“Persecuted and attacked, but never defeated”. ‘El Machete’ during its clandestine period

Abstract

El Machete, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Mexico, was declared illegal between 1929 and 1934. During this period, the publication – intended to organize and guide communist militants, workers, and peasants – came to construct itself as a political actor that resisted in clandestinity. In this article, I analyze how the newspaper represented itself as a militant whose trajectory was essential to the workers’ struggle and therefore had to be protected and defended by them. I argue that, by presenting itself as a political actor rather than merely a space of enunciation, El Machete embodied the clandestine resistance of Mexican communism and operated as a unifying agent for the militant base. To develop this argument, I draw on press studies, which provide tools for understanding periodical publications as cultural products that articulate practices, discourses, and political projects. Examining the clandestine communist press thus allows for a critical reflection on the construction of militant subjectivities and the formation of networks of solidarity within a context of surveillance, persecution, and state repression.