The Uruguayan Anarchist Federation (FAU) argued that everyday people transformed into revolutionary subjects through the regular practice of collective direct action in labor unions, student organizations, and neighborhood councils. Their slogan was "create popular power" and they developed a popular counter-subjectivity, known as especifismo, a strand of anarchism that builds theoretical cohesion around a specifically anarchist organization whose militants participate in social movements with the intention of making anarchist practices hegemonic within them. The FAU worked in coalition with the Communist Party (PCU), MLN-Tupamaros (MLN-T), and other organizations to support a unified Left project while simultaneously rejecting the PCU's electoralism and the MLN-T's foco strategy. The FAU embraced Third Worldism and a class struggle strategy that made them a relevant force among popular social movements. A military takeover of the state in 1973 sought, in part, to dismantle the Tendencia Combativa-a coalition of dissident labor unions spearheaded by the FAU-that influenced one third of the nation's unions. The state's wrath greatly damaged, but never destroyed, the FAU.
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