Without Masters is an anthropological history of the radical ethical and political principle of autogestión as it traveled around the world in the twentieth century and came to be popularized in Mexico City in the early 2000s. A political term that first arose in 1962 Algeria traveled across continents until it landed in Mexico City’s anarcho-punk scene in the 1980s, where it eventually came to be associated more with zines, music, art, and Zapatismo than with its origins in anarchism or syndicalism. Without Masters brings the true history of autogestión and the quiet radicalism of Mexico City’s autogestive collectives to an English-speaking audience for the first time. Along the way, Stone brings together diverse materials, from punk zines and political fliers to Beat novels and Zapatista parables, that tell an alternate history of radical politics throughout the world in the second half of the twentieth century which serves as a reminder of Mexico’s formative role in the creation of modern social theory.

Livia K. Stone is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Illinois State University and author of Atenco Lives!: Filmmaking and Popular Struggle in Mexico.

Introduction  1
1. Getting the History Right  27
2. Ubiquitous and Invisible Mexico City  53
Interlude. El Chopo  81
3. Punk and Zapatismo  87
Interlude. It All Starts with a Strike  123
4. The Strike  127
Interlude. What Do We Have Left?  161
5. Colectivos Autogestivos  163
Conclusions  191
Acknowledgments  203
Notes  205
References  215
Index  227