Anarchists of the Caribbean
Countercultural Politics and Transnational Networks in the Age of US Expansion

Examines the anarchist networks that connected Florida, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Panama in the early 1900s.

Kirwin R. Shaffer (Author)

9781108733304, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 July 2022

332 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 2 cm, 0.51 kg

'Shaffer's book is a meticulously researched account of the transnational networks anarchists forged in the early twentieth century … a most welcome contribution to the study of the early twentieth-century Latin American Left'. Frances Sullivan, Humanities and Social Sciences

Anarchists who supported the Cuban War for Independence in the 1890s launched a transnational network linking radical leftists from their revolutionary hub in Havana, Cuba to South Florida, Puerto Rico, Panama, the Panama Canal Zone, and beyond. Over three decades, anarchists migrated around the Caribbean and back and forth to the US, printed fiction and poetry promoting their projects, transferred money and information across political borders for a variety of causes, and attacked (verbally and physically) the expansion of US imperialism in the 'American Mediterranean'. In response, US security officials forged their own transnational anti-anarchist campaigns with officials across the Caribbean. In this sweeping new history, Kirwin R. Shaffer brings together research in anarchist politics, transnational networks, radical journalism and migration studies to illustrate how men and women throughout the Caribbean basin and beyond sought to shape a counter-globalization initiative to challenge the emergence of modern capitalism and US foreign policy whilst rejecting nationalist projects and Marxist state socialism.

List of figures
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
A biographical prologue: the transnational world of José María Blázquez de Pedro
Introduction. An antiauthoritarian cartography of the Caribbean
1. Anarchist straits: Cuba's war for independence and the origins of the Caribbean network
2. Anarchists vs. Yanquis: the expanding network resists US neocolonialism, 1898-1915
3. ¡Tierra y Libertad!: Caribbean anarchists and the Mexican Revolution, 1905-1930
4. The Caribbean Red during the Red Scare: anarchists and the Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1924
5. Anarchists vs. Yanquis II: the canal, the Great War, Puerto Rico's status, and banana republics, 1916-1926
6. Bolivarianismo anarquista: anarchist pan-Americanism in the heart of the hemisphere
7. Down but not out: confronting socialists, communists, and tropical fascists, 1925-1934
A literary epilogue: Marcelo Salinas and Adrián del Valle, 1920s-1930s
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Political activism [JPW], Anarchism [JPFB], Political ideologies [JPF], Revolutions, uprisings, rebellions [HBTV]