Neither martyrs nor bandits. The GPG guerrilla in Chihuahua (1963-1965)

Abstract

The general scenario, political, economic, rural and urban that Mexico exhibited in the years 1963 to 1965 and that corresponds to the change of sexennium from Adolfo López Mateos (1958-1964) to Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970) was characterized by: offering few job opportunities in the countryside and in urban factories, presenting  limited possibilities of access to education, repressing  people with paramilitary bodies, experiencing  a marked economic dependence on US imperialism and allowing arbitrary acts committed by a government whose social and economic policies affected large-scale sectors of society. This scenario was the fundamental basis that led to the birth of a self-proclaimed guerrilla movement such as Grupo Popular Guerrillero (GPG) led by Professor Arturo Gámiz García and supported by left-wing youth against the then governor Práxedes Giner Durán. The guerrilla began as a movement of collective actions against the State (first as a social movement and then as an armed movement) that culminated in the assault on the barracks of the city of Madera on September 23, 1965. After this event, the social actors who died during the assault were regarded as "martyrs". For its part, the government, in particular, the Federal Security Directorate (DFS) described them as "bandits". However, this work considers the guerrilla as a social movement whose purpose was to improve the living conditions of society and reform the prevailing political model and its actors not as "martyrs" nor "bandits" but as men with flaws and virtues, who were conscious of their social reality.