Escaping authoritarianism through community A Community Supported by the Network Catalyzers Program 2025, and Led by Forum Member Hilda Landrove
Everything begins with a question—or better yet, two.
The first: How do we understand the passage from one authoritarianism to another? Not merely the shifting of authoritarian power, which changes faces and directions while leaving its foundations intact, but the movement of people who flee one regime only to embrace its supposed opposite as the solution to what they are escaping.
The second: What alternatives can be offered?
In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence—often in seemingly impossible contexts—of communities formed out of necessity: mutual aid, humanitarian assistance, and resistance against tyrannical power. This has been particularly striking in societies like Cuba, burdened by decades of civic suppression and restriction. These are what Rebecca Solnit calls “impossible communities”—capable of transcending divisions of race, class, and geography, bridging the inside with its diaspora. They take shape amid disaster, sustaining life in the ruins.
Such communities can only be built through the intentional incorporation of difference. They require a shared foundation, a common purpose, and a deep sense of responsibility for the lives of others—an acknowledgment of the fundamental interconnection in which another’s life is also our own.
We want to explore what makes a community possible and take on the challenge of creating one in the heart of Mexico City—one that remains open to those who live elsewhere, connected through the space of the internet. A refuge for those who have lost their original communities, where we can build—through encounter and recognition—an alternative to disconnection, to the alienation of difference, and to the complacency with hierarchical imposition that allows authoritarianism to take root.
If these questions and purposes resonate with your own, this may be your space.
For more information, contact the Forum's Head of Community, Evan Yoshimoto.
