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to genealogy of critical profession of journalism has in the Mexican Edmundo Jardón Arzate one of its valuable pieces, perhaps one of the most hidden. Originally from Calimaya, state of Mexico, he began his political life in the student movement that converted the Scientific and Literary Institute into an Autonomous University in that entity, where he studied law.
In the mid-1940s, Jardón participated in the Revolutionary Institute of Social Studies, a conjunction of political and technical activists – lawyers, doctors, agronomists, teachers – influenced by a national-revolutionary version of Marxism. His militancy was located in the Sergio Kirov Communist Bloc, from where he contributed to founding the Unified Socialist Action. The ASU had as its main leaders Hernán Laborde and Valentín Campa, who had been expelled from the PCM in 1940 and who, in convergence with those excluded in 1948, gave birth to the Peasant Workers Party (POCM). At various times, Jardón wrote in the press of this organization and became the director of its organ. Novemberwhose emblematic motto was: “For the Mexican revolution to socialism.” At that time, he also participated in non-militant press such as Glimpses and ABC.
Among his most relevant works are those from 1958, when Jardón wrote a series of articles on the decline of democracy in the union movement in the pages of Rotothemesa short-lived publication critical of the Mexican government. He was arrested in 1959 while covering the railroad strike that, as Vallejo would say, shocked the nation. In this period, various militants left the POCM and rejoined the PCM; Jardón also did so, joining the “El Machete” cell, along with fellow red journalists Mario Gill, Gerardo Unzueta, Hugo Ponce de León and Eliezer Morales. By 1960, the biweekly was founded Policy with Marcué Pardiñas as its architect, a significant publication of the crucible of the national and international political struggle of the left. Jardón became director of Policy towards the end of its appearance cycle. During those years he also wrote in The Daythe newspaper founded by Enrique Ramírez y Ramírez.
Jardón’s participation in the communist press, that is, in The Voice of Mexicoincreased in the second five years of the 1960s, being especially important in 1968. Although his work is well known From the Citadel to Tlatelolco; Mexico, the untouched isletreferring to the student movement, Jardón was very active throughout that year, writing about the most important political-social issues. His participation as an envoy in Paris especially stood out, from where he covered the elections to the National Assembly. He also followed events involving the French university, from where he produced texts such as “The Acute Problem of Higher Education.”
In that same 1968, the PCM’s distance from the USSR was certified after the invasion of Prague, which led to Jardón allying himself in the following years with a group of militants who formed a dissident group known as the “Unity of the Communist Left”, in the mid-1970s, where he found himself alongside Dionisio Encina and Manuel Terrazas, communist cadres of fierce loyalty. pro-soviet. At the same time, he collaborated with the newspaper Siqueiros of the “Brecht” cell of the PCM.
He separated from the PCM in 1974 and joined the Socialist Action and Unity Movement, which supported the thesis of the validity of the Mexican Revolution as an obligatory path for socialism. From that moment on, Jardón met old militants such as Carlos Sánchez Cárdenas, Alexandro Martínez Camberos, Miguel The Mouse Velasco, Miguel Aroche Parra, Alberto Lumbreras and the Salvadoran-Mexican Graciela de Anaya García. in the organ Release From this group, Jardón wrote prolifically, following the Mexican situation towards the process of political liberalization.
Already in the MAUS and before the electoral option opened in 1979, Jardón was nominated as a candidate for deputy for Toluca, and in 1981, a candidate for the governorship of his home state, both under the alliance and umbrella of the communist electoral registry. In that year, he faced the PRI machinery that brought Alfredo del Mazo as its candidate. Jardón, under the motto “Against imposition and corruption, for a democratic and honest government,” carried out a campaign that was described at the time as “another style,” as it looked at sectors affected by official policy.
Without a doubt, his journey is an expression of the diversity of the Mexican left, its concerns and its debates. In the course of the 20th century, with its multiple organizational nooks and crannies, Jardón’s red pen awaits greater recognition from those who today assume the legacy of the fight for democracy.
* UAM researcher. Author, together with Juan de la Fuente, of The Plebeian Root of Mexican Democracy (2025)
