Asociación Continental Americana de Trabajadores

The Continental American Workers' Association (Spanish: Asociación Continental Americana de Trabajadores; ACAT) was an international anarcho-syndicalist trade union federation based in Latin America during the 1930s. Founded in 1929, following a series of initiatives by the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (FORA) and the Mexican General Confederation of Workers (CGT-M), the ACAT sought to unite the various anarcho-syndicalist federations of Latin America in order to coordinate their actions, with the ultimate goal of establishing anarchist communism. Soon after its foundation, the ACAT faced a number of difficulties accomplishing its objectives, as the rise of dictatorships throughout Latin America prevented its member sections from continuing their trade union activities and stunted international coordination. After the 1930 Argentine coup d'état, the ACAT was forced to move its headquarters from Buenos Aires to Uruguay, where it continued publishing its magazine La Continental Obrera. By the mid-1930s, the ACAT was already effectively defunct. In 1941, it ceased publication of La Conintental and dissolved itself. Over the subsequent decades, the FORA made a series of attempts to reconstitute the ACAT, but these were all unsuccessful.