Uruguayan Anarchist Federation

Uruguayan Anarchist Federation
Uruguayan Anarchist Federation
Founded	1956
Ideology	Anarcho-communism, Especifismo, Platformism
Website
	http://federacionanarquistauruguaya.uy/

Federación Anarquista Uruguaya, commonly known as FAU or Uruguayan Anarchist Federation, is a Uruguayan anarchist organization founded in 1956. The FAU was created by anarchist militants to be a specifically anarchist organization. The FAU was the first organization to promote the organizational concept of Especifismo.^[1]

History[]

The FAU began with the collection of ideological and cultural traditions contributed by Italian, Galician and Catalan anarcho-communist and anarcho-syndicalist refugees, that fled fascist persecution during the Spanish Civil War and World War II. The organization was involved, from the outset, in social struggles around the country, working on the strengthening of trade unions and advancing towards workers' unity.

In 1967 the Uruguayan government ordered the dissolution of the FAU, which went underground until 1971. Its activity was restructured according to the new situation, and they began to develop a clandestine network for the printing and distribution of propaganda. The OPR-33 (Popular Revolutionary Organization-33), an armed arm of the FAU, was launched and began to carry out a series of actions: sabotages, expropriations, kidnappings of political leaders and industrial employers, armed support of strikes, occupations of factories, etc. It was around then that the Partido por la Victoria del Pueblo, a Libertarian Marxist group sympathetic to the Cuban Revolution, emerged from the FAU.

Cornered by the repression of Uruguayan and Argentine special services, about fifty FAU members were tortured, killed and disappeared, while others were sentenced to long years in prison. When the Civic-military dictatorship of Uruguay fell in 1985, the FAU faced an immediate reorganization effort. The FAU, since its reorganization, helped in the creation of several similar anarchist organizations in Brazil and Argentina, including the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha (FAG), the (FACA), the Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro (FARJ) in Brazil, the Anarchist Federation of Rosario (FAR); and the underground Argentine organization AUCA (Rebel).^[2]

Today their social efforts cover broad sectors: organizing in trade unions, schools, parental councils and neighborhood associations, protecting the environment, writing to prisoners, and building a social housing cooperative. They also run a printing press, 6 community radio stations, 4 athenaeums, 3 libraries and built a Solidarity and Mutual Support Space.