About

 

Comando Colibrí, loosely translated as "The Hummingbird Command" or "The Hummingbird Gang", is a Mexican "guerrilla command" located in Mexico City and Chiapas that seek the "prevention of violence against women". They identify themselves as the "armed wing of decolonial latinamerican feminism" and offer self-defense clases including Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu, and Kali, and empowerment and support services. 

Goals

The overarching goal of the organization is the empowerment and protection of women, whether through physical training or emotional support. They are heaving anti-colonialist and anti-patriarchal, but tend to tackle these societal issues through grassroots organizing and autonomous action than political channels. Their mission statement is translated as follows:

As a guerilla command, we do not want the mediocre rights of men, nor their hypocritical tolerance, nor their weak respect, we want to dynamite it all: the state, the capital, the racism, the coloniality, the family, the oppressive religions, the transnationals, the transgenics, the banks, the ideas that women is first and foremost a mother, the sexuality as a device, the heterosexuality as the norm. Nor god, not the state, nor the party, nor the husband. Our demand is one and only once: to construct the conditions for possibility of a utopia, here, in the Abya Yala.

Opposition

The group’s major oppositional force is patriarchy and its societal manifestations, as violence against women, the silencing of women, etc. This is perceived as a remnant of coloniality, especially given the group’s ties with Native Central American culture, which is the other major factor it seeks to ameliorate and destroy. The following is one of the group member’s take on it:

“However, the command is furious, because the physical, symbolism, economic, psychic violence, against our sisters is so, so strong, that we are being exterminated, all of us here, in our home. Because of this, we have adopted a motto that was born with blood: ‘If they touch one of us, they touch us all.’ In this sense, as a guerilla command, we must learn to defend ourselves with the body, because our arms are also those of the flesh. Because of this, it is fundamental to the command to form its subcommands in self-defense, knife work, and firearm handling.”

Location
Comando Colibrí, Comando Colibri