|
|
Contesting Internationalisms: Transnational Anarchists Confront US Expansionism in the Caribbean, 1890s-1920s
| Utilizing census material, government surveillance, anarchist newspapers and works of anarchist literary culture, this paper explores the emergence and spread of anarchist ideas and practictioners throughout Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Panama Canal Zone in the first decades of the twentieth century. All three areas experienced simultaneously their "freedom" from another country, the rise of US power in their midst, the emergence of organized labor, and the development of anarchist groups. These groups of radical freedom-lovers challenged local and national political leaders as well as US overseers on issues that included labor rights, education, immigration, democracy and relations with the United States. Meanwhile, as these groups evolved in the Caribbean, the region became part of a series of overlapping transnational anarchist networks that sent anarchists, their money and their newspapers to Mexico, the United States and Europe while incorporating the same from these other geographical transnational networks. Ultimately, anarchist networks in the Caribbean reflect the rise of a small, but vocal movement to challenge the spread of industrial capitalism and US foreign policy at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the same time, these movements offered programs and projects for Caribbean residents to work toward alternative notions of what it meant to be "Cuban," "Puerto Rican," or "Panamanian."
|
|
|
|
