LAND AND FREEDOM
In 1911 an anarcommunist army, organized from Los Angeles by Ricardo Flores Magón and the Mexican Liberal Party, took the border cities of Tijuana and Mexicali and raised for the first time on the continent, and probably the world, the anarchist flag of “Tierra y Libertad ”, white words on a red cloth. The experiment lasted less than six months, but marked the border region.
Paradoxically, Tijuana is officially "heroic" for defeating the army of Flores Magón, a national hero. A crazy local smear campaign accuses Magón's army, known for its fight against any type of state, of wanting to annex Baja California to the United States. It is said that at that time nationalism was born in this portion of the border, where the third world lives shoulder to shoulder with the fifth largest economy in the world: the state of California. Apparently, on this corner, being Mexican and heroic coincides with rejecting a utopia, supporting a dictatorship and capitalism.
Since 2016, the Magonista Committee has carried out a series of interventions trying to reintroduce the flag of "Land and Freedom" in Tijuana, recovering a lost past and drawing lines of flight towards the near future. As a key activity, we make flags in public spaces and distribute them at various events, ranging from distributing blankets to people who sleep on the street to feeding more than 200 people, building kites that carry the motto across the border, to organising historic walkthroughs and unfolding banners at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. More than 100 people have collaborated in the interventions, which usually culminate in a party, celebrating the possibility that this may have been the first Anarcho-Communist state in the world.
The project tries to discuss several problems publicly and through acts, such as the relevance of "Land and Freedom" at the beginning of the 21st century, the resurrection and reinterpretation of historical facts and archives, the idea of cognitive estrangement as a critical tool, the (aest)ethics of dwelling, the possibilities for artists and intellectuals to work at street level. We try to find several lines of flight in these events: public responses to the motto, the materiality of the flag, the creation of Temporarily Autonomous Zones, "penshacer" (thinking through doing), the autonomous life of images and materials, in addition to allying ourselves and producing alternatives to political commitment in the border area.
You can see a couple of video here.
The Comité Magonista Tierra y Libertad is an imaginary transborder organization, horizontal, open and with fluctuating membership that, from the California Commune, busies itself on public psychronogeography. Starting from penshacer, it strives to mess with consciences and to erotize the public body, without fear of error, ridicule or absurdness, in order to provoke coincidences, interferences, moments and possibilities. SInce 2016, the Committe has been undeertaking a series of interventions and interferences to celebrate the taking of Tijuana by the Partido Liberal Mexicano, trying to establish an anarcho-communist commune.