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.