Introduction

Abstract

"My dream is to found an NGO to take the dogs out of the slums." These were the public words of one of Argentina's most recognized models about twenty years ago. If someone wanted to ridicule such a cause, the very one the model championed, they would never come up with such a paradoxical statement.

However, beyond its literal meaning or, even, the intentions that the author might have attributed to her comment, the phrase did not end there. It could be read as an index of what, in recent years, some have called "white veganism": the withdrawal of a movement that came to be dominated by the experience of privileged people. Indeed, since the utterance of those words until today, the cause in favor of vegetarianism, veganism, and the care of non-human living beings has become increasingly widespread among influencers and other propagandists of "beautiful souls." This is a supposedly ethical stance that allows one to present themselves on social media as activists for a better world, without having to face the risks that loom over anyone daring to question any of the many pillars that sustain the status quo.

The gains from refraining from participating in animal slaughter are not limited to acquiring moral benefits. This renunciation is also conceived as the path leading to the horizon of perfect health. Or, at least, it was until recently, when the commercial circuit addressing the needs of that segment of the population obsessed with regulating their eating habits was limited to a broad set of neighborhood health food stores.

Recently, the ultra-processed food industry began to scale this market. "Not so happy animals" was the title of an advertising campaign launched in early 2024 by NotCo, the Chilean plant-based food company founded in 2016 by vegan entrepreneur Matías Muchnik. The advertisement features logos of fast food chains illustrated by smiling chickens, pigs, and cows. With a discourse denouncing animal mistreatment and appealing to conscious consumption, one of the jingle's verses, sung by a smiley chicken, goes: "If you see my smile/ don't be deceived/ how could I be happy/ if they are going to cook me."

NotCo is considered one of the Latin American startups with the greatest profit potential. Thanks to investments from figures like Jeff Bezos and Marcos Galperín, and agreements with companies like Starbucks, Mostaza, and Burger King, it has expanded to markets in the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and other countries in the region. Its products aim to offer an alternative to the consumption of animal-based foods by mimicking their taste and texture. Thus, along with NotMayo, NotBurger, NotMilk, and NotCheese, they recently launched NotTurtle, a turtle soup without a turtle—or, as the promotional video for its release describes it, "the recipe for an endangered animal, without that animal."

These brief notes only confirm readings that interpret vegetarianism and veganism as a sensitivity of exclusively individual reach and arrogantly detached from the mud of politics. However, since the early 19th century, the consumption and exploitation of animals have been concerns that have challenged the leftist field. Although they struggled to become priority issues within social struggles, there were various expressions that sought to introduce the problem through different means. From anarchists and members of the early suffragist movements to more recent articulations of anti-speciesism with different political currents, those we now call non-human animals were granted the status of a subject whose care is necessary to address in order to achieve the dream of a freer and more egalitarian world.

The dossier we present takes us through some of these experiences and theoretical elaborations in order to emphasize the links between vegetarianism and other struggles led by different social movements: from 19th-century utopian socialism in England to the libertarian colonies in Catalonia during the Civil War; from anarcho-naturist expressions in southern Chile to punk protests against McDonald's in 1980s Buenos Aires; from straight edge anarchism to transveganisms in contemporary animality philosophies. This is an overview of a much broader movement that could well continue to be explored with studies on new activist organizations, the projective experiences of Latin American popular veganism, or the economic perspectives of ecological analysis. In any case, these works allow us to discuss the discredit faced by those positions that seek to make the rejection of meat consumption a first-order political issue.

The following pages show us how the terms vegetarianism and socialism not only arose in a common context but also expanded together through popular literature disseminated during the formation of the working class. The works that follow analyze newspapers, popular books, fanzines, and song lyrics. They focus on countercultural forms of consumption and explore the genealogy of veganism to highlight some of its most current theoretical connections. They discuss the stratification and encapsulation of the classical historiography of the left, dominated by conceptions according to which economic exploitation would be the foundation of other "minor" causes: oppression in love, family, food, and health. In short, they argue historically and philosophically against the autonomization of diverse struggles, while also pointing out the difficulties faced by those who sought to connect the principles in favor of interspecies equality with, for example, calls for general strikes.

In this sense, the recovery of militant trajectories in the articles presented is less an arbitrary decision than a methodological necessity of the sources themselves. After all, it is impossible to account for the history of vegetarianisms and their various politicizations without referring to the singular lives of those who, against both their own and others' resistance, debated the link we establish with those other lives sacrificed to serve our plates of food.