Constructing Worlds Otherwise Societies in Movement and Anticolonial Paths in Latin America

A new collection from one of Latin America's most dynamic radical thinkers—in the tradition of Frantz Fanon and Eduardo Galeano.

Through a survey of the most marginalized voices across Latin America—feminists, the Indigenous, people of African descent, and inhabitants of urban favelas and rural towns—Zibechi introduces the Anglo world to a range of critical perspectives and new forms of struggle in Peru, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Bolivia. His book contributes to global geographies of autonomous and anti-state thinking, including that of the revolutionaries in Rojava and Abdullah Öcalan, ideological theorist of Kurdish resistance, for a rich and dynamic survey of movements of nonstate power. Constructing Worlds Otherwise comes at a time when the global left—struggling to expand its vision in an era of climate chaos and rising authoritarianism—finds itself at an impasse, desperate to animate and renew its critical imaginary.

Praise for Constructing Worlds Otherwise:

“A survey of sustained autonomous people’s movements in Latin America that helps us rethink survival in the context of the extractivist State. It reimagines change even as it raises the quintessential question of how to move from episodic to radical social transformation.” —Johanna Fernández, author of The Young Lords: A Radical History.

“Essential reading for expanding the radical imagination.” —Benjamin Dangl, author of The Five Hundred Year Rebellion: Indigenous Movements and the Decolonization of History in Bolivia

“Zibechi has gifted us with a powerful tool for understanding pueblos/societies in movement—helping us to better understand what they are interrupting historically and breaking from theoretically.” —Marina Sitrin, author of Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina.

"Brilliant activist-scholar Zibechi takes us beyond the dogmatic, state-centric lefts of yesteryear to highlight the wisdom of emancipatory, antipatriarchal, and anticolonial thought and praxis from the global South. He offers insightful portrayals of place-based struggles of 'peoples in movement,' including the Zapatistas, Indigenous peoples of the Colombian Cauca region, Kurdish women of Rojava, and the Brazilian MST. Their radical non-state and non-capitalist practices are constructing other worlds." —Richard Stahler-Sholk, Professor Emeritus, Eastern Michigan University

Raúl Zibechi is a Uruguayan writer, popular educator, and journalist. He writes for La Jornada, Desinformémonos, and NACLA Report on the Americas, among other outlets. Zibechi has published numerous books, including Dispersing Power, Territories in Resistance, and The New Brazil.

George Ygarza Quispe is a popular educator, translator, and organic researcher who has worked in Peru and across North America, thinking through hemispheric undercurrents. He also holds a PhD in Global Studies.