Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at poetry and resistance during the Mexican drug war, specifically during the Caravan of Solace. The poems discussed show that poetry is possible only in dialogue with collective mobilization; if it serves as consolation, it ceases to be poetry.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at the role of poetry in the context of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity. The movement was initiated by the poet Javier Sicilia, who publicly renounced poetry after the assassination of his son in the context of the Mexican drug war; during the apotheosis of neoliberalism.

First I will look at Sicilia's refusal to continue writing poetry; a stance which resonates with that taken by Theodor Adorno. For Adorno, a poem is and has to remain an 'open wound'; once it gives consolation, like a painkiller, it renounces poetry. I read Sicilia's refusal to write poetry as a renunciation of a consolation that would have prevented people from taken action for social change.

I then turn to two poems that were recited during public meetings, and which were documented by the collective EmergenciaMX. The first oem functions as an 'open wound' and enquires into the social function of the pain caused by the destruction of the social fabric.The second functions as a mirror in the Zapatista sense. This poem returns to the poet and the listener not only who they are, but also who they would like to be and, more importantly, all those who are by their side but who they cannot see because they remain outside of the peripheral vision.

Thus, poetry during the apotheosis of neoliberalism is only possible as resistance to the culture that normalizes the destruction of the social fabric; and it becomes poetry because it emerges from a collective.