Anarchism in Mexico

Pre-conquest, some of the indigenous peoples of what is today Mexico had decision-making structures based on participation, discussion, and consensus, hallmarks of modern anarchism. Today, indigenous community assemblies and collective decision making inform some Mexican social movements of the left 'and below,' such as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, and these practices have a large influence both on Mexican anarchism and anarchists in the United States and internationally.

In 1824, the utopian socialist Robert Owen unsuccessfully tried to acquire a district of fifty leagues to develop a colony in the Mexican provinces of Coahuila and Texas along the same principles set forth in New Harmony. His request was eventually denied by the Mexican government.

In 1861 the Greek Plotino Rhodakanaty tried to implement the ideas of Fourier and Proudhon during the administration of President Comonfort. He published Cartilla Socialista a manual explaining the ideas of Fourier. Some of his adepts like Francisco Zalacosta, Santiago Villanueva, and Hermenegildo Villavicencio, became the first worker's rights activists in Mexico. Other students of Rhodakanaty founded a school called "La Social, Sección Internacionalista" following Bakunin. These activists organized one of the first mutualist societies in Mexico. Mutualism is the preferred term for anarchism by the Mexican authorities.

Around 1882 another anarchist group was founded by the brothers Enrique and Ricardo Flores Magón. They published the newspaper Regeneración in 1901. Their movement is oft-cited as a precedent for the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Other famous leaders of the Magonista movement were Práxedis Guerrero, Camilo Arriaga, Juan Sarabia, Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama and Librado Rivera.

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