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Just had another thought. I don't know the details, but I've been told that foco theory (the guerrilla war strategy used by anti-imperialists in South America) influenced the anarchist idea of autonomous zones. A foco is (I think) an attempt to create dual power by establishing concentrations of guerrillas in particular "liberated zones" and trying to implement full communism in those zones (in fact the way "liberated zones" are run is usually a lot preferable to what will eventually be implemented if the war is won). Of course it's all tied-up with the ideas of class power and vanguardism, the idea that a small party or army with the right analysis can act on behalf of an entire social class without any structure of representation whatsoever... but it does seem that groups like the Zapatistas descended from the foco model.