Politicize Reading to Understand Mexico’s History

Mérida, Yucatán — In the face of the sociocultural definition process underway in Mexico and Latin America, a critical and politicized reading of history becomes a valuable tool, primarily to confront the ideological threats seeking to halt the advance of progressive governments in the region. For writer and historian Paco Ignacio Taibo II and sociologist and author Armando Bartra, the fact is undeniable, and they expressed it as such: it is necessary to politicize reading in Mexico.

This is not, and they made this clear during a shared talk at the Teatro Armando Manzanero at the start of the 2nd Interstate Encounter for the Southern Zone: Voice, Word, and Reading Mediation, a partisan matter or an ideological imposition, but rather to become "politicized in the best sense of the word."

The issue, they emphasized in the conversation before a theater full of reading mediators from the southern region of Mexico, is about encouraging the understanding and investigation of national and international historical processes, but with a critical vision toward current events, such as the pressure from the United States government against Mexico and Venezuela, or the genocide committed by the State of Israel against the population of Palestine.

The message was clear to the reading promoters who arrived in Mérida this week from Veracruz, Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Quintana Roo, and municipalities in the interior of Yucatán: reading circles and clubs are doing valuable work, but they must reinforce it by promoting historical reading.

“We must encourage the reading of national and international historical processes, read about Pancho Villa, the Agrarian Revolution in Michoacán, about Obregón, about Carrillo Puerto in Yucatán, and look into processes like the Russian Revolution, the Chinese one, and the Cuban one,” asserted Taibo.

According to the also Director General of the Fondo de Cultura Económica, “it is necessary to provoke a phenomenon of historical reading in reading rooms and clubs.”

Regarding this, Armando Bartra added: “We need to know history so as not to repeat it. Knowing the past not only prevents mistakes, it also allows us to recover valuable processes: food sovereignty, the vindication of original cultures, the feminist struggle. Today we face problems very similar to those of a hundred years ago and we must learn from them.”

In this sense, Taibo II, with his peculiar way of speaking, irreverent and without protocols, reiterated it: “We need reading circles and clubs to become more politicized, but it is not about indoctrinating.” The objective, he clarified, is to generate spaces for reflection that help understand the country and the continent. “We must start reading not only what communities want or what is in fashion, but open the door to historical readings that answer the essential questions: where do we come from, who are we, where are we going,” he said.

For Taibo II, Mexico is living a moment of historical definition and it is vital that readers and mediators delve into its past to understand it. “President Claudia Sheinbaum raises the concept of sovereignty based on a vision of history; based on this, it is important that a phenomenon of reading occurs in rooms and clubs, especially among mediators.”

He also posed another challenge: not only for mediators to become more involved in this process, but also to go and seek out adolescents, with intelligent, provocative strategies, but not restrictive ones like waging “war on the phone.”

“We have to go look for adolescents in a provocative way. Tell them: ‘Hey, dude, grab your damn phone and google, if you want, a poem by Miguel Hernández. A quatrain, not even a whole poem, four lines. And see if it moves you or not’.” For Taibo, devices are not the enemy: “use the phone to go culturally beyond ‘I ran into Margarita who was my girlfriend,’ don’t be stupid. It’s a waste of time. The phone isn't good for a novel, or for a long story, but it is for a poem, for a short story. Let's fight for the meaning of the phone in positive terms.”

With his characteristic irony, he recalled a historical mistake by the left on this matter: “when the left said ‘turn off the TV and turn on a book,’ they screwed up. Leave the TV on and during the intermissions, when they sell beer, you open a poem by Miguel Hernández.”

Always on the same theme, but less irreverent, Armando Bartra emphasized “there are historical mistakes we can make over and over again. One of the reasons – for this – is that we do not know our history. Knowing it is learning lessons from the past. Not only to avoid mistakes, but also to repeat processes from which we can learn.”

As an example, he mentioned the revolution in Yucatán during the times of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, in addition to the struggle led by Elvia Carrillo Puerto or women less prominent in history like Rosa Torre or dozens of others who participated to demand their rights, but “they were not the governor’s sister.”

In this regard, he highlighted the teachings of feminism: “in Yucatán, 100 years ago, women were asking ‘who owns a woman’s body if not the woman?’ Today, a hundred years later, they still have to be affirming the same thing. So, there is much to learn from history.”

The sociologist and philosopher stated without hesitation that from processes like the one previously mentioned, much can be learned today. If Mexico has a problem of food sovereignty, he commented as an example, we must recover the production of basic goods and in the past, in the knowledge of the original cultures, there are many valuable processes that can be recovered.

Bartra insisted that every historical process must be analyzed in a broader context because “we cannot understand what is happening in Mexico if we do not see what is happening in the world.” In this sense, he explained what is happening in Latin America where, “exceptionally, there are leftist governments in Guatemala, in Honduras; if we go to the Southern Cone, we will see that there are nine leftist governments. Only four are not. We have the two largest countries, Brazil and Mexico, with progressive governments. What does that represent? What does it mean for us? How can we think about the Fourth Transformation in light of these processes?”

That is why he returned to what was indicated earlier by him and Taibo II: “the threat of (Donald) Trump is upon us, yes, but also upon Venezuela and upon all of Latin America. If we do not react, the threats become realities. I don’t believe that at this moment they are taking the next step, which would be an armed intervention, but if there is no response and if there is complicity, then they become encouraged. We must react before they do.”

In this way, Taibo II and Bartra agreed that politicizing reading is not a whim or a partisan act: it is a tool to understand the present, strengthen collective identity, and prepare new generations to face the challenges of a continent that, once again, is in dispute.