from Making Worlds Books
ADVANCED REGISTRATION RECOMMENDED
A study of Cold War-era Latin American anarchism in action.
Araiza Kokinis’s investigation of the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation (FAU) broadens our understanding of the Cold War-era political landscape beyond the capitalism-communism and Old Left-New Left binaries that dominate historiographies of the epoch.
Arguably the most impactful anarchist organization globally in the Cold War era, the FAU viewed everyday people as revolutionary protagonists and sought to develop a popular counter-subjectivity through accumulating experiences directly challenging the market and the state. The FAU argued that everyday people transformed into revolutionary subjects through the regular practice of collective direct action in labor unions, student organizations, and neighborhood councils. Their slogan: create popular power. FAU’s strategy and tactics, ones in which everyday people took on roles as historical protagonists, offered the largest threat to maintaining social order in Uruguay and thus spawned a military takeover of the state to repress what became a popular worker revolt.
With less than 80 militants, FAU played a key role both sparking and networking popular protagonism in workplaces, neighborhoods, and on campuses. This book tells the story and offers insights useful for militants and organizers today.
Troy Araiza Kokinis is a professor of Latin American Studies at UC San Diego and works on a hot line at a pizza joint on the weekends. He hand paints signs in the Argentine fileteado porteño style and loves Dodger baseball.
