Catalunya - Mayo Fuster-Morell

Interview Details

• Region: Europe - Catalunya
• Language: English
• Interviewee: Mayo Fuster-Morell
• Interviewers: Terry Dunne & Mags Liddy
• Date: 2017
• PGA Affiliation: Movimenta de Resistência Global
• Bio: Mayo Fuster-Morell was involved in MRG in Barcelona and participated in the Prague IMF protests and various PGA processes and meetings in Europe. She was later involved in the 15M movement.
• Audio File: https://www.dropbox.com/s/eh7ad0kcygo2l03/PGA%20Catalunya%202%20-%20Mayo%20Fuster-Morell%204-5.m4a?dl=0
• Transcript: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ic30fkzfsm2ss36r9g3qn/PGA-Catalunya-2-Mayo-Fuster-Morrell.docx?dl=0&rlkey=mit6gkf67145nh22o57wxz5hq

Transcript

Terry Dunne: We will start. You’ve already seen the questions we are interested in. I want to start with now and work backwards chronologically. So you were involved in Movimento de Resistência Global. Yeah. So I want to be maybe specific to that organisation.

I wanted to ask you what legacy do you think Movimento de Resistência Global left behind it for today, for movements today and for movements in the post-crash context. So what influence did it have in subsequent years.

Mayo Fuster-Morell: I do not follow other places, but I would say… so I cannot like compare very deep but I would say PGA has had a really great impact here in Spain, in terms of…Particularly regarding the . . . . MRG was the group… the group of articulating a new generation of political activism. So MRG was the organisation that articulated and was the first political experience of a new generation of political activists in Spain which now is in a ruling position. Now it’s in the government of the city council with Ada Colau [the current Mayor of Barcelona]. Now it’s in the main part the opposition at the national level with Podemos, with Pablo Iglesias who was also a part of the MRG. It’s also part of the main key party for government, for creating the government at the Catalan regional level, with the nationalist CUP… it’s a nationalist leftwing group which is part of the government here at the Catalan level and it is part of the independence movement here and the membership were also part of the MRG. Just giving you three examples of really in the frontier position in the government or in the opposition but in really key positions are of the people who was in MRG and who met each other in MRG.

So I think in these terms these are just examples of individual people but it’s more of a generation which actually pass is now bringing a political change in the country. And that’s one element like, that generation which for us was there the political basement, the first experience, the first time we met each other was through MRG. But it’s also like the first wave of a set of other waves of organisational innovation in terms of networks as an organisational method. That MRG was the first one, Peoples’ Global Action as a global network was the first one. Also of these elements of working global and local, no?

These two elements- the network and the global and local, it was at that moment the first time we were coupling these into the political repertoire or the political vision.

And now we have many I can point to many other waves of …networks as a method or decentralization, y’know? You can see like many other ways of this was, these principles comes and comes again.. you know but for me it the first time it came in a very significant way. You can always go back and say that it was also there, but for us like that was like very much a foundational moment of a political change which is lasting 20 years and possibly is going to be a whole cycle and which is going to refine the political system in Spain so …

Terry Dunne: But is the moving in to an electoral politics not moving away from the network based forms of organisation. How do you bring the two together? Or has it been possible to bring the two together?

Mayo Fuster-Morell: I think there has been a second moment in the history since the MRG which has been so many very important and that has provide a shift in terms of the network logic of organizing incorporating other elements into it. And it was the 15-M mobilization. I think until the 15-M mobilization the idea of decentralization or horizontal organising and somehow a political strategy that was autonomous and counter hegemonic in this sphere of society no, with the 15-M — which was a surprise and it was the moment in which we incorporated the need for to balance network methods with a mission of covering and giving a response to emergencies, social emergencies and having an impact in the very short term dimension…. And when I say short term that means so like getting into the electoral establishment like but not losing the question of the network as … ? method..

Mayo Fuster-Morell: After 15-M which was not like . . . it was like …80 percent of the population was in favor of the Indignados, which is one reason why we changed the strategy… we changed from a counter hegemonic strategy to a hegemonic strategy, we can build a majority, there was a majority in the squares so lets move in the terms of the agreement(?) of the majority because it might bring the change, you know it was the organisation of demonstrations of one million people with the slogan was an anti-capitalist slogan. So in that context we say lets move into a hegemonic, majority movement, lets work in this dimension, no?

So with this came also the question of the strategy of getting into the political institutions in order to stop the . . . not necessarily for gaining power but to stop the utilization of the state to enclose the commons. So until that moment you could say I want to defend the network strategy, but network strategy later on became commons strategy when you realise that the hierarchy of the political institution is preventing you to arrive to anywhere from a counter-hegemonic strategy . . . going and occupying the institution is a matter of stopping that enclosement not only a matter of wanting to gain power over something (unclear)

Terry Dunne: We’ll go back to PGA in a moment, but I just have one more question following on from what you were saying about Indignados, I mean even before people had the support of 80% of the population, or a million people at a demonstration, even before that, there was a change in language to maybe reach that situation?

Mayo Fuster-Morell: I think it was a change not . . . I think 15 M was really a disruptive moment it really changed the scenario and I remember before the 15 M in the period from 2008 to 2015 (? 2010?) there was so hard moment because it was okay we have had with the starting of the economical crisis the ever bigger crises of capitalism where the financial system is only maintained with the intervention of the state I mean all the elements – the levels of unemployment in Spain, here the action of Enrique was part of the denouncing, no? so it that context, that society was not mobilizing, was so hard, y’know imagine, what more has to happen, what do you need to happen more than this, no? And it was really hard, and suddenly — Indignados without being planned, I can point you to several movements from which you can realise that something was going to happen — from the free culture movement you can realise, from the housing movement you could realise y’know, from this specific movement you could see that there was such an energy and something was going to happen but we never realised that it was going to be of that massive impact. That it was the influence of the Arab Spring, and there was this might happen in other places, that was there, but it was also a sense of sadness a sense of indignation a sense of how is this possible and I think there is another element between these two movements, the free culture movement and the housing movement, were very influential in bringing the network forms of organising and the network forms from the internet into the political land, and the housing movement also as tributaries which would feed the 15 M, but 15 M was much much larger than that. And there are some societal changes. I think the land of Spain has come up into one of the more progressive countries in the world. If you see the statistics about progressive values, homosexual rights, woman’s rights, all these kinds of beliefs, Spain is really really progressive, and that is something which is a bit surprising because actually Spain is like forty years ago we were actually forty years of a right-wing Catholic dictatorship, no? Forty years of Catholic, no? and then you have one of the most progressive countries in the world, we have really progressive laws (?). And I think that element of feminist vision in society was also searching for 15 M and the political innovation which didn’t come from the PGA by the way – the PGA was quite a Marxist political culture. So I think that – I am pointing out so far how PGA has been important but there are other elements of the Spain in the situation and one is this one. Yeah.

Terry Dunne: We’ll go back to the PGA then. So can you talk a little about how the people’s global action facilitated international collaboration and international solidarity and on what it did best?

Mayo Fuster-Morell: So people’s global action facilitated the frame of the global Local. In the sense of.. So people global action was the network that was connecting South and global activists in new modalities. I think it was very innovative at that time, and very, very important.

Terry Dunne: And what worked best for it? What was, I mean, in terms of being able to to organize on that scale transnationally is is a pretty impressive achievement in terms of getting getting to be able to do that. And what helped what what approach is worked best?

Mayo Fuster-Morell: It has global individuals, many of us were several nationalities as well as many of us were anthropologists and I think this dimension of individuals which were able to make this their sweets. No, because at the beginning it was a connection between people, but then it becomes like people really making connections between organizations. So I think it was this element of the living conditions that made possible that someone can be global and be part of several continents at the same time. That was a precondition for the PGA. Internet was obviously a precondition of the PGA. The Question of the possibility to connect with others. It’s obviously the desperation of the Zapatistas. Now that was very important. That was how the zapatistas adopted the internet and the network forms, even if later on I went to meet the Zapatistas and most of them don’t know what is internet. That’s another element. Just for us was a myth, which in reality was not true. But it was so powerful, The idea that the Zapatistas were internet savvy. yeah, it was a piece of the Zapatista. Zapatismo is many pieces at once. One is the communities; another one is the United States activists that were at the very. specific of moment of the of the rising of the Zapatistas that are communicated online and doesn’t mean that the communities were aware about this.

So there were many pieces we thought they were really were nothing. And was a very powerful influence and. And so the position of the Zapatistas, as inspirational force true or not true. Like, not true, but. It’s avocation, more than its.. I don’t know. And then the capacity of communicating through the internet, the element of global individuals, you know, the obviously the analysis of the; here we have Ramon Fernandez, who ran that was like one one researcher on the global institution for us was very, very important in telling us about the economical nature. Manuel Castells was also a reference for network theorizing. And ? on the global local. All these kind of elements that the sense of injustice brings us together to get involved with the PGA.

Terry Dunne: And what challenges did PGA face in organizing internationally? What were the main challenges, the main difficulties? But maybe particularly when you’re dealing with situations can be very different in different countries, different movement landscapes. Different levels of resources accessible to different people, to different people, different types of organizations. I mean, the difference between say, who I’d imagine going to a PGA and being linked to the PGA and say Britain. But in comparison to you, who’s linked to it in Mexico or Bolivia is in terms of the difference between organizations and different individuals and how much resources individuals have access.

Mayo Fuster-Morell: So I think the PGA played a role, played the role of its moment and that’s it, it played very well. It was able to create a network globally that the Mobilized for Seattle and break the scenario of speech and trade these elements of a global movement in that the people global action was really, really very important. So I that’s and it was that and and it’s achieved it. No, we could have had more resources then we could have perhaps done more things, but I think it achieved that. And that’s it. We want to think that perhaps PGA could have offered. And that’s something; if you think about the disappearance of the MRG and the global justice movement, its the Spanish, everybody in MRG,

This is the MRG. It sounds like “American”. So in terms of the “American”, we decided to switch sides when we realized we have finished all of commitments. So we decided to suicide. to suicide, to stop the organization. MRG decided to commit suicide and we make public this OK because we realize that we have finished our role. So. Oh yeah. MRG, it started in order to create a coordination of ?? level. Yes. In order to mobilize against the global institutions. So we mobilize. Something we mobilize for a Prague, particularly, was that important, you know, and but then what happened is that we realize that the goal of the network was already achieved in the sense of at the federal level, we already met each other and somehow we we we the infrastructure was there, the many layers and the media was there. The element of getting to know each other was there, you know? So then it comes other type of things to do. The infrastructure, communication infrastructure knowledge was there. So it’s not necessary anymore. So. And at the same time, MRG was being used by the World Social Forum. In order to wanted to say that the autonomous sections of the movement were present because what happened of that the International Commission of the World Social Forum decided to have a MRG as part of its members and MRG representing PGA without asking us. So they they put us in a representative position in the International Commission of the World Social Forum without asking MRG anything.

Mayo Fuster-Morell: And we say, you know, we don’t want to play the role of the representation. We don’t understand why MRG should be when when they gather all the groups and not, we don’t want to represent them. We don’t have the structure for over representation of forces, and the MRG its goal. So. So we make the letter. We say we we make an assembly and we decided to suicide. When was this when these were seen? This was in 2000?. The day it happened, I met my partner. Okay. You don’t need to be sitting here 10 years or 15 or 2002. So yeah, yeah, yeah. And OK, so you can say that MRG played its role. People Global Action played a role creating a global network. It was very inspirational, played in those Southern Trust, communication infrastructure, communities and theoretical vision about the global movement, and network form. And then it is it. it finishes, is it not? You can say that. And that’s it. But you can also say, considering the emergence of the World Social Forum on the social forum as a space of coordination that was useful in certain sites, like in Latin America it was very powerful. But in other places in Europe was what was like a lost of energy. And. And this confluence between the traditional left, the communist parties and the social, the global movement, social movements that was not fruitful here in Europe. So you could say perhaps you if the PGA would have been able to shift in shift from the goal that it played in a particular period and moving to the new goal of what was the WSF [] , but assuming the protagonist of the new movements instead of the traditional left because it would have been better. you know? For for us was very, very difficult to see that the social forum was covered in that area.

Mayo Fuster-Morell: You know, an some kind of bringing a type of political strategy of discursive actors. The discussion was the same. Just the type of actors behind. That that we didn’t want to. You know, we thought that the new social movement was much more forward, you know? Yeah. And and so you could say that somehow the people global action failed to transform itself into something else to give continuity to the political innovation of the people global action in order that the traditional actors of the traditional left, at least in Europe, didn’t occupy that space. You know, perhaps the 15m movement which has come earlier, perhaps, you know, but it didn’t so. And I think one problem of the PGA. One limitation was the incapacity of changing leadership. We never have a change of leadership. The people who was essentially in the position of the PGA was having a core role in its history, and it was not possible to change the leadership. And I’m not sure they are structured and the honesty that there was leadership in the first front. And that’s that’s, I think, a weakness of culture.

Terry Dunne: Ok. Are you saying that it was a form of organizational structure that had a leadership, but it wasn’t a recognized leadership and informal one. And because it’s not a recognized leadership, you can’t elect a new one.

Mayo Fuster-Morell: Yeah,

Terry Dunne: OK. Often the case in horizontal, non hierarchical organizations. Yeah.

Mayo Fuster-Morell: And this is one of the elements which I have feeling when I say that feminism was not a core. Perhaps it was in the compound, but not to be anti-feminist, the PGA but in its form, it was not a feminist movement because it didn’t, the demands, for example, this question of the structures of power beyond the visible structures of power because it was mainly male domination I guess. And that is something that I somehow we have been able to recover from all that ambience for the building of the 15m or the building of ?? movement, I believe it came from the.

Mags Liddy: The Feminist element of indignados and that came from domestic feminist gender groups in here in Spain. Or.

Mayo Fuster-Morell: I don’t know why. I cannot say why is Spain is so, so.. The article about the tyranny of the structureless makes, you know, it’s not that that either you can have networks. You don’t have a network structure, but assume somehow that the network morality or modalities make disappear the power. It’s such an absurd idea and not making it, you know. Making masking the reality of the power concentration in the network forms and governing is not that about, it’s not about the how you govern the power concentration and influence, but how you convert it in a democratic manner instead of assuming that it is not. Yes.

Terry Dunne: And it was a male dominated network. And there was there a reaction against that at any stage?

Mayo Fuster-Morell: No. There wasn’t a lot of reaction, but there was a moment of drama in in one of the meetings of the PGA. That it was addressed, the question of gender with a methodology of very personal based methodology. I was not there, but I remember it was very dramatic. People was crying, saying that yes, this is true and we been behaving badly. And all this started because a woman wrote a letter making public that she has been raped during Prague mobilization, she was staying in the flat of the PGA people. She was raped. So when this came, you know,

So when this came in to light, there came other cases. Also not not that dramatic, but they came out of other cases of people who has been suffering abuse or things like this. But this case, you know, not it became a critique of feminists. It came in cases of abuse to women, you know? Yes. And this came like this. But I never had that real like I dont’ remember, like a moment in which a theoretical discussion about learning from feminists, or it was more about reacting to a problem that you have in front of you and you have to do something. So I’m.

Terry Dunne: I think I got two more questions. One question is. I. You spoke a bit about PGA being inspirational. Yeah? And so maybe if you could speak to the to the inspiration it brought to people locally in Catalonia and the impact it had in Catalonia in terms of being part of this international?

Mayo Fuster-Morell: I would like to connect to finish the previous question. Sure. I want to point about this element of the lack of the of the capacity of renewal of the leadership, the main nominations and how far like the discussion was imposed even in a personal manner, like the this like that someone could not participate in PGA because of personal dimension. You know, it was really. Like could you imagine in an assembly of the PGA that someone say, I don’t want this person to participate just because I don’t feel comfortable because whatever this woman to participate and and the assembly agreed to continue like it was this level of the of the leaders being able to impose practices; totally undemocratic. No. And it’s not becoming like a problem, not it was really like it’s not OK. And I think this is what became somehow the PGA. That it was not able to to overcome the role of the people that become so central. That could be even tyrannical. You know, they’ve become so central. They have so much power that they become tyrannic with other people. And that’s why we couldn’t do anything because these people were central without them we could not continue. That was the situation.

Terry Dunne: Their power was based upon being involved in a long time, having the contacts?

Mayo Fuster-Morell: The contacts, A reputation and, you know, like the PGA was about connecting continents and people they didn’t know each other. You know, someone say something, the others would come to the meeting for the funding. And there were many, many, many hiding a little because we knew we would be able to get funding. I mean, the funding. who was funding it?

Terry Dunne: Oh, right, right. Right?

Mayo Fuster-Morell: Well, elements that were not made public. No? And when you do things that that some people, when you do things that can be you risk, that that the police arrest someone, and you do actions that are illegal or actions that might have been a bit in the borders. You know, sometimes these this does not does not facilitate the democratic organizing. Because you have to hide it.

Because then there are going to be police in the assembly or whatever, you know. And so that was this fear. So there was people that was; the people who have the international contacts. The people who has the connection with the funding, the funders, you know, the I know all these elements. Yeah.

Terry Dunne: Yeah. I will give you the opportunity at the end at the end of the interview to come back to anything that you feel we should cover that we haven’t covered. Yeah. Well, I wanted to go on to ask about what the international inspiration meant. Of the PGA meant locally in Catalonia. I mean, what what impact did it have here to be part of this actual network that was spanning the globe? Yeah, what kind of I’m feeling that that gives people?

Mayo Fuster-Morell: You I think, honestly, that Catalonia was very prepared to the idea of an network form. So for Catalonia, these ideas didn’t come from outside? Actually, Barcelona was the inspiration for the PGA. Like, we were a key key key place for the PGA and but for us, it was a way of thinking. For the organizing. Coordinating internationally.

Terry Dunne: That’s interesting. That Barcelona you feel was the inspiration for

Mayo Fuster-Morell: Actually what what the first PGA meeting was in Spain. Yes, it came to Barcelona.

Terry Dunne: Did you attend that?

Mayo Fuster-Morell: No

Terry Dunne: Yeah, I think. Sorry, go ahead. No, I think. Yeah, I think actually at the last, the last question was, if there’s anything that we haven’t covered, do you think we should be talking about?

Mayo Fuster-Morell: It changed my life. Well, that’s it. That element of how far the specific people were, the specific possibilities of being someone global was the condition for the possibility of PGA and how actually PGA changed the [trajectory] of life for some of us.

Terry Dunne: What we are supposed to start off with the question how you became an activist and which I omitted from this interview because it’s not a language I like, but maybe we could rephrase the question in another way. How did you personally end up being in MRG and becoming involved in PGA? It changed your life more from that.

Mayo Fuster-Morell: And I was a student from economics.

Terry Dunne: Ok?

Mayo Fuster-Morell: I didn’t have a family background or anything. My friends, from my parti popular, I didn’t came from. But then I saw in the internet chatter I saw Seattle in it. And it’s I say it brings me about a sense of injustice and a sense of rage. I say, OK, I want to be there. And I decided to. I then read about the news about Prague. Yes, in the newspaper. And so I say, I want to be there. And I decided I decided to go to Prague alone. To go to Prague without knowing anyone. But MRG was the organizer of the trip. So I don’t know how I have the information about who was organizing the buses to go to Prague. And this is the very first person I talked to was in that Enric Duran. And so for me was the door. The MLG and the PGA was the door to activate. And I was not supposed to be an activist. I could have not been an activist in my life. I didn’t have any element of my strategy that would have made me an activist. And that changed my life. And after that, I was like five years totally outside; of like being a full time activist without having any work or a student or studying or anything. Yeah.

So five years. Well, then I feel so in my work. So I must not only have five years full time activism is the best of me living, and I was living with very few resources, you know, living from the networks of the squats and but then also in deciding to create a cooperative or in my my my work decision has been also from this basis, a certain element of wanting to contribute to these things.

Terry Dunne: We take thanks for that. I don’t know if we want to keep that running or not, but I just I wanted to make a comments about the familiarity of some of the things you were saying. we were talking about depression after 2008, and people are saying, you know, if there’s not going to be protests now, when will there ever be? Yeah, OK. This is quite familiar in an Irish context. The stuff about sexual violence and this kind of been a problem. That kind of it wasn’t that the people were talking about feminism that it’s this problem confronted them. This is very familiar, and the some of the stuff about informal leadership is as well. So, yeah, this is this is quite familiar, not the stuff about people ending up being mayor of the city or being in the main opposition party. Ah, yes. Now, from there wouldn’t be anyone like that from where we’re coming. There would be like in recent elections, it would be a lot more of a far left presence in the parliament, but it’s pretty much all from from Trotskyists and Trotskyists are kind of just eccentric people. It wouldn’t be from the Irish equivalent of MRG at all. But that’s just that’s just by the by.

Mayo Fuster-Morell: I think there is something else. There was, I think, the people who came from PGA. Were extremely innovative. And that is very valuable with the market. So you have people who have become millionaires, people from PGA. people who has been in a very good reputation, a position. Yes, yes. For example, one of the founders of Twitter came from PGA.

Terry Dunne: The founders of what?

Mayo Fuster-Morell: Twitter, not the founders, one of the designers of Twitter was from PGA. Or in my case. I’m affiliated with Harvard now. Harvard is a very reputable university. you can say about people who have been very much creative and innovative. And in the market, on academic level, you know, they’ve been able to achieve the success. yes, because they are innovative. That in order to gain power and achieve that point. They were some ideas have been ss influential in their work.

Terry Dunne: I think everybody who was in the PGA has been able to do great things. Not everybody but yeah.

But yeah, are. Yes.

Mayo Fuster-Morell: Like a school of the skills. you could learn a lot from the PGA.