La Jornada: José Revueltas is an ethical and critical beacon for the left, experts agree

Half a century after his death, which occurred yesterday, the figure of the writer, revolutionary and political activist José Revueltas not only has not lost strength, but he stands as an ethical and critical beacon for the current left.

The academic María Eugenia Espinosa, the historian Carlos Illades and the journalist Luis Hernández Navarro agreed on this during the discussion The political and intellectual life of José Revueltas.

This was the starting point of a cycle with which the National Institute of Historical Studies of the Revolutions of Mexico (INEHRM) pays tribute to the author of The earthly days y The walls of waterwhose activities will continue until today.

Illades was forceful: “Revueltas is the most relevant intellectual of the Mexican left,” who best survived the crisis of Soviet socialism and still retains the respect of Tyrians and Trojans.

Like his predecessor, he reviewed his expulsions from the Mexican Communist Party (PCM), his denunciation of the “historical nonexistence” of the organization as a proletarian vanguard and his role as theorizer of 1968.

He highlighted that Revueltas embraced the idea of ​​a “democratic revolution” based on self-management and class independence, distancing himself from both the revolutionary nationalism of the PRI and Soviet dogmatism.

“His criticism of Stalinism and party bureaucracy continues to be a living instrument for understanding today’s authoritarianism,” he noted.

Sin dogmas

The historian and academic María Eugenia Espinosa spoke from the perspective of someone who personally knew “Pepe” Revueltas at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM during 1968.

“He was a 54-year-old man, but for us he was already old, undermined by prisons. However, he joined the Fight Committee as one more, without any prominence,” he recalled.

The teacher narrated the experience of the birth of the Popular High School, a self-managed process that marked an entire generation and that influenced Revueltas’ theoretical reflection on self-management.

“He learned from the movement as much as we learned from him,” he said. “He was independent of dogma and today he would categorically condemn the genocide in Gaza, what is happening in Iran and Cuba, and all forms of oppression,” he stated and assured that Revueltas’ legacy was not diluted over time: his disciples continue to fight on different fronts.

Luis Hernández Navarro, editorial coordinator of The Daydrew five vignettes or approximations to the existence of the youngest of the Revueltas brothers (1914-1976), whom he described not only as a deeply “stubborn”, “passionate and exciting” man, but as “one of the greatest Mexican novelists of the 20th century”, alongside Juan Rulfo and, paradoxically, Martín Luis Guzmán.

In his speech, he highlighted how the writer never gave up on his ideology or fight, despite the fact that he spent four and a half years in prison at different times: starting at age 15, with six months in correctional facilities; twice in the Marías Islands, with 12 months of short confinement, and “30 tremendous months” in the Lecumberri prison, between 1968 and 1971, accused of being the intellectual author of the popular movement of ’68.

“I will not give in until the last moment of my life,” Revueltas used to say, who also stated that prison had not affected him, but on the contrary, it was a school that strengthened him and gave him vigor, the journalist and writer stressed.

In his words, José Revueltas was “a communist through and through” and, like Jean-Paul Sartre – “with whom he maintained a close dialogue and relationship” – he maintained that Marxism is the knowledge of our time.

After mentioning that the author recognized José Carlos Mariátegui as his teacher, he said that what allowed him to get closer to communist theory was internationalism.

“He was a man of the world, a cosmopolitan and at the same time deeply national, who knew the last town of Mexico, but also the Soviet Union, Cuba and other parts of the planet, always fighting.”

Among other aspects, Hernández Navarro outlined the writer’s incursion into the PCM while he was still a teenager, as well as the various occasions when he was expelled from it and the thesis he developed about the historical nonexistence of that political body.

He also addressed his love relationship and then criticism of the Soviet Union, as well as the impact that the Cristero War had on him. Later, he highlighted how his social and political life impregnated him with the reality of the country. “Throughout his entire existence, Revueltas lived the revolution as a passion and the passion as a revolution.”

Hernández Navarro closed by reaffirming that Revueltas was a critical intellectual in the broadest sense of the term, consistent with his conviction that intellectuals should be critical by nature.

Hernández Navarro and Illades agreed on several points: first, that Revueltas was a thinker of ethics above institutional morality; second, that his time in prison and in hiding forged an unbreakable coherence; third, that his thesis of the “headless proletariat” – the inability of the official parties to represent the working class – anticipated the emergence of the new left, and fourth, that the 1968 movement found in him its most lucid “organic intellectual.”

The INEHRM tribute continues today at 12 noon with the virtual presentation of the book Waking up in the darkness. José Revueltas: Revolution and surveillanceand at 5 p.m. with the discussion The legacy of José Revueltas in cinematography. Both activities are free to access and will be broadcast on the institute’s social networks.