As one of the notoriously most critical people of Anarchapulco over these last 6 conferences I’ve been involved with, I’m here to tell you Anarchapulco 2021 was the best year ever.  I’ve spent the time since I got home working on post-production stuff for the conference and thinking about what it is that happened this year.

I forked Anarchapulco back in 2018 because at the time there was a huge split in the community.  As I saw it, this split was between those who talk about things and those who get them done.  Anarchapulco, as we saw it, was like a sort of Anarchy school for new people, not for those of us who’d already been immersed in this world since the beginning.  There were always complaints and we compiled those complaints into a separate event.

Many thought the whole point was to take over Anarchapulco, to replace it completely.  That in reality was never the goal.  What we wanted was to change how Anarchapulco did things, to make it more about what it was that got everyone obsessed in the first place.  An amazing chance to mingle with like-minded folk in paradise.

Honestly, as coronavirus started last year, I told my partner that I didn’t expect Anarchapulco to continue.  Last year was rough on the conference for a lot of reasons.  Combined with Covid, I expected Berwick to take it as his chance to give up on it.  I think, for him, the idea of Anarchapulco was always way better than the reality of what ensued.

Late November, El Capitan (as she’s called)/ Catherine Bonadin, tells me that Jeff is now suddenly open to do doing the conference.  She laid out her plan.  Guys, she basically forked it from the inside, went back to basics, and produced the best event this community has seen.

Cat, Macey, Patrick, Greg, me, and a few others in the production team worked mostly on faith.  We had our loved ones telling us we weren’t being paid enough, but we all believed so much in what we were doing that we didn’t care.  I feel I can speak for all of us when I say: DEFINITELY FUCKING WORTH IT.

First off, for me personally, working with this year’s production team taught me the value of what a team that works well together can feel like.  There was no real weak link in our team this year.  Our strengths personally complimented the weaknesses of others.  There was basically no internal drama or infighting within the production team at all.  It was wonderful to behold and be apart of.

The plan for this year came from survey results gathered from last years attendees.  The goal was to figure out exactly what people wanted instead of the guesswork and false promises of the past. And the community spoke!

First the event was decentralized, partially by force.  This was something I was thankful of covid for, because the prior venue had some pretty awful restrictions we were not about to subject people to.  It forced us to think outside the box, and with Macey’s help, we found the best damn venue we could have asked for.

Not one owned by a corporate entity that pays the local employees nearly nothing…We went local and rented a gorgeous secret location that was perfect for the vibe of the people this year’s conference attracted.

While the VIP ticket was the highest ever for Anarchapulco, it was worth it from all sides.  For Anarchapulco, it attracted the most serious of us, which led to a pretty amazing atmosphere of people dedicated to knowledge and connection. The VIP attendees were floored at the beautiful location, incredible food, and surprise yacht trip.  We had ZERO complaints from the in-person crowd, actually quite the opposite.

Nothing but love.

The local impact was HUGE. Our production company is Mexican; these are the people who made the whole virtual environment and kept the stage running.  Our venue was able to hire 20 local people for the event during times of virtually no tourism because of COVID.  The shuttle company that everyone loved wasn’t actually a company but a group of hard-working taxi driver friends who came together to make transportation of people easy for us.  They told us that they made what they would make in 3 months in just one week working for Anarchapulco.  Acapulco is struggling harder than most parts of Mexico financially because their entire economy is dependent on tourism. The majority of the locals are poor. Beyond that, we were able to privately hire several locals for help with various things throughout the event.

Then there’s the Marsh Home, the effort of which was spearheaded by Crypto Show Danny Sessom, who is an amazing activist with a huge heart for those kids. In the past, Anarchapulco has done small things for the Marsh Home here and there but never really in ways which counted until this year.  We had the smallest crowd ever but we managed to raise over 20k in donations directly to this orphanage over 3 days between direct donations and charity auctions.

Not only that, but they were given space on the main stage to share their story and for the children to perform.  The woman who runs the place had everyone, myself included, crying as she shared her personal story of why she has dedicated her life to taking care of kids that are not hers.  Her prayers have been answered, she said, oddly enough from anarchists.

Anarchapulco thought of everything this year, including the fact that many are not able to travel due to this plandemic. So, the watch parties were born and those helped to breed an international community which was pretty amazing to be a part of.  The event was also virtual this year, for those stuck in their homes. That virtual ticket also got you access to the watch party and was Anarchapulco’s cheapest event ticket ever as far as I know.

And the watch parties were incredible. There were locations in Thailand, Malibu, and the biggest was FloteFest in Texas.  Hundreds of people flocked to a private property in Texas for FloteFest, which was amazing to witness from afar.  I honestly wish I could have been in two places at once during that time.

Something that occurred to me a few days ago as I was watching my way through the entirety of Anarchapulco 2021 is that we managed to start a pop-up online TV station with 24 hours of incredible curated content over 4 days.  The ads, virtually recorded speeches, and live in-person speeches blended together to make this really cool, cohesive feed that allowed you to feel a part of the event regardless of where you were.  This was content produced from MANY people, not just the “entity” of Anarchapulco…and that’s part of what made it special.

Then there’s Agorapulco, which seems to be sort of a homage to Anarchaforko.  This was unrelated to Anarchapulco, in that we didn’t have involvement in the planning or production of those events beyond ones we collaborated on like the Launch party.  It started before the conference and is still going on as I type this, several weeks later.  I mentioned Agorapulco mostly because we tried to collaborate with them on a level that Anarchapulco never did for Anarchaforko, which was actually our end goal.

There were things we feel could have went better, but all in all this was the best Anarchapulco ever especially when you consider it was planned in 3 months during covid times.  We didn’t let COVID stop us and we won’t in the future, we don’t care how decentralized we have to get.

Stay tuned for 2022.  The plan is more decentralization and collaboration.