesina (LVC). CLOC’s remarkable experience in combating colonialism, racism, patriarchy, agribusiness and capital’s extractivist agenda has given rise to a continental system of political education beyond the scope of traditional cadrefication. CLOC’s is a process of experience- and reflection-based education the movements call formación. 

CLOC-Via Campesina: Who, What, Where and Why?

The Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC-Vía Campesina) is a continental articulation of peasant, farmworker, fisherfolk, and other land- and territory-based movements with decades of direct experience in the struggle for human, economic, social, cultural, and political rights. The accumulated experience of cadre within CLOC is deep, as many come from the collective experience of building revolutionary transformation in local, national, continental and international contexts. Born in 1994 from an alliance of people’s organizations mobilized in what was known as “500 years of Indigenous, Black, and Popular Resistance”, a protest against official celebrations of Columbus’ arrival to the Americas, CLOC’s steadfast embrace of class struggle offers a profound and pluralistic understanding of socialism, as it stands at the forefront of the struggles against patriarchy, racism, colonialism, capitalism, neoliberalism, and imperialism in the effort to build a new society free of oppressors or oppressed in right relation to Mother Earth. 

Currently, the CLOC includes 84 member organizations in Latin American and Caribbean countries. Some of its more well-known members are Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) [See: Brazil’s MST by DSA], Chile’s National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women (ANAMURI), Cuba’s National Association of Family Farmers (ANAP), Haiti’s Papaya Peasant Movement (MPP), Puerto Rico’s Organización Boricuá for Ecological Agriculture (Boricuá) and Guatemala’s Peasant Unity Committee (CUC). Among its many efforts, CLOC is dedicated to consolidating food sovereignty at the levels of nation and territory by multiplying experiences and knowledge in agroecology. To confront the living legacies of colonialism, patriarchy and racism, CLOC connects peasant organizing efforts with those of workers, students, and others disproportionately demeaned and disenfranchised by corporate interests. 

At the global level, CLOC brings together the struggles for peasants’ rights in Nuestra America with permanent solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for life, rights, and sovereignty. The CLOC campaign “Sovereign Peoples, People in Solidarity”, for example, helps people across the continent hear from and connect with the efforts of the people of Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua to build and sustain transformative political projects while resisting U.S. imperialist aggression and unilateral coercive sanctions. Unapologetic in nature, CLOC expresses a firm and public commitment to “furthering debates that contribute to building the theoretical and programmatic foundations for a socialist project in the Americas.” 

Many of these debates take place through CLOC’s formación infrastructure, processes, and programs. The CLOC’s ‘Banners of Struggle’, available online in Spanish, give a sense of its vision for structural, democratic change to defend life, biodiversity, and rights in the Americas:

• Popular, Comprehensive, and Redistributive Agrarian Reform
• Peasant Agroecology based on the Recovery of Ancestral Knowledge
• Food Sovereignty based on Public Policy supporting the Peasant and Small Farm Sectors
• Implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP)
• The Construction of Popular Peasant Feminism
• Alliance-Building with Organizations of Other Sectors
• Youth-led Processes for Intergenerational Renewal
• Internationalist Solidarity
• Political, Ideological and Technical Training or formación…

What is Formación?

People’s movements develop a collective identity based on a shared analysis and, above all, a shared experience of struggle for a fundamentally different society. As noted in DSA’s 2023 article on Paulo Freire and Political Education, “there can be no theory that doesn’t inform practice, and vice versa. While distinguishable, the two must be inseparable, two sides of the same coin”. While in some contexts [See: Global North] for one person to wear “many hats” – to the point that often there can be meetings with more organizations “present” than people in the meeting – this can be problematic and is often an obstacle in the construction of a collective political project. Within the CLOC’s political culture, it is understood to be much more advantageous to have a shared analysis and greater levels of organicity – which is a kind of organizational culture that helps individuals understand where their unique contributions can be most impactful and appreciated within the larger needs of the collective. There is a popular saying that reflects this concept: “It’s more helpful to have one idea in a hundred people than one person with a hundred ideas.” Movements create specific moments for people to share their unique thoughts, reflections and opinions – with consensus and unity being the overall objectives – adjoined by moments in which members are expected to carry out responsibilities effectively without imposing their own desires or opinions on the collective’s agreed-upon commitments.

Formation is simply one part of a larger whole. As social movements or popular organizations attempt to change society, they must take action of some kind – whether that be through street protests, sit-ins, occupations, encampments, boycotts, lawsuits and beyond. Action is a moment in a long-term struggle, and should be planned and carried out collectively. Organization is another moment; this is when people debate and decide what their long-term vision is, and what kind of a structure can help them get where they hope to go. Assemblies, internal elections, designation of roles, and the creation of political positions are all part of organization. Formation, in turn, is a moment of struggle in which people temporarily remove themselves from action in order to critically reflect upon that action. Formation gives form to the action of an organization. By studying their own experiences and mistakes, as well as those of others across borders or throughout history, organizations can more effectively adjust their strategies and tactics, to be able to return to their practice with a more accurate understanding of their context and situation. The cycle of action-reflection-action, like the practice-theory-practice cycle described by Paulo Freire, is part of a collective movement through history known as praxis, as people resist and learn from that resistance. Formation is part of a critical process of collective self-preparation for world-changing activity.

According to La Via Campesina’s International Formation Collective, of which CLOC is an integral part, “formation is an infinite and permanent process of producing, socializing and sharing new knowledge derived from confronting ideas and comparing them with reality. It is a process of producing and reproducing the knowledge of our own reality, including the commitment to seek and distinguish our unique reality from the rest. All of this, of course, not only to understand the world but with the intent to transform it.”

Over 30 years into its development, the many movements that make up CLOC now maintain multiple formation processes with diverse tracks and methodologies. Designed to prepare new and experienced grassroots cadre for a lifelong – often difficult and dangerous – journey of political engagement for social transformation, these processes also serve to strengthen internationalist unity within diversity that is unique to the CLOC and La Via Campesina. 

A few of the CLOC’s most prominent formation processes are:

• Latin American Institutes of Agroecology (IALA)

Beginning with the IALA Paulo Freire in Barinas, Venezuela, the IALA model of peasant universities created by and for member organizations of the CLOC has now spread to include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. These autonomous social movement universities provide advanced training in agroecological production methods, as well as organizing skills, dialogue, and reflection to learn from concrete struggles and improve the practice of social movements in territories. 

The IALAs are a space of Latin American integration that recover the historical memory of 500 years of colonialism and over 200 years of formal independence while US neocolonialism has continued.

• Political and Ideological Formation Schools

Organized at two distinct levels – regional grassroots leadership and continental organizational leadership – the CLOC’s Political and Ideological Schools aim to consolidate an experienced collective of cadre at the national, regional, and continental levels capable of accompanying popular struggles with political clarity and determination. 

At the regional levels, both the “Andean School” (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia) and “School of the Southern Cone” (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay) host grassroots organizers in a diversity of national venues – schools, churches, cultural centers, and more – where selected participants share organizational updates, contextual analyses, contributing to a dialogue of knowledge as well as mística, meals and other daily commitments (cooking, cleaning, studying, and more).

At the continental level, the rotative 15-day Egidio Brunetto School (held in different contexts and countries each time it’s organized) and multiple short-courses held at Managua’s Francisco Morazán International Peasant School host leadership development processes for those who have completed courses and processes at the regional levels.    

• Continental Women’s Schools

The CLOC’s Continental Women’s Schools are about empowering rural women organizers in what La Via Campesina defines as “popular peasant feminism,” a uniquely movement-based contribution to grassroots feminism that centers class analysis and the collective construction of food sovereignty. The most recent CLOC Women’s School took place in the Dominican Republic (May 2024) –- the sixth such school in recent years. In it, Nicaraguan feminist leader Yolanda Areas Blass noted that, “each region in La Via Campesina used to organize their own political education processes. Now we have been able to strengthen the school system of the Women’s Articulation from the first International Women’s School carried out in Africa, where we advanced globally in the discussion about popular peasant feminism and about women’s political participation.” From grassroots to global, the CLOC and Via Campesina’s popular peasant feminism are contributing to other important formation processes such as the Berta Cáceres International Feminist Organizing School (IFOS).

• Continental Communication Schools

Involving many of the same grassroots leaders engaged in the above mentioned processes, the CLOC’s Continental Communication Schools are an equally important cycle of action, reflection, and matured action designed specifically to deepen political and technical expertise in “popular anti-capitalist communication.” According to their own reporting, the 5th Continental Communication School (online due to Covid-19) included critical reflections on “the concept of internationalism and its implications for popular struggles” as well as “the ongoing challenges facing communication in CLOC organizations.” 

Participant communicators, “learned about and evaluated CLOC’s current continental communication work as a counter-hegemonic strategy in the class struggle.” They then, “delved into the nature of CLOC’s communication, current strategies and challenges, internal and external communication tools,” before engaging in practical, “workshops strengthening skills in areas such as photography, video, audio, graphic design, social media, newsletters, and internal communications”. 

“The rich process of political education in popular communication,” left participants of the 2020 course with, “many lessons learned, challenges identified and, above all else, a growing collective (of communicators) with transformative dreams and hopes, strengthened by a revolutionary and internationalist spirit.”

• Continental Youth Encampments

Last but by no means least, the CLOC’s multiple youth-led processes feed into their own larger political education process known as ‘Encampments’. Each held in a unique national/historical context, hosted by the youth of a CLOC-LVC member organization, dozens of organized youth gather to, “promote formation and reaffirm the principles of CLOC Via Campesina as well as to exchange productive experiences, celebrate Latin American and Caribbean culture, cultivate the mystique and strengthen the peasant struggles of the regions of our territories.” In Spanish only, the following documentary shares some of the voices, smiles, and experiences of the XVII Youth Encampment of 2022.

Closing Remarks

Latin America’s Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC) is a living, breathing, and learning articulation of people’s movements prioritizing the political development of cadre within a larger process of action, reflection, and matured action aimed at consolidating a socially just and ecologically sound society for all. It listens to and learns from its own organizers – encouraging honest debate amongst the many – while encouraging friends and allies to contribute their own experiences through a dialogue of knowledges. From a place of organizational strength and sincerity, the CLOC learns while teaching and teaches while learning. For those of us engaged in our own processes of political education for societal transformation, the CLOC inspires. 

Readers interested in contacting the CLOC directly can do so in both English and or Spanish emailing: secretaria.cloc.vc@gmail.com. 

See Also: 

https://cloc-viacampesina.net

https://www.instagram.com/cloclvc/?hl=en

https://web.facebook.com/cloc.viacampesina

https://web.facebook.com/friendsatc/?locale=es_LA&_rdc=1&_rdr#

Click here to read in English.

Imagínese que en los barrios más pobres de Detroit, Atlanta y Chicago, en lugar de solares vacíos, pudiera encontrar un parque público con relucientes piscinas, instalaciones deportivas y recreativas de primer nivel y un paisajismo espectacular. Si es madre soltera, en vez de tener que cargar con su ropa varias cuadras para pagar por lavarla, podría ir a un espacio público y bien mantenido donde lavar la ropa gratis mientras disfruta de comida deliciosa cultivada en el huerto agroecológico al costado de la lavandería. Mientras tanto, tus hijos pueden aprender a nadar, asistir a talleres sobre cómo cultivar alimentos en la ciudad, visitar el planetario para aprender cómo la cosmología maya se relaciona con el Big Bang, pasar el rato en el parque de patinaje o aprender a tocar la guitarra.

Mientras almuerzas y lavas la ropa, hay una empleada cuyo trabajo es hablar contigo y estar atenta a cualquier indicio de violencia doméstica en tu vida. Si estás lidiando con violencia doméstica, justo al lado hay una consejera que puede ayudarte. Imagina que, en este escenario, incluso en las zonas más vulnerables de las ciudades estadounidenses, puedes tener acceso a un abogado experto si lo necesitas. Independientemente de lo que estés enfrentando en casa, puedes consultar con la masajista y la acupunturista en este mismo edificio público, un espacio para mujeres conocido como Casa Siemprevivas. Ella no solo te ofrece masajes, sino que también enseñará cómo hacerlos a quince de tus vecinas y amigas para que puedas usar este espacio para círculos de apoyo mutuo. Son espacios donde se fomenta la liberación emocional a través de la risa y el llanto. Todo esto es gratuito y financiado por el gobierno.

En Estados Unidos, esta clase de inversión en servicios públicos tan extensas sigue siendo una fantasía, por ahora. Pero es muy real y funciona eficientemente en la Ciudad de México bajo el liderazgo del partido MORENA de la presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, la líder populista de izquierda del país.

Estas instituciones públicas en México se denominan Unidades de Transformación y Organización para la Inclusión y la Armonía Social, o UTOPÍAS. Actualmente existen dieciséis, todas ubicadas en Iztapalapa, la alcaldía más poblada y pobre de la Ciudad de México. Prácticamente todas las UTOPIAS ofrecen servicios para mujeres que sufren violencia doméstica, centros de reducción de daños para personas usuarias de drogas, espacios de apoyo para personas queer y trans, centros comunitarios para personas mayores y talleres para ayudar a los hombres a deconstruir la masculinidad tóxica, lo que en la práctica implica enseñar a hombres cuyas relaciones están en declive terminal o que se han convertido en padres solteros debido a una tragedia imprevista, cómo hacer cosas como lavar los platos, freír huevos o trenzar el cabello. No es poca cosa.

Cada UTOPIA ofrece una variedad de servicios especializados. Por ejemplo, UTOPIA La Libertad, ubicada justo detrás del muro de una prisión, cuenta con un zoológico interactivo y un planetario. UTOPIA Meyehualco, que ocupa lo que antes era un extenso parque con canchas de fútbol exclusivas para ligas privadas, ahora tiene un gran parque de dinosaurios animatrónicos (sí, leíste bien) y una pista de hockey. UTOPIA Olini alberga estanques amplios y bien cuidados, una piscina de marea y un gimnasio que sirve de sede a un destacado grupo de breakdance. UTOPIA Estrella Huizachtépetl se asienta sobre lo que antes era una zona de drenajede una planta de tratamiento de aguas y que ha sido convertida en un extenso ecosistema de humedales. Y UTOPIA Quetzalcoatl, ubicada de forma inusual en múltiples edificios y espacios discontinuos en una zona urbana densa, se centra en gran medida en los servicios de salud mental infantil, contando con una arteterapeuta en su plantilla. Algunas de las UTOPIAS organizan talleres periódicos para apoyar a los residentes, especialmente a las mujeres, en la creación de pequeñas empresas y cooperativas bajo el lema de la «economía solidaria».

En la siguiente sección, compartiré más historias sobre cómo las personas utilizan y se benefician de los servicios que ofrece UTOPIAS, basadas en varios meses de investigación de campo en México. Mi objetivo es ampliar nuestra visión colectiva en Estados Unidos y otros países del centro del poder sobre cómo puede ser un sólido sistema urbano de atención comunitaria. Además, espero compartir la historia más profunda de la organización y la lucha de la clase trabajadora que hizo posible estos programas. A pesar de las muchas diferencias que existen entre nuestros contextos en cuanto a sistemas de organización, considero que los organizadores estadounidenses tienen mucho que aprender de los organizadores que han construido poder de masas en México.

Historias desde abajo: cómo las UTOPIAS mejoran la vida de los trabajadores

Con todos estos servicios sociales gratuitos que se ofrecen, con un marcado enfoque anticarcelario, feminista y ecológico, no es de extrañar que las UTOPIAS hayan captado la atención de los círculos de izquierda internacionales como un ejemplo concreto de cómo puede ser la política ecosocialista municipal. Como parte de mi investigación en ecología política urbana, estoy pasando un semestre sabático aquí y baso este artículo en visitas a ocho de las dieciséis UTOPIAS y entrevistas con diversos miembros del personal, usuarios y funcionarios.

A lo largo de estas visitas y entrevistas, surgió una imagen inequívocamente positiva. Los terapistas de salud mental me comentaron cómo podían dedicar mucho más tiempo a los pacientes trabajando en los centros UTOPIA que en las clínicas con poco personal.

Una ginecóloga obstetra que realizó rotaciones entre las clínicas UTOPIA creía que finalmente podía hacer aquello para lo que había estudiado: “llevar la justicia reproductiva directamente a la gente.”

Un agricultor que trabaja en UTOPIA La Libertad compartió que su visión agroecológica para el futuro era que “las ciudades pueden y deben cultivar sus propios alimentos.”

Una mujer de tercera edad me contó que los talleres sobre la muerte y el morir le brindaron apoyo y consuelo tras el fallecimiento de su esposo.

Un carnicero de 24 años, antiguo adicto a la heroína, logró rehabilitarse gracias a los servicios de reducción de daños y asesoramiento de UTOPIA Teotongo, y ahora acude al centro al menos una vez por semana para ayudar al chamán en sus ceremonias de temazcal (cabaña de sudar). Explicó: “Las UTOPIAS me proporcionaron una vida que nunca antes hubiera podido imaginar.”

Un grupo de chicas adolescentes que formaron una banda de punk rock confirmaron que no lo habrían podido hacer sin los instrumentos y espacios de ensayo gratuitos proporcionados por UTOPIA.

Las UTOPIAS también demuestran que ampliar los espacios comunes urbanos para elcuidado de las personas no tiene por qué ser costoso. El gobierno de Iztapalapa ha declarado que la construcción de cada UTOPIA costó 100 millones de pesos (unos 5 millones de dólares estadounidenses), con un presupuesto operativo de aproximadamente 1 millón de dólares estadounidenses. Incluso si estas cifras fueran subestimaciones, e inclusive si fueran diez veces mayores en Estados Unidos debido a los precios más altos de los materiales y la mano de obra, las cifras igual no serían muy onerosas, considerando los miles de millones que nuestras grandes ciudades gastan en policías y exenciones fiscales para los ricos.

Mientras hablaba con trabajadores y usuarios de las UTOPIAS y les preguntaba sobre cómo se construyeron estos espacios, un nombre surgió constantemente: Clara Brugada, la ex alcaldesa de Iztapalapa y ahora Jefa de Gobierno de toda la Ciudad de México. Trabajadores de la salud mental, jubilados, técnicos hidropónicos y administradores de los sitios me dijeron que las UTOPIAS fueron una creación de Brugada, y que fue a través de su visión y pura fuerza de voluntad política, respaldada como estaba por el pueblo, que se construyeron las UTOPIAS.

El consenso que escuché era tan generalizado que parecía absurdo negarlo, incluso si resultaba contraintuitiva que una sola persona pudiera recopilar un conjunto de servicios tan radicales relacionados con temas tan variados como la salud mental, la educación científica y la agricultura urbana. Aun así, algo parecía incompleto, así que investigué más a fondo. A través de mi investigación sobre la historia reciente de la política de la Ciudad de México, quedó claro que existió un movimiento de masas que moldeó la estructura política urbana de la ciudad, desarrolló e impulsó muchas de las iniciativas que hoy se encuentran en las UTOPIAS y, de manera significativa, dio lugar al surgimiento político de Clara Brugada. Se llama el Movimiento Popular Urbano.

El Movimiento Popular Urbano y MORENA: organización política tras el neoliberalismo

Décadas antes de que surgiera el partido MORENA, una constelación mucho más dispersa de organizaciones urbanas luchaba por las demandas inmediatas de los trabajadores: títulos de propiedad de sus tierras, servicios de agua y electricidad. Pero en algunos casos, estas organizaciones se iban más allá de luchar por demandas políticas inmediatas. También experimentaron con y finalmente construyeron servicios directos para mejorar la vida de las personas. Crearon centros para mujeres víctimas de violencia doméstica, cultivaron alimentos, regeneraron ecosistemas forestales urbanos y brindaron servicios de reducción de daños para personas usuarias de drogas. En esencia, construyeron muchos de los elementos que ahora encontramos, a gran escala, en las UTOPIAS.

El hecho de que los organizadores urbanos de la Ciudad de México lograran crear un movimiento social contundente con verdadero poder político en estas condiciones debería darnos aún más confianza en que nosotros también podemos hacerlo.

El propio Movimiento Popular Urbano construyó poder político entre los ocupantes informales y marginados de la ciudad, la población urbana en situación de pobreza con empleos informales y otros trabajadores que se aferraban a una apariencia de normalidad y dignidad. Este movimiento creció en el terreno fértil del descontento urbano durante las décadas de dominio procapitalista del Partido Institucional de la Revolución (PRI) y la posterior oposición conservadora.

El partido gobernante PRI históricamente mantuvo su poder desde finales de la década de 1940 hasta bien entrada la década de 1990 e incluso parte de la década de 2000 mediante una estructura corporativista construida sobre tres pilares organizativos bajo su estricto control: la CTM(Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos), representando al trabajo organizado, la CNC (Confederación Nacional de Campesinos) representando a los campesinos, y la CNOP (Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Populares) representando a las clases medias urbanas, las organizaciones de la “sociedad civil” y, en teoría, la población urbana en situación de pobreza.

Sin embargo, para la década de 1980, un gran número de residentes de la Ciudad de México no pertenecían a sindicatos industriales ni estaban representados de manera significativa por la CNOP. Para quienes vivimos en Estados Unidos en el siglo XXI, esto probablemente nos resulte muy familiar: la afiliación sindical se ha desplomado en nuestro país desde la década de 1980, y las organizaciones de la ‘sociedad civil’ han ido desapareciendo gradualmente de la vida popular.

Al igual que en Estados Unidos, en la década de 1980 el movimiento sindicalista en México era solamente una sombra de su pasado militante.  La CTM se formó en el crisol de la década de 1930. El presidente progresista Lázaro Cárdenas fundó esta organización con el objetivo de aglutinar al proletariado industrial, más militante y de tendencia comunista, con los trabajadores más independientes del sector del transporte y los empleados de pequeñas empresas. Sin embargo, tras la llegada al poder del derechista Miguel Alemán Valdés en 1946, este rebautizó al partido oficial como Partido Institucional de la Revolución (PRI) y se propuso purgar a los militantes del movimiento obrero organizado. Nombró a Alfonso Ochoa Partida, apodado “el charro” por su afición a la charrería, deporte típico del rodeo mexicano, como jefe de la CTM para llevar a cabo estas purgas. Hasta el día de hoy, los sindicatos procapitalistas, de carácter débil, son conocidos como “sindicatos charros”. En México, estos sindicatos favorables al capital siguieron siendo fuerzas políticas poderosas durante los años de bonanza económica de la relativamente próspera industrialización por sustitución de importaciones durante las décadas de 1950 y 1960.

Esta era, caracterizada por una relativa armonía de clases y sostenida por la estructura corporativista del PRI, comenzó a desmoronarse a finales de la década de 1960. Las masacres de activistas estudiantiles, primero la de Tlaltelolco en el año 1968 y luego de manera subsiguiente la del Halconazo, seguidas por la Guerra Sucia impulsada por José López Portillo en la década de 1970, generaron una crisis de legitimidad política para el PRI. A pesar de las demandas relativamente moderadas del movimiento estudiantil en favor de la reforma política, el PRI se mostró reacio a tolerar cualquier desafío a su hegemonía corporativista. La crisis de legitimidad política del PRI se agudizó con la crisis económica mundial de finales de la década de 1970, que supuso el fin de la industrialización por sustitución de importaciones, la cual había mantenido un nivel de vida en ascenso durante las décadas de la posguerra. Estas crisis combinadas marcaron el principio del fin para el PRI y crearon oportunidades políticas para que la oposición de izquierda se organizara y se fortaleciera.

Durante las décadas de 1970 y 1980, organizadores radicales y estudiantes que habían huido al campo durante la represión de la Guerra Sucia trabajaron arduamente en la implementación de programas de educación política rural, a menudo inspirados en la teoría maoísta de la línea de masas. Muchos campesinos ya contaban con convicciones radicales arraigadas en el legado de Emiliano Zapata, el militante defensor de los derechos territoriales campesinos de la época revolucionaria mexicana. Dichas convicciones se vieron reforzadas por sus experiencias vividas en la lucha económica rural a lo largo de los años.

A medida que la crisis económica de la década de 1970 empezó a mermar la viabilidad de los medios de subsistencia rurales, decenas de miles de campesinos que acababan de ser desplazados económicamente comenzaron a trasladarse a las afueras de la Ciudad de México. Si bien estos recién llegados eran pobres, carecían de poder político formal y eran muy vulnerables a la explotación de terratenientes codiciosos, distaban mucho de ser actores pasivos. Trajeron consigo sus análisis políticos radicales y rápidamente comenzaron a formar organizaciones comunitarias politizadas. Con el derrumbe de la legitimidad de las vías formales para la participación política popular urbana, estas organizaciones se transformaron en el Movimiento Popular Urbano. 

La historia de Enrique Cruz, un militante de treinta años perteneciente a la UPREZ (Unión Popular Revolucionaria Emiliano Zapata), una de las organizaciones del Movimiento Popular Urbano, ayuda a esclarecer esta historia. Él me explicó:

Soy hablante de soque indígena y nací en Oaxaca. Mis padres y abuelos participaron activamente en la lucha contra la minería de oro y plata que destruía nuestra tierra y amenazaba los ecosistemas que tanto apreciábamos. Al mudarme a la ciudad, encontré una escuela dirigida por la UPREZ adornada con murales de Emiliano Zapata, y supe que esa era mi gente. A través de la UPREZ, adquirí una sólida formación política y me convertí en organizador comunitario, luchando por una vivienda digna, brindando educación directa y formación política a otras personas, y trabajando en otras causas.

Organizaciones como la UPREZ surgieron en la década de 1980 y se fortalecieron especialmente tras el catastrófico terremoto de 1985, que desencadenó una ola de solidaridad urbana. Una de las organizaciones más fuertes es la Unión de Colonos de San Miguel Teotongo, ubicada en el extremo noreste de Iztapalapa, en las afueras de la Ciudad de México.

Cuando, en agosto de este año, visité su centro comunitario y oficina para examinar sus archivos comunitarios y expliqué que estaba interesado en la historia y las consecuencias políticas de las UTOPIAS, el empleado Marco Antonio Flores me informó que “Si te interesan las UTOPIAS, has llegado al lugar correcto. Gran parte de lo que ves en las UTOPIAS —servicios para mujeres que sufren violencia doméstica, apoyo a personas con problemas de drogadicción, agroecología— nosotros lo pusimos a prueba, experimentamos y desarrollamos desde la década de 1980. Ver que ahora están generalizadas y cuentan con el apoyo del gobierno es algo maravilloso.”

Al conocer las UTOPIAS, algunas cosas me resultaron familiares. En mi trabajo político y académico, he visto una impresionante variedad de proyectos con objetivos similares, desde grupos anarquistas independientes que realizan proyectos de conservación de tierras, hasta centros sin fines de lucro avocados a la salud sexual y reducción de daños, pasando por organizaciones agrícolas comunitarias. Pero ver todo esto, y mucho más, reunido y a gran escala con todo el respaldo del Estado, me pareció algo completamente distinto. 

¿Qué hizo que estas organizaciones tuvieran éxito no solo en la lucha por los servicios urbanos básicos, sino también en su influencia en la política nacional y local? Le pregunté a Marco Antonio por qué su organización parecía tan sólida y persistente, con una presencia tan fuerte en la comunidad hoy en día, mientras que otras organizaciones miembro del Movimiento Popular Urbano parecían haberse disuelto. Él respondió: “En la década de 1980, muchas organizaciones se centraron en exigir la regularización de la tierra, el suministro de agua potable, electricidad e incluso el control de alquileres. Una vez satisfechas algunas de esas demandas, no tenían muchos motivos para continuar. Nuestro enfoque era más amplio: luchamos por los derechos básicos, pero también construimos un centro comunitario dinámico con el objetivo más general de velar por el bienestar integral de los miembros de la comunidad”.

La propia alcaldesa de la Ciudad de México, Clara Brugada, pertenece a este movimiento. Siendo estudiante, comenzó a organizarse con la Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo. Se organizó políticamente para abogar por servicios básicos como electricidad, agua y desagüe. Según Florentina Juana Martínez, activista con la Unión de Colonos desde la década de 1970, Brugada desempeñó un papel fundamental como joven estratega a principios de la década de 1980. Impulsó a su grupo a presionar al gobierno para que cumpliera con esas demandas, así como a autoorganizarse para brindar servicios que el estado no proporcionaba.

En la década de 1990, Brugada lideró una campaña para transformar una prisión de mujeres, que también solía albergar a presas políticas durante la Guerra Sucia, en una escuela preparatoria. Esta campaña, que hoy podríamos describir como abolicionista, finalmente triunfó y la escuela se inauguró en el año 2000. Mientras luchaban por la titularidad de las tierras, Brugada continuó organizándose con la Unión de Colonos para establecer un centro comunitario que apoyara a mujeres víctimas de violencia doméstica, restaurara ecosistemas urbanos y brindara apoyo a personas con problemas de drogadicción.

Aquí hay una lección más amplia para la Izquierda de EEUU, para DSA, y quizás aún más específicamente para la gestión entrante de Zohran Mamdani en la ciudad de Nueva York: en nuestras ciudades existen movimientos que están fortaleciendo la capacidad para realizar movilizaciones masivas y combativas. Entre ellos se encuentran el movimiento inquilino y el movimiento obrero. Pero también incluyen proyectos innovadores llevados a cabo por grupos comunitarios centrados en la justicia ambiental, la justicia reproductiva, la agroecología y otros temas.

En otras palabras, las organizaciones comunitarias de Iztapalapa que resistieron el paso del tiempo y lograron un poder político duradero no solo lucharon por cosas como el control de alquileres y el saneamiento urbano básico, por tan vitales que fueran esas cosas. También construyeron directamente los mecanismos necesarios para, con escasos recursos, brindar atención a la comunidad  urbana, y al hacerlo se aseguraron de que, cuando surgiera una oportunidad política, sus ideas y prácticas estuvieran sobre la mesa para que las fuerzas políticas afines las aprovechen. 

Estos grupos forjaron alianzas estratégicas con personas que, con el tiempo, construirían el partido MORENA y se integrarían al aparato estatal. A medida que el partido MORENA consolidaba su poder, estos grupos se fueron incorporando a la gobernanza municipal en lugar de mantenerse al margen.

Organizaciones comunitarias existentes y la lucha por los bienes comunes urbanos

Cada una de las UTOPIAS se ubica en un barrio con una historia política y económica particular. Mientras que la Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo fue una fuerza poderosa y visionaria para la organización y el desarrollo comunitario, otras UTOPIAS contaban con organizaciones comunitarias significativas, aunque menos persistentes. Muchas UTOPIAS se sitúan en terrenos y parques anteriormente abandonados. Las UTOPIAS de Tecoloxtitlán y Papalotl, por ejemplo, se ubicaron en solares urbanos baldíos que solían ser mercados negros de autopartes robadas.

Rodrigo Castellano Hernández, coordinador de programación de UTOPIA Papalotl, compartió que a finales de la década del 2000, un grupo de miembros de la comunidad se unió para comenzar a desarrollar programas para jóvenes en la zona. Ofrecían clases de artes marciales y empezaron a experimentar con la agricultura urbana. Para cuando Clara Brugada asumió la alcaldía de Iztapalapa, ya existían sólidas iniciativas comunitarias para recuperar el espacio y destinarlo a actividades comunitarias positivas y solidarias.

De igual manera, en UTOPIA Tecoloxtitlán, un grupo de vecinos aunó recursos comunitarios para crear un centro de educación especial y un centro para Alcohólicos Anónimos en el parque, organizando el trabajo comunitario para limpiar el terreno urbano deteriorado. Y en UTOPIA Meyehualco, construida en un parque que antes solo estaba disponible para los miembros de una liga privada de fútbol, ​​el gobierno municipal, junto con organizaciones comunitarias aliadas, se organizó para que ese terreno sea para uso público gratuito, a pesar de las objeciones de los miembros del club privado que buscaban mantener la propiedad absoluta del terreno.

En las ciudades de Estados Unidos, el proceso específico para encontrar espacios para proyectos como este probablemente sería muy diferente al de Iztapalapa. Si bien las ciudades estadounidenses tienen un margen de maniobra considerable en sus presupuestos municipales, las clases dominantes han logrado mantener, año tras año, la financiación de la policía en lugar de la asistencia social. Sin embargo, los movimientos radicales en Estados Unidos han demostrado que las cosas no tienen por qué ser así. Desde las huelgas de maestros por mejores condiciones durante los últimos 15 años, hasta las campañas en pro de la abolición del sistema policial que surgieron tras las protestas por la muerte de George Floyd en 2020, nuestros propios movimientos han revelado que los presupuestos municipales pueden ser espacios importantes de lucha de clases.

Cabe destacar que las UTOPIAS no funcionan simplemente como un órgano del partido MORENA y de la alcaldesa Clara Brugada. Organizaciones comunitarias radicales también utilizan estos espacios para organizar poder político independiente. En septiembre, asistí a un evento en UTOPIA Paplotl organizado por una de las organizaciones miembro más importantes de la UPREZ, la organización de Enrique. En un auditorio repleto, con cerca de quinientas personas provenientes de decenas de pequeñas organizaciones comunitarias y cooperativas centradas principalmente en temas de vivienda, los líderes de la UPREZ incorporaron formalmente a estos grupos y a sus numerosos miembros de clase trabajadora a su organización.

Uno de los fundadores y veteranos del movimiento URPEZ, Jaime Rello, describió sucintamente cómo se relacionan estos movimientos de masas con las UTOPIAS y el partido MORENA:

Camaradas, las UTOPIAS son la síntesis de toda esta experiencia y lucha de más de 57 años desde el movimiento de 1968. Nuestra camarada Clara, surgida de los movimientos populares y de la Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo, aprendió bien de toda esta experiencia de lucha y ahora la pone en práctica. Pero eso no basta, camaradas, si no hay un movimiento fuerte que continúe luchando por estas causas, porque las presiones que enfrentamos, y que Clara enfrenta, por parte de la derecha, las presiones que enfrentamos por parte de los intereses del capital, son muy fuertes.

Nuestras organizaciones no las construyen únicamente los líderes. Las construye toda la sociedad. Necesitamos que todos contribuyan y antepongan el interés colectivo a los intereses individuales. Hemos llegado hasta aquí gracias a miles de activistas sociales que han dedicado su vida a transformar este país y esta ciudad.

La UPREZ y el Movimiento Popular Urbano están innegablemente aliados con el partido MORENA. La propia Clara Brugada surgió de estos movimientos obreros de Iztapalapa. Sin embargo, es evidente que estas organizaciones no se desmovilizan simplemente porque uno de los suyos esté en el poder. La relación entre estas organizaciones de masas y el gobierno de MORENA podría servir de modelo sobre cómo DSA y otras organizaciones de izquierda podrían relacionarse con la alcaldía de Zohran Mamdani o gestiones públicas similares: utilizando los espacios, recursos y plataformas que ofrece dicha administración para organizarse con firmeza en defensa de los derechos de los trabajadores y los inquilinos, construir centros independientes de poder comunitario y desarrollar una sólida red de bienes comunes urbanos avocados al cuidado, tanto dentro como fuera del Estado.

Las raíces históricas de las UTOPIAS nos demuestran que las iniciativas comunitarias de cuidado mutuo pueden ser impulsadas y ampliadas por el Estado cuando las condiciones son propicias. No es necesario crear desde cero buenas ideas para el cuidado comunitario, la agroecología urbana y el bienestar físico y mental. Muchas organizaciones ya realizan este trabajo. Con una financiación estatal relativamente modesta, pueden convertirse en programas sólidos al alcance de toda la población. En Estados Unidos, podemos encontrar organizaciones locales y regionales similares que poseen la visión y la experiencia necesarias para que nuestras versiones de las UTOPIAS prosperen.

Armados con visiones de cuidado comunitario similares a las que se han implementado en la Ciudad de México, y con el creciente poder político de DSA, estamos en condiciones de luchar precisamente por estas cosas en nuestras ciudades. Debemos aprovechar esta oportunidad, tanto en la ciudad de Nueva York como en todo el país.

Bibliografía

Además de entrevistas y observaciones de campo, este trabajo se basa en gran medida en los siguientes libros sobre la historia urbana de la Ciudad de México.

• Davis, Diane. 1994. Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century. Temple University Press.

• Gerlofs, Ben. 2023. Monstrous Politics: Geography, Rights, and the Urban Revolution in Mexico City. Vanderbilt University Press.

• Vitz, Matthew. 2020. A City on a Lake: Urban Political Ecology and the Growth of Mexico City. Duke University Press.

Español

Este fin de semana, la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza, fuerza policiaca personal de Trump, empezará a ocupar nuestra ciudad y secuestrar a nuestros vecinos para terrorizar a la comunidad inmigrante e intimidarnos a quienes nos oponemos. Charlotte Metro DSA condena esta invasión. Nos mantenemos en solidaridad con la clase trabajadora de todas las naciones . Lucharemos contra esta invasión con toda la gente de consciencia.

Estos ataques son parte de una historia larga del estado fomentando la división entre personas de la clase trabajadora para debilitar y amenazar a nuestras comunidades con agentes armados cuando parecemos demasiado fuertes.

Previamente en este año, iniciamos nuestra campaña para boicotear a Avelo. La aerolínea Avelo es una aerolínea de bajo costo que está bajo contrato con ICE para llevar a cabo vuelos de deportaciones. Estamos pidiendo a la gente que participe en el boicot para generar presión a la empresa y la Ciudad de Concord, ciudad de donde despegan los vuelos, para que cesen el contrato. Con este fin llevaremos a cabo una protesta el día 29 alrededor del aeropuerto Concord-Padgett, les invitamos a que se nos unan.

Otros grupos de la comunidad están trabajando activamente para luchar contra este fenómeno.

Por favor revisen y utilicen la red de migrantes de las Carolinas y su línea directa para reportar secuestros (704) 740-7737

Y también visiten Siembra NC para obtener detalles sobre el entrenamiento en vigilancia de ICE el 17 de noviembre.

Nuestro objetivo es organizar y unir a la ciudad para resistir estos secuestros. Por favor acérquese a nosotros para colaborar o involucrarse.

En Solidaridad,

El Comité Directivo de Charlotte Metro DSA

English

Today, Customs & Border Patrol, Trump’s personal police force, will begin occupying our city and abducting our neighbors to terrorize the immigrant community and cow domestic opposition. Charlotte Metro DSA condemns this invasion. We stand in solidarity with the working class of all nations. We will fight this invasion with all people of conscience.

These attacks are a part of the long history of capital & its state fomenting divisions among the working class to keep us weak and siccing armed agents on us and our communities when we appear too strong.

Earlier this year we began our Boycott Avelo campaign. Avelo airlines is a budget airline that has a contract with ICE for deportation flights. We are asking people to boycott the company and help us put pressure on the company and the City of Concord where they fly out of to get them to drop the contract. To that end, we’ll be having a protest on the 29th by the Concord-Padgett airport. We invite you to join us.

Other groups in the community have also been actively fighting back. Please check out the Carolina Migrant Network and use their hotline to report abductions: (704) 740-7737. 

See Siembra NC for details about their upcoming ICE Watch trainings.

We aim to organize and unite the city to resist these abductions. Please reach out to collaborate or get involved. 

In Solidarity,

The Charlotte Metro DSA Steering Committee

On November 4th, a 1% sales tax was passed (52% to 48%) in Mecklenburg County to fund the P.A.V.E. Act.

We remain opposed to the sales tax increase. The working class had no say in the P.A.V.E. act, yet we are those with the most to lose. With the current $20 billion transit plan, we will also gain the least. We will not be able sit on the new governing Transit Authority Board of Trustees, but we're free to be harassed and kicked off transit by the new transit police force. There are no guarantees that these transit expansions will be completed, and that this tax money will actually go towards transit or bike infrastructure.

We support transit when it serves the working class. This Bill does not. It serves to support corporations.

Bills like the P.A.V.E. act get passed because these politicians don’t care about workers, only their corporate donors.

We're building an organization by and for the working class that can stand up to the capitalist class and fight for reforms like fast, free, reliable, and comprehensive public transit. We hope you will join us!

In Solidarity,

Charlotte Metro DSA

The High Peaks Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (HPDSA) mourns the lives of the more than 334 transgender and gender non-conforming people (TGNC) lost in 2025, including the more than 57 people who lived in the U.S. Many of those lost were trans people of color, a pattern that continues year after year, and a tragic reminder that we are failing the most vulnerable people in our communities. We are heartbroken by the loss of our comrades. 

We believe that trans people deserve to live free and full lives of peace, joy, and happiness without fear of being discriminated against, harmed, or even killed for how they choose to express their gender. We know that any lives lost–whether to direct or stochastic violence–represent a failure by all of us to address pressing issues within society. We ask everyone to stand up and defend our TGNC community at every opportunity, and push back against harmful anti-trans ideologies wherever they may appear.

We have seen an alarming increase in hateful rhetoric directed at TGNC people in 2025, along with tens of millions of dollars spent by political campaigns in recent elections to sour public opinion against them, with little political defense from the mainstream Democratic Party and its allies. Combined with influencers masquerading as experts and discredited or misrepresented studies being used as proof of harm, all backed by conservative think tanks and politicians funded with dark money, TGNC people have never been at greater risk. This damaging propaganda has led to trans people losing their jobs, new and vindictive restrictions on their ability to travel abroad safely, bans from participating in sports, and hundreds of thousands of TGNC youth losing access to life-saving medical care. Further potential injustices are a constant threat on the horizon.

“As a trans person myself, I feel the incredible pressure we’re under every day,” says Cayenne Wren, member of HPDSA. “We wake up, turn on the news, and we’re instantly confronted with unhinged social posts about us. Our very right to exist is endlessly debated about, even though we’re never included in those discussions. All too often we’re underemployed and unemployed, and when we do get a job, we are frequently harassed. Our greatest risk of harm is often from intimate partner violence and even our own family members. My heart breaks continuously for not only those we’ve lost, but also for my trans siblings who must continue to live with injustice every day of our lives. I love each and every one of you, and please know that you are never alone.”

For gay and bisexual individuals who fail to see the fight for trans liberation as central to the broader queer struggle, and for feminists who reject trans women as part of their coalition. Like Jewish liberal Zionists over the last two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, they will continue to find themselves ostracized further from the broader social justice movement, and forced into the untenable position of having to align politically with reactionary right-wing forces that subjugate them as well to uphold the white supremacist heteropatriarchal order.

HPDSA asks you to join us today in pledging to end all forms of violence against TGNC people. You can make a difference by directly donating to TGNC people in need, uplifting trans voices, showing up to public meetings to advocate for trans rights and inclusivity, being vocal against anti-trans propaganda, participating in local and state elections, and advocating for our elected officials to do more to protect TGNC in our state and provide a sanctuary for those individuals who face greater threats elsewhere. 

Together, we can make a difference in the lives of our most vulnerable community members and work towards a future where trans people can live openly and authentically without fear. 

Resources

• New York Name Change Guide

The post High Peaks DSA Honors Transgender Day of Remembrance appeared first on High Peaks DSA.

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Imagine that in the poorest neighborhoods of Detroit, Atlanta, and Chicago, you could find a public park with glistening swimming pools, world-class sports and recreation facilities, and spectacular landscape architecture rather than vacant lots. If you are a single mother, rather than being forced  to lug your clothes blocks away to pay to wash your clothes, you can come to a public, well-maintained, space to do your laundry for free while you eat delicious food grown at the agroecological garden nearby. Meanwhile, your children can learn how to swim, attend workshops on how to grow food in the city, hit up the planetarium to learn how Mayan Cosmology relates to the Big Bang, hang out at the skate park, or take a guitar lesson.

As you eat your lunch and do your laundry, there is a staffer whose job it is to talk to you and be on the lookout for any whiff of domestic violence in your life. If you are dealing with domestic violence, right next door is a counselor who can help you. Imagine in this scenario, somewhere in the most gutted sections of U.S. cities, you can have access to an expert lawyer should you need one. Regardless of what you’re dealing with at home, you are welcome to see the massage therapist and acupuncturist in this same public building, a space for women known as Casa Siemprevivas. She doesn’t just provide you with bodywork, but will teach these practices to fifteen of your neighbors and friends so that you can use this space for peer-support bodywork circles. These are spaces where emotional release through laughter and crying are encouraged. All of this is free and funded by the government.

In the U.S., this kind of investment in such expansive public services remains imaginary, for now, but it is very much real and operating efficiently in Mexico City under the leadership of the MORENA party of President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, the left-wing populist leader of the country. 

Such public institutions in Mexico are called “Units for Transformation and Organization for Inclusion and Social Harmony” or UTOPIAs for short. There are now sixteen of these, at present exclusively in Mexico City’s most populous and poorest borough of Iztapalapa. Virtually all UTOPIAs provide services for women dealing with domestic violence, harm-reduction forward centers for drug users, spaces to support queer and trans folks, community centers for the elderly, and workshops to support men in deconstructing toxic masculinity – which in practice involves teaching men whose relationships are in terminal decline or men who have become single fathers due to unforeseen tragedy, how to do things like wash dishes, fry eggs, or braid hair. No small thing.

Each UTOPIA  has a range of other specialized services. For example, UTOPIA La Libertad, sited directly behind a prison wall, has a petting zoo and a planetarium. UTOPIA Meyehualco, occupying what used to be an extensive park full of soccer fields for use by exclusive leagues only, now has a large animatronic dinosaur park (yes, you read that right) and a hockey rink. UTOPIA Olini hosts extensive manicured ponds, a tidepool, and gym that’s the home field for an outstanding breakdancing squad. UTOPIA Estrella Huizachtépetl sits atop a reclaimed drainage area from a water treatment facility that has been converted into an extensive wetland ecosystem. And UTOPIA Quetzacoatl, sited unusually across multiple discontinuous buildings and spaces in a dense urban area, has a strong focus on children’s mental health services, with an art therapist on staff. Some of the UTOPIAs have regular workshops supporting residents, especially women, in forming small businesses and cooperatives under the banner of the ‘solidarity economy.’

In the following section, I will share more stories of how people use and benefit from the services provided at the UTOPIAS based on several months of research on the ground in Mexico. My aim is to expand our collective imagination in the United States and elsewhere in the imperial core about what a robust urban commons of care can look like. In addition, I hope to share the deeper history of working class organizing and struggle that made these programs a reality. Despite the many differences between our organizing contexts, I suggest that US organizers have much to learn from organizers who have built mass power in Mexico.  

Stories from below: how the UTOPIAs improve the lives of working people

With all of these free social services on offer with a strongly anti-carceral, feminist, and ecological inflection to boot, it is no wonder that the UTOPIAs have garnered attention among international left-wing circles as a concrete example of what municipal ecosocialist politics can look like.  As part of my research in urban political ecology, I’m now spending a sabbatical semester here and I’m basing this article on visits to eight of the sixteen UTOPIAs and interviews with a range of staffers, users, and functionaries.

Across these visits and interviews, an unambiguously positive picture emerged. Mental health counselors told me about how they were able to spend far more time with clients working at the UTOPIAs than they had been working at understaffed clinics. 

An OB-GYN who rotated among the UTOPIAs believed that she was finally able to do what she went to school to do: “bring reproductive justice directly to the people.”

A farmer on staff at UTOPIA La Libertad shared that his agroecological vision for the future was that “cities can and must grow their own food.”

An elderly woman told me that the workshops on death and dying provided her with community and solace after her husband passed. 

A 24-year old butcher who used to be addicted to heroin got clean thanks to the harm reduction and counseling services at UTOPIA Teotongo, and he now goes to the site at least once a week to assist the on-site shaman in conducting temazcal sweat lodge ceremonies. He explained, “the UTOPIAs provided me with a life that I could have never imagined before.”

A group of teenage girls who started a punk rock band confirmed that there was no way they could have done so without the free instruments and practice spaces provided by the UTOPIA.

The UTOPIAs also demonstrate that expanding the urban commons of care-giving does not need to be expensive. The government of Iztapalapa has stated that each UTOPIA cost $100 million pesos (about $5 million USD) to build, with an operating budget of about $1 million USD. Even if these figures are underestimates, and even if they were ten times higher in the United States due to higher prices for materials and labor, the numbers would still not be very burdensome when you consider the billions that our big cities spend on cops and tax breaks for the rich.

As I spoke to workers and users of the UTOPIAs and asked about how these spaces were built, one name came up consistently: Clara Brugada, the former mayor of Iztapalapa and now Head of Government of all of Mexico City. I was told by mental health workers, retirees, hydroponic technicians, and site administrators that the UTOPIAs were the brainchild of Brugada, and that it was through her vision and through the sheer force of her political will, backed as it was by the people, that the UTOPIAs were built. 

The consensus that I heard was so widespread that it felt silly to simply deny it , even if it seemed implausible that a single individual could compile such a radical set of diverse services related to issues as varied as mental health, science education, and urban agriculture. But still, something seemed incomplete – so I dug deeper. Through my research into the recent history of Mexico City’s politics,  it became clear that there was in fact a mass movement that shaped the city’s urban political matrix, developed and piloted many of the initiatives commonly found at the UTOPIAs today, and in a significant way directly produced Clara Brugada. It’s called the Urban Popular Movement. 

The Urban Popular Movement and MORENA: political organization in the wake of neoliberalism

Decades before the MORENA party took shape, a far more scattered constellation of urban organizations were fighting for working people’s immediate demands for titles to their land, water services, and electricity. But in some instances, these organizations went beyond fighting for immediate political demands, and also experimented with and ultimately built direct services to improve people’s lives. They created centers for women dealing with domestic violence, grew food, regenerated urban forest ecosystems, and provided harm reduction services for drug users. In essence, they built many of the elements that we now find, at scale, across the UTOPIAS.

That urban organizers in Mexico City managed to create a forceful social movement with real political muscle under these conditions should give us further confidence that we can too.

The Urban Popular Movement itself built political power among the city’s disenfranchised squatters, the informally employed urban poor, and other working class people clinging to some semblance of normality and dignity.  This movement grew in the fertile soils of urban disaffection with the decades of pro-capital rule by the Institutional Party of the Revolution(the PRI) and subsequent conservative opposition. 

The ruling PRI party had historically maintained its power from the late 1940s all through the 1990s and even part of the 2000s through a corporatist structure built on three organizational pillars under its strict control: theConfederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos (CTM), representing labor, the Confederación Nacional de Campesinos (CNC) representing peasants, and the Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Populares (CNOP) representing urban middle classes, “civil society” organizations, and, in theory, the urban poor. 

By the 1980s, though, large numbers of Mexico City residents were neither in industrial unions nor were they meaningfully represented by the CNOP. For those of us living in the United States in the 21st century, this likely sounds very familiar: union density has plummeted in our own country since the 1980s, and ‘civil society’ organizations have gradually receded from popular life.  

Just like in the United States, by the 1980s the labor movement in Mexico was a shadow of its militant past.  The CTM formed in the crucible of the 1930s. The progressive president Lázaro Cárdenas established the organization with the aim of bringing together the more militant and communist-inflected industrial proletariat with more independent workers in the transit sector and those working for smaller businesses. But after the rightist Miguel Alemán Valdés came to power in 1946, he rechristened the official party as the Institutional Party of the Revolution(the PRI) and set out to purge militants from organized labor. He appointed Alfonso Ochoa Partida, nicknamed “el charro” for his love of the Mexican rodeo sport of charrería, as the head of the CTM to carry out these purges. To this day, flat-footed pro-capital unions are known as “sindicatos charros” in Mexico. These capital-friendly unions remained powerful political forces throughout the economic halcyon years of relatively prosperous Import Substitution Industrialization during the 1950s and 1960s. 

This era of relative class harmony held together by the PRI’s corporatist structure started to unravel in the late 1960s. The 1968 Tlaltelolco and subsequent Halconazo massacres of student activists, followed by the dirty war of the 1970s carried out by José López Portillo, created a crisis of political legitimacy for the PRI. Despite the relatively moderate demands of the student movement for political reform, the PRI was unwilling to tolerate any challenge to their corporatist hegemony. The PRI’s crisis of political legitimacy was supercharged by the global economic crisis of the late 1970s, which sounded the death-knell for Import Substitution Industrialization that had maintained rising standards of living in the postwar decades. These combined crises spelled the beginning of the end for the PRI, and created political openings for left-wing opposition to organize and build.

During the 1970s and 1980s, radical organizers and students who had fled to the countryside during the repressive days of the Dirty War had been hard at work carrying out rural political education programs, often inspired by the Maoist mass line theory.  Many peasants already had existing radical commitments anchored in the legacy of Emiliano Zapata, the militant champion of peasant land rights from Mexico’s revolutionary days. Such commitments were reinforced by their lived experiences of rural economic struggle over the years. 

As the 1970s economic crises began to make rural livelihoods less viable, tens of thousands of these newly dispossessed peasants began to move to the outskirts of Mexico City. While these new arrivals were poor, lacked formal political power, and were highly vulnerable to the predations of greedy landlords, they were far from passive actors. They brought their radical political analyses with them and quickly began to form politicized community organizations. As the legitimacy of formal avenues for popular urban political participation collapsed, these organizations grew into the Urban Popular Movement. 

The story of thirty-year-old Enrique Cruz, a militant with one of the organizations of the Urban Popular Movement known as the UPREZ (the Emiliano Zapata Popular Revolutionary Union), helps shed light on this history. He explained to me, 

I’m an Indigenous Soque-speaker and I was born in Oaxaca. My parents and grandparents were deeply involved in the struggle against gold and silver mining that was destroying our land and threatening the ecosystems we cared about. When I moved to the city, I found a school run by the UPREZ adorned with murals of Emiliano Zapata, and I knew that these were my people. Through the UPREZ, I gained a strong political education and became an organizer fighting for dignified housing, providing direct education and political education to others, and working on other issues.

Organizations like the UPREZ emerged in the 1980s, and became especially strong in the aftermath of the catastrophic 1985 earthquake that sparked a wave of urban mutual aid activity. One of the strongest of these organizations is known as the Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo (the Union of Settlers of San Miguel Teotongo), located in the far northeast corner of Iztapalapa on the edge of Mexico City.  

When I visited their community center and office to examine their archives in August and explained that I was interested in the history and political consequences of the UTOPIAs, staffer Marco Antonio Flores informed me that “If you’re interested in the UTOPIAs, you’ve come to the right place. Much of what you see in the UTOPIAs – services for women facing domestic violence, support for drug users, agroecology – we piloted those things, experimented, and developed them starting in the 1980s. To see them widespread and supported by the government now is a wonderful thing.” 

On first encountering the UTOPIAs, there were some things that seemed familiar. In my political and academic work, I have seen an impressive range of projects with similar aims, from scrappy anarchist outfits doing land projects, to non-profit sexual health and harm-reduction centers, to community-based agriculture organizations. But to see these things, and so much more, packaged together and brought to scale with the full muscle of the state behind them felt like something quite different. 

What made these organizations successful in not only fighting for basic urban services and also finding a foothold in national and city politics? I asked Marco Antonio why his organization seemed to be so robust and so persistent, with such a strong presence in the community today, while other member organizations of the Urban Popular Movement seemed to have disbanded. He responded, “In the 1980s, many of the organizations focused narrowly on demanding land titles, water hookups, electricity, and even rent control. Once some of those demands were met, they didn’t have much of a reason to continue. Our focus was larger: we fought for basic rights but also built  a vibrant community center with a more expansive goal of providing for the well-being of community members in a comprehensive way.” 

Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada herself is of this movement. While she was a student, she began organizing with Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo. She worked to organize for basic services like electricity, water, and sewage. According to an elder woman organizer who has lived in the community since the 1970s, Brugada played a critical role as a young strategist in the early 1980s. She pushed their group to lobby the government to fulfill these demands, in addition to self-organizing to provide services that the state would not.

In the 1990s, Brugada was a leader in a campaign to repurpose a women’s prison that also held political prisoners during the dirty war into a preparatory school. This campaign, which we might today describe as ‘abolitionist,’ ultimately succeeded and the school was inaugurated in the year 2000. While they fought for land titles, Brugada continued to organize with the Unión de Colonos to establish a community center to support women dealing with domestic violence, to restore urban ecosystems, and to provide support for drug users.

Here, there is a larger lesson for the US left, for DSA, and perhaps even more specifically for an incoming Zohran Mamdani administration in New York City. We have movements in our cities that are building the capacity for mass, militant mobilizations. These include the tenant movement and the labor movement. But they also include innovative projects carried out by community-based groups focused on environmental justice, reproductive justice, agroecology, and more. 

In other words, the community organizations of Iztapalapa that endured the test of time and won durable political power didn’t just fight for things like rent control and basic urban sanitation, as vital as those things were. They also directly built the means of providing urban community care with scarcely any resources, and in doing so ensured that when a political opening came about, their ideas and practices would be right there on the table for sympathetic political forces to run with. 

These groups intentionally built partnerships with people who would eventually build the MORENA party and become part of the state apparatus. As the MORENA party consolidated power, these groups were therefore integrated into municipal governance rather than kept on the periphery. 

Existing community organizations and the battle for the urban commons

Each of the UTOPIAs is situated in a neighborhood with a particular political and economic history. While the Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo was a powerful and visionary force for community organizing and development, other UTOPIAs had significant if less persistent community organizations in place. Many UTOPIAs are sited on formerly abandoned lots and parks. The Tecoloxtitlan and Papalotl UTOPIAs, for example, were both sited in empty urban fields that used to be black markets for stolen auto parts. 

The programming coordinator from UTOPIA Papalotl, Rodrigo Castellano Hernández, shared  that starting in the late 2000s, a group of community members came together to start running youth programming around the community. They offered martial arts classes and started to experiment with urban agriculture. By the time that Clara Brugada became the mayor of Iztapalapa, there were already robust community efforts in place to reclaim the site for positive and care-forward community activities. 

Likewise, in UTOPIA Tecoloxtitlan, a group of neighbors combined community resources to start a center for special education and an Alcoholics Anonymous center in the park, self-organizing community labor to clean up the dilapidated urban field. And in UTOPIA Meyehualco, which was built in a park that was previously available only for private soccer league members. The municipal government, alongside allied community organizations, organized to secure this land for free public use despite objections from the private club members who sought to maintain their complete ownership over the property.

In cities in the United States, the specific process of finding space for projects like this would likely look very different than it did in Iztapalapa. At the same time, US cities do have considerable leeway over municipal budgets, even if the ruling classes have been terribly successful at maintaining funding cops rather than care year in and year out. But radical movements in the US have demonstrated that things need not be this way. From teachers striking for better conditions over the past 15 years, to abolitionist campaigns in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd uprisings, our own movements have revealed that municipal budgets can be meaningful sites of class struggle.

It is worth emphasizing that the UTOPIAs do not merely function as an organ of the MORENA party and Mayor Clara Brugada. Radical community organizations use the spaces to organize independent political power too. In September, I attended an event at UTOPIA Paplotl put on by one of the most important member organizations of the UPREZ, Enrique’s organizing home. In a packed auditorium of about five hundred people hailing from dozens of smaller community-based organizations and cooperatives focused mainly on housing issues, the leaders of the UPREZ formally inducted these groups and their many working class members into their organization. 

One of the founders and movement elders of the URPEZ, Jaime Rello, described how these mass movements relate to the UTOPIAs and the MORENA party succinctly:

Comrades, the UTOPIAS are the synthesis of all this experience and struggle of more than 57 years since the 1968 movement. Our comrade Clara, who emerged from the popular movements and the Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo, learned well from all this experience of struggle and now puts it into practice. But that’s not enough, comrades, if there isn’t a strong movement to continue to fight for these issues, because the pressures that we face and that Clara faces from the right, the pressures we face from the interests of capital, are very strong. 

Our organizations are not built solely by leaders. Our organizations are built by everyone. We need everyone to contribute and put the collective interest before our individual interests. We have come as far as we have because of  thousands and thousands of social activists who have dedicated their lives to transforming this country and this city.

The UPREZ and the larger Urban Popular Movement are undeniably allied with the MORENA party. Clara Brugada herself came from these working class movements of Iztapalapa. Nonetheless, it is clear that these organizations are not demobilizing simply because one of their own is in power. The relationship between these mass organizations and the MORENA government could serve as a model for how DSA and other left organizations might relate to a Zohran Mamdani mayoralty or similar administrations: using the spaces, resources, and platforms provided by such an administration to fiercely organize for the rights of workers and tenants, to build independent centers of community power, and to develop a robust urban commons of care both within and outside of the state.

The historical roots of the UTOPIAs show us that community-driven initiatives to care for one another can be elevated and brought to scale by the state when conditions are right. It is not necessary to build good ideas for community care, urban agroecology, and physical and mental well-being from scratch. Many organizations have been doing this work. With relatively modest funding from the state, they can blossom into serious programs available to the masses. In the U.S. context, we can find similar types of local and regional organizations that have the vision and experience that could help  our versions of UTOPIAs flourish.

Armed with visions of community care similar to what has been realized in Mexico City along with the growing political muscle of DSA, we are in a position to fight for precisely these things in our cities. We should seize this opportunity, in New York City, and across the country.

Bibliography

In addition to interviews and field observations, this piece draws heavily on the following books on the urban history of Mexico City:

• Davis, Diane. 1994. Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century. Temple University Press.

• Gerlofs, Ben. 2023. Monstrous Politics: Geography, Rights, and the Urban Revolution in Mexico City. Vanderbilt University Press.

• Vitz, Matthew. 2020. A City on a Lake: Urban Political Ecology and the Growth of Mexico City. Duke University Press.