Although studies of anarchism seem to have appeared more frequently in recent years, the editors of In Defiance of Boundaries: Anarchism in Latin American History locate much of the interest in the subject in the 1990s, coinciding with new scholarship on labour and social history, as well as the fall of authoritarian socialism. In their introduction to the volume, Geoffroy de Laforcade and Kirwin Shaffer offer a broad view of anarchism, from the classic thinkers associated with the movement in Europe to new currents in the literature, while emphasising a material–cultural relationship built into the movement. For de Laforcade and Shaffer, the volume speaks to the ‘breadth of methodological approaches and the expanding geographical dimension’ (p. 18) of the work on anarchism in Latin America. And the volume certainly lives up to this statement.

The volume is split into three parts, with thirteen essays and an epilogue. Evan Matthew Daniel opens Part 1 (on internationalism) with an essay on cigar makers and the differences within the ‘single universe’ of Havana, Key West and Ybor City (the latter two in Florida). Shaffer and Anton Rosenthal's essays take up the networks built out of newspapers by anarchists in the Panama Canal Zone and the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) mostly in Chile and Mexico, respectively. Continuing the transnational perspective but from a different angle, James Baer's chapter argues that the Argentine–Spanish connection is fundamental for how we conceptualise anarchism in both countries.

Part 2 (on labour, culture and counterhegemonic movements) contains essays on Uruguay, Cuba, southern Brazil and Argentina. Lars Peterson offers a particularly nuanced and careful view of how anarchists in Uruguay perceived President José Batlle y Ordóñez over the course of twelve years, homing in on the ‘ideological flexibility among anarchist unions’ (p. 118), on their ‘malleable ideology responsive to exigency, extraordinary need … or opportunity’ (p. 133). Shaffer's second contribution to the volume uses a wide variety of sources to analyse cultural aspects of Cuban anarchism (vegetarianism, for instance), while Beatriz Ana Loner shows how geographical differences in state repression in Brazil and Rio Grande do Sul's location near Argentina and Uruguay helped produce a thriving anarchist movement in southern Brazil. De Laforcade breaks with typical periodisations in Argentina, revealing how a simple ‘before and after Perón’ may not work. In addition, through oral interviews, de Laforcade details the ways memory and practices of anarchism left their mark on the docks for decades.

Part 3 (on nation, identity and gender) is led off with an essay by David Díaz-Arias on Costa Rica, literature, and how some anarchists ‘were willing to stretch their radicalism’ (p. 231) according to the context. Shawn England's essay positions the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) as a central organisation in the Mexican Revolution. Steven Hirsch examines northern Peru, the links between the coast and the Andes, and how anarchists used a discourse on race and indigeneity in conjunction with their politics of class. With the complex relationships between the urban and the rural, and shifting uses of race with the arrival of Japanese immigrants, this essay could certainly be expanded into a lengthier treatment. In Raymond Craib's contribution, based on his recently published book, we read the story of Casimiro Barrios, a ‘constant sentinel’ (pp. 286–8). Through this history Craib breaks down the strict barriers separating various leftist lines, interrogates the transnational and ‘sedentary’, and accomplishes this with a sharp eye on the spatial politics of the era. In the last full-length essay of the book, Laura Fernández Cordero argues that highlighting the political activism of women anarchists is not nearly enough, and that any history that deals with gender must necessarily do so as a ‘relational perspective’ (p. 303). Important for Fernández Cordero is the editorial power that came with women-led papers, which allowed them to ‘establish a distinctive voice by making editorial decisions’ (p. 312). Closing off the volume, José Moya's epilogue scales out toward the world historical place of anarchism, describing it as a thoroughly modern political project. Moya also points to some variables that may have allowed for the spread of anarchism among certain occupations and locations as opposed to others.

Edited volumes tend toward different interpretations of the subject or theme of study, and this one is no different. But these tensions, rather than inherently problematic, call attention to productive avenues for future research. One of these tensions is the definition of anarchism and what anarchists do. In some cases, the politics of rejecting the state as a whole is taken as a given. Perhaps written in this language for effect, this approach sits at odds with some of the other essays which show how, in the case of Uruguay or Chile or Mexico, anarchists at certain times made political judgements as to how and on what terms to engage with the state to advance their cause or the well-being of non-elite people. Secondly, the volume raises questions about the diffusionist model of anarchism, wherein anarchism begins in Europe and spreads to other parts of the world, in this case Latin America. Elements of this are reproduced in Moya's epilogue (p. 333), as well as in other essays. Baer somewhat inverts this relationship. On the other hand, as Craib deftly shows in a provocative section on ‘misplaced’ ideas (pp. 288–9), attempting to find the directionality of anarchism might be a false start. Both of these differences in interpretation call attention to questions of defining anarchism historically and geographically, and the difficulty of drawing discrete lines around the category.

This is a welcome contribution to the history of anarchism, labour, and social and cultural history, as well as on the use of different scales of analysis for historical research. In Defiance of Boundaries will surely be a foundational volume on thinking comparatively and transnationally on Latin American anarchism for years to come.