Apoyo Mutuo (Mutual Aid)
Ongoing project since 2017
SEVERAL ACTIONS AND PRINTS

The Mutual Aid project is inspired by the theory that the philosopher, scientist and Russian anarchist Piotr Alekséyevich Kropotkin (1842-1921) developed around the behavior of different species of animals and the way of subsistence of the human being in precarious communities under extreme conditions. This Mutual Aid principle has also influenced multiple models of understanding about the functioning of organizations based on cooperation, reciprocity and teamwork such as mutualism, associativism, communitarianism and anarchism itself, among others. Frontally, Mutual Aid represents a counterweight to a capitalist and individualistic system in which socioeconomic competitiveness, pyramidal structure and personal success are modular gears of the productivist machinery.

Israel Martínez proposes a reflection on the postulate of the Russian theorist twice: on the one hand he emphasizes the movement of social and student protest of 1968 silenced by the State ten days before the inauguration of the Olympic Games celebrated in Mexico that same year and, on the other, questions the genuine but ephemeral solidarity that Mexican society showed after the devastating earthquakes of September 2017. How could this awareness of help, cooperation and joint work for the common good be expanded? Stop being an intermittent and fleeting manifestation to become a continuous and transforming Mutual Aid... evolutionary.

Martinez’s interest in disseminating Kropotkin’s thought has led him to generate a project in the process and in the long term in which the slogan of mutual aid acquires different formats and temporalities that have been materialized in publications, blankets in public spaces, actions and in the flag of Casa del Lago UNAM, a medium or support whose essence is the transmission of a message, an identity and a political declaration.

Text by Víctor Palacios