24 Facts About Plotino Rhodakanaty

Plotino Constantino Rhodakanaty was a Greek and Mexican socialist and anarchist, as well as a prominent early member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mexico.

Plotino Rhodakanaty is known as one of the first advocates for anarchist thought in Mexico.

Plotino Rhodakanaty was an early activist in Mexico's mid-nineteenth century labor and campesino movement, which foreshadowed the Mexican Revolution in 1910.

Plotino Rhodakanaty published various books and essays about the threats of privatization and capitalism, and helped establish an "escuela libre" in Chalco.

Plotino Rhodakanaty conducted efforts to bring his friends and colleagues into the church, and was ordained an elder and leader of the local congregation before becoming disillusioned with the church in 1880 following the rejection of his plan to turn Mexico into a "utopian society".

Plotino Rhodakanaty was born on October 14,1828, in Athens, First Hellenic Republic.

Plotino Rhodakanaty's father was a member of the Greek aristocracy, and his mother was Greek with Austrian citizenship.

Plotino Rhodakanaty's father died near the end of the Greek War of Independence, and Plotino Rhodakanaty went with his mother to Vienna.

Moses Thatcher, an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, stated in 1880 that the mother of Plotino Rhodakanaty had been born in Mexico.

Some believed that Plotino Rhodakanaty was a Mexican who had adopted a persona and foreign identity; others believed that he was born in London.

Plotino Rhodakanaty studied medicine in Austria and Berlin before traveling to Budapest in 1848 to assist in the failed Hungarian Revolution.

Plotino Rhodakanaty traveled next to Berlin, where he was exposed to the ideas of Hegel, Fourier, and Proudhon.

Plotino Rhodakanaty then traveled to Barcelona to learn Spanish and prepare to move to Mexico, spending at least two years in a large anarchist community there.

Plotino Rhodakanaty arrived in Mexico in 1861, and within the year he published La Cartilla Socialista and began propagating the ideas of contemporary European thinkers, particularly those of Fourier, Proudhon, and Bakunin.

Plotino Rhodakanaty published other radical essays, including Neopanteismo, and founded various scholarly journals.

In 1870, Plotino Rhodakanaty helped establish La Escuela del Rayo y del Socialismo, an "escuela libre" in Chalco.

In 1875, Plotino Rhodakanaty came across and read various translated sections of the Book of Mormon, a religious text of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and gained a conviction about it being "the word of God".

Plotino Rhodakanaty wrote in 1878 to the headquarters of the church in Salt Lake City, Utah, and requested additional church literature, as well as for missionaries to be sent to Mexico.

Plotino Rhodakanaty's petitioning for missionaries, as well as his efforts to convert his friends and acquaintances, were instrumental in the subsequent establishment of the LDS Church in Mexico.

Plotino Rhodakanaty disapproved of the violence in Mexico associated with the insurrections, but believed that the church would surely institute their proposed United Order there, which would essentially follow his plan to turn the country into a utopian society.

Plotino Rhodakanaty resigned as head of the congregation in Mexico City in August 1880, and on May 2,1881, he published an article titled "Social Reform", which was critical of the church.

Plotino Rhodakanaty had an aversion for violence and a naive hope that the wealthy would voluntarily transition to the new society he hoped to create, and because of this, the leadership of Mexican radicalism and anarchism increasingly passed to younger hands, many of whom were his former students.

Plotino Rhodakanaty taught there throughout the time that Otilio Montano, the author of Emiliano Zapata's famous Plan de Ayala, attended as a student.

Many report that Plotino Rhodakanaty left Mexico to return to Europe in 1886, but there is no evidence confirming his return to Europe, nor is there any to confirm that he stayed in Mexico.