Tributes to Adolfo Gilly August 25 1928 – July 4 2023 – A Mexican revolutionary who visited Dublin in September 1979
Adolfo Gilly has passed away.
Suzi Weissman drew our attention to the tribute below, written by Olivia Gall :
Today Adolfo Gilly, a great among the great historians of the revolution and the post-revolution in Mexico, passed away.
Our beloved teacher has also gone. The first time I took class with Gilly was when he came to Mexico from Italy to give some classes at UNAM, before the Mexican government decided to grant him naturalization. The Faculty of Economics class was crowded. Every time he referred to something very critical about Mexican politics he told us “if I say this they’re going to apply the 33″…….. but, he laughed, “there they go.”
Later I attended, over several semesters, his Seminar on the History of the Mexican Revolution at the postgraduate degree of the FCPYS. Adolfo was a great teacher, perhaps the best of all the teachers I had back then and ever had.
Today also left Gilly my mentor, who accompanied the process of my doctoral research on Trotsky in Mexico very closely. I was fortunate to have his wisdom, his irremediably critical spirit, his ironic gaze, his strong passion for history and politics, his rigorous opinions, his scorn, and his relentless recommendations and warnings.
Years later, when Adolfo was talking about Friedrich Katz, he referred to him as “my Katz commander.”
Last time I saw him I mentioned his Argentinian origin. He reprimanded me: “Argentinian me? Ain’t no way I’m Mexican! ”
Dear Adolfo, we’ll miss you a lot, we’ll always miss you.
Adolfo Gilly in Dublin, September 1979
On August 27 1979, on the same day:
- The IRA killed 18 members of the British paratroop regiment at Narrow Water County Down
- The IRA killed a British Royal Family member Lord Mountbatten, in Sligo.
A tsunami of ruling class condemnation blitzed across the world’s media. Pope John Paul II joined the chorus. The Narrow Water ambush was not universally unpopular in Ireland.
I offer one anecdote : at that time the IRA, although in my opinion it was fighting for a just cause, was pursuing a purely militarist campaign, opposing a mass action strategy. Defeat was on the cards. The IRA and Sinn Féin only accepted the need for a mass broad-based campaign in support of the H-Block/Armagh prisoners in late 1979. As a result most people in Dublin, on August 27 1979 – were at best demoralized spectators to the war in the north.
But the Narrow Water ambush was sensational news – it had strong echoes of the famous 1920 Kilmichael Ambush in 1920. This was part of working class embedded revolutionary consciousness. I was sitting in a Dublin Pub – the Foggy Dew off Dame Street – after a couple of political meetings. Numerous friends and comrades joined me – more people flooded in – all glued to the telly. Us politicos were used to not showing much emotion around these events – would this be seen as yet another IRA military disaster as ruling class personalities issued one denunciation after another? But no, something changed. We started to notice the casual drinkers were not reacting well to the fulminations of the politicians and the priests. After a short while one or two people who heard our swelling group comment about the news joined in, saying things like “I am glad I am not the only one who thinks like you”. After an interval the sentiments of approval rippled around the pub, a bar-tender came down giving out about the Paras, and so on.
An Interesting Follow-up – Enter Adolfo Gilly
There was an interesting follow-up. A few weeks later I received a phone call from the Fourth International HQ in Paris. I was asked, at short notice, to meet a comrade from Mexico, working as European Correspondent for a magazine called Uno mas Uno, who was flying to Dublin from Rome. I met Adolfo Gilly at the GPO in O’Connell Street. He had to cover all of Europe from Rome, without a travel budget. He wrote about the Narrow Water ambush and the same day killing of Lord Mountbatten in Sligo. Being a good revolutionary, Adolfo was repelled by the international ruling class tsunami of condemnation. Thinking about his Mexican audience, he reminded readers of the Irish San Patricios, Irish soldiers conscripted into the 1847 USA army invading Mexico. These gallant Irish emigrés, repelled by imperial Yankee slaughter, organised a mutiny and switched sides. Their leader was John Riley, brutally murdered with his comrades by the Yankees after their cause was defeated. The story was well-known in Mexico – memorials honouring Riley and his comrades stand in Mexico City – and I had never heard it before.
Adolfo Gilly, after writing the story, thought nothing more about it – but he had stirred something in the owner/editor of the magazine – who made an urgent international phone call to his European correspondent. This Mexican magazine owner was sick and tired listening to the imperialist propaganda barrage, and was delighted to read Gilly’s article about the Narrow Water ambush. For the first and only time, Adolfo Gilly got an expenses-paid trip outside Rome, and spent a week working in Dublin just before the visit of Pope John Paul II. You can find out more about Adolfo Gilly here : https://thenewpress.com/authors/adolfo-gilly
More recently Ry Cooder, the Chieftains, Liam Neeson and many Mexican musicians produced a wonderful tribute to John Riley and the San Patricios https://youtu.be/7fpkongV_HQ
Dan La Botz writes a very good tribute here : http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article8153
Two recommended Adolfo Gilly books are here : https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/authors/gilly-adolfo
John Meehan July 6 2023
Tomás Ó Flatharta 
Leave a comment