Anarchism In Mexico feat. Andrew, Pt. 1

the world's most unique ancient civilizations. Whose came the Almechs, often called the mother culture of Mesoamerica, known for their colossal stoneheads and influence on later cultures. Then the Maya with their dazzline cities, mathematics and calendars, and eventually the Aztecs, who built the Grand Empire settled onto nour stietland which is now Mexico City. Unfortunately, we can't spend much time on this rich history. We must progress to the time

of European contact. In fifteen nineteen, everything changed Spanish Conquistra and nan Cortez, and within just two years the mighty Aztec Empire fell disease. Alliances with native enemies of the Aztecs, Technological advantages and brutal warfare aided the Spaniards to overthrowing

the civilization of millions. What followed was three centuries of colonial rule under New Spain, marked by extraction, Catholic conversion, and the mixing, often violently, of indigenous European and African peoples. By the early eighteen hundreds, the winds of independence were finally blowing. A Catholic priest named Miguel Hidago sparked the

fight with a cry for freedom in eighteen ten. Specifically, he sought the end of rule by Spanish peninsulars, which are the people who came from Spain and ruled over Mexico. He called for the equality of races, and he called for the redistribution of land. As a hill capility put it in anarchism in Latin, a miracle. Hidago proposed to abolish, even if by gentle and gradual means, what he called, in almost Prudonian terms, the horrible right of territorial property, perpetual,

preditory and exclusive. This whole land topic is going to come up a lot in the history. By the way, you may be familiar with the phrase land and freedom pierre libertad that comes from Mexico.

and modernize the country. In the mid eighteen hundreds, figures like Quarez led a sweeping movement against the old powers of Mexico, the Catholic Church and the military, which had long dominated both land and politics. To the layers their reforma. They seized church property, secularized education, and promised a new

era of rights and equality. But there was a catch, because to weaken the Church, the liberals sold off its land, not to the peasants or indigenous communities who had worked on it for generations, but to wealthy buyers e heroes. The communal lands of indigenous peoples were privatized under this liberal banner freedom and progress. They created a new class

of landlords and pushed rural people deeper into poverty. But Nita Juarez died, but his legacy lived on with those reforms to cement the separation of church and state, freedom of religion, the prohibition of forced labor, and so on. But following him came the Porfiriato earth thirty year long dictatorship under the mixed tech president Portfyrio Dias, who continued the modernization of the country but also deepened its long

standing inequalities. Portfolio DEAs surrounded himself with intellectuals known as the scientific Coos. They were positivists, as in adherents of the positivist school of philosophy, which advocated for rational planning and economic development as a path of social progress. His slogan was ban Opalo the bread or the stick, and reflected the policy of rewarding compliance with prosperity while punishing

dissent with severe consequences. The liberty order and progress equation sacrificed liberty as the Mexican people were expected to trade freedom for the benefits of these policies. Workers ended up facing low wages, long hours, and of course lacked rights, while estate laborers were landless and under the arbitrary rule of Mao demos. Education was largely restricted to elites in major cities, groups like the Yaqi Indians were forcibly relocated

as cheap labor to plantations. Governors, those supposedly elected, were effectively presidential appointees, monitored by Heife's politicals, who intervened the local affairs. The rulatis and elite constabulary maintained order, but often disregarded due process, which fostered a whole reign of terror in the rural areas. Diaza's popularity eventually waned as prosperity was monopolized by a small, often foreign elite. This elite emulated European customs, which created a stark divide with

the growing proletariat and middle classes. By the second half of the nineteenth century, Mexico was caught in a contradiction a state that promised emancipation through property rights while dispossessing the very people it claimed to free. The liberal project have feeled them, and in its failure, space opened for

deeper critiques of property power and the state itself. A younger generation began questioning the system, and with this rise in criticism, gim rise and repression, which set this stage for the Mexican Revolution of nineteen ten.

the world. Like that's kind of one of the biggest trends that we've been able to see throughout your Latin American anarchism series, is like how how much they all mirror each other, and like how much of like a global movements used to exist, like not like a organized fashion, but like there's like some like other force that is that is like a driving these like global trends of

like revoltant revolution. Yeah, and like we see this a lot in like the yeah, like the nineteen ten to nineteen twenty time period, I mean even just in Latin America.

the twenty tens are already over. The narratives around it are still formulated, right, We're still in the midst of the nineteen twenty in the nineteen twenties, the twenty twenties, say, you know, the narratives around it will still be developing all now. But we're already halfway through, and I'm sure people have already seen certain trends that are going to make for some excellent retrospective commentary.

most popular consciousness. Yeah, to the point where even like the more like liberal parties are being quote unquote forced to adopt like similar rhetoric looking at like like like the Labor Party in the UK and hear in the States, how how much like the Democratic Party last year, like completely caved on like far right populist talking points on immigration and stuff.

of a digression here. But before we get to the point of the Mexican Revolution, though, we should really take a look at the slow and sell development of radical ideas in Mexico during the nineteenth century. You see, indigenous resistance persisted throughout Mexico's history through often quiet, revolved acts of non cooperation that would steadily ensure that Spain could

never fully establish his dominion even after independence. The cldinal structure lived on in the haciendas, the church, and the state. So the indigenous communities would continue to resist, sometimes in profoundly anti authoritarian ways, by the nineteenth century. And this history is courtesy Anahill Cappialities anarchism Latin America. As I mentioned in eighteen sixty one, a man arrived in Mexico with a very distinct name. He was Platino Constantino Rourkanati.

He was a Greek immigrant, radicalized by the revolutions in Europe and steeped in the works of Furia. Was a utopian socialist and prudon who was an anarchist Fuist anarchist. He had fled the counter revolutionary tide crashing over the continent with a mission. Rocannati believed Mexico, with its long standing indigenous traditions of communal landholding and mutual aid, was the perfect place to plant the seeds of a new utopian society. And in a lot of ways he was right.

by day and philosophy by night. He was a Christian, but not anything like the Christians that dominated Mexico at the time, because as an hil Caplite, he puts it for him, the essence of Christianity is charity, that is love for all, as it is taught in the Gospels, and that essence is the moral foundation of socialism and

revolution as well. Pure Christianity, he wrote, is the religion that will regenerate the world when people finally come to understand the power of its basic principles liberty, equality, and fraternity. But it is Christianity without dogma like Saint Simon's and without priesthood, liturgy, or hierarchical organization, the model for which he finds in the life of Jesus and his earliest followers.

Primitive Christianity is authentic Christianity, but has been entirely degraded by the Catholic and Protestant churches, and has nothing to do with so many sects that call themselves Christian end quote. A few months after his arrival in eighteen sixty one, he published a socialist primary in Mexico that marked him as the first anarchist to put forward distinctly anarchist theory

in the country. In the mid eighteen sixties, he formed a group called Lass Socil the goal of spreading the ideas of mutualism, free association, anti capitalist cooperation through books, pamphlets and education. Barucannati and his collaborators launched workers schools aimed the promoting literacy, political consciousness, and autonomy. Once at school was the Esquila de Rio id Socialismo, the School of Lightning and Socialism Hellier. It combined moral instruction with

a deep critique of the exploitative labor system. This was, you know, education as a rebellion, not just to read, but to recognize the exploitation and to imagine alternatives. Rotconnati thought of his socialism as the fullest expression of the French revolutionary motto of liber equality and fraternity, which no

half measure like liberalism could ever reach. He recognized that the immediate objective must be quote, the extinction of poverty, the distribution and increase to the commonwealth, the abolition of prostitution, and the conservation of all our faculties, including the intellectual, physical, and moral ones, for the transformation of humanity through science, beauty, and virtue end quote.

actions belong equally to all end quote. In other words, our country is the entire world, and all men are brothers. He also wrote that the abolition of all government in the nations, which frightens you and you consider impossible and absurd, they have never tried it will usher in a totally new world of institutions in which the peoples of the world will live in happiness end quote. Brouclati was a pacifist and as a prosch anarchism, which bought his original instruction

of socialism being via Charles Furia. But eventually he came to understand the need for a class struggle, as he said, quote, a social revolution in which many heroic victims will be sacrificed in the sacred altar to restore the justice denied it to the people end quote. His work attracted young radicals, many of whom would later play key roles in the

development of Mexico's labor movement. Before he started Lass social he had initiated the first group or is Sudiante Socialistas, from which game figures such as Santiago Vilenueva, who tried to organize the worker's movement, Permeneghillo, Phil Vicencio and Francisco's at a Costa a leader of rural masses. It's the core of this group that would help him to create lessocl which would educate and agitate but also assist workers beyond mutual aid to an active class struggle posture in

defense of the interests against bosses. So basically he took these mutual aid societies and made sure that they didn't stay mutual aid societies, that they were radicalized into resistance societies, because those sort of mutual aid associations were very common in Latin America at the time. You know, workers would create these little groups where they would try and support each other. But it's very easy to fall back on that and to assume, you know, that's all you have

to do. Making sure that they have a radical posture, a revolutionary posture. It's important to ensure that you're not just rest in your laurels and expecting change to come to you, and indeed they did not expect the change to come to them. In June eighteen sixty five, these

resistant societies supported the first industrial strike in Mexico. Unfortunately, it was crushed by the leader of the country at the time, Emperor Maximilian, but it was his occupation and the economic harshness of it all that fermented the spread of anarchist ideas. Another student tut of Rocannati school came Julio Chavez, a precursor to the more famous Emiliano Zapata

and a fervent anarchist communist. He agitated for a peasant rebellion and engaged in land expropriations, which grew in popularity wherever he was active, from the chalcot Tex Soco region where he began, to all the states of Quebler and Morellia, as Capelletti recounts, quote, the federal army finally moved against him and defeated and imprisoned. He was executed in eighteen sixty nine by order of President Benito Juarez. Before he died,

Chavez cried out, long live Socialism end quote. His manifesto, which was written of few months before he died, would help introduce more masses in the Mexican movement to the idea of class struggle, and like a light bulb over one's head, it immediately made it clear who was responsible

for their suffering. Santiago vid and Weever, and a fellow student Rocanati named Vila Vitensio worked arduously to organize the artisans and workers in Mexico City, and they definitely had the cards stacked against them, but they helped to organize an industrial strike in a textile mill in eighteen sixty eight, and in eighteen sixty nine they established a Circulo Peraltario and in eighteen seventy the Grand Seculio de Obreros de Mexico and in eighteen seventy one the newspaper Al Socialista.

And this is when the red and black so famously associated with anarchism came into the Mexican workers movement. The eighteen seventies saw struggles between radical and moderate factions among workers, proletarian presses making a name for themselves, and the first Convention of the General Workers Congress of the Mexican Republic in eighteen seventy six with a manifesto that indicated the

crown influence of libertarian ideology in Mexico. Of course, there was a tension in that Congress between the socialists and the anarchists, but water is wet. Sadly, Mexico wasn't ready for revolution, or rather, the ruling class wasn't. While Rovercinnati and others sold seeds among students and workers, the country was swinging toward reaction.

were dismantled or sidelined. The more confrontational elements of the early anarchists current went underground. Those who spoke of abolishing property or questioned the Porphyria vision of modernity were met with jail, exile, or worse. Rotcarati's allies, Alacosta, through his newspaper Like International, promoted a twelve point socialist agenda, advocated and universal social republic, municipal autonomy, workers' rights, workers associations,

wage avolition, and property equality. Despite Diaz's rise in eighteen seventy seven, he led a present uprising in Sierra Gorda and planets to La Baranca, battling federal forces until eighteen eighty. Despite his defeat and imprisonment in eighteen eighty one, the rebellion persisted. Salacosta's ally, Colonel Alberto Santa Fe, introduced the

Lays del Pueblo, Influenced by Mercunan's ideas. Though not a purely anarchist manifesto, this document emphasized land distribution, national industry promotion, army suppression, and free education. Salafe argued that true Mexican independence depended on reclaiming stolen lands, a movement which, of course ski in traction among the peasants. General Negrete supported Santa Fe's revolutionary efforts, just as he had backed Chavez,

Lopez and Sanlacosta earlier. Santa Fe's resistance against Diaza's dictatorship was more radical than mayor electoral opposition. It aimed at transferring sovereignty to local municipalities and land to peasant collectors. However, by the eighteen nineties, Diaz effectively suppressed most worker movements through bribery and repression. While industrial workers and miners fared slightly better than the peasant, wages steadily declined after eighteen

ninety eight. Rodocanati left Mexico in eighteen eighty six after giving over two decades of his life to the cause, But as two decades of so and seeds would eventually flourish in the Mexican Revolution. What will be covering in the next episode Thanks for tuninen A madrasage. You can follow me on YouTube at andrewism and patron dot com slash Saint Drew.