Anarchapulco has been a huge part of my personal history. because that is the first place where I started to share my story when we moved to Mexico nearly 6 years ago.  Say what you want about it, but it has really managed to shake things up in the anarchy world, for better or for worse, and was a huge inspiration for actually getting out of the country for me and many other people.

In fact, when I made the plan to go to Mexico, we had the goal of arriving by Anarchapulco 2016, which also happened to be right around my birthday, as it is every year. Jeff Berwick, regardless of what opinion you may have of him, positive or negative, helped me across the border with pretty solid advice that worked in getting two hippies, their puppy, and a truck full of shit with plates that weren’t ours across that border (and without passports or money for that matter).

I expected a lot when I went to Anarchapulco 2016. Back then, it was hosted in a hotel that was known as The Grand, which was both on the beach and in the heart of the city, giving everything Acapulco had to offer just outside its doors within walking distance.  The energy was magic and that’s what kept us in the city until the next year. We did have criticisms, but we also had a lot of love for the people we became connected to as a direct result of Anarchapulco.

2017 took a huge shift towards what many referred to as the corporatization of Anarchapulco.  Anarchapulco left behind that bustling city for the surrounding suburb known as Diamanté at the Mundo Imperial resort, full of creepy New World Order statues and huge walking distances within the conference area and hotel itself.

Anarchists being anarchists were not happy, and my partner and I were listening to their complaints.  Because we were somewhat openly critical in years past, people felt comfortable venting about their experiences to us.  Some people were perfectly happy that year, but the rest were left wanting more than what they got.  They wanted to return to the part of town known as the main bay.  At the very least, they wanted a better resort with a more intimate vibe and more hands-on content.

But as Anarchapulco grew bigger and bigger, it became harder and harder to achieve that intimate, inspiring vibe that made Anarchapulco famous to begin with.  It started in 2015 at Hotel Copacabana, a small hotel smack in the center of the main bay of Acapulco with only a few hundred rooms at most.  It was like a miniature version of what The Grand was, and while people hated the hotel for playing that god awful Copacabana song in the elevators, the atmosphere born at that venue was what sparked the event that has drawn literal thousands of people to Mexico over the years.

As cofounder of Anarchaforko, I was pretty critical of the changes within Anarchapulco, everything from location to the content of the conference itself.  Anarchaforko was born out of the criticisms we kept hearing from people dissatisfied with the trajectory of the conference.  We would hear people complaining and ask, “what would you rather see?”

If there’s one thing I have learned in this life. it is that you don’t change anything by simply complaining.  If you’re going to complain, at least have the decency to help come up with solutions for providing what people really want. Anarchaforko was our solution, and it was meant to be a respectful, but decentralized, bonus to what to main event was offering people.

Well, right off the bat, it was seen as competition to Anarchapulco by the event planners, which considering how we led with criticisms, I don’t blame them. The reality was, we never wanted to replace or compete with Anarchapulco, this is why we were holding our events only on days that Anarchapulco wasn’t doing things.  We just wanted to add what people felt they were missing; and for 2018 we did, and almost 2019 too.

Most of you who know my story know about the murder in February 2019 of John Galton that destroyed Anarchaforko, and honestly had a huge effect on Anarchapulco too.  People became afraid to travel to the event because of the murder, combined with the fact that the event was already losing some public esteem because of a change in management.

I won’t get too much into this change into management; those closely involved know who I am referring to, but the reality is, most people didn’t appreciate the management choice of 2019-2020. Let’s face it, the once proud event was floundering in criticisms aimed at the new head of the conference, someone no one in the community met before her involvement with the event.

I only bring this up to say that by the end of 2020’s event, a lot of the original people who became involved and made it good were expressing the fact that they were simply done with the conference, for one reason or another.  It was no longer the big happy family it appeared to be in years prior.  A chaotic family, but nevertheless, before 2019-2020, Anarchapulco was a festival of anarchistic jubilation unmatched in my experience at least.

Enter Coronavirus. I remember at Anarchapulco 2020, there were waiters dressed in hazmat suits serving corona beers as a joke to coronavirus, almost a scary nod to what was to come in the world as this was just before everything locked down.  Most conferences cancelled their events in the months to follow our February event.  Catherine Bonandin was trained and ready to take on role of producer, but due to the uncertain world circumstances, she didn’t get the “ok” to start from Jeff until this time last year.  She came up with a virtual in-person hybrid model that was flexible in the event that the border got closed.

Let’s talk about Catherine Bonandin, someone formerly known as Catherine Bleish.  She has been involved with Anarchapulco since 2018, first as a volunteer and speaker, ending now as producer.  I can’t really think of someone better suited to be at the head of the event.  She’s wise, fair, and great with people.  Not only that, but she’s incredibly open to criticism which makes working with her in a team both fun and effective.

One of Cat’s most valuable skills that made 2021’s event the success that it was is her ability to recognize talent in people and bring good people to work well together.  It was through her efforts that the dream team was formed, now lovingly called the dream team within our team meetings.

Currently, the core of the dream team is Cat, Macey Tomlin, me (Lily Forester) and Arielle Friedman, someone incredibly wise and helpful that we recognized and brought in from the Agorapulco crowd.  I loved the idea of Agorapulco to start, but my personal experiences with the event was lack of organization and security against sketchy people, something that has been increasingly important in all communities over the years. There was also a lot of disharmony and aggression among some of the people putting it together which can be hard for making events good.

The dream team started with Macey Tomlin; then she added me to help on the backend stuff.  Anyone know knows me well knows I am known for getting shit done when other people just can’t or don’t have the time. By the end of the 2021 conference, it was me, Macey, and Cat, working in perfect harmony together, with several satellite groups from the venue, to the stage production staff supporting us, keeping it a well-oiled machine.  Credit of course needs to be given to people like Patrick Smith, Alex Vidal, Jason Henza, and a few others who really helped to make things happen in the moment.  It was also during this time we found and brought in Arielle Friedman to help.  And we produced what I consider to have been the best Anarchapulco to date.

The location, the Jardin Secreto or in English, the Secret Garden, is the best we have found yet both in terms of beauty of the environment and top notch staff and food for our VIP guests. The whole point of the VIP event is to provide that in-person experience with the speakers for those still determined enough to go to Acapulco.  The limited capacity of ~100 we had last year was due to extreme capacity restrictions in Acapulco, this year that number is 300. But it ended up being a really cozy intimate event, with virtually zero drama, as the higher ticket price ended up attracting a different kind of person than who might have gone to Anarchapulco in years past.

On that note, Anarchapulco is known for attracting a wide spectrum of people, both really good and really not so good, if you know what I mean.  But last year was pretty void of sketchy, ridiculous people.  There was not a single alcohol poisoned person in sight, for example, despite an open bar.  No complaints about anyone’s behavior, in fact.

Beyond that it was the first real voyage for Anarchapulco in providing quality virtual content to the community, with the live aspect from the stage at the VIP event in Acapulco.  Since a lot of the event was virtual for the sake of capacity restrictions, Anarchapulco finally decentralized with the invention of watch parties.

Some of you might have attended the first Flote Fest last year, which was one of Anarchapulco’s official watch parties hosted by the Flote team. There were watch parties in Malibu, Orlando, Texas, and even Thailand, and the cool part about the watch party is you only need the virtual access ticket (150) or virtual access plus lifetime replay ticket (199) for access. Watch parties are put on by people interested in partnering with Anarchapulco that can provide venue and equipment to make it happen.

The thing that I really like about the watch parties is that they can be whatever you want them to be.  Anarchapulco is inviting people to fork the conference and stream it at their own event.  Anyone who went to Flote Fest knows that it wasn’t just a bunch of people watching Anarchapulco.  Some of the content provided to Anarchapulco’s stream last year was direct from Flote Fest, which really brought this cool worldwide family vibe to it.  Who knows, maybe you’ll see a watch party from me this year.

The real problem was that at a certain point, those in control of the conference became disconnected from the wants and needs from the people at the conference and Anarchaforko was created to help bridge that gap.

Anarchapulco has evolved to the point where the fork is no longer necessary, because of things like the decentralized watch party format and the fact that everything we do with the conference is stuff we confirm through survey results, such as the desire for private travel, we are trying to line up for people to escape the US and maybe Canada.

Beyond that, the quality of content provided last year is the best of any year I’ve attended, and it’s all available in a beautiful, easy-to-access format on the website for life. I watched everything from last year from start-to-finish and I thought it was incredible — the contrast of the traditional live stage speeches with professionally produced alternative media content.  It made for like 5 days of Anarchist content, complete with seriously professional quality ads from groups like Alfa Vedic, Bitcoin.com and Pirate Chain.

Our production company is Mexican and seriously incredible at what they do, both at building a custom Anarchapulco virtual conference environment that actually worked for the virtual customers, while maintaining a beautiful in-person stage with only minimal hiccups that were out of their control.  A cool fact is that now, Anarchapulo hosts their own content on their own servers instead of using YouTube or paid streaming alternatives for hosting this content, which would likely be taken down.

Something else worth mentioning is a big complaint many people had; that is, Anarchapulco was in a big resort for a few years, and so the relative impact on the local economy was somewhat small.  People were encouraged to stay on the resort where most of the money left Acapulco instead of staying with the people.

But that also changed in 2021.  We hired a team of 25 taxi drivers to brand their cars for us and provide amazing transportation services for the event.  In a few weeks, they made what it would usually take them 3 months to make. The venue hired 65 people for the event to work the event.  In Acapulco, they depend on tourism and because of COVID, the whole community was seriously struggling.  The money paid to the venue was used by the venue to better their property, providing lasting jobs throughout the year in the area.

Then we look at the money fundraised by the event itself for the local Marsh Children’s’ Home: more than 20k for the local community, which is the biggest local impact Anarchapulco has ever had on Acapulco.

All of these changes made in the last few years are the reasons that I currently spend so much of my time, way more time than most people realize, grinding away making sure the website, email system, and a few other things of the conference function smoothly.  I don’t put effort into things I don’t care about at this point.

And part of the reason I have been so quiet here post-wise is building this infrastructure with the dream team I am now delighted to share a bit more about with the world.

To save 10 percent on all tickets (virtual, replay, and VIP event included) use code LILY10 on your purchases at anarchapulco.com.