LAUSR

In the 1970s and 1980s, Puerto Rican and Chicana/o/x radicals from across the United States developed a sophisticated theory of fascism as part of a broader effort to defend themselves against government repression and apply the lessons of the rightward trajectories of many Latin American countries. In the process, they built panethnic alliances that helped spur the emergence of Latina/o/x identity as it is commonly understood in the twenty-first century. This article uses the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Movement, or MLN) as a case study of this broader process because of its binational character and its persistent willingness to grapple with both the theory and practice of fascism and anti-fascism in the United States and in Latin America. While the MLN abandoned its own panethnic structure in the early 1980s, its legacy of Latina/o/x struggle against far right and white nationalist forces persists into the present moment.