Black Flag and Caribbean Red: Anarchist Antiauthoritarian Networks in the Caribbean, 1890s–1930s

Utilizing census material, government surveillance, anarchist newspapers and works of anarchist literary culture, this paper explores the emergence and spread of anarchist ideas and practitioners along a network (red, in Spanish) from South Florida, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Panama Canal Zone in the first decades of the twentieth century. With the exception of Florida, the other three areas experienced simultaneously their official "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. As these groups evolved, the Caribbean regional network became part of a series of overlapping transnational anarchist networks that sent anarchists, their money and their newspapers to the Mexican Revolution, the United States (especially New York City), Spain, and along the Pacific Coast of South America to Peru while incorporating the same from these other transnational networks. Ultimately, the rise of small, but vocal local movements and the resulting regional network challenged 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."