Speaker 1: Welcome to Assassination Week. P Bang Bang time, lix, pulsive device, etcetera. Hello,
Speaker 1: welcome to Assassination Week. I hope you like that intro
Speaker 1: from our good friend when we commissioned to do that
Speaker 1: intro from some big props to them for giving us
Speaker 1: like ten seconds of their time to record that intro. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's it's been so long since we've been planning to
Speaker 1: do this, yep, but here we are talking about killing people.
Speaker 1: It's great because when we first thought of Assassination Week,
Speaker 1: we're like, how are we going to fill five episodes there?
Speaker 1: And then there's like so many more assassinations happened there
Speaker 1: were there were to the next day. Yeah, yeah, we've
Speaker 1: we've decided to stop imagining things into the ether and yeah,
Speaker 1: and so maybe Assassination Month. It's me who knows. Hey, well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. If if people keep getting assassinated, we
Speaker 1: will do more assassination episodes. That is the way it works. Yep.
Speaker 1: That's that is sadly part of our job. So we've
Speaker 1: already done one. I guess we did. We did shinzo
Speaker 1: Ab a little bit, but we're coming back to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna do. We're gonna later because we
Speaker 1: have a lot more context information about the assassination now,
Speaker 1: but that that is later this week. So we have
Speaker 1: we have five episodes all about assassinations, most of which
Speaker 1: have happened or tried to happen this year. Most most
Speaker 1: of these are gonna be pretty pretty topical. Yeah, mine
Speaker 1: is not so well. I mean, look, we got we
Speaker 1: gotta we we we we got, we got, we got
Speaker 1: to start with the historical assassination. We can't we we
Speaker 1: can't completely have it be just randomly jumping back and
Speaker 1: forward between times. There has to be some kind of logic. Well,
Speaker 1: the assassination is a logic. But yeah, today we're talking
Speaker 1: about Eta Basque nationalist leftist group and more specifically, I
Speaker 1: guess they're Operation Agro, the killing of Luis Carrero Blanco
Speaker 1: in Spain in nineteen seventy three. It's like, obviously not
Speaker 1: very very current. It's often pointed to is like a
Speaker 1: very influential assassination, right, one that made a difference and
Speaker 1: made a change. Often it's called the only thing that
Speaker 1: ever did to advance the cause of Spanish democracy, which
Speaker 1: I think, like this is not and I'm sorry if
Speaker 1: you think that they're like based leftist terrorists. This is
Speaker 1: not not a generally as as an organization. We don't
Speaker 1: like people who murder journalists. That's one of us dances.
Speaker 1: And so there's going to be a little bit of
Speaker 1: context around this that we need to give first. So
Speaker 1: maybe if we kick off with who they are and
Speaker 1: then we can talk about that assassination in particular. How
Speaker 1: familiar folks do we think with with Eta? What do
Speaker 1: people know about him in US? Not at all? Yeah,
Speaker 1: people all eat Okay, I think well they're they're I
Speaker 1: think they're famous for this asascination and for having literally
Speaker 1: the worst outfits I've ever seen in my entire that
Speaker 1: that that the combination of like the face mask in
Speaker 1: the beret is like one of the most unfortunate things
Speaker 1: I've ever seen. It is hideous. It is you you've
Speaker 1: got just just wear the mask. It's cooler a batch.
Speaker 1: It's awful, truly dogshit. Okay, Chris, come in with the
Speaker 1: fashion police early on. I say, where what you want.
Speaker 1: I think you will look great and really alienating ski
Speaker 1: mask and beret audience right at the start. So if
Speaker 1: you've if you've managed to, you know, stick around through
Speaker 1: that hate speech. We're going to talk about eta. They do, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do like to wear a ski mask. It's part
Speaker 1: of an esthetic, isn't it though, Like that's an aesthetic
Speaker 1: of like I guess eighties terrorism. That is like like
Speaker 1: woodland pattern kind of DPU camoufly, dBm camouflage, a cheap
Speaker 1: black schemask, balaclava and a berry like sometimes you can
Speaker 1: pick two of those things. But it's definitely like a
Speaker 1: vibe from that time period. M I wonder, I wonder
Speaker 1: why none of these groups worked. It must have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the fashion, to be fair, the Zapatista's
Speaker 1: big scheme mask. Maybe it's the bubble. Maybe the bubble
Speaker 1: is what sets then Yeah, no, it's it's it's the
Speaker 1: fact that yet you don't wear the barret on the
Speaker 1: scheme mask necess because they just wear the masks. Yeah, okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we're we're united, and I believe that the
Speaker 1: Zapatistas look cool and in many ways are cool. In fact,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about them today, we're talking about it.
Speaker 1: So it's an acronym, right, Um, it's an acronym in
Speaker 1: Scara or Basque. I don't I don't speak Basque. It's
Speaker 1: a very hard language for me to learn. At least
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say it's a hard language too length.
Speaker 1: I think it depends on who you are, but it
Speaker 1: is and that I have historically struggled with understanding. It
Speaker 1: does have a generous smattering of xs, and so you know,
Speaker 1: if you're seeing it out there, good luck to you.
Speaker 1: I will try and pronounce things as respectfully as I can.
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time in the Basque country
Speaker 1: by Graceeing. I really really love bast people. They're very nice.
Speaker 1: I enjoy their food and their cider and their countryside.
Speaker 1: But today we're talking about this group Escot. It stands
Speaker 1: for you scadi to askatasuna, which means like Basque homeland
Speaker 1: and liberty, which they were going to call it ata,
Speaker 1: but in certain backdown dialects that means duck, so they
Speaker 1: moved away from that. That would have been so much
Speaker 1: funnier write you've been ducked, but they didn't do that.
Speaker 1: They right from the get go they were about like
Speaker 1: like this dual process right of politics and political violence.
Speaker 1: Their slogan means keep up on both sides, and their
Speaker 1: logo is like a snake wrapped around the acts. The
Speaker 1: snake is politics the actors access I guess political violence, terrorism,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. And over the years
Speaker 1: of action, they killed people so that they were pretty
Speaker 1: serious terrorist group, right, Like I can't I don't know
Speaker 1: how many people the ira A killed, but I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of groups in there. I don't think it would be
Speaker 1: that many killed. Like I think they killed like over
Speaker 1: a thousand. Okay, Well, I mean I said, like the
Speaker 1: entire troubles killed thirty so it's like a not in
Speaker 1: significant fraction of that. Yeah, I mean the British government
Speaker 1: did a decent amount of that and definitely yeah, but
Speaker 1: like it's a not in significant fraction of the total
Speaker 1: number of people who died in the troubles, So they're
Speaker 1: not like nothing, no, but like it's only up there.
Speaker 1: And look, this is much of a similar thing as
Speaker 1: we're going to see right where the Spanish state killed
Speaker 1: a lot of people too, and sort of armed groups
Speaker 1: acting in sort of coalition with the Spanish state. It's
Speaker 1: the safest way to say that, but certainly with the
Speaker 1: complicity of the Spanish state played a large part in this,
Speaker 1: this dirty war that ETA conducted with the Spanish state. Right,
Speaker 1: and to understand them, you have to understand a little
Speaker 1: bit about Basque nationalism, early Basque nationalism. We we can
Speaker 1: like find the guy who really constructs the idea of
Speaker 1: a Basque nation, right, and Sabina is the guy. Um
Speaker 1: he takes what is like a language, it's a very
Speaker 1: old language, right, predates Latin and places where that language
Speaker 1: is spoken, and takes it from like these are the
Speaker 1: areas where this language is spoken to, like this is
Speaker 1: our nation. And all nations are created, right, Like nations
Speaker 1: don't come from the primordial soup, Like we don't evolve
Speaker 1: into one nation or another an abrogation. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they they're constructed by like entrepreneurs identity, which war leads
Speaker 1: to some kind of false consciousness, one might say, to
Speaker 1: maybe distract people from other things. But that's the right
Speaker 1: Zapatistas watches, that's the yeah, yeah, we're coming for you
Speaker 1: with a work mob. We're going to cancel you. Nations
Speaker 1: begin to exist when religion losers a claim on university
Speaker 1: nandas in the speed and we don't need to go
Speaker 1: into the history of nationalism particularly, it's important people to
Speaker 1: know where the Basque land is. So the Basque Land
Speaker 1: is in the northwest of Spain and the southwest of France. Right,
Speaker 1: it's these provinces where historically they're mountainous provinces. People there
Speaker 1: were often shepherds. You'll often find Basque people in the
Speaker 1: United States like growing wine or doing cheap herding, and
Speaker 1: that's their sort of historical images themselves. And they speak
Speaker 1: this Basque language. Right. So ETA come onto the scene
Speaker 1: as a Basque nationalist leftist group, Like they sort of
Speaker 1: have some elements of Marxism, but they're obviously like nationalist. Um.
Speaker 1: They they center, they don't center Catholicism, which is what
Speaker 1: previous Basque nationalisms have done. Right, Previous Basque nationalisms have
Speaker 1: been elite constructs that centered language, poetry and the Catholic identity.
Speaker 1: Don't do that. They have this that's where they're slightly better. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: right there. They're better than like the Carlists, who are
Speaker 1: like things went wrong when Spain moved away from this
Speaker 1: line of royal secession and we need to go back
Speaker 1: to that and like extreme religious totalitarianism and a monarchy.
Speaker 1: Like they're better than that. I feel pretty comfortable saying that.
Speaker 1: And they've done some cool stuff that they used to
Speaker 1: kidnap bosses who refused to negotiate with striking workers, which
Speaker 1: like I know, watch out rail rail company owners. But
Speaker 1: they they definitely have like a leftist lean, right, they
Speaker 1: have this sort of pan third world is idea, this
Speaker 1: pan sort of colonized people idea. They begin assassinating people
Speaker 1: when they take revenge for this guy who's called Chabby
Speaker 1: at stabata Um. You can look at that name if
Speaker 1: you want to see some ex is in the name.
Speaker 1: But they they kill the local chief of police. Right.
Speaker 1: What happened is Barrietta, and this was a guy we're
Speaker 1: killed by a policeman. The police stop them at a roadblock,
Speaker 1: they run away the police, the police shoot them. In response,
Speaker 1: they kidnapped the local chief of police who has probably
Speaker 1: been torturing people. Right like that, you have to understand
Speaker 1: that all this is happening in the context of a
Speaker 1: Spanish state, which is extremely violent and repressive. And they
Speaker 1: kill this guy right with this Franco right, yes, no so,
Speaker 1: but they begin under Franco. Right, so they and their
Speaker 1: support probably peaks under Franco, right, like they What what
Speaker 1: we're going to see is actually they are somewhat integral
Speaker 1: to not bringing down the Franco regime, and in a sense,
Speaker 1: Spain never does bring down the Franco regime, right and
Speaker 1: I want to get into that a little bit, but
Speaker 1: in destabilizing the Franco regime, and they certainly there was
Speaker 1: more support for this kind of political violence when the
Speaker 1: state is so obviously like undemocratic, unjust and incredibly violent
Speaker 1: towards people, right, so they when they're killing members as
Speaker 1: a guard Seville, these are people who are torturing prisoners,
Speaker 1: right A. Prisoners pretty often when they're captured, turn up
Speaker 1: tortured in court, like very obviously that they have been
Speaker 1: victims of beatings and physical violence, right, A lot of
Speaker 1: things you'll see. They also kidnapped this guy, forget it.
Speaker 1: He's one of the founders of Vox, and they kept
Speaker 1: him in a seller for months and months and months
Speaker 1: and months. They like, I don't I don't like Vox,
Speaker 1: but they also don't like lucking people and sellers, So
Speaker 1: two things can be bad. And Vox is a right
Speaker 1: wing populist Spanish party, if people aren't familiar. They also
Speaker 1: did a lot of extortion. They also did a lot
Speaker 1: of extorting local businesses, right they called it the Revolutionary tax.
Speaker 1: So they got into some sort of more classic kind
Speaker 1: of organized crime stuff there. And but the assassination we
Speaker 1: want to talk about today is so the way they
Speaker 1: do this is they rent this flat right there, that's
Speaker 1: an apartment for American listeners. And they rent this flat
Speaker 1: claimed to be students, like sculpting students, right, like they
Speaker 1: were art students, were into sculpture. That's that's why we're
Speaker 1: covered in dust every day and we and we wear
Speaker 1: these overrules. And for five months they spend every day
Speaker 1: digging a tunnel underneath the road by their flat, right,
Speaker 1: and in that tunnel they packs of explosive. And what
Speaker 1: they're doing there is they're waiting for this guy, Luis
Speaker 1: Carrero Blanco to come in his car, which he travels
Speaker 1: in every day, right, and they're gonna explode that explosive
Speaker 1: and they're going to kill him. The reason they want
Speaker 1: to kill him is because they say that he is
Speaker 1: the the best example of pure fascism. Right. He's a
Speaker 1: former admiral, he's Spain's sort of prime minister. He's Franco's
Speaker 1: chosen successor, right, so he's going to take over from Franco.
Speaker 1: And so by killing him, they're able to destabilize the
Speaker 1: whole Franco Regimer. Franco cries in public when he finds
Speaker 1: out cal Blanco is dead, and so spoiler alert, career
Speaker 1: Blanco is extremely dead. The way they did this is
Speaker 1: they dressed up as electricians, which is also a lot
Speaker 1: of dressing up in this which is kind of fun.
Speaker 1: And they painted a little line on a wall to
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, when the car gets to here, we
Speaker 1: explode it. So the car gets to there, they explode it.
Speaker 1: They launched this car over a church and it lands
Speaker 1: on the second floor terraces on the other side. Sometimes
Speaker 1: this is called like the Basque Space program or Luis
Speaker 1: Carrero Blanco is referred to as Spain's first astronaut. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can find a picture of it. It is his
Speaker 1: hysterical the core like it's just it just goes. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's periodically in Spain, like someone will be prosecuted
Speaker 1: for making this joke. This Spain's first astronaut joke. And
Speaker 1: so it happened someone pretty recently and she had really
Speaker 1: made it a thing of making jokes. Actually, I think
Speaker 1: his I think it's his grandchildren have noted that it's
Speaker 1: a problematic restriction of free speech that the people keep
Speaker 1: getting prosecuted for this. And the court recently found that
Speaker 1: they weren't mocking his family or his memory, but they
Speaker 1: were just pointing the objectively funny way in which he died, which,
Speaker 1: you know, great for the court to agree that it
Speaker 1: was objectively funny that a terrible fucking person died by
Speaker 1: being blown literally sky high, and it's his driver and
Speaker 1: his bodyguard were also killed. Shouldn't be a bodyguard for
Speaker 1: a piece of shit. But they THETA guys had disguised
Speaker 1: themselves of electricans. After the bomb went off, they ran
Speaker 1: around shouting, Oh no, we've hit a gas pipe, like
Speaker 1: there's been a gas explosion. Every everybody clear out. YEA
Speaker 1: was yeah, so pretty pretty entertaining stuff, acting as their
Speaker 1: side passion, I guess, and and like the reason they
Speaker 1: did if they did a pressor not longer afterwards, wearing
Speaker 1: their outfits, which some of you may find offensive, and
Speaker 1: they they cited like his irreplaceable place in the hierarchy
Speaker 1: right and him being this they called him a pure
Speaker 1: Franco list and oddly like ETA were not. At this point,
Speaker 1: they were less unpopular than they became later because they
Speaker 1: weren't doing quite as much extortion and they hadn't been
Speaker 1: engaging in quite as many murders of journalists, right and
Speaker 1: and you used to see this. I'll get to that later. Actually,
Speaker 1: they got grudging praise from almost everyone for doing this,
Speaker 1: right and because it really does destabilize and kind of
Speaker 1: keep their legs out from under the Franco regime. And
Speaker 1: it makes Franco cry, which I think is a laudable goal,
Speaker 1: like it's good to Franco cry Franco crime or so
Speaker 1: they well it kind of it kind of it kind
Speaker 1: of astomizes the Franco a state, right between people who
Speaker 1: are like this bunker tendency who want to go hardcore
Speaker 1: and crack down, and those who are like, we don't
Speaker 1: have the ability to crack down, like we'll lose all
Speaker 1: popular support if we do that, and it really sort
Speaker 1: of vaporizes the consensus for what to do after Franco dies,
Speaker 1: which he does a few years later. I want to
Speaker 1: point out that people will you'll read these articles on
Speaker 1: like the popular news websites or like you know, like
Speaker 1: hot take websites where they're like, oh, this carbon launched
Speaker 1: Spain it's a democracy. I don't do that. I think
Speaker 1: first of all, the major r with that is the
Speaker 1: idea that Spain quote unquote transition to democracy. When you
Speaker 1: have a pacted transition where the people who did the
Speaker 1: war crimes in the previous regime specifically not prosecuted an
Speaker 1: exempt from prosecution, that's not what democracy looks like. I
Speaker 1: think the most accurate way of just driving west Spain
Speaker 1: is is a post dictator like a post dictatorship, and
Speaker 1: Spain is still there now that we see that with
Speaker 1: these prosecutions for mocking him, right with the fact that
Speaker 1: there are people in Spain who are still in prison
Speaker 1: from mocking the crown, like, that's not what democracies do.
Speaker 1: Good thing that could never happen in Britain. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: you won't find you won't find me defending that either,
Speaker 1: But we don't. We don't make a big industry of
Speaker 1: talking about Britain's transition to democracy. Maybe don't talk about
Speaker 1: transitions at all, given the powerful turf discourse in Britain.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think it's problematic that that folks talk
Speaker 1: about this like, yeah, it spin his fixed, like Spain
Speaker 1: has some dark ship that it needs to process like
Speaker 1: it was not until the middle of the last decade
Speaker 1: that we started exhuming the graves from the civil war.
Speaker 1: And that's still highly contentious, right, you still have a
Speaker 1: political party that doesn't want do that. Spain is still
Speaker 1: processing the fact that the Catholic Church took babies away
Speaker 1: from people who had considered to be leftist and gave
Speaker 1: them to people who it considered to be more appropriate
Speaker 1: to raise them. It's called Nino bios if you want
Speaker 1: to look it up. Yes, Spain not transitioning to to democracy.
Speaker 1: And I want to make like that very clear. Some
Speaker 1: of the other ship that Etta does is really this
Speaker 1: is where they start to lose any any claim to
Speaker 1: being like a liberation movement, right Like they bombed anpair
Speaker 1: Core that's like bombing a target for American folks in
Speaker 1: Barcelona and they killed twenty one people. Now I will
Speaker 1: say this isn't this is exemplary bad policing. They called
Speaker 1: the cops and we're like, hey, we've put a bomb
Speaker 1: Underneas the supermarket. You will ought to clear it out.
Speaker 1: And the cops were like, I can't tell if that's
Speaker 1: a real threat or not. And as a result, did
Speaker 1: do anything and as a result the bomb went off.
Speaker 1: I think he's a supermarket and twenty one people died. Right,
Speaker 1: They also did a newspaper in Catalonia beforehand. Reporters Without
Speaker 1: Borders still for a long time classified Spain as a
Speaker 1: place that was hostile to journalists because of the attacks
Speaker 1: on journalists by Etta. Right. Also, the state isn't hostile
Speaker 1: to journalism, but I want to point out that they
Speaker 1: killed journalists, they killed university professors who disagreed with them,
Speaker 1: they killed local counselors, and it was some of these,
Speaker 1: like these very unpopular murders which really sort of strip
Speaker 1: support from them. And one thing that the Spanish state did.
Speaker 1: A couple of things the Spanish state did that really
Speaker 1: were extremely repressive against Etta was they would move Basque
Speaker 1: prisoners out of the Basque homeland and sort of hold
Speaker 1: them thousands of miles away from their families, like in
Speaker 1: the Canary Islands and ship like they're probably closer to
Speaker 1: Africa than you are to to your your home country
Speaker 1: when they do that, right, and you would often see
Speaker 1: I don't know if maybe you guys have seen this.
Speaker 1: It's a white flag. It's got an outline of the basquetland.
Speaker 1: It's got an arrow and it says aria, have you
Speaker 1: seen that like protests? Now if you if you've been
Speaker 1: at the protests, I is that like you know, in
Speaker 1: like the early two thousands in Europe, you would see
Speaker 1: that flag a lot. It just means Basque prisoners to
Speaker 1: the Basque homeland. Like a lot of people got behind
Speaker 1: that who might not have got behind other things that
Speaker 1: ETA did, right, but it does seem deeply inhumane to
Speaker 1: move these people so far away from their families. It's
Speaker 1: sort of an extra punishment. The Spanish state also had
Speaker 1: this thing called gal gal Is groupo anti terroristadi li
Speaker 1: braction so I guess like anti terrorists liberation group. And
Speaker 1: these were desquads right, These were discord dated and inverted
Speaker 1: by the police. Etta enjoyed like a safe space in France,
Speaker 1: I guess, or like at freedom for prosecution. Certainly under Franco.
Speaker 1: France was like, you know what, Franco really sucks, So
Speaker 1: you guys go ahead and send it. Do your terrorism
Speaker 1: about a clauvist. I'm sure the French also objected to
Speaker 1: their beret style, but this is this same space. It's
Speaker 1: basically what they said, Yeah, yeah, this is like a
Speaker 1: whole thing with Midterrand in France in the seventies, like
Speaker 1: France kind of became this weird like like they basically
Speaker 1: had this, they had this open policy. Were like there
Speaker 1: was a bunch of well, they're there're a bunch of
Speaker 1: people in Italy who got like falsely accused of like
Speaker 1: being the Red Brigades. What's that guy's name, the guy
Speaker 1: negri An Toto who's like a kind of famous. This
Speaker 1: theory kind of sucks by the end, but like they
Speaker 1: arrest him for like being a terrorist, and then he
Speaker 1: gets himself elected to parliament so we can get parliamentary immunity,
Speaker 1: and then flees the country to France. Yea, yeah, this
Speaker 1: was a weird time. Was in Carlos Jackal also in
Speaker 1: Paris for a while. Yeah, yeah, you love it, france
Speaker 1: open door policy to terrorists, Like this is this is
Speaker 1: this is the only cool thing France has done since
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, you're not wrong. They invented parkour. When
Speaker 1: was that, Oh that was like in the resident xt Okay,
Speaker 1: there you go. Okay, so the second cool thing, you're
Speaker 1: going to hand that to them? Yeah, they'll tend that
Speaker 1: to the entire country of Reds. Yeah, maybe not actually,
Speaker 1: given their treatment of migrant deaspirts in recent years. And
Speaker 1: sometimes the firefighters will go out and beat the ship
Speaker 1: into the police. That's true. Do you think we all
Speaker 1: have to give that to them? I wanted to maybe
Speaker 1: end with this quote from Supercomman Anti Marcos. So we've
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about So this is from a
Speaker 1: piece code I shipped upon this, I shipped upon the
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Vanguards of the Earth. Yeah, it's something. Yeah. All
Speaker 1: the titles are like having problems translating total in bundo,
Speaker 1: which is like yeah, if you I couldn't find it
Speaker 1: written in the original Spanish. Maybe that's just because I
Speaker 1: was googling wrong and I didn't put a lot of
Speaker 1: time in it. But I found so many of the
Speaker 1: Zapatist text of preserves better in these weird English translations.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if they're written in English, it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be posible. They're written in English the first time.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think this one. I think I
Speaker 1: think these. I think this particular one is a translation. Okay,
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, yeah, I've tried to find in Spanish. Actually,
Speaker 1: But so I'm just going to go with a translation.
Speaker 1: I think it's probably from lib Calm or a similar
Speaker 1: website with like aging red and black asthetic vibes. But
Speaker 1: I love those websites, so it's had a bit on
Speaker 1: I hope you'll enjoy it. We don't see why we
Speaker 1: should have like the ETA or kind of like reaching
Speaker 1: out in solidarity and the Zapatis just has previously been
Speaker 1: like Now, dude, we are not the same. You're not
Speaker 1: just like ascetic society. We are not the same people.
Speaker 1: We don't see why we would ask you what we
Speaker 1: should do or how we should do it. What are
Speaker 1: you going to teach us to kill? You a list
Speaker 1: who speak badly about the struggle to justify the death
Speaker 1: of children for the reason of the cause. We don't
Speaker 1: need or want your support or solidarity. We already have
Speaker 1: the support and solidarity of many people in Mexico and
Speaker 1: the world. Our struggle has a code of honor inherited
Speaker 1: from our guerrilla ancestors, and it contains, among other things,
Speaker 1: respect of civilian lives, even though they may occupy government
Speaker 1: positions that oppress us. We don't use crime to get
Speaker 1: resources for ourselves. We don't rob, not even a snack store.
Speaker 1: We don't respond to words with fire, even though many
Speaker 1: hurt us or lie to us. One could think that
Speaker 1: to renounce these traditionally revolutionary methods is renouncing the advancements
Speaker 1: of our struggle. But in the faint light of our history,
Speaker 1: it seems that we have advanced more than those who
Speaker 1: resort to such arguments. Like, I deeply enjoy this critique,
Speaker 1: you can look it up. Was big on killing people
Speaker 1: who are tangently related to the regime in any way,
Speaker 1: which I don't agree with. We should also add that
Speaker 1: they more or less definitively stopped doing stuff in eighteen
Speaker 1: and that they had a press conference, and in their
Speaker 1: press conference, actually Arenaldo Teggi, who was a former member,
Speaker 1: said that they wanted to express a sorry for the
Speaker 1: pain and suffering other people have endured. He goes on, like,
Speaker 1: we feel their pain, and that sincere feeling leads us
Speaker 1: to affirm that it should never have happened. Sure, buddy,
Speaker 1: you want to say sorry because you did terrorism. But
Speaker 1: I do think that, like we should, we're talking about assassination.
Speaker 1: Is gonna be talking about assassinations a week. There are
Speaker 1: ways to do leftist political struggle that are not killing
Speaker 1: random civilians and their friends and family members and bombing supermarkets,
Speaker 1: and those are the better ways. But making Franco cries
Speaker 1: good sending Franco's successor into near Earth orbit is pretty funny.
Speaker 1: So we we enjoyed that one at least, if not,
Speaker 1: I think it is worth pointing out, like we weighed
Speaker 1: this pretty obvious by by that line. But it does
Speaker 1: not get a free space, a free bask homeland. The
Speaker 1: Zappatistas have actually taken and still controlled territory, a thing
Speaker 1: that none of these weird thrilla groups ever pulled off.
Speaker 1: So you know, yeah, they don't even get majority support
Speaker 1: really at any point. Like occasionally there will be people
Speaker 1: who are like, yeah, you know what, Like I agree
Speaker 1: with some of what they say, but their tactics are
Speaker 1: deeply flawed. You know, these keeping people, like torturing people.
Speaker 1: That kind of thing in the context of the dirty
Speaker 1: war with the state is important. But yeah, they don't succeed, right,
Speaker 1: And I don't think you do succeed by by extorting
Speaker 1: the people you're claiming to liberate. That generally doesn't work well.
Speaker 1: So up the Zappatistas, I guess, Yeah, that seems like
Speaker 1: a good place to end. Yep, cool, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: this has what may could happen here and join us
Speaker 1: tomorrow from more assassinations and also the day after that,
Speaker 1: the day after that and the day after that. Yep,
Speaker 1: don't wait, m it could happen here as a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
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Speaker 1: for it could Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone
Speaker 1: media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.