Introduction: Indigeneity and Latin American Anarchism
Anarchist Studies - ISSN 2633-8270
Volume 28 Number 2
Introduction: Indigeneity and Latin American Anarchism
Geoffroy de Laforcade, Steven J. Hirsch pages -
DOI: 10.3898/AS.28.2.01
Abstract
Examples of indigenous/anarchist cross-fertilisation, so to speak, abound in Latin America, particularly in the case of Mexico, the site of the twentieth century’s
first social revolution. Devra Weber examined the alliance, which transcended the northern border, between Mexican Magonistas associated with the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) and Purépecha/Tarascan, Yaqui and Mayo peoples. Mexicans, she wrote, were critical in forging the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), particularly in the Southwest of the United States. The PLM, which coordinated its activities from the US Midwest, in addition to indigeneity brought questions of gender and women’s rights to the fore of the Mexican revolutionary struggle. According to Weber tactics of ‘hiding and evasion’ developed by indigenous communities in their long struggle against imperial and national conquest were reformulated and deployed by Magonista ‘Wobblies’ north of the border. She highlights the cases of figures such as Fernando Palomárez, a Yoeme, Spanish and English-Speaking Mayo Indian and critical architect of revolutionary organisation in northern Mexico, and Primo Tapia de la Cruz, ‘a Purépecha Magonista Wobbly’ who took time to ‘carefully explain the precepts of anarcho-syndicalism and communism in the Purépecha language and within the context of a Purépecha worldview’. Tapia, a prominent activist for indigenous rights, learned English and migrated to Los Angeles in 1907, before returning to Michoacán where he organised a communist peasant union in 1921 and fell to assassination in 1926. ‘Magonista Wobblies’, she concludes, ‘provide a window into the diverse history of Mexicans who migrated to the United States and into the historical roots of many families and communities’.
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To cite this article
Geoffroy de Laforcade, Steven J. Hirsch (2020) Introduction: Indigeneity and Latin American Anarchism, Anarchist Studies, 28(2), -. https://doi.org/10.3898/AS.28.2.01