Introduction: Indigeneity and Latin American Anarchism

The articles in this special issue frame the question of anarchism and indigeneity as historiography, but also as a commentary on the ways in which examining Latin American pasts can inform contemporary understandings of social movements in the region and beyond. In particular, our hope is that they will provoke further interest and research into how history reflects on the ongoing efforts by revolutionaries today, and by the diverse communities with which they engage, to imagine a future devoid of authoritarian and instrumentalist discourses and practices that continue to reproduce the inequities of state power, capitalist oppression, and colonial domination. The case can be made that while its historiography is in its early stages, anarchists in Latin America historically engaged the communities in which they immersed, in some localities more successfully than others. This issue of Anarchist Studies will show that Bolivia - largely ignored in the English-language literature on the subject - and Peru demonstrated early and ongoing efforts to approach indigeneity among Aymara and Quechua peoples in urban and rural settings (see de Laforcade and Hirsch). In Guatemala, however, which is at the heart of a vast regional geography of diverse Mayan peoples ranging from Honduras to Mexico, and in which the white and mestizo populations are a distinct minority, no such tradition emerged (see Monteflores). Raymond Craib has noted that in Chile, a country on the southern reaches of the Andes that produced a vibrant anarchist culture in the early 20th century, the anarchist archives show virtually no connection between the labour movement and the southern Mapuche peoples of Araucania. Beyond the simple question of whether anarchists acknowledged and engaged in solidarity with indigenous communities, however, there is the more sensitive question raised by Mexican sociologist Josué Sansón on the 'translatability' of anarchist ideas and practices among Peruvian rural communities, which he studied. Sansón argues that the transmission was not 'unidirectional', but rather a 'space of encounter in which some Aymara and Quechua communities received and appropriated them, reinterpreting and adapting them to them their own idioms of resistance in the creation of their own autonomous movements.'

Anarchists and 'the Indian Problem' in Peru, 1898-1927

Anarchists' pursuit of indigenous emancipation in Peru has been obfuscated and largely erased in Peruvian historiography. This is attributable in part to a concerted effort by Marxists and national populists (Apristas) to minimise anarchist influence and to arrogate to themselves the role of true defenders and revolutionary allies of Peru's indigenous peoples This article examines the way anarchists understood the nature of Peru's system of domination and the multifarious ways it oppressed, exploited, and marginalised indigenous peoples. They recognised the imperative to overcome urban-rural and coastal-sierra divisions to empower indigenous workers and peasants and to forge multi-ethnic alliances. In doing so, they fostered indigenous syndical organisations, encouraged the formation of indigenous intellectuals and activists, promoted bilingual education, and established study centres and rural schools. They defended indigenous and multi-ethnic communities' rights to land and resources and supported their demands for self-governance. That they were unsuccessful in achieving indigenous emancipation does not negate the important legacy of solidarity and struggle they bequeathed to Peru's current anarchist movement.

Anarchism and the Indigenous Peoples of Guatemala: A Tenuous Relation

While the indigenous peoples of Guatemala and its history of anarchist thought are seldom studied together but there is merit to exploring the differences and convergences between the anarchist movement's perspectives on class and ethnicity and those of better understood liberal, socialist and communist traditions. Anarchists in Guatemala made tentative efforts to reach out to rural workers and peasants in the period between 1928 to 1932, but these efforts were circumscribed and largely unsuccessful. They did so under the influence of more structured movements in Mexico and Argentina, which incorporated visions of collective emancipation that would appeal to autonomous indigenous movements; however their brief embrace of these issues, interrupted by fierce repression by the state, was curtailed by the overwhelming urban base from which they intervened in labour and social struggles. The reasons for this failure lay in the history of Guatemalan race relations and the structural divisions between urban and rural society that endured during the transition from colonial to republican society, and which anarchists tied to overcome.

Indigeneity, Gender, and Resistance: Critique and Contemporaneity of Bolivian Anarchism in the Historical Imagination of Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui

From the 1920s to the 1940s, Bolivia was a hub of Andean transnational solidarities rooted in artisanal trades, and spearheaded by migrant workers whose cultural, educational and social activism reflected a mosaic of influences from older militant traditions in neighbouring countries. Virtually absent from existing overviews of Latin American anarchism in English, Bolivian anarchism engaged extensively with autonomous indigenous and communal movements, and is therefore a distinctly revealing case from which to evaluate the engagement of anarchists with indigenous majorities in the Andean space where they lived. This article explores the work of sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, whose dense tapestry of pioneering scholarship on the intertwining horizons of conquest, rebellion, republicanism, resistance and populism in Bolivia over five hundred years includes profound and nuanced assessments of indigeneity and gender, pointing to the need for a more nuanced understanding of how racialised identities are defined in society, and the ways in which they are deployed discursively by revolutionary movements. From the rebellions Tupac Katari and Pablo Zárate Willka in the late 19th century, the subsequent quest of Aymara 'caciques apoderados' for allies among organized artisans and the urban poor, struggles of anarchist women, independent agrarian trade unionism, and the Katarista movement of the 1960s and 1970s to the popular insurgencies of the past three decades, Cusicanqui's work threads together archival, oral and iconographic history while enlisting the participation of popular movements in an ongoing critique of the legacies of internal colonialism, racialization, patriarchal inheritances, and languages of resistance in Bolivia; as well as the lessons of struggles for autonomy, freedom and decolonization in which anarchists and the movements they subsequently influenced took part.

Anarchist Resistance in the German Hambach Forest: Localising Climate Justice

The Hambach forest occupation is the most important ecology-oriented anarchist resistance project in Germany and Europe. Anarchists in the Hambach forest are part of the national and transnational anti-coal and climate-justice movement. The forest occupation is the only direct strategic intervention for the transformation of the German energy system. The central principles of anarchist practice in the forest are decentralisation, voluntary association for direct action and a direct-democratic organisation. The success of the resistance has been enhanced by the occupiers' ability to connect forest occupation to societal goals and highlight the difference between sustainable and exploitative ways of producing and living.

Medieval History and Anarchist Studies

Medieval history and anarchist studies have a great deal to offer one another, but there is very little intellectual traffic between the two fields. This paper encourages historians to deploy anarchism as an approach to historical research akin to Marxist or feminist historiography, so that 'anarchist history' can move beyond the history of the modern anarchist movement and become a radical new way of studying and learning from the human past. Recent developments in anthropology and archaeology are offered as examples of how this might happen. Medieval history would benefit from the development of an anarchist approach to questions of ungoverned spaces, domination and inequality, and the growth of states and institutions. Anarchist studies would benefit from greater awareness of recent research in medieval history, much of which is relevant to anarchist interests.

Modelling Power in Anarchist Perspective

An adapted version of the taxonomy of power developed by Starhawk and Uri Gordon can help us to construct an integrated model of power that is consistent with anarchist principles. Rather than conceptualising power as a pyramid, in which power emanates from the apex and cascades down the ranks, we should see it as a dynamic matrix within which power is continually shifting both in quantitative and qualitative terms. The overall power (power-to) of individuals and groups is derived from a combination of coercive power (power-against), social power (power-with) and power-from-within. We will only be able to survive as a species if we can find ways to limit the exercise of all forms of coercive power, to unleash the multiplier effect of social power, and to distribute power-to as widely as possible. To achieve these goals, it is necessary to reconceptualise the nature of power itself.

Dr Félix Martí Ibáñez's 'Considerations on Homosexuality' and the Spanish Anarchist Cultural Project

This article places a reconsideration of the Spanish anarchist doctor Félix Martí Ibáñez's work on sexual morality and, in particular, homosexuality within the dual historiographical framework of scientific ideas and anarchism's own history of engagement with these subjects. It argues that recent developments in the writing of the history of anarchism have paid far more attention to the articulation of cultural issues within anarchist movements as part of their overall contestation against the 'bourgeois', religious and capitalist world and sets this article within this renewed framework. The thought of Félix Martí Ibáñez is assessed not for its supposed 'scientificity' but for what it tells us about the eclectic nature of Spanish anarchism at the time and for what such thought signifies for today's libertarian movement.