It Could Happen Here - Anarchism In Mexico feat. Andrew, Pt. 2

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Andrew concludes his series on Latin American anarchism with the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and its aftermath. Sources: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/chuck-morse-anarchism-in-mexico https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/angel-cappelletti-anarchism-in-latin-america Kirk Shaffer’s “Tropical Libertarians: Anarchist movements and networks in the Caribbean, Southern United States, and Mexico, 1890s–1920s” (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/steven-j-hirsch-lucien-van-der-walt-anarchism-and-syndicalism-in-the-colonial-and-postcolonial#toc97)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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AT&T, connecting changes everything. Cool Zone Media. Hello and welcome to Get Up In Here. I'm back with… Garrison Davis. Hello. And I'm Andrew Sage, or Andrewism, on YouTube. Now, previously we explored a lesser known chapter in Mexico's radical history. Before Magón, before the revolution, when a Greek emigre named Protino Rurikonati arrived in the 1860s, convinced that Mexico's indigenous communal traditions could form the basis for a new anarchist society. Through schools, pamphlets, and mutual aid

societies, he helped sow the first seeds of anarchist thought on Mexican soil. Some of his students pushed even further and flirted with many burgeoning streams of anarchism, even as Porfirio Diaz's regime clamped down on anything that challenged his drive for order and progress. Rodriquenati faded from view, and many of his students and associates had to go underground for a time, but the ideas would live on, like quiet sparks awaiting for the next revolt. And the next revolt would come in 1910, when the Mexican Revolution erupted. But keep in mind the context here.

When we talk about revolutions, the focus tends to be on the flashpoints, the gunfire, the slogans, the major figures. And I will do a lot of focus on some of the major figures throughout this history. We have to keep in mind that revolutions have roots that run deep, run deep below the surface. The revolutions are often shaped by decades or centuries of injustice. And Mexico's revolution was no exception. Because for over three decades, Javier Figueroa Diaz ruled Mexico with what was basically a velvet glove over an iron fist.

He brought railroads and electrification, but also grave, grave costs for the rural poor, the indigenous communities and the working classes. By 1910, thanks to his efforts, almost all the land in Mexico was in private hands. The rural poor now found themselves as peons and haciendas, while those that fled to the city found themselves proletarianised, made to work at various industries for long hours, low pay and little protection. Despite appearance stable and efficient and orderly, the system in Mexico was profoundly unjust. And yet, many saw it as a model for progress in a region full of instability.

A description that seems eerily familiar to the situation that's currently taking place in El Salvador. Beneath the polished veneer, tensions were braying. Workers were organizing, journalists were risking their lives, teachers and lawyers and even wealthy landowners began to murmur about the need for reform. And in the countryside, those old communal memories refused to die. Even after the land was taken, the land was remembered. By the turn of the 20th century, Diaz approached his 80s with no successor in sight and the people were getting fed up. Which brings us into the first phase of the Mexican Revolution.

According to Archil Capuleti, the author of Anarchism Latin America and the main phase of the Mexican Revolution. According to Árjel Capuleti, the author of Anarchism Latin America and the main source of this episode, Francisco A. Madero wasn't quite a revolutionary. In all honesty, he just wanted to tweak the status quo, to keep a free market but ban the re-election of presidents. He came from money, he was an upper class intellectual, a believer in parliamentary democracy and in free markets. He read the Revue Spiritae religiously, a spiritualist journalism. He believed in a kind of metaphysical liberalism, where good governance and good intentions could steer history in the right direction. Madero's party, the Partido Democrata, was formed with a single, clear goal. Ending Porfirio

Diaz's decades-long grip on power. But some more radical forces, like Ricardo Flores Magón and the Partido Liberal Mexicano, or PLM, Madero's vision was nowhere near enough. Don't get fooled by the name, by the way, the PLM had some revolutionary credentials. It started off as a simple, anti-clerical, anti-dictatorial party, but perhaps with the influence of North American and Spanish immigrant anarcho-syndicalists, it eventually took on a libertarian character, guided also in part by the ideological evolution of Malcolm himself. It was neither liberal nor truly a party in the end, but rather a truly revolutionary libertarian organization. We'll get back to Magon's story in a second.

But the point is, when Magon was calling for social revolution, land redistribution, and workers' control of production, Madero merely wanted electoral reform. He had no real programme for agrarian justice and was, quote, generally indifferent to the problems of the Mexican masses, as Capuleti put it. Still, Madero's 1910 campaign electrified all of those who were yearning for change, revolutionaries and reformists alike. His challenge to Diaz helped ignite a broader uprising that managed to bring Madero into power in 1911. Before we get into what happened during the Madero presidency, let's go back in time to follow Ricardo Flores Magón's story.

Magón was born in 1873 in the village of San Antonio el Oxochitlán, in Oaxaca. His roots straddled both indigenous and mestizo heritage. As a law student in Mexico City, he found himself swept into the tide of anti-government agitation. Before he even turned 20, he was jailed for the first time. He joined the radical press in 1893 with El Democrata, an anti-Diaz paper the regime quickly snuffed out, but he wasn't deterred. In 1900, he co-founded Regeneracion, the publication that would become the voice of the Mexican left in the 20th century. It was while behind bars where he often found himself that Magón encountered the ideas that would shape his

life's work. Thanks to the library of liberal landowner Camilo Arriaga, he read the writings of Kropotkin and Malataster, and through those texts, crystallized his anarchist vision. Now, even though Magon's ideology incubated quietly in his early political life, it didn't stay buried for long. As his conflicts with the Diaz regime intensified, so too did the radicalism of his actions. He edited El Hijo del Ajizote, a satirical rag that earned him yet another stint in prison, and after his release in 1904, Magón fled to Texas, where he relaunched his generation

with renewed poopers. By 1905, the peopled helped spark the creation of the Partido Liberal Mexicano, or PLM, which as I said wasn't much of a political party as it was a radical organ, though it did have some reformist demands mixed in. They were trying to soften their language, at times to appeal to conservative sympathisers of reform away from the ads. The PLM sought the abolition of the military tribunals, free secular education, workers' rights like the 8 hour workday minimum wage, and the expropriation of idle lands. In short, it went further than the 1917 constitution that would come a decade later, and could be seen as the crystallisation of many of the Mexican Revolution's most

popular aims. Magón and the PLM established alliances across borders, particularly among the industrial workers of the world. But that put a target on Magón's back for both Mexican and US authorities. You already know they can't be having solidarity like that. The Pinkertons rolled up, backed in part by Diaz himself, and they were on Magón's tail constantly. Even ended up as far north as Canada, just trying to escape their constant harassment. But despite the repression, their momentum could not be killed.

Between 1906 and 1908, the PLM helped organize a string of strikes and uprisings. The most infamous was the Canary Near copper strike. Mexican miners were paid starvation wages while their American counterparts earned double for the same work. When the miners struck for fair pay and better conditions, they were met with deadly force. The rebellion that followed saw American rangers and Mexican troops massacre more than 200 people, and thousands were jailed. Another uprising ignited in Rio Blanco, where textile workers, already paid appitance, organized with the leadership of José Niera, a student of Magón.

When negotiations failed and repression ramped up, the workers responded not with another petition but with insurrection. On January 7th, 1907, they stormed the mill, freed prisoners, cut wires, and declared open rebellion. The state responded with a bloodbath. Entire families were dragged from their homes and executed. Another one of the uprisings was a peasant revolt that began in 1906 in Akayukan and spread through Tuxlas, Minatitlan, and Tabasco. It was crushed, of course. In 1908 in Villescas, though their plans had

been leaked to the authorities, revolutionaries had a firefight with police and freed a town jail. Just two days later, in Las Vargas, other students of Magone were fighting for justice. Another set of guerrillas arose in Palomas, but they failed. Yet another insurrection happened in Faya Dolid, Yucatan, and they suffered summary executions. And all those events, all those small revolutionary bans challenging the states, they failed. But they emboldened

the dream of a different world with their will to act. On November 5th, 2018 at 6.33 a.m., a red Volkswagen Golf was found abandoned in a ditch out in Sleephole Valley. The driver's seat door was open. No traces of footsteps leaving the vehicle. No belongings were found, except for a cassette tape lodged in the player. On that tape were ten vile... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! Aaaaah! Grotesque... Oh my god, oh my god!

Horrific stories that to this day have been kept restricted from the public until now. You feeling this too. A horror anthology podcast. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Giving yourself that agency to not just be one thing, right? I don't have to be the perception that is crafted or the version of me that everyone is kind of projecting onto me. Like I am having my human experience and it is faceted. It's so faceted and it's fascinating.

May is mental health awareness month and deeply well is a sanctuary for your healing. I'm Debbie Brown, healer, wellbeing expert, teacher, and fellow seeker. And each week, we explore what it means to become whole through soul-expanding conversations and practices. Why focus on tiny joys? Well, because they remind us of what it means to be human. They anchor us in the present moment and they create ripples of gratitude that nourish our spirit. Tiny joys are acts of self-love.

To hear this and more ways to prioritize your piece, listen to Deeply Well from the Black Effect podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.

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to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts and to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast. In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own.

I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting the series took us through the darkest corners of the internet, and to the front lines of a global battle against deep fake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law, and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margie Murphy.

And I'm Olivia Carville. This is Leather Town, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. McGone was jailed again in 1907, but it wasn't over for him yet. And I really don't like to romanticize this idea of these uprisings that they fail, but they're still inspiring. We don't want to go too far into that where self-sacrifice for self-sacrifice sake, but

I think it's important to point out that there were multiple failed attempts before the successful uprising that ushered in the Mexican Revolution. It wasn't a first time successful attempt. By the time Magone was released from prison in 1910, the revolution had already begun to burn across Mexico. And that is in part in thanks to the efforts of those uprisings, even though those individual uprisings failed. The Catalan immigrant Amadeo Ferez pumped up this energy in 1911 with El Tipografo Mexicano, yet another newspaper with a fierce anarcho-syndicalist spirit meant to

mobilize urban workers. At the same time, old anarchist typographers were not only printing their message, they were forming unions like the Union de Canteras Mexicanos. In mid-1912, Juan Francisco Moncaliano arrived from Cuba and quickly rallied a diverse group of workers into Grupo Luz, set on establishing a progressive education platform, a la Francisco Ferrer. By September 1912, these unions and Grupo Luz united to form La Casa del Obrero, forging a distinctly anarcho-synicalist identity. They organized lectures, built libraries of classic anarchist works, and launched a new bi-weekly called Lucha, all while energizing a massive May Day rally in 1913, where 20,000 workers rallied.

Like Magone, these radicals saw through the hollow promises of Madero's democracy. Voting for a new president wouldn't free the peasantry. Legislative seats wouldn't redistribute land. No Congress, no matter how liberal, would ever voluntarily dismantle the system that fed it. For them, revolution was no less than putting land and production into the hands of the people. No bosses, no landlords, no masters. Just workers, organising life on their own terms. Madero's revolution, if we could even call that, had mobilised peasants, workers and radicals. But that moderate phase was about to end, because once seated as president,

Madero leaned heavily on old elites. He really siphoned energy away from genuine social change with that reformist push that he was doing. A move that sounds all too familiar. Madero's refusal to enact meaningful change lost him as allies very quickly. Figures like Pasquale, Orozco, and even Emiliano Zapata, who had initially supported the rebellion against the Aas, became disillusioned. So while Madero governed, the PLM continued its fight, now against the emerging new regime. In northern Mexico, PLM-aligned forces initially rose alongside Madero's, but did not make common cause with him. When strategic positions in Chihuahua

were lost, with the middle class and Orozco siding with Madero, the Morganists turned their attention elsewhere. The next target was Baja, California. In early 1911, they began seizing towns, Mexicali, Los Alcodones, Tecate, and finally Tijuana, seeking to establish a libertarian society, a model for what they called a free America. But the backlash was swift. American, British, and French businesses owned pretty much all of Baja California. Landowners and newspaper moguls in California, USA, which were often the same people, panicked and ended up smearing the McGonnests as secessionists trying to hand over Mexican land to the US.

In truth, as McGonn wrote in Regeneracion, does Baja California belong to Mexico? It does not. It is under the control of foreign capital. Mexicans owned nothing of it. The PLM's campaign was not about taking Mexico apart. It was about reclaiming it from the hands of foreign elites. Nothing less than land and liberty. As Capuleti put it, quote, on the contrary, McGone's goal was nothing other than a classless and stateless libertarian society that would provide the archetype and point of departure for the Mexican and world revolution." The downfall of the Baja California campaign came at the hands of bourgeois champion Madero, backed by the US government and capitalists.

By mid-1911, the McGonagall uprising in Baja California had effectively been extinguished. Yet the saga didn't end there. On the 14th of June in 1911, Magón and three of his associates were arrested, tried in Los Angeles, and Magón himself was sentenced to McNeil Island prison in Washington State, a fate he endured until 1914. Which meant that Magón wouldn't be present in Mexico for the death of one of his biggest ops. Since Madero failed to gain the support of radicals or secure the loyalty of reactionaries, the conservative military overthrew and assassinated him, installing Victoriano Huerta into power in 1930. And just like that, the so-called moderate phase of the Mexican Revolution ended in blood.

Huerta's dictatorship tried to turn back the clock to the Porfiryan era. Huerta ruled with military force and repression. The usual stuff, persecuting labour organisers, shutting down radical spaces, deporting foreign activists, jailing dissenters, murdering people. Crackdowns eventually hit La Casa de Lobrero's publications and destroyed the anarchist library. But out of this repression emerged a new tactic. They basically said, you know, you could burn our books, that's fine, do what you have to do, but you're not going to stop us from spreading our message.

They established grassroots orators, the Tribunal Roja, who took the revolutionary message directly to the working classes, giving speeches where they were at and sharing the message even without access to literature. By May 1914, a new people, Emancipación Obrera, was launched, though it too fell prey to the regime's brutality. Thankfully, the regime wouldn't last long, because Huerta's power didn't go unchallenged. From the north, Venustiano Carranza and the constitutionalists rose to oppose him, claiming to defend Madero's legacy.

From the south, Emiliano Zapata refused to accept any government that ignored the demands of landless peasants. And throughout the country, armed struggle reignited. Which brings us to Emiliano Zapata himself. He was doing his own thing politically, but he was inspired and powered by the anarchist supporters of Magon. His ideology was rooted in the Kalpui, the collective land systems of his indigenous ancestors.

He eventually adopted the slogan Tierra y Lirutad and rallied behind the Plan de Ayala, demanding land redistribution and local self-governance. He had little tolerance for political maneuvering. He saw the false promises of figures like Huerta and Carranza. For Zapata, revolution was not about elections or modernization, it was about giving land back. That's really all he cared about. In contrast, as the Wario to his Mario, there was Pancho Villa. He was a charismatic northern general and a populist who worked with and against Carranza. As Magone described him, Zapata delivers riches to their true owners, the poor. Villa executes the proletarian who takes a piece of bread.

The both were opposed to Carranza. Their goals, strategies, and ethics were far apart. Like I said, Marriott is worried. Carranza didn't last long, as I mentioned. He was ousted by 1914, so just about a year of being in power and being a violent dictator. And after Huerta fell, Finustiano Carranza rose to fill the vacuum. Like I said, he claimed to be continuing Madero's legacy, and his vision of Mexico was just as top down. He wasn't exactly fond of anarchists or the radical left in general, but faced with pressure from the Zapatistas in the south and fierce forces in the north, he courted labour organisations like Casa Del Obrero Mundial, offered gestures of support, a few favourable labour reforms and even physical

space, like giving them the Jesuit college Santa Brigida as headquarters. In return, Carranza hoped to build a loyal base of organised workers, integrate them into his constitutional army and neutralise the more radical strains of revolution. And I'm sorry to say that it partially worked. He was able to buy off some of these workers. While this alliance gave La Casa de Obreros space to organize workers throughout the country and ramp up educational and proselytizing efforts, much like what would take place in Spain years later, the anarchists began to lose their

anarchist roots from the collaboration. Instead of backing Zapata, in February 1915, La Casa signed a pact with the constitutionalist forces and created quote unquote Red Battalions within Carranza's army. But although La Casa expanded its influence and merged amount strikes among miners, teachers, drivers, bakers, oil workers, textile workers, carpenters, button makers, and barbers in 1915 in response to the economic pressures of inflation and unemployment, by early 1916, their government allies were cracking down on them. Not long after hiring the Red Battalions, they fired the Red Battalion. They shut down La Casa's offices.

They sent key figures to jail. In response, the Workers' Movement held a National Congress in Veracruz. And out of this emerged a new labor federation built on anarcho-synicalist principles, committed not to capturing power, but to dismantling it. The Confederación del Trabajo de la Región Mexicana. In May 1916, a general strike erupted in protest of the imprisonment of La Casa's leadership and to demand urgent economic relief. While the strike was an immediate success, its ease led many young militants to believe that change could come through a benevolent state. Notably, Luis Morones, who would later lead the Confederación

Regional Obrera Mexicana, signed agreements with Carranza's government. Matters intensified 10 months later when a second strike broke out due to low pay. In response, Carranza ordered mounted police to break up assemblies and declared martial law. The strike was crushed, its committees suspended all activities and one prominent leader was nearly executed before his sentence was finally commuted. La Casa shut down and the strike failed, but the anarchists endured. On November 5th, 2018 at 6.33 a.m., a red Volkswagen Golf was found abandoned in a ditch out in Sleephole Valley. The driver's seat door was open.

No traces of footsteps leaving the vehicle. No belongings were found. Except for a cassette tape lodged in the player. On that tape were ten... vile... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! Aargh! grotesque... Oh my God. Oh my God.

horrific stories... that to this day have been kept restricted from the public until now. You feeling this too? A horror anthology podcast. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Giving yourself that agency to not just be one thing, right? I don't have to be the perception that is crafted or the version of me that everyone is kind of projecting onto me. Like I am having my human experience and it is faceted.

It's so faceted and it's fascinating. May is mental health awareness month and deeply Well is a sanctuary for your healing. I'm Debbie Brown, healer, wellbeing expert, teacher, and fellow seeker. And each week we explore what it means to become whole through soul expanding conversations and practices. Why focus on tiny joys? Well, because they remind us of what it means to be human.

They anchor us in the present moment and they create ripples of gratitude that nourish our spirit. Tiny joys are acts of self-love. To hear this and more ways to prioritize your piece, listen to Deeply Well from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

AT&T, connecting changes everything. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glodd. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Sir, we are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL Enforcer Riley Cote, Marine Corvette, MMA fighter Liz Caramouche. What we're doing now isn't working and we need

to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs Podcast Season 2 on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up.

I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting this series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deep fake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carville. This is Levertown, a new podcast from

iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. By mid-1917, new groups like Luce and several local casas had reappeared throughout the country. However, internal debates culminated in the October 1917 National Workers' Congress, where reformist forces led by Luis Morones properly marginalized the anarchists, setting the stage for the rise of the CROM and a more moderate pro-management approach, aligned with, of all people, the American Federation of Labor, the AFL. Carranza's crowning achievement came in that same year, with the signing of the Constitution of 1917. On paper, it was progressive. Land reform, limits on change power, labour protections.

But to many revolutionaries, including Magon, this wasn't the revolution fulfilled. Far from it. It was a revolution managed. Their wildest dreams trimmed down to a policy. Even its better reforms were hardly enforced. But with the Constitution of 1917, Carranza could still claim legitimacy. He could claim progress. And he could claim that the revolution was over. But what happened to the revolutionaries? Zapata was still fighting for land in the South, but Carranza would assassinate him in by 1919. Magone was imprisoned in the USA, denouncing the betrayal from behind bars, workers were still struggling for real power in their workplaces, and the vast majority of rural Mexicans remained

poor, dispossessed, and disillusioned. In case you're wondering what happened to Magon, in 1916 he was jailed in the US until a group of exiled anarchists led by Emma Goldman and Alexander Bergman paid his bond. Now that feels like a cameo or crossover episode of some kind, right? And then in 1917, the year of the new constitution, he was back in jail again for speaking out against the First World War and calling for a social revolutionary war instead. He was sentenced to 20 years, and his health deteriorated steadily. He wasn't a fan of Carranza at all. He called

him a strikebreaker, an assassin, and a wolf in sheep's clothing. When Carranza's government offered him a pension, he said quote, all money obtained by the state represents the sweat, the anguish, and sacrifice of workers. If this money came directly from workers, I would gladly and even proudly accept it because they are my brothers. But when it comes to the intervention of the state after being compelled from the people, the money would only burn my hands and fill my heart with remorse." So long story short, he didn't accept the money. When the US said they might let him go if he said sorry and petitioned for a pardon,

he said in many words, hell no. Among his more beautiful words he said quote, repentance. I have not exploited the sweat, anguish, fatigue and labour of others. I have not oppressed a single soul. I have nothing to repent for. My life has been lived without my having acquired any wealth, power, or glory, when I could have gotten these three things very easily. But I do not regret it. Wealth, power, and glory are only won by trampling

others' rights. My conscience is at peace, for it knows that under my convict's garb beats an honest heart." So he died in his jail cell in 1922, possibly assassinated. Zapata, like I said, was assassinated by Carranza in 1919, and Carranza himself was assassinated in 1920. In case you were keeping track, both of McGon's major ops he ended up outliving, right? He outlived Madero and then he outlived Carranza. But he still died in jail, which is kind of tragic. But Carranza's successor, Alvaro Obregon, was both friendly with reformists in the CROM and not as hostile to the anarchists as Carranza, which gave the anarchists an opportunity to

regroup. Strikes built up across the country. Miners, oil workers, textile workers, dock workers and more. Some 65,000 workers in July 1920 alone. Out of this momentum came the Federacion Comunista del Proletariado Mexicano, or FCPM. It was an ideologically mixed group, but leaned in an anarchic direction and starkly contrasted itself with the reformist ways of the CROM and the international ally, the AFL. The FCPM went on to establish the Confederación General de Trabajadores, or CGT, in 1921 as a direct challenge to the CROM. They were fully declaring their independence from state and party.

Their focus was on class struggle. The Mexican government flew to a socialist language from time to time, but the anarchists saw through the charade. They called out that so-called socialist-like government's deportation of anarchists and socialists. They even called Morrone, the guy who started CROM, Mexico's Mussolini. The CGT stood against the Moscow-backed Third Internationale and instead allied with councillors like Rosa Luxemburg and Anton Panacuec.

They also formed a specifically anarchist section within the group meant to play the same role played by the FAI for the Spanish CGT. The Mexican CGT backed strikes, including in 1921 when they backed a rail worker strike against US companies. And in 1922, they expelled CGT leaders who had flirted with electoral politics, reiterating their anti-party stance. They would not allow themselves to be retaken and capitulated to reformist aims. That same year, media protests turned into confrontations when right-wing thugs killed the demonstrators' child in front of the US consulate.

And they didn't stop there. Anarchists in the CGT helped organize tenant strikes in Mexico City and Veracruz. They led general strikes in textile mills and rallied against state violence. They protested in solidarity with international struggles from Spain to Boston, from the murder of Salvador Segui to the jailing of Sacco and Bencetti. They also had to deal with efforts to defame them through misinformation, such as the accusation that they were embezzling workers' funds.

Throughout the early 1920s, you had some new libertarian publications jumping out. You had Viverojo, La Humanidad, Sachetario, Tierra Libre, Alba, Anarquica, and so on. And by 1924, under President Calles, who followed the assassinated Obregon, the tides began to shift. Calles was more hostile to the anarchists than Obregon and openly favoured Sierra O'Nan. He gave Morones a cabinet post, passed laws to undermine CGT organizing, and escalated repression. The CGT held its ground, organizing general strikes, occupying textile mills, confronting police, expanding to the countryside, all their usual stuff.

They fought for short term relief and long term revolution. By 1926, CGT had grown into a federation of 157 affiliated groups. Unions, syndicates, agrarian communities all included. And yet, by the late 1920s, things started to free. The CROM was declining due to their attachments to a government that was no longer conciliatory to their political ambitions. And the CGT couldn't capitalize on that decline of the CROM was declining due to their attachments to a government that was no longer conciliatory to their political ambitions. And the CGT couldn't capitalize on that decline of the CROM. The government sought to marginalize them entirely. Thousands of former CROM members joined the CGT while the CGT itself began to make some slides toward concession and reformism.

And so it reached a point where they were calling themselves anarchists, but the anarchism was nowhere near there. And yet, anarchism didn't die. It morphed, it migrated, and it regrouped. After the fall of Spain in 1939, exiled members, the CNT and FAI arrived in Mexico, reinvigorating the scene for a time. They published Tierra y Libertad, built new organizations and kept the memory and the fight alive. A few anarchists and policies managed to emerge within the Mexican Communist Party into the early 1930s as well, at least according to Kirk Schaffer. President Caes ended up founding what became the Institutional Revolutionary Party, a contradiction if I ever heard it. And they basically ran the show in Mexico for 71 years straight, from 1929 to 2000.

Their administration co-created the conditions that would birth the new Zapatismo's in 1994. They're not anarchists as they have been very clear to state, but maybe they will get a two-parter in the future going into their history in more depth. The history of anarchism in Mexico has been quite the story, I must say, and with that we've reached the end of that classical history. Its modern history is still being written, still being told, but this is the end of our exploration for now.

Not just of Mexico's anarchist history, but of this entire series of anarchism in Latin America. I joked about making an episode about Quebec's anarchism scene, but that may remain a joke for now. We've journeyed a very long way together, from the Andes to Buenos Aires to Montevideo to Sao Paulo to all over. We've seen how, long before the name anarchism arrived on Latin America's shores, people would resist in hierarchy, through indigenous forms of autonomy,

African Maroon communities, and peasant traditions of land sharing and reciprocity. We saw how these anarchic and anarchish instincts met new ideas, genuinely and intentionally anarchist ideas, coming from Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kapotkin, brought over in pamphlets and in the minds of exiles and immigrants. In Mexico, those forces took on a revolutionary scale. Roto-Kanati planted the seed. Magon amplified its voice. The workers, the peasants, the students, they all gave it their all, their fire. And even when that fire was smothered by reformists, by nationalists, by reactionaries, by capitalists, by the bullets and the bribe, it never truly went out.

Across the Americas, these movements rarely won in the traditional sense. They were often betrayed, suppressed, and erased from history. But although anarchy was not achieved, anarchists and the anarchist idea will survive. Anarchist thought is radically resilient, and it never really disappears. It usually just goes underground or into the margins, or into new forms, from student collectives to feminist organisations to squats to ecological struggles. Inspiring movements that aren't necessarily anarchist, but lean in a direction that questions some of the familiar patterns of authority. Thank you for walking this journey with me.

I've been André Sage, you can find me on YouTube at Andréism and support the work over at Patreon.com slash Jandru. All the sources, citations and further reading can be found in the show notes. This has been It Could Happen Here, all power to all the people. Peace. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed

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