Edendale, Los Angeles - Edendale Commune

Edendale Commune

From November 1914 to June 1916, Edendale was also home to the Edendale commune, founded by Mexican anarcho-communist radicals of the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM). After their release from the penitentiary at McNeil Island in 1914 as political prisoners accused of inciting rebellion, criminal libel and violating neutrality laws, Ricardo Flores Magon and his wife, Maria Talavera, her daughter Lucille Norman, his brother Enrique and Enrique's companion Teresa Arteaga and other PLM members and their families settled on five acres of rented farm land near 2325 Ivanhoe Ave, Edendale in Silver Lake. Other members of the PLM, Rivera and Palma moved near by. As time passed other anarchists and members of the IWW settled in nearby shacks. They shared this space with the pre-Hollywood film studio colony. The PLM members lived the communal lives they envisioned for the rest of the world by raising fruit, vegetables and chickens at Edendale that they sold on the streets of Los Angeles and at the Plaza Olvera's open market. With their farming proceeds, they purchased necessary goods such as print supplies to continue publishing Regeneracion, the Mexican anarchist newspaper published by the PLM.