This article was written in the days immediately following June 6th. The author was not able to participate in the street movement due to geographical distance from Los Angeles.
Conquest
In August of 1846, US troops under Stephen Kearney occupied Santa Fe without firing a shot. In January of 1847, a combined force of Hispano and Indigenous rebels launched an uprising against the occupation but by February, the US army had taken the Taos Pueblo by force and began executing some of the insurgents without trials. By July, the last insurgent holdouts were destroyed. New Mexico, like every inch of land on this continent, was conquered by bloodshed.
The invasion of Mexico, intentionally provoked by the US to acquire land for slavery’s expansion, ended in US victory and the loss of 55% of Mexico’s territories. Some even pushed for the annexation of all of Mexico but this was opposed by people such as the notorious pro-slavery Senator John C. Calhoun who stated “to incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the government of a white race.” In 1853, wanting better terrain for railroads, the US acquired the Gadsen Purchase, bringing Tucson into the nation and thus the borders of the continental US were more or less finalized. Afterwards, the question of slavery in the newly acquired territories would lead set the stage for the Civil War and eventually the liberation of the enslaved. But what of the Mexican citizens who remained living in these lands after 1848?
Although it’s hard to say how many Mexican citizens lived in the Cession due to the fact Mexico did not yet have a proper census, some estimates put it around 100,000. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo promised citizenship to Mexicans residing in newly conquered territory as well as respect for land grants. However, like with many other treaties with Indigenous Nations, these promises were not kept. Land Grants set up by Spain and Mexico that protected communal land for grazing and timber were slowly enclosed on– usually by taking advantage of a population with little understanding of the English language and the legal system as well as outright theft and collaboration from the lighter-skinned Hispanic elite. In the decades that followed, the Hispanic population of the Southwest, hereon referred to as Xicano, were proletarianized, dispossessed of their land and forced into mining, railway and agricultural work. In the mid-20th century, many Xicana and Mexican women, along with other groups, were forcibly sterilized. Until 1930, Xicanos and Mexicans were recorded as white in the census although after Black Americans, Xicanos had the second highest lynching rate. They certainly didn’t benefit from this classification, save for a small elite minority.
I start with 1846-48 not only because it marks the beginning of the dispossession and violent subjugation of the Xicano people but also the beginning of a militant resistance, as seen in the Taos Revolt, against white supremacist violence and capitalist enclosures. Later generations would take up the spirit of resistance such as Las Gorras Blancas in Las Vegas, New Mexico or the Cortinista Uprising in Texas. In the era of the world rebellion of the 1960s, the Xicanos of Los Angles and Albuquerque, among other cities, exploded in revolt. When Black Angelenos rose in 1992, the Xicano and Latino community rose in solidarity, making up one-third of those killed and half of those arrested. Even in the 21stCentury, as migration from Latin America has increased, the shadow of this revolt still lingers, such as the 2020 uprising in Salt Lake City in retaliation for the murder of Bernado Palacios-Carbajal. This history is fundamental to understanding the current rebellion in the Los Angeles area.
Trump 2.0
In his 4-year absence from the White House, Donald Trump seemed to drift further Right–from pardoning participants in his failed attempt to emulate the Hitlerputsch to moving to ban trans women from sports. His extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric expanded to include Haitian immigrants by parroting dangerous rhetorics of migrants consuming household pets. (White people seem to react worse to animal abuse than to the abuse Black and Brown people face on a daily basis). Trump is the modern incarnation of the tradition of nativist populism dating all the way back to the Know-Nothing Party and earlier.
Upon returning to the White House, the administration went ahead with its promise of militarized and rapid deportations. We were hit by images of ICE agents carrying away immigrants as they screamed and kicked. The White House twitter account posted an AI-generated image in the Studio Ghibli style of an ICE agent arresting a crying migrant. (There’s a special place in hell for whoever had that image generated).
The Los Angeles area was particularly hard hit by these raids. The city has a long history of militarized policing such as the 1969 SWAT raid on a Black Panther chapter and Operation Hammer in the late 80s where the LAPD carried out Vietnam-style search and destroy missions on Black and Brown communities. These communities are no strangers to these types of raids; in fact, I’d argue they make up a facet of Xicano & Latino identity in the US.
In the film Born in East LA, Cheech Martin’s Character is mistakenly deported by Immigration to Mexico when he is caught in a factory raid and isn’t carrying any identification on him. Although a comedy, it takes real inspiration from the fear people have that even citizenship won’t save you from deportation, such as the case of the Mexican Repatriation in the early 30s where around 50% of those deported were US citizens.
As ICE became more extreme, I began to think (and hope) that this kind of rapid and reckless deportation campaign would cause some type of militant response, Trump’s heavy-handedness was pouring gasoline on a growing fire. My predictions were confirmed on June 6, 2025.
Rebellion
On the same day Kilmar Garcia was being brought up on federal charges of human trafficking, ICE raided a garment district in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. The Westlake District has a heavy Xicano/Latino presence, with many coming from families fleeing violence in Central America. In recent years, the neighborhood has been facing the full blunt of gentrification as property prices have soared.
When the Friday raid went down, it drew a crowd of tired and angry militants who sought to stop and slow down the vans carrying away immigrants. A man pushed against a van and was violently knocked down; someone then threw their bike at the vehicles. Later, militants surrounded a Federal Building downtown and were pushed back by the LAPD. There was a standoff in Chinatown that night. Saturday, at the Home Depot in Paramount. A larger crowd surrounded more Federal Agents. They set street fires and threw projectiles at the feds. On walls were modern slogans (Abolish/Fuck ICE) along with classic slogans recalling the era of Chicano Power (Viva La Raza). As Border Patrol vehicles were leaving, they received a hail of projectiles with one smashing the driver’s window. A car belonging to a news crew was trashed in the Home Depot parking lot. A few blocks over in Compton, a car was set alight in the middle of the intersection. Later, a crowd attempted to stop a bus carrying US Marshalls. As of this writing, groups are still gathering in the downtown LA area.
The Democratic response to the recent rebellion has been to put the blame on the Trump Administration and its agents for its overtly militarized and violent deportation campaign and to promise to work with immigrant rights groups. Let’s be real, if the deportation campaign was done more slowly and without drawing much response, they wouldn’t have a problem with it. Overall, the Democrats prefer to rely on local law enforcement to put down the rebellion. Despite the fact the LA events seem milder than the events in Minneapolis 5 years ago, the Republican are already crying Insurrection and Rebellion (one of the few times I agree with the GOP) as Trump sends in the National Guard much against Newsom’s wishes and by Monday Trump has deployed 700 marines to the city. The last time the Marines were deployed to an American city was also in Los Angles in 1992. This is the first time since 1965 that Presidency has federalized the national guard without request from a State Governor and had led to a feud between Newsom and Trump with Newson calling Trump deranged and moving to sue the administration and Trump calling for his arrest. No doubt the Democrats will turn Newsom into some kind of patriotic hero standing up to Trump’s authoritarian fascism. But let us not forget Newsom’s own support for state terror against homeless encampments.
Since Ferguson over a decade ago, the tactics of the Democratic Party when dealing with rebellion have become more refined and moved away from the shared party position of sending in the military as seen in the 1960s and 70s. To use Malcolm X’s analogy of the Fox vs the Wolf, Trump and the GOP is the obvious wolf, sending in federal agents, the National Guard and federal troops, openly wishing for the movement’s violent destruction, turning white terrorist vigilantes into heroes. The Democrats are the Fox, slyer and sneakier in their approach. They use a more diverse range of tactics: Good Protestor vs Bad Rioter, Good Cop vs Bad Cop, posing for photo op carrying a sign reading “Immigrants Make America Great”, but never an “Abolish ICE” sign, having cops hugging our elders. Their tactics are ones of de-escalation and cooptation, which is why they were pissed off by Trump’s use of the National Guard; it makes people angrier and more radical and thus less likely to be coopted.
Return of the Magonista?
While figures of the Mexican Revolution such as Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata remain the most popular and whose images no doubt inspire some of the street militants today, I want to turn our attention to another figures who better represents the trans-national tendencies that we see among the militants today.
Ricardo Flores Magon was born Oaxaca to a Zapotec father and mixed raced mother. Influenced by the writings of European anarchists, he put emphasis on indigenous communal organizing as the basis of revolution, not too dissimilar to the Russian Narodniks and their belief that Russian peasant communes would serve as the basis of a Russian revolution. When the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz moved against Mexican Liberal Party (PLM), Magon, his brother and other anarchists escaped to the US and, from there began to organize workers, both Xicanos and Mexican migrants, into Insurgent armies launching raids into Mexico to spark a mass revolt against Diaz. When Madero’s call for revolution resulted in an open revolt in late 1910, a combined insurgent army of Magonistas, indigenous Baja Californios, Chicanos, Wobblies, Workers, Black and White, launched an uprising in Baja California from their base in Los Angeles. The Baja Commune lasted for a few months before being put down by Maderista forces after Diaz’s defeat.
Magon was later arrested by US authorities and eventually died in Leavenworth Penitentiary in 1922, about 35 miles from where I was born and raised. Yet he made his mark on the Revolution, the cry of Tierra Y Libertad raised by the PLM was used by Zapata’s Ejercito Libertador del Sur. Mexico declared 2022 the Year of Magon. (The irony of which does not need to be stated),
The street militants putting themselves on the line to protect migrants today represent a potential transnational identity inherited from the Magonistas that seeks to transcend revolutionary action within borders by calling for the abolition of ICE and borders. As Magon wrote, “[The Mexican People] didn’t need “leaders,” nor “friends of the working class,” nor “paternal decrees,” nor “wise laws” — they didn’t need any of this. Their actions did it all and continue doing it all.”
What Now?
As I write this, the rebellion shows little sign of slowing down even as the National Guard and Marines move in (“But Your National Guard ain’t hard”). Despite similar militant actions happening across the country, at this point it seems unlikely for LA to reach highs like Minneapolis did 5 years ago. When the smoke settles and the military withdraws, what will happen? Will Vigilance Committees form to protect migrants like those formed by abolitionists to protect runaway slaves? Will there be a revival in radical Xicano politics? Will calls to “Abolish ICE” fall into calls to “Defund ICE” and provide more “humane” deportations and lead to very mild reforms? Will a Democratic Administration come to power in 2028 and dismantle ICE while forming new border terror groups like when ICE was formed out of the INS in 2003? It’s all too early to say for certain.
What I would do at this point is to give some advice to the street militants. I don’t expect many to take these words to heart but it’s worth a shot.
Like when the Situationist International during May 1968 warned worker-student insurgents to watch out for manipulators who seek to take charge of their autonomous struggles with their various party lines and ideologies, the street movement must keep the same thing in mind moving forward. Its enemies on the right are clear–the Trump Administration, the Republican Party, ICE and the other federal agencies, the National Guard and Marines, LAPD and LA County Sheriff’s Department. But there are enemies and manipulators whose counter-insurgent ideology is less clear. There are the Democrats, particularly those in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who represent a middle-class assimilationist ideology. While the Democrats appear to be the rational opposition to the GOP, and at the times they can be, most of us also take notice of the increasing right-wing shift they have taken in recent years most notably during the Harris campaign. We must remain vigilant and critical of them less we repeat the tragedy that was Pelosi and other Democrats wearing Kente Cloths while taking a kneel back in 2020.
Then there are those to the left of the Democrats who manage to pop up like mosquitos at any type of protest. Another more modern manipulating force to watch out for is the political streamer. While they dress up in the clothes of radicals with their keffiyehs and goggles but make no mistake, they are only here for their own ego, for view, they use current political crisis to get into petty dramas with YouTube has-beens. And once you investigate their content, you realize it is uninspired reaction videos, barely seasoned with minimal commentary. They create thumbnails where they make over exaggerated faces, the so-called “soy face”, along image of students and protesters being brutalized by the police. If you encounter these figures in public, do the world favor and expose them, expose them as faux radicals, using our struggles for political and internet clout.
PLM Style
Among the various flags flying during the rebellion there is the expected flags of Mexico and various Central American nations, the flag of the UFW as well as the flag of Atzlan, the proposed Chicano Nation-State. Among the crowd burning a car in Compton, someone waved the flag of Burkina Faso. There is also the flag of Palestine being waved as well as militants wearing Keffiyehs. This should come as no shock as the question of Palestine is once again at the forefront of world affairs.
Since Israel’s current genocidal campaign on Gaza in October 2023, the cause of Palestinian Liberation has taken by militants across the world over. Notably in the US many campuses experienced occupations in the spring of 2024 calling for divestment from Israel. Politicians both sides of the aisle were quick to denounce these occupations and demonstrations as anti-Semitic. Since returning to office, Trump has only ramped up campus repression, such as using the same ICE that terrorizes LA to arrest Palestinian and other foreign students such as Mohsen Mahdawi as well as threatening Harvard to withdraw federal grants over its failure to discipline “anti-semitic criminals”. I don’t recall the administration taking a hard stance against anti-semitism when crazy white boys were chanting “Jews will not replace us” and shooting up synagogues.
A common Israeli taking point when facing criticism for its excessive military response is to attempt to draw parallels with the US. They ask, “How should America respond if rockets were launched from Tijuana at San Diego?” In perhaps one of the best examples of a Freudian Slip, it highlights both Israeli ignorance and fears and Palestinian and Xicano/Migrant commonality. Just like how Tel Aviv and Gaza are part of Historic Palestine, San Diego and Tijuana were both Mexico but more importantly part of the homeland of the Kumeyaay People. Just like the barriers separating the occupied territories and Israel along the border set in 1948, the wall along the border set in 1848 is a scar reminding all those who see it of violent conquest and extermination, dividing families and communities for generations. It should come as no shock that the same tactics and technologies used by ICE along the border are used by the Israeli military and police in Palestine, the two groups are in constant communication.
It is this commonality with border walls and the year ’48 that inform the Xicano and Migrant struggle’s solidarity with Palestine. From the 1980 meeting between La Raza Unida Party and the PLO in Lebanon to modern support for Palestine against the genocide, our struggles are very much intertwined especially now as ICE and IDF are on a warpath.
Like the images of Fox News and Co that show their audience hoards of migrants from Latin America, Africa and Asia pouring through the Southern Border, the Israelis were horrified by images of Palestinians pouring through blasted open fences, the grandchildren of those expelled in 1948. Just like the San Diego-Tijuana analogy reveals an unconscious recognition of stolen land in North America and Palestine, it reveals the fears of both Israel and America–the generations of the disposed: brown, black, and poor, running through and destroying the literal barriers of racial supremacy taking over the Eden (however false it may be) that has constantly been denied to them for generations. They fear the Palestinians tearing down the colonial kibbutz as much as the youths from the ghettos and barrios smashing up Apple and Gucci stores.
It is this fear that informs figures like Trump, Homan and Netanyahu; they fear not only a retributive violence of the colonized and disposed but hate our ability to resist through joy and celebration. We can only hope that this hatred will bubble up to the point where they drop dead.
When Method Man rapped about P.L.O. Style, identifying the commonality of Black Americans and Palestinians, ghettoized yet resilient, both equipped with ski masks and machine guns, we should embrace this with P.L.M. style. Modeling ourselves off of the Magnonistas of old, restless and borderless, enemies of all states whether on this side or that side of the border, setting the stage for revolution.
Instead of an unequal rocket exchange between San Diego and Tijuana, let us imagine, instead, of the border wall along the two cities being blown up, torn down like the Gaza wall on October 7th, 2023. Border Patrol, ICE, the military and police as well as the Federales are sent running, tails between their legs, humiliated as the IDF on that day, as families and communities embrace in victory, just as when the Minneapolis insurgents chased the police out of the 3rdPrecinct and put the building to the torch, just as when the Russian Workers stormed the Winter Palace in 1917, just as when the Mexican peasants marched victoriously into Mexico City in 1914, just as when the Parisian Workers, to borrow Marx’s famous phrase, stormed the heavens back in 1871.
By way of conclusion
As Matthew McDaniel said at the end of his documentary video of Los Angeles’s 1992 rebellion, “there is no real way to end this video because what happened in Los Angeles is not over”. The same can very much be said of this essay, both literally since as I write the movement is still going, and in a grander picture since the movement to abolish ICE, borders, the police and the wage system isn’t going to stop once order has been restored and everyone goes home.
From here we, the Xicano and migrant movement, must develop a more robust critique. Although not as prominent as the official Black leadership, we must develop a critique of the Hispanic (Mis)Leadership Class as they provide a cover for anti-migrant and anti-Xicano/Latino policies. Who are you going to blame when your sheriff and his deputies/criminals are brown with Spanish surnames?
This Leadership Class are the successors to the collaborating Hispanic elite post-1848, Madero’s tepid middle-class liberalism, Carranza and Obregon’s counter-revolutionary Constitutionalistas, PRI’s political dictatorship and neoliberalism. The militants occupying LA today are the descendants of 1847’s Taos Rebels, the Gorras Blancas and the Cortinistas, of Joaquin Murrieta and Cajeme, of the Magonistas and their borderless revolution, of the migrant and Chicano Workers who went south to take part in one the greatest revolutions of the last century, of Zapata’s Liberation Army and Villa’s Northern Division, of the militant miners, farmworkers and garment workers, of the Pachucos and Cholos, of the barrio rebels of the 1960s and 70s, of the students gunned down at Tlatelolco in 1968, of the migrants outsmarting border security and coyotes smuggling family and friends across the border, Hermanos and Hermanas of the Autonomous Rebel Collectives in Chiapas. We shall take up this revolutionary tradition and wear it with pride.
Some people may find my diagnosis of the return of the Magonistas as too hopeful or idealistic, maybe so. But perhaps we have been taught by years of rightist assault and liberal and leftist finger wagging to believe the very concept of hope is counter revolutionary. But even in the abyss, a single spark can seem like a new dawn.
“A new lie is sold to us as history. The lie about the defeat of hope, the lie about the defeat of dignity, the lie about the defeat of humanity”
-Subcomandante Marcos