The “Indios” of Spain and the Mexican Revolution: Racial Ideologies and the Labor of Internationalist Solidarity

Abstract

This article examines the influence of the Mexican Revolution (1906–40) on Spanish anarchists’ views on racial and class solidarity. Whereas recent transnational studies of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) have highlighted the conflict’s lingering imprint on Latin American politics and society, this essay explores why Spanish anarchists interpreted the Mexican Revolution as an insurrection led by Mexico’s Indigenous communities. It argues that such readings of the conflict, most of which were advanced by non-Indigenous revolutionaries, both challenged and reinforced racialized notions of social and political upheaval. This article therefore demonstrates how these views challenged orthodox interpretations of social revolution while exposing the obstacles to building internationalist solidarity among laboring classes in post-imperial and postcolonial societies.