Heberto Castillo: Nationalize the Revolution

ByMartí Batres

This editorial by Martí Batres originally appeared in the April 13, 2026 edition of El Heraldo de México.

One of the great merits recognized for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is the rescue of historical memory, the recovery of the struggles of the Mexican people, the respect and admiration for our heroes and heroines, the love for what Mexico means, and the vindication of Mexican cultures, both current and ancient.

However, there is a very important precursor to such laudable purposes: Heberto Castillo Martínez, whose solitary voice began to radiate positively in the country from the 1960s of the last century.

He participated in the founding of the National Liberation Movement alongside President Lázaro Cárdenas in 1961.

Amilcar Cabral, Fidel Castro, Heberto Castillo and friends.

And already in 1968, as part of the Coalition of Middle and Higher Education Teachers for Democratic Freedoms, Heberto promoted the importance of taking to the streets with large photographs of Emiliano Zapata, Francisco Villa, José María Morelos and Miguel Hidalgo to confront the paranoia of the government of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, which sought to stigmatize the popular-student movement of that year as an “international communist conspiracy driven by foreign forces”.

In 1969 he was imprisoned in Lecumberri. Upon his release in 1971, he dedicated himself to preparing the founding of the Mexican Workers’ Party, established in 1974, whose logo was the Aztec symbol signifying unity and movement.

In the late 1970s, with the so-called oil boom, he dedicated himself to promoting a sovereign energy policy.

When the neoliberal shift began in the 1980s, Heberto deepened his struggle in defense of national sovereignty.

Shortly afterwards he launched a campaign under the slogan: “Nationalize the Revolution”.

It was a double message. On the one hand, a demand on the PRI governments that spoke of the Mexican Revolution while simultaneously selling the country out to the interests of large transnational corporations. Yes, those who accused others of fomenting a conspiracy to subordinate Mexico to foreign interests were the very ones subordinating it to foreign interests.

But on the other hand, Heberto also spoke to the Mexican left and demanded that, while respecting the struggle of other peoples of the world, they should base their battle on the historical struggles of the Mexican people.

Once, in those 1980s, I heard a lecture by engineer Heberto Castillo at the University of Guadalajara, in which, addressing the Mexican left-wing organizations, he said: “We talk a lot about the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Vietnamese Revolution, and I ask you: When are we going to talk about the Mexican Revolution?”

Heberto Castillo demanded that the Mexican left look to our own history and find in it the answers for the transformation of Mexico.