United States writer and anarchist theorist Paul Goodman famously wrote, “A free
society cannot be the substitution of a “new order” for the old order; it is the extension of spheres of free action until they make up the most of social life” (Goodman, 2010: 25). Breaking with the classical model of revolution as a monumental moment where old institutions and powerful fall and freedom flourishes, autonomous struggles in Mexico resonate with Goodman’s insight, characterized by their everyday processes of organization, through spaces and relationships that resist and navigate the commodification, control and discipline of everyday life. Part of this “extension of spheres of free action” as Goodman puts it, is an ongoing dynamic relationship with all sorts of forces and processes that interfere, conflict, repress, support or cooperate with, the processes and forces of autonomous organization and struggle.
In this dissertation I’ve approached autonomous politics in a processual manner— exploring multiple currents of autonomous action and organization being engaged through various locations in Mexico—the community assembly, the community or free radio and community-based self-defense and justice. I’ve resisted taking autonomous politics as something cohesive, totalized or fixed. I’ve further contested the approach to autonomy as something wholly separated and integrally developed—a space or alternative whole that functions outside of the confines of the state, capitalism, law, etc. I did this purposely, as quite frankly, autonomous politics under that interpretation do not exist.
The thrust of this dissertation and perhaps its most useful contribution has been to engage rather than ignore the contradictions and tensions inherent to autonomous processes of
researchers, activists or independent media workers—ignoring the multi-layered dynamics of complexity in which these movements are embedded and engaged. Prior to my work on this project, I too was working under the assumption that autonomous struggles absolutely reject engagement with state, capitalist and other unwanted exterior forces. As I engaged with autonomous processes and movements throughout my fieldwork, it became clear that
autonomous struggles aren’t about this abstract and absolute rejection but are about the complex and dynamic relationships that they engage, navigate and through which they exist. It seemed important then, to map out some of the multiple layers of resistance politics, rather than flattening them out into fixed and totalizing concepts or political strategies.
A fundamental component of the multi-layered-ness of autonomous struggles, is the plurality and diversity of locations from which autonomous struggles do their work. As I’ve sought to emphasize, these movements and processes are always embedded in certain historical and material contexts, from which they are organizing, responding, resisting or collaborating. Autonomies are thus located, plural and most importantly in constant movement. Autonomies are enacted and articulated differently across space and time, within and beyond the diverse contexts of Mexico. Fundamental to understanding what autonomous politics does, is
understanding the context from which autonomous processes of organization emerge, exist and resist.
Thinking through the importance of location of autonomous struggles, a certain tension emerged that runs through much of this dissertation. If autonomous processes of struggle are plural, and are engaging their work from a plurality of material, historical, cultural and political contexts, what do they do in terms of building alliances and solidarities beyond their immediate contexts? How do located and diverse struggles work together or not? It is there, in the porous
borderlands of autonomies, that I find autonomous struggles to be navigating, negotiating, organizing and resisting. There, in the constant processes of internal and external organization, internal and external resistance, autonomous struggles are hard at work.
Multiplying and Extending Processes of Autonomous Self-organization:
The various processes and forces of autonomous self-organization I have reflected upon in this dissertation, exemplify in another way, the manner in which modes of self-organization reinforce one another, leading to the multiplication and extension of free action as Paul
Goodman puts it. I feel it important to return to the three modes of autonomous self-organization I have covered in this dissertation, to better map out, albeit briefly, the way in which self-
organized processes support, amplify and cross-organize with other processes of self- organization. With this, we can shine light on the complex, yet exciting ways that various processes of self-organization work themselves together into more integral processes and practices of autonomous self-organization, within and across located community struggles.
As I suggested in chapter three, the community assembly is a node of community decision-making which connects many other spheres of community organization and processes of political resistance. The community assembly, at least within many Indigenous and
campesino communities, remains the principal decision-making force in the community, the maximum organ of power, on which community life is organized. The assembly isn’t a static organizational blueprint placed before the demands required by the contexts of the group, but rather through the assembly, the demands and the necessities of the group spring forth in a horizontal and egalitarian manner. From the assembly, other processes of autonomous organization are kindled, developed and put into practice. Assemblies serve in this way, as a