Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina 9780252038990, 9780252096976

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Copyright © 2015. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Anarchist Immigrants i n S pa i n a n d Argentina

james a. baer Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Anarchist Immigrants i n S pa i n a n d

Copyright © 2015. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Argentina

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Copyright © 2015. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved. Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Anarchist Immigrants i n S pa i n a n d Argentina

Copyright © 2015. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Ja m e s A . B a e r

University of Illinois Press U r ba n a , C h i c a g o , a n d S p r i n g f i e l d

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Copyright © 2015. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

© 2015 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America c 5 4 3 2 1 ∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Control Number: 2015931457 isbn 978-0-252-03899-0 (hardcover) isbn 978-0-252-09697-6 (e-book)

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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For Carolynn, always

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Copyright © 2015. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved. Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Contents

List of Illustrations  ix Preface  xi Principal Individuals  xv

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List of Abbreviations  xvii Introduction  1

C h a p t e r 1. Origins of the Spanish Anarchist Movement



C h a p t e r 2 . Anarchists and Immigration from Spain to Argentina 



C h a p t e r 3 . Deportations and Reverse Migration, 1902–1910 



C h a p t e r 4 . The CNT and the War Years: Anarchist Rivalries



C h a p t e r 5. The FORA and the CNT: Transnational



C h a p t e r 6 . Changing Political Climates and Return Migration:

in the Nineteenth Century  15

51

and New Leadership  74 Anarchist Rivalries  93

Abad de Santillán and the FAI in Spain  118

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

32



C h a p t e r 7. Abad de Santillán and the Anarchist Revolution



C h a p t e r 8 . Argentine and Spanish Anarchists in the



C h a p t e r 9. Exile and Homecoming 

in Spain  141

Spanish Civil War  161

179

A p p e n di x

A . List of Spanish Refugees aboard the Winnipeg 193

A p p e n di x

B . La Protesta: Prisoners in or Deported from

Argentina, 1905–1906 199

Notes 203 Bibliography 223

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Index 231

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Illustrations

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Photographs



1. Antonio Pellicer Paraire, 1906  36



2. Immigrants in Argentina, 1905  41



3. Immigrants’ Hotel, Buenos Aires, early twentieth century  49



4. Cell block in the National Penitentiary, 1923  53



5. Conventillo detail, Buenos Aires, 1910  59



6. Conventillo patio at Piedras 1268, early twentieth century  60



7. Meeting of the car drivers (chófers) union, 1911  67



8. Shoemaker working in the conventillo patio, Buenos Aires, 1914  75



9. Prison, Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, 1918  83



10. Diego Abad de Santillán, mid-1920s  85



11. Prisoners on their way to cut timber, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, early twentieth century  88



12. Diego Abad de Santillán identification card, mid-1920s 94

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.



13. General José Félix Uriburu, president of Argentina, 1930  120



14. Villa Devoto Jail, Buenos Aires, 1939  126



15. The Chaco, 1930s  128



16. Manuel Villar, Spain, 1936  143 Tables

1. Spanish Immigration to Argentina, 1871–1914  24–25



2. Spanish Immigration to Argentina and to Latin America, 1882–1910  40



3. Spanish Immigration and Return from Latin America, 1882–1940  62



4. Ages of Spaniards Deported from Argentina, July–September 1919  90



5. Immigration to Argentina, 1915–1940  100



6. Spanish Anarchist Immigrants Deported, October–November 1930 123

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Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Preface

T h i s st u dy b e ga n when I immigrated to Argentina in the 1970s. I had already spent one year there as a high school exchange student and made many friends in Mar del Plata, where my host family lived, and in Buenos Aires. With their assistance, I obtained immigrant visas so that my wife and I could move there as permanent residents. We lived and worked in Buenos Aires for just under two years, experiencing the excitement of the end of the military dictatorship and the return of Juan Perón. I had begun a study of the Spanish Civil War while in graduate school and was impressed with Noam Chomsky’s perspective in American Power and the New Mandarins. Chomsky’s criticism of liberal studies of the anarchists in Spain piqued my interest. When I contacted a Buenos Aires editorial house that published works about anarchists in Spain, I learned that one author, Diego Abad de Santillán, resided in Buenos Aires and welcomed young researchers. I asked to meet him, and he agreed. I walked up to the second floor of a downtown office building and into a very busy office. Several secretaries were typing or on the phone, and another brought me coffee. They ushered me into Abad de Santillán’s office, and I took a seat across the desk from this grandfatherly man of seventy-six. He was dressed in slacks and wore a cardigan to ward off the chill. I explained that I was just learning about the events in Spain in the 1930s and asked him to tell me about his role. His voice was steady as he recounted, “The revolution that broke out

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Preface

in July 1936 was made by the people. There was no ‘head.’ No one was leading the spontaneous uprising.” We talked for nearly an hour, and he gave no hint that answering a neophyte’s questions was bothersome. He was gentle and patient and encouraged me to learn more. He directed me to the anarchist athenaeum on Brasil Street in Buenos Aires and shared the names of Jacobo Maguid and José Grunfeld, two of his comrades who frequented it. I spent much time there, talking with members, reading books, and learning about their ideas. When I returned to the United States, I continued to correspond with Maguid and Grunfeld. They met with me whenever I returned to Buenos Aires and helped me understand more about their ideas, their organization, and their experiences in Spain. As we spoke, I realized that they did not dwell in the past and had many strong opinions about current events. My study expanded as I learned more about Spain and Argentina. Many people assisted me, and I am sure that I will overlook some. Nevertheless, I do want to thank everyone who made this book possible. My deans at the Alexandria Campus of Northern Virginia Community College, Jimmie R. McClellan and Paul McVeigh, encouraged me, and Kevin O’Hagan, interlibrary loan librarian, obtained every book I needed quickly and efficiently. I received a 2000 sabbatical funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers. This support allowed me to spend one month in Buenos Aires in the National Library and the Archives. I was assisted by my daughter, Amanda Baer, who worked long hours in unheated buildings, reading old newspapers and records of those deported. Staff members at both of these institutions were very helpful, making sure that I found photographs and census information. Friends Jorgelina Sara and Alberto Antonino assisted with interviews of individuals and obtaining research materials in Buenos Aires. Hernán Scandizzo of the Biblioteca Popular José Ingenieros and Diego Bugallo at the athenaeum of the Federación Libertaria Argentina were very helpful in providing me with archival material. The NEH fellowship also allowed me to travel to Amsterdam, where I spent several weeks at the International Institute for Social History, looking over the Abad de Santillán and Max Nettlau Archives and the files of the FAI and the CNT. Mieke IJzermans was not only a wonderful librarian but a kind hostess who made rooms in her home available for visiting foreign researchers. The Northern Virginia Community College Educational Foundation assisted me with travel to Spain through a 2002 “Open Moment” award. In Madrid, Marcela García Sebastiani accompanied me through the maze of officialdom in the National Library and the archives in Alcalá de Hernares. I also spent

xii Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Preface

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time at the Arús Library in Barcelona and visited many of the sites where the events I was studying took place. Colleagues in the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies listened to many versions of the chapters of this book, making comments and offering suggestions that helped me refine many of the concepts. Professors Ronn Pineo of Towson University in Maryland and Daniel Masterson at the Naval Academy were especially forthcoming with encouragement and advice. I also appreciate the assistance from Professor Michael Seidman, who read an early draft of my manuscript and offered helpful comments. Laurie Matheson, editor in chief at the University of Illinois Press, has guided me through several revisions that made the manuscript clearer. I appreciate the readers who gave me criticism and suggestions on additional literature. Every book is the work of many, although I take full responsibility for the contents. I just could not have done this alone. I hope that readers, academic or casual, will learn more about the dynamics of population movements, especially at the turn of the twentieth century, and about the importance of the transnational experience that shaped the ideas and experiences of the individuals studied here. The interaction of those who migrate and the lands in which they reside still shapes many people’s lives. In some ways, I continue to live in two worlds, the United States and Argentina. One who experiences life in another country never quite leaves that other land behind. Countless people and many countries continue to be enriched by the immigrant experience.

xiii Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Copyright © 2015. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved. Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Principal Individuals

Abad de Santillán, Diego (1897–1983): Born in Spain and arrived in Argentina with his family in 1905. Member of FORA. Left Argentina in 1932 and settled in Spain in 1934. Member of FAI. Served as economic counselor to Catalan government in 1936. Returned to Argentina in 1940. Moved back to Spain in 1982. Barrett, Rafael (1876–1910): Immigrated to Argentina in 1903. Participated in the anarchist movement. Became writer exposing working conditions in Paraguay. Moved to France due to illness in 1910. Camba, Julio (1882–1962): Born in Spain. Arrived in Argentina in 1898. Deported in 1902 and remained in Spain. Writer and participant in anarchist movement. Gilimón, E. G.: Born in Spain. Arrived in Argentina at the end of the nineteenth century. Deported in 1909. Returned to Argentina and deported again in 1910. Spanish authorities immediately stripped him of citizenship and deported him to Uruguay. Later that same year, he returned to Argentina, where he had family. Writer for La Protesta. González Pacheco, Rodolfo (1882–1949): Argentine-born writer and editor of La Protesta and La Batalla. Spent several months in Spain during the Civil War. Grunfeld, José (1907–2005): Argentine-born founder of FACA. Served in Spain, 1936–39. Returned to Argentina and participated in FLA.

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Principal Individuals

Inglán y Lafarga, Gregorio (1876–1929): Born in Spain. Immigrated to Argentina before 1896 and remained there the rest of his life. Editor of La Protesta Humana and founder of FOA in 1901. López Arango, Emilio (1894–1929): Born in Spain. Immigrated to Argentina in 1910. Editor of La Protesta, member of FORA. Murdered in Buenos Aires. Loredo, Antonio (?–1916): Born in Spain. Arrived in Argentina in 1897. Editor of La Protesta. Deported to Spain in 1905. Editor of Solidaridad Obrera until deported from Spain in 1909. Deported from Argentina to Spain in 1910. Remained active in the CNT. Maguid, Jacobo (1907–97): Argentine-born member of FACA, served in Spain during Civil War. Montero, José María (1897–?): Born in Spain. Arrived in Argentina about 1925. Driver and creator of collective bus service in Buenos Aires. Returned to Spain in 1937. Fled to Mexico in 1940 and remained there for many years before returning to Spain. Pellicer Paraire, Antonio (1851–1916): Born in Spain. Arrived in Argentina in 1891. Founder of FORA. Prat, José (1867–1932): Born in Spain. Fled to Argentina in 1897. Returned to Spain in 1898. Rouco Buela, Juana (1889–1969): Born in Spain. Arrived in Argentina in 1900 with her parents. Feminist anarchist and editor of Nuestra Tribuna. Villar, Manuel (1905–72): Born in Spain. Arrived in Argentina in 1912. Member of FORA. Deported to Spain in 1933. Member of FAI. Served in Spain during Civil War. Jailed for eighteen years. Returned to Argentina in 1960s.

xvi Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Abbreviations



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AIT Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores; anarchosyndicalist international, founded in Berlin in 1922 CEDA Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas; conservative Spanish political party, founded in 1933 CGT Confederación General del Trabajo; Argentine labor federation, founded in 1930 CNT Confederación Nacional del Trabajo; Spanish anarchosyndicalist labor federation, founded in 1911 CORA Confederación Obrera Regional Argentina; Argentine syndicalist labor organization, founded in 1909 CRRA Comité Regional de Relaciones Anarquistas; broke from FORA in 1932 and became FACA in 1935 FACA Federación Anarco-Comunista Argentina; Argentine splinter group, separated from FORA in 1935 FAI Federación Anarquista Ibérica; Iberian organization of anarchist affinity groups, founded in 1927 FOA Federación Obrera Argentina; Argentine anarchist labor federation, founded in 1901 FORA Federación Obrera Regional Argentina; Argentine successor to the FOA, founded in 1904

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Abbreviations



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SIA Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista; international agency to assist Spanish refugees, founded in 1936 UGT Unión General de Trabajadores; Argentine socialist labor federation, founded in 1903 USA Unión Sindical Argentina; Argentine syndicalist labor federation, founded in 1922

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Anarchist Immigrants i n S pa i n a n d

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Argentina

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Copyright © 2015. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved. Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Introduction

A n t o n i o L o r e d o , Diego Abad de Santillán, and Manuel Villar were among the millions of Spanish immigrants to Argentina in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Loredo became an editor of a Buenos Aires daily anarchist newspaper, La Protesta, before being deported (twice) to Spain. Abad de Santillán was a writer, a historian, and one of the most important anarchists in both Spain and Argentina. Villar also served as an editor of La Protesta until 1933, when he was deported to Spain. There, he quickly assumed the position as editor of Solidaridad Obrera. The lives of these individuals reflect a powerful current at the turn of the twentieth century: the sharing of anarchist ideas between Spain and Argentina through immigration and return. This study shows how the ebb and flow of Spanish anarchist migrations to Argentina helps explain the development of both a transnational anarchist ideology and related organizations that connect these two countries. The book follows the lives, careers, ideas, influence, and travel of dozens of individuals who moved between these two countries in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century. The life stories of individual immigrants allow us to explore their movements and understand how supranational links influenced the growth of the anarchist movements in Spain and Argentina. In many cases, these connections were established by migrant laborers who sailed back and forth across the Atlantic, harvesting crops in both countries, and by

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Introduction

immigrants who left Spain for economic, personal, and political opportunities in America. Some of these Spaniards were or became anarchists, moving, adapting, and maneuvering for advantages provided by each country. These migrants formed a critical nucleus of militants who bound the two countries in an ideological relationship that profoundly affected the history of both nations. This study encompasses the period between 1868, when the ideas of Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin first became known in Spain, and the end of the Spanish Civil War, after which the regime of Generalíssimo Francisco Franco and the Second World War effectively ended the relationship between these two countries’ anarchist movements. The investigation of Spanish anarchist immigrants to Argentina brings into focus three strands of history that join these two countries and their seemingly disparate worlds. First is the significance of population movements as fluid choices by individuals that impact the development of ideas and institutions in the country of origin and the country of settlement. My approach uses biography and labor, institutional, and intellectual history to understand the lives of anarchist migrants whose mobility generated bonds powerful enough to create a transnational anarchism. Individuals from several countries forged these interpersonal relationships through the experience of migration and the working conditions they encountered, creating one of Argentina’s most powerful labor federations. This perspective expands on the work of Delsey Deacon, Penny Russell, and Angela Woollacott, who use the mobility of individuals rather than the nation as their frame of reference. Using multiple approaches (economic, cultural, political, and personal) that emphasize the various influences that make national boundaries less meaningful, these authors note that those who have resided in more than one country embody “connections and movements that have preceded, transcended or exceeded national boundaries.”1 Many of the anarchists identified in this study moved back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, and their migrations connected Spain and Argentina through shared ideas and organizational networks. Their individual political ideas and activities shaped thinking and actions in both locales while generating new links between them. Their physical journeys, in the words of David Berry and Constance Bantman, reflect journeys of the mind.2 When Julio Camba was deported to Spain in 1902 as a result of the Residency Law, he found out how much he had changed since he left his native land for Argentina four years earlier. He returned espousing a synthesis of individualist anarchism (following the ideas of Peter Kropotkin) and the collectivist anarchism (looking to the ideas of Mikhail Bakunin) that had divided Spanish anarchists. In 1900, eleven-year-old Juana Rouco Buela came to Argentina

2 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Introduction

from Spain; she developed into a passionate supporter of anarchists. At age eighteen, she was deported and met with Federica Montseny, one of Spain’s leading women anarchists. Rouco Buela never forgot that meeting and when she returned to Argentina, she continued the mixture of feminism and anarchism she had learned from Montseny. Camba and Rouco Buela were two of nearly 1.5 million Spaniards who left their homeland hoping to make better lives for themselves in Argentina between 1871 and 1914. Some Spaniards emigrated because they could not obtain land or were unemployed or because wages in Argentina were higher than in much of Spain. Contrary to the conclusions of Timothy J. Hatton and Jeffrey G. Williamson, my research shows that population growth in Spain was not a factor that drove emigration.3 In discussing an “emigration cycle” that resulted from demographic and economic forces, they attribute mass migration from Europe in the late nineteenth century to a confluence of an increase in population within a country or region and the availability of better wages abroad. Hatton and Williamson mention the importance of friends and relatives but do not consider the continuing strength of the relationships that bound many expatriates to their native lands. Influential Spanish anarchists Ricardo Mella and Anselmo Lorenzo contributed to the Argentine anarchist weekly La Protesta Humana in the 1890s. Fernando Po and Gregorio Inglán y Lafarga, anarchist immigrants who had been active in Spain, held important posts at the founding of the Federación Anarquista Argentina (FOA) in 1901. These examples demonstrate how anarchists shared newspapers, membership in labor organizations, and personal ties across the Atlantic Ocean. Douglas S. Massey et al. also attribute economic factors to emigration. They describe neoclassical economic theories and other approaches relating to the relative growth of capital markets and availability of labor within broader world systems.4 Massey and his coauthors recognize that individuals who have moved once, either within their own country or abroad, are more likely to migrate again. José María Montero left Spain to look for work in the United States, where he worked in an automobile factory in Detroit. He subsequently returned to Spain before heading to Argentina. Though Argentina’s need for labor unquestionably affected immigration, one of the most significant findings of this study is that political circumstances in Spain and Argentina led many anarchists to flee Spain or return as conditions changed. Anarchist militants Rafael Roca, Pedro Esteve, and Indalecio Cuadrado left Spain as a consequence of political circumstances at the end of the nineteenth century and continued as militants in Argentina. José Prat and Antonio Rosado resided for a time in Argentina but returned to Spain when the political climate there changed.

3 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Introduction

Blanca Sánchez-Alonso focuses specifically on the significance of Spanish regional variations on emigration, studying the effects of wealth, literacy, income, and urbanization.5 These are important factors, although my research shows that it is difficult to identify emigrants’ regions of origin from ports of embarkation alone. Most Spanish emigrants left through Vigo and La Coruña in Galicia. An emigrant from Andalusia in the south might take a train to Vigo and then a ship to the Americas. Likewise, returning immigrants might arrive in Vigo before traveling by train to their village of origin. My research recognizes that Spanish regionalism affected the labor movement but is less significant in anarchist migrations. Regional variations influenced migrations within Spain, although returning migrants almost always sought to go back to their villages of origin. Sánchez-Alonso does touch on return migration, but only in regard to fewer economic prospects abroad, rather than a broader perspective of economic and political circumstances available to migrants that I emphasize. This study also explores the supranational/transnational connections through migrations and return that are affected by national events but advanced without regard to national boundaries. Returning immigrants often chose destinations based on plans that did not assume permanent residence abroad or the breaking of ties with their native land. The immigrant experience was not a single act but a process that could include a return to Spain, voluntary or not. Between 1871 and 1914, Argentina received almost 5 million immigrants, but 2.5 million people then emigrated to other countries. Thus, nearly half of all immigrants to Argentina did not remain permanently.6 These aspects of migration caused individuals continuously to evaluate their goals and the opportunities available in their new country, their native lands, or elsewhere. Adrián Troitiño worked as a baker in Argentina but also helped laborers in Montevideo. When he was deported to Cadiz, Uruguayan workers helped pay his way to Montevideo, where he became a key leader in the country’s anarchist movement. He was instrumental in helping others deported from Argentina jump ship in Montevideo. In the mid-twentieth century, Frank Thistlethwaite criticized the parochial nature of immigration research among American and European historians, which created what he called “a salt-water curtain”: the Atlantic was a barrier not to be breached.7 Much has been done since Thistlethwaite coined the phrase, yet dynamic links between the Americas and Europe still have escaped scrutiny. Return migration—individuals who did not remain abroad but went back to their native lands—is an integral part of the migration story. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Argentina deported Spaniards Benjamín García, Julio Camba, Miguel Ríos, Manuel Lago, Antonio Navarro, Ramón Antoñeda, José

4 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Introduction

Pañeda, Guido Monachessi, José Pérez, Alfonso García de la Mata, and Manuel Lourido. Some subsequently returned to Argentina, but others remained in Spain as anarchist activists. Mark Wyman’s Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880–1930 does an excellent job of describing the variety of immigrants who chose to return home. However, he focuses exclusively on immigrants to the United States. His statistics show that many immigrants to the United States never planned to remain permanently abroad.8 These Atlantic journeys constituted extensions of centuries-old migrations within Europe that had drawn labor from one region to another for a limited time. But Wyman does not track returnees back in Europe. In contrast, I follow the activities of Antonio Loredo and Manuel Villar, who continued to serve as editors in the anarchist press after returning to Spain, showing their influence on Spanish anarchists. David Gregory has demonstrated the importance of returned migrants in Spain. In Andalusia, he writes, “the majority of the leaders of the new independent unions in rural areas are returned emigrants.”9 However, he does not pursue the link between immigrants’ experiences abroad and their activities after returning. The transnational perspective provided by the stories of anarchist migrants H. Grau and Joaquín Hucha, who wrote for the anarchist press in both Argentina and Spain, demonstrates how they helped knit together the two countries’ movements. Spanish anarchists who immigrated to Argentina carried with them ideas and experiences from their previous activities. In some cases, this baggage included antagonisms over differences in approaches and ideological emphases. When individualist and collectivist immigrants arrived in Argentina and affiliated with the anarchist movement, these conflicts were renewed. However, because of the different environment and the mixture of immigrants from Italy, France, Ireland, and England, the Argentine anarchist movement altered the nature of these Spanish conflicts. Italian immigrants in Argentina such as Pietro Gori and Errico Malatesta urged a greater emphasis on organization. Antonio Pellicer Paraire’s writings began to reflect a combination of Spanish and Italian ideas and helped in the formation of an Argentine national labor federation. When Argentine authorities deported some of these Spanish militants, this new mixture of ideas and experiences accompanied them and often affected the Spanish movement. Thus, the back-and-forth of individuals and ideas helped to create a trans-Atlantic anarchist movement with what Akira Iriye calls a global consciousness arising from the idea that a wider world exists over and above individual states and national societies.10 José Prat, back in Spain after listening to the debates among Argentine workers, wrote about the dangers syndical-

5 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Introduction

ism posed to the anarchist movement. When the newly formed International Workingmen’s Association of syndicalist, anarchist, and other nonpolitical labor groups met in Amsterdam in 1925, syndicalism became a bone of contention between Argentine and Spanish anarchists. Nevertheless, the Atlantic anarchist community possessed an awareness of common interests and concerns that were not unique to one nation but formed part of a transnational anarchist ideology. Anarchists in all countries sought a revolution. The bonds that united anarchists in Spain and Argentina were the social networks created among migrants. Charles Tilly has explored “trust networks,” which he defines as a specialized form of personal relationships among migrant streams.11 While Tilly focuses on recent migrants and the bond between those in the United States and Peru through remittances, anarchist migrants in the early twentieth century also demonstrate the “solidarity between people at the origins and destinations of migration streams.”12 Enrico Moretti did not identify his approach as transnational when he proposed a “model in which the probability of migrating depends positively on the social networks that link the migrant to that country.”13 He notes the significance of previous immigrants, who provide information, money, and job prospects in the receiving country. The concept of chain migration, or individuals who emigrate, establish themselves, and then bring other family members, is well known and is demonstrated by the experiences of Pellicer Paraire, who had a relative in Argentina; Abad de Santillán, whose father sent for the rest of the family after he was established; and Juana Rouco Buela, who came because an aunt gave her passage to Argentina. However, Moretti expands the concept to include wider networks of friends, a pattern followed by anarchists who were deported back to Spain and welcomed immediately into the Spanish movement. Ramón Palau, for one, reported that he and his fellow deportees received an enthusiastic reception in Barcelona. Militants returning as immigrants and deportees often quickly obtained posts within the Spanish movement because they shared similar goals and knew of conditions in Spain through the anarchist press. Davide Turcato’s article on Italian anarchism highlights the importance of newspapers in anarchist networks.14 He explains how anarchist newspapers around the world helped create a shared ideology of anarchism. This volume highlights the importance of the anarchist press in reporting on economic and social conditions in Spain and Argentina as well as personal experiences shared by returning and deported anarchists. Emilio V. Santolaria wrote about poor working conditions and low wages in Argentina in the Spanish periodical Solidaridad Obrera, and a Buenos Aires paper, La Protesta, printed a series of articles, “Crónica de España,” on economic and social conditions in Spain.

6 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Introduction

When political conditions in Spain changed, some migrants returned, others stayed in Argentina, and still others traveled back and forth between the two countries. Their experience resembled that of the golondrinas (birds of passage), migrants who sought opportunities from the reversed seasons of the northern and southern hemispheres, though the anarchists followed political seasons as well. The Spanish anarchist migrants in this study are like the “transnational activists” identified by Sidney Tarrow.15 The “Nesting Pigeon” lived abroad but returned to engage in local affairs. Antonio Rosado, for one, fled after being arrested for organizing workers in Andalusia, spent two years in Argentina, and then returned to Spain after a general amnesty, continuing to organize workers for the CNT. The “Bird of Passage” resides in the receiving country while organizing and participating in activities against his native government. Abad de Santillán left for Argentina as a child but returned to Spain to study and was influenced by the anarchists he met there. He then went back to Argentina and became an editor of La Protesta, vociferously attacking Spanish anarchists for what he perceived as syndicalist heresies. He sailed again for Spain when the republic offered possibilities for action but left again, disappointed in the Spanish movement. Finally, when faced with Argentina’s military dictatorship, Abad de Santillán headed back to Spain, where he became one of the anarchist leaders during a social revolution and the civil war. Abad de Santillán is one of the best examples of the continuous movement of anarchists and ideas across the Atlantic Ocean, although his leadership positions in both Spain and Argentina were unusual. Finally, this study recognizes the importance of anarchist networks in understanding the relationship of the individual to the state. In Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future, Akira Iriye approaches transnationalism from an international relations perspective. He recounts his development and that of historians in general regarding the place of the nation in history and the advantages of supranational studies. He recognizes the importance of international environmental, business, and nongovernmental organizations in turning historians’ focus away from the state. While both global and transnational approaches look beyond national boundaries to issues relevant to humanity as a whole, transnational history is unique in exploring nonnational entities and connections. While this book focuses on anarchist organizations as nonnational entities, my perspective is binational rather than global. Although some of these migrants traveled to several countries, the majority went back and forth between Spain and Argentina. Their consciousness as anarchists encompassed values that rose beyond citizenship in a particular country. Newspaper articles in Barcelona and Buenos Aires reported on re-

7 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Introduction

pression in both countries, and Spain’s execution of educator Francisco Ferrer sparked demonstrations in protest in Buenos Aires. Anarchists believed in federations of groups and identified countries as regions rather than nations. They contested government structures wherever they lived and were less likely to exhibit a sense of patriotism. Nevertheless, their identity as Spaniards was not totally obliterated by migration, and many Spanish anarchists sought to participate in the anarchist revolution of 1936, viewing it as an accomplishment of Spanish goals as well as world revolution. Some of these anarchists returned voluntarily to Spain, while others were deported from Argentina during the 1930s. When Abad de Santillán formed a new affinity group within the FAI in Spain, he was joined by Idelfonso González, who had been deported from Argentina, and Fidel Miró who returned to Spain from the Caribbean. These men joined together as revolutionaries, not just Spaniards who had returned to fight for their country. Spanish and Argentine anarchists looked to a revolutionary future regardless of their country of residence, since the ideology of anarchism does not recognize the legitimacy of the political nation-state. Spain’s earliest anarchist federation was the Spanish Regional Federation, and Argentina’s anarchist federation used the term region rather than nation. This approach gave rise to some tension with individuals who felt strong ties to their country of birth or their country of residence. At the end of their lives, José María Montero and Abad de Santillán returned to their native Spain to die. Anarchists in Spain who had not experienced the transnational migration did not welcome advice or interference by Argentine anarchists, and although Jacobo Maguid received an important post in Spain, he was called “the Argentine” to emphasize his foreign birth. Emilio López Arango and other anarchists in Argentina, who experienced a fusion of ideas brought by immigrants from many countries, saw their dynamic movement as superior to anarchist movements in Europe. Writing to Abad de Santillán at the International Workingmen’s Association Congress, Enrique Nido warned that Ángel Pestaña of the CNT was “a troublemaker.” An individual who migrates from one country to another must balance the transnational and the nation. To what extent does mobility create another plane of awareness? To what extent does the individual continue to live in the Old World through periodicals, social and sports clubs, and personal associations? The Spanish anarchists studied here, especially Abad de Santillán, demonstrate an awareness of ideological and organizational contacts that transcends one nation. But they also show their devotion to the land of their birth. Abad de Santillán saw himself as both Spanish and Argentine, presenting a fine distinction. His aspirations for an anarchist revolution were global. His participation in a fluid

8 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Introduction

anarchist movement that spanned the Atlantic Ocean was transnational. And his influence in Spain during the 1930s reflected his comrades’ acceptance of him as a native Spaniard. This study demonstrates the power of personal and transnational ties among Spanish anarchist migrants. An analysis of anarchist immigrants and their transnational social, institutional, and personal networks also helps clarify interpretations of Spanish and Argentine history that are not well defined when isolated in a national history. Venerable histories of Spanish anarchism such as those by Murray Bookchin, Juan Gómez Casas, and Juan José Morato have failed to explore the link between Spanish and Argentine anarchism and how the two sides of the Atlantic influenced each other.16 These works concentrate on events in Spain without recognizing the importance of immigrants coming home from Argentina. After being deported, E. Reyes wrote to La Protesta that he was greeted by a large crowd at the port in Vigo. He then toured Spain, denouncing the Argentine government. Angel Smith’s excellent study on the Catalan labor movement also does not include any recognition of the role played by Spanish anarchists returning from Argentina.17 Chris Ealham refers to Abad de Santillán’s and Manuel Villar’s roles in Spain in the 1930s but does not account for the two men’s experiences in Argentina.18 Both were profoundly affected by the military coup in 1930 and by the feuding anarchist factions’ inability to unite to oppose the regime. Julián Casanova is imprecise when he identifies a new generation of anarcho-syndicalist leaders in the CNT, including Antonio Loredo. Loredo had been deported from Argentina, where he supported anarcho-communism against syndicalism among Argentine unions. Loredo’s writings after returning to Spain suggest that he was not a supporter of syndicalism within the CNT, and to include him with Ángel Pestaña as an anarcho-syndicalist ignores the events within the anarchist movement that shaped Loredo.19 Studies of anarchism in Argentina recognize the importance of Spanish immigrants but have overlooked the significance of those deported to Spain and of Argentine anarchists’ critique of the influence of syndicalism in the Spanish movement.20 José Moya’s extensive study of Spanish immigrants to Argentina shows that structural changes such as railroads and steamships played a large role in stimulating immigration.21 But he also states that letters from immigrants abroad to friends and relatives back home influenced many Spaniards to leave in search of better opportunities. However, his study focuses only on immigrants’ impact on Argentina’s history. Moya recognizes that immigrants who returned from Argentina with wealth and stories of success had a great effect on immigration, but he overlooks immigrants who were deported from

9 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Introduction

Argentina with tales of police repression and unemployment. In 1910, Antonio Zamboni was deported to Barcelona, where he wrote for Tierra y Libertad on Argentine anarchists’ response to repression after 1902. Yet, although returnees influenced some Spaniards to remain in Spain and agitate for better conditions in their native land, many continued to seek better opportunities abroad. Recent works on anarchism have recognized the transnational aspects of the anarchist movement as well as the blending of labor and social issues. Benedict Anderson describes the peregrinations of anarchists such as Catalan Fernando Tarrida del Mármol, who moved between France and Spain, and Michele Angiolillo, an Italian anarchist who spent time in France, Belgium, England, and Spain, where he assassinated Prime Minister Cánovas del Castillo.22 Anderson argues that connections among revolutionary groups and individuals were independent of the specific nation. My study affirms Anderson’s thesis, especially in the late nineteenth century, when immigrants in Argentina from many countries—Victoriano San José, Ettore Mattei, Emilio Piette, and John Creaghe—worked together to oppose the state and its institutions. A global perspective on the era of mass migrations (1870–1915) permits a focus on “not only national and local context but on supranational connections and multidirectional flows of the ideas, people, finances and organizational structures that gave rise to these movements,” according to Steven Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt.23 I emphasize these multidirectional flows in focusing on anarchist movements in both Spain and Argentina and their interconnections. As Spanish immigrants moved between Spain and Argentina depending on the opportunities and the circumstances available in each country, their experiences demonstrate how immigrants carefully planned their moves based on assessments of which country would provide the most benefits at a given time. Connections across continents enabled these activists to influence events on both sides of the Atlantic. Repression in late-nineteenth-century Spain drove anarchists abroad, often to Argentina, where they created the country’s most important labor organization, the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA). Facing increasing strike activity in the early twentieth century, the Argentine government passed laws to restrict anarchists and deported many back to Spain, where they participated in the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), which became the country’s most important labor movement. In the 1920s, Miguel Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship repressed Spanish anarchism, leading to a transnational debate over the correct response. Facing challenges from syndicalist groups that favored some cooperation with the state, Argentine anarchists argued that syndicalist tendencies weakened the Spanish movement. In part, this pressure helped bring about the creation of the Federación Anarquista

10 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Introduction

Ibérica (FAI), a coalition of affinity groups that proposed strengthening the ideological purity of the Spanish movement. Argentina’s 1930 military coup crippled the anarchist movement, leading to the deportation of hundreds of activists and forcing others to flee to Spain, where the dictatorship had ended and the monarchy had given way to a new republic. As the circumstances of anarchists in Argentina changed, migrations to Spain increased. There is no way fully to understand the progression of anarchist ideas and the nature of the movements in these two countries without a detailed study of the movement of anarchist migrants and the transnational networks they developed. This study explores these questions about the state and the transnational character of migrations that establish an extrastate dimension. As a work of history, this volume balances individual lives and experiences with national and international events over a period of seventy-two years. But it also uses the concept of transnationalism to weave the story of population movements between Spain and Argentina into a perspective on how humans can retain ties to more than one country and how their migrations can influence the history of multiple countries. According to Donna Gabaccia, this transnational focus creates a “nomadology,” a term she took from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who have criticized national migration historiography.24 Nomadology recognizes the significance of the individual and the group as a unit itself rather than as a subset of the history of the nation. My emphasis on the lives of individual migrants broadens our attention from strictly national issues such as labor federations and government repression to the contacts among individuals who travel back and forth between Spain and Argentina. Such transnational migration studies can pose challenges because they do not necessarily give the same perspective as national studies and may not support the emphasis on the state. In this respect, the choice of anarchist immigrants seems fitting. Spanish anarchists regarded their migrations as tactics toward a goal rather than the goal itself. Organization of the Book

Chapter 1 provides a short history of anarchism and the ideas of Mikhail Bakunin, giving an overview of the origins and ideas of anarchism and its impact on Spain. It discusses the turbulent late nineteenth century in Spain, the growth of the Spanish Regional Federation, and the beginnings of immigration to Argentina, demonstrating the movement of people between these two countries. Chapter 2 explores the Spanish anarchist movement and its link to emigration through the lives of Antonio Pellicer Paraire, José Prat, and Gregorio

11 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Introduction

Inglán y Lafarga. Their travels, experiences, and influence link the anarchist movements in Spain and in Argentina. Some Italian and Spanish and a few French immigrants had been familiar with or participants in European anarchist movements. Many had struggled with internecine conflicts before coming to Argentina and brought these quarrels with them. But in a new environment with mixtures of peoples and ideas from many areas, they began to integrate different notions into a truly Argentine anarchism that became very dynamic at the turn of the twentieth century. Chapter 3 focuses on the anarchist movement in Argentina to 1910, as its ties to Spain were reinforced through deportations from Argentina as well as continued immigration from Spain. After strikes and labor unrest in 1902, the Argentine government passed the Residency Law, which allowed the deportation of unruly immigrants. Deportations of anarchists then occurred sporadically until the 1930s. Many deported writers, editors, and activists remained active after returning to Spain. Juana Rouco Buela, deported in 1907 for her role in an anarchist feminist organization, took part in the movement in Spain before returning surreptitiously to Argentina. Antonio Loredo had been a member of the editorial board of the anarchist daily La Protesta prior to his 1909 deportation and later surfaced as an editor of Barcelona’s influential anarchist newspaper, Tierra y Libertad. These deportations of Spanish anarchists show not only that population movements can be involuntary as well as voluntary but also that these returnees brought experiences and ideas from Argentina. Chapter 4 details the relationship between the anarchist movements in Argentina and Spain from 1910 to 1918, when World War I and the Russian Revolution brought serious challenges to the anarchist movement. Violence and labor unrest leading up to the 1910 centennial of Argentine independence caused the government to pass a new social defense law that further restricted radical immigrants and increased deportations. At the same time, Spanish anarchists created the CNT, which became the country’s most powerful and important labor federation through the 1930s. However, the Argentine anarchist movement experienced a serious rupture at a 1915 meeting of unions, and the FORA, which had guided the movement since the beginning of the century, became weakened. World War I had virtually ended immigration from Spain to Argentina, and the new group of anarchists included some Argentine natives. In this period of personal and ideological rivalries, a branch of the old federation became the FORA V. It emerged as champion of what it called a “purer” anarchism and challenged the ideology of the Spanish movement’s leaders. Chapter 5 describes the transnational conflict between the Argentine FORA and the Spanish CNT during the 1920s, when the administration of Hipólito

12 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Introduction

Yrigoyen in Argentina presented opportunities for anarchists but the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera in Spain repressed the movement there. The 1922 creation of the International Workingmen’s Association gave Abad de Santillán a forum in which to present the American emphasis on antipolitical anarchism and oppose the reformist leadership of Ángel Pestaña and Salvador Seguí in Spain. The Spanish created a new leadership group, the FAI, to serve as an ideological guide to the CNT, much as La Protesta’s editorial group had provided leadership within the FORA. These developments illustrate how the back-and-forth nature of population movements influenced anarchist organizations in both nations. Chapter 6 presents a history of the political and social climates of Spain and Argentina after 1930. A military coup led by General José Félix Uriburu created a new political climate in Argentina, as the new government hunted down, arrested, and deported anarchists. Abad de Santillán fled Argentina and eventually moved to Spain. Argentina deported hundreds of other Spaniards, most notably Manuel Villar, who became important in the anarchist movement in Spain before and during the civil war. At the same time, the end of Spain’s military dictatorship, the abdication of the monarch, and the creation of a parliamentary republic offered new hope to anarchists there. Consequently, the changing political climate in Argentina forced some Spanish-born anarchist émigrés back to Spain. Chapter 7 looks at the significance of returning immigrants and the importance of the Argentine anarchist movement during the Second Spanish Republic and in the anarchist revolution that transformed Catalonia in 1936. Abad de Santillán’s After the Revolution (1936) gave a detailed account of the organization of an anarchist society. In July 1936, workers in Barcelona armed themselves and defeated the military in that city before beginning a social revolution that implemented many of the ideas expressed in Abad de Santillán’s book. Chapter 8 focuses on Spanish anarchist immigrants and Argentine anarchists during the civil war and the experience of refugees from Spain. Abad de Santillán served on the powerful Antifascist Militias Committee, while Villar edited Solidaridad Obrera, an important anarchist periodical. Many other Spaniards returned from Argentina to participate in the civil war, among them José María Montero and Antonio Casanova. While these individuals were only a small number of those fighting in the war, their experience in Argentina and their enthusiasm for the social revolution at the outbreak of the civil war made them staunch supporters of the republican cause. Chapter 9 provides information about the lives of refugees who fled from Spain in 1939 and evaluates the significance of this transnational history on

13 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Introduction

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migration studies as well as Spanish and Argentine history. Population movements transfer more than just individual immigrants. They also transmit ideas from one nation to another. And since migration sometimes leads to a return, those ideas can come back, altered by experiences abroad, and affect the country of origin. If Argentina became a nation of immigrants, Spain became a nation whose returning immigrants helped to shape its history.

14 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Chapter 1

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Origins of the Spanish Anarchist Movement in the Nineteenth Century

N i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u ry S pa i n experienced sporadic outbursts of violence against the Crown, uneven economic growth, and an increasingly tenuous hold on its colonies. The reign of Isabella II, from the regency of her mother, María Christina in 1833 to her overthrow in 1868, led to an increasingly powerful central state propped up by the army. “Henceforth, no institution would remain outside the ambit of the state or arm of the law, not even the Church.”1 Two countercurrents emerged in the mid- to late nineteenth century: regionalism in many forms, and the initiation of an organized labor movement influenced by the First International. The increasing tension within the First International over personal and ideological difference between Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin brought Giuseppe Fanelli to Spain to share the ideas of anarchism and recruit support for Bakunin. This chapter traces the growth of Spain’s anarchist movement and shows immigration’s importance for labor as well as for militants fleeing repression. Growth of Anarchism in Spain

Several currents of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thought merged in the development of the Spanish anarchist movement. William Godwin, an English writer considered the father of philosophical anarchism, responded to the events of the French Revolution with concern over the role of the state.

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 1

He valued individual liberty and believed that education that allowed students to pursue freely their own interests and did not impose any doctrine or dogma would result in rational humans who did not need coercion to live in harmony with others. Godwin argued that private property should be abolished because it restricted humans. He even said that individuals should not be restricted by the convention of marriage in the pursuit of love. In short, Godwin was philosophically an anarchist. The term anarchy derives from the Greek an-archos, “without a leader.” Anarchy, in Godwin’s mind, did not mean disorder or chaos. Instead, it referred to a state of order established voluntarily by individuals rather than imposed on them. Godwin’s major work, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) reflected his suspicions that even a revolutionary state such as France was inimical to the liberties of individuals. The French Revolution brought many new terms into the political vocabulary. Terrorism came from the reign of terror, a policy of the Committee of Public Safety to destroy enemies of the revolution and, eventually, of its leader, Maximilien Robespierre. While terrorism in the twenty-first century has come to mean individuals committing criminal acts of violence to further their cause, its original meaning and purpose was to further the goals of the state and its leadership. Enemies of the French revolutionary state were called anarchists, a term Robespierre coined “to attack those people on the left whom he had used for his own ends but whom he was determined to be rid of.”2 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a French writer and social theorist, also reacted to the French Revolution and the question of individual liberty. He pursued the idea that one’s labor, not government, was the basis for all social organization. In his most famous work, Proudhon asked, “What is property?” His answer, “Property is theft,” became one of the intellectual foundations of modern anarchism. Property, in the form of capital or land, whose owners were supported by the state, denied workers their fair share, claimed Proudhon. This emphasis on the state’s economic foundation made anarchism an anticapitalist movement that rivaled socialism for support among members of the nineteenth-century working class. By far one of the most significant individuals in the development of European anarchism during this period was Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian noble. Bakunin met and talked with Proudhon while in France in the 1840s. Arrested in Russia and condemned to death for his support of revolution, Bakunin was instead exiled to Siberia in 1857. Four years later, he escaped to Japan and then traveled on to San Francisco and New York before finally arriving in London at the end of 1861. In 1865, Bakunin moved to Naples, where he founded the first of his revolutionary organizations, the International Brotherhood. In 1868,

16 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Origins of the Spanish Anarchist Movement

he created the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy but agreed to dissolve it to join the International Workingmen’s Association (known as the International) later that year. Bakunin and Marx did not get along. Bakunin mistrusted Marx and his desire to have workers control the state. Bakunin believed that the greatest force for tyranny was the state itself and thought workers themselves should collectivize without formal organizations created by socialists. Bakunin wanted workers to create their own society in “a spontaneous, formidable, passionate, energetic, anarchic, destructive, and savage uprising of the popular masses.”3 Marx felt Bakunin was too disorganized and accused him of maintaining the separate International Alliance.4 In 1872, the two great leaders of the proletarian movement had a falling-out, and Bakunin was expelled from the International. Many members of the organization left with him, and the organization effectively ceased to exist. Bakunin died in 1876, but his movement continued in several countries, including Spain. That country’s Pellicer family contributed greatly to the development of anarchism there and, through the immigration of Antonio Pellicer Paraire, in Argentina as well. Antonio Pellicer Paraire was born in Barcelona on February 23, 1851. As a youth, he was apprenticed to a typesetter, and he practiced that trade for much of his life. He became familiar with anarchist thought because many typesetters—skilled craftsmen who valued their independence and feared the changes of the Industrial Revolution— were influenced by Bakunin and his ideas. Antonio’s uncle, José Luis Pellicer, and cousin, Rafael Farga Pellicer, who later went to Switzerland to meet directly with Bakunin, numbered among Spain’s first anarchists. Pellicer Paraire and his family first heard Fanelli, Bakunin’s Italian emissary, when he came to Spain to gain adherents for the Alliance for Social Democracy in 1868. Fanelli spoke only French and Italian and could not communicate easily with most of his listeners. He went first to Madrid and then on to Barcelona, where he met Farga Pellicer, who spoke French. According to Anselmo Lorenzo, another of the founders of the Spanish anarchist movement, There was Farga Pellicer—in the Catalan Athenaeum—illuminating the office with the luster of his stare, cheering it with the candidness of his smile, animating everyone with his constant and thoughtful activity. He was of medium height, well built, with a reddish face, blond hair, and beard. His voice was strong and well modulated to express clearly what he thought. He chose his words well, especially when he spoke Castilian, using the neologisms he created with great ease and propriety to express better what he wished to say.5

17 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Chapter 1

Farga Pellicer was impressed with both Fanelli and Bakunin’s ideas, and in 1869, Farga Pellicer joined with Gaspar Sentiñon, José García Viñas, Trinidad Soriano, and Antonio González Meneses to create the International’s official Barcelona section. Farga Pellicer and Bakunin corresponded, and in September 1869, the Spaniard traveled to Basel, Switzerland, to attend the meeting of the International. There, Bakunin charmed Farga Pellicer personally and brought him into the International Brotherhood, an alliance of militants he maintained in defiance of Marx and the International. Murray Bookchin, an American libertarian writer, describes the International Brotherhood as a “secret organization of anarchist militants.”6 According to Bookchin, Bakunin never bothered to reconcile his secret organization with his distaste for organizations in general, believing that he and his associates were honest in their desire to help the anarchist cause and were not seeking power for themselves. Critics of anarchism have often noted this contradiction, but the concept survived in Spain and in Argentina, where small groups of dedicated anarchists attempted to keep the anarchist movement free from reformist tendencies and political activities.

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Spain in the Late Nineteenth Century

Several strains of federalism emerged from the individualism in Andalusia, the fueros (local autonomy derived from Medieval Spanish towns), and separatist sentiments in the Basque Provinces and in Catalonia. This blend allowed anarchist ideas of individual liberty to join in a multifaceted opposition to Spain’s central government. In 1868, Francisco Pi y Margall translated Proudhon’s book on federalism, Du principe fédératif, into Spanish, providing the country with the theoretical background for republican ideas on federalism. Pi y Margall’s federalism thus had an impact on Spanish anarchists. “Consciously or unconsciously, the doctrines of Proudhon make up the creed of the majority of people in Spain, so that, in one form or another, in every Spaniard you will find a federalist,” said Ricardo Mella, one of the early theoreticians of the Spanish anarchist movement.7 While most federalists were regionalists rather than anarchists, the two groups became allies in the chaotic period between the abdication of Queen Isabella II in 1868 and the restoration of her son, King Alfonso XII, in 1875. Civil war, division, and scandal had weakened the Spanish central government and encouraged a variety of opposition movements. Queen Isabella II had come to the throne of Spain as a child in 1833. She had relied on the military to keep the supporters of her Uncle Carlos, the Carlists, from attempting to

18 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Origins of the Spanish Anarchist Movement

overthrow her. Isabella’s reign was long, but her personal life was dissolute, her mother was implicated in a railroad scandal, and she ultimately lost the support of most of her subjects. She created a crisis by refusing to accommodate reformists from the Progressive Party, pushing them into an alliance with the Democratic Party and the military. In the 1860s, General Juan Prim allied the military with the growing number of politicians who were willing to remove Isabella from power. The issue that divided the conspirators was what to do after deposing Isabella. Prim pushed ahead and overthrew Isabella in a September 1868 army coup. Isabella went into exile in France, and the military rejected members of her family as candidates for monarch. The Revolution of 1868 brought a period of both hope and chaos. It led to political instability, but it also allowed workers and the middle class to participate in government in ways that had been previously denied. For one brief moment, Spain’s nascent anarchist movement found itself with the support of a wide range of regional federalists in seeking greater liberties for Spaniards. This situation led to the creation of the first anarchist organization in Spain and then to its destruction. Nevertheless, once established on Spanish soil, the ideas of anarchism and the goals of liberty for peasants and workers remained powerful for the next seventy years. The members of the coalition that overthrew Isabella agreed only on creating a Constituent Cortes (parliament) that would begin writing a new constitution. They remained divided on issues of religion, form of government, and economic policies. General Francisco Serrano served as regent after September 1868, and General Prim became prime minister. Under their leadership, the Constituent Cortes produced the new constitution in 1869, establishing a constitutional monarchy. Progressive Party members, Liberal Unionists, and Democrats participated in the creation of the new constitution, but some Democrats, including Pi y Margall, who wanted an end to the monarchy in Spain, bolted their party and established a new Republican Party. Raymond Carr believes that by that early date, the Republicans already exhibited a preference for “extreme federalism”—Pi y Margall’s idea for a union of cantons in Spain not unlike that in Switzerland.8 This Republican notion of regional autonomy appealed to both members of the middle class and workers in Barcelona and throughout Catalonia. The Spanish government urgently sought a new king from among Europe’s many royal dynasties, but no viable candidate emerged. In September 1869, the Republicans rebelled, refusing to accept the new constitution. The rebellion was quickly put down, but other groups, including the Internationalists, who were members of the organization dominated by anarchists, also distanced

19 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Chapter 1

themselves from this government. The Internationalists represented a mixture of artisan and working-class Spaniards, some of whom supported the Democrats or later the Republicans in opposing the policies of the recently exiled queen. Faced with a new monarchy, the Internationalists reacted against the government.

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Creation of the Spanish Regional Federation

Spanish workers suffered from long hours and poor working conditions. Many felt that the changes in government had little impact on their plight. In June 1870, 150 delegates representing Spanish laborers met at the Teatro del Circo in Barcelona and created the Federación Regional Española (Spanish Regional Federation). Key to the success of the Spanish movement was its connection to the working class. At the meeting they heard about the misery of Spanish workers: “The report of Bove, a Barcelona textile worker, is typical. The workers, he tells us, are exploited from five in the morning to late at night. Women work from ten to fifteen hours for less than a dollar, and in some factories, for as much as eighteen hours for a little more than a dollar.”9 Miserable conditions had led many Spanish workers to migrate to the industrializing cities in the north of the country, while others migrated abroad. But now that Fanelli had brought Bakunin’s ideas of revolution, Spanish workers and artisans eagerly sought to bring about change. Farga Pellicer and other anarchists attempted to shape the movement according to Bakunin’s ideas. The participants in the Spanish Regional Federation represented several factions. Led by Anselmo Lorenzo, who supported Bakunin, the Madrid section contained nearly two thousand individuals, among them liberals, Masons, and mutual aid supporters. The Barcelona section contained workers who belonged to the Federal Center of Workers Societies. The Federal Center had cooperated with Republicans in support of a federal republic, and its members were not adverse to political participation. These differences mirrored the divisions within the International Workingmen’s Association between the followers of Marx and those of Bakunin. The constituent congress of the Spanish Regional Federation in Barcelona produced mixed results, reflecting its disparate membership. Farga Pellicer opened the congress by speaking out against the state and the church. He knew of the divisions among the participants but wanted to push forward with a broad program that would appeal to many Spaniards. The key issue proved to be the organization’s stance toward political participation. Farga Pellicer and the anarchists opposed any participation, but members of the congress decided

20 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Origins of the Spanish Anarchist Movement

to allow individuals to choose whether to participate. However, according to Bookchin, the congress’s most important achievement was the creation of a dual structure for the Spanish Section of the International.10 Spanish workers were to be organized by trade as well as by locality. Workers within the same industry would be organized into unions that would seek to redress grievances associated with the workplace. Workers within the same locality would become members of a local organization, irrespective of occupation, that would seek to coordinate economic and social activities within the locality. Of course, all of these local organizations would federate with regional and national organizations to cover the entire country. This apolitical federalism fit well with Republicans’ growing demand for a federal republic. The growth of the Spanish Regional Federation continued through 1870 and into 1871. However, the widening rift between Bakunin and Marx became unbridgeable during the September 1871 London Conference. The key issue there was the same one skirted in the congress in Barcelona: whether to participate actively in the political process. The Marxists demanded political participation, and the Bakuninists rejected it. Marx’s son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, traveled to Spain in December 1871 to support Marx’s followers, known as the Authoritarians. This group opposed Bakunin’s Alliance of Social Democracy, to which Farga Pellicer and other Spanish leaders belonged. Bakunin eventually dissolved the Alliance. Spanish Bakuninists retaliated by expelling Marx’s followers from their organization. The issue was resolved in the Hague in September 1872, when Bakunin was expelled from the International. The split of the movement in Spain had mirrored that of the International and weakened the workers’ organizations. An alternative for workers in Spain who lacked a strong labor organization was emigration. Spanish workers might find excitement as well as economic opportunity abroad. When the Spanish Federation was established in 1870, Pellicer Paraire became secretary to the typographers’ section. But in 1871, he escaped his country’s political and organizational conflicts by emigrating: “From the time I was twenty until I was twenty-four, I traveled through Mexico, Cuba, and the United States, always with my typesetting equipment in hand as my stock-in-trade,” he later wrote.11 He earned enough money to survive and indulge his “desire to see and to learn.”12 While in New York, Pellicer Paraire took advantage of the Catalan population residing there to help establish a Catalan-language periodical, La Llumanera.13 After four years abroad, Pellicer Paraire became tired of traveling and stowed away on a ship bound for Spain. Midway through the voyage, he presented himself to the captain and asked for compassion; he then worked off his passage in the ship’s galley.

21 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 1

Pellicer Paraire’s experience as an immigrant brought out four aspects of international migrations. First, the variety of motives: he did not escape Spain for economic reasons, since the country experienced a period of economic expansion from the 1870s until the late 1880s. Instead, Pellicer Paraire wanted to see the world and experience life abroad. The second issue is that of immigration policies. Since the Spanish government encouraged immigration to the colony of Cuba, Pellicer Paraire could begin there before moving on to Mexico and the United States. Third, in the United States, he chose to live and work among Catalan immigrants, indicating the importance of networks among immigrants. Finally, Pellicer Paraire returned to Spain, like other immigrants who did not want to remain abroad permanently and remained active among other Spaniards. Pellicer Paraire knew when he returned in 1875 that great changes had taken place in Spain. Between 1868 and 1875, the Spanish government had gone from a constitutional monarchy to a republic and then to a renewed Bourbon monarchy. Amadeo of Savoy accepted the throne in October 1870 and made arrangements to come to Spain. On the day he arrived, his greatest supporter, General Prim, was assassinated. Prim’s death foreshadowed the lack of support for Amadeo among many groups of Spaniards. The new king was genuinely concerned with creating a government that would provide stability and promote liberal values, but he faced the outbreak of a third Carlist War in the north in 1870 and was saddled with a fractious coalition that fell apart by 1871. When Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla became the first Progressive prime minister, his party split into two factions. A series of governments followed: Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, followed by General Serrano in 1872, and then Ruiz Zorrilla again. In February 1873, Amadeo abdicated the throne and left Spain. With no king and no royal family ready to accept the throne for one of its members, Spain, by default, became a republic. By 1873, the Internationalists had broken into factions, and the anarchists had little interest in a republican government. They had also lost the support of much of the working class. “The workers [in Barcelona] were indifferent to the Internationalists’ pleas for revolutionary strikes and, after the failures of 1869, they had lost interest in the schemes of the artisan intellectuals of Catalanism.”14 The first president of the Spanish Republic, Estanislao Figuras, lasted until April 1873, when Pi y Margall assumed the presidency. Pi y Margall hoped to preside over a nation that freely adopted a federal structure. But opposition from centralists, Carlists, and monarchists made Pi y Margall’s vision of a nation of autonomous regions unlikely. When he resigned in July 1873, republican cantonalist uprisings erupted all over southern and eastern Spain.

22 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Origins of the Spanish Anarchist Movement

Most supporters of these cantonalist uprisings were regionalist factions that feared a central republic. However, joining them in an attack on the government were Internationalists throughout the south. The division of the Spanish movement into Marxist and Bakuninist factions continued. But in December 1872, Farga Pellicer and González Morago organized a conference in Córdoba that was attended by fifty-four delegates representing twenty thousand members. This conference asserted the Bakuninist preference for autonomy of member organizations. The federal council held no coercive power over the membership. Instead, it acted as a statistical bureau, with no paid functionaries. According to Gerald Brenan, the major resolutions at this congress included demands for “universal education, the eight-hour day and improved sanitation in factories. This, as we shall see, was simply the programme of Pi y Margall’s Federals.”15 Antigovernment violence broke out in Seville, Málaga, Cartagena, and Valencia on July 19, 1873. General Manuel Pavía took Seville for the government after two days of fighting; battles continued in many other cities for nearly two weeks. The Internationalists shared some of the goals of the cantonalists but had little influence on these events except in the town of Alcoy, south of Valencia on Spain’s eastern coast. There, a general strike began July 7, and the police fired on a crowd of workers, who stormed City Hall two days later. The workers disarmed the police and killed the mayor. A Welfare Committee was appointed to maintain order and to negotiate a surrender to the approaching army. The entire affair lasted only a few days and preceded the outbreaks in major cities. But it was the first time workers had organized against the government, and much of Spain was aghast at the prospect. When the government restored order later that summer, it cracked down on Spanish anarchists, and the anarchist federation disappeared. Nicolás Salmerón presided over the destruction of the cantonalists and the defeat of the Internationalists, but his regime barely lasted two months. On September 6, 1873, he was succeeded by Emilio Castelar, a federalist seen as less extreme than Pi y Margall. However, Castelar was unable to salvage a federal republic. In 1874, General Francisco Serrano replaced Castelar as president after a military coup by General Pavía, effectively ending the federalists’ control of the Republic. Throughout 1874, strikes were outlawed and members of the anarchist Spanish Federation went underground as the Ateneo de la Clase Obrera (Athenaeum of the Working Class) in Barcelona was shut down. There was no functioning national federation of anarchists. Instead, regional groups in Barcelona, Madrid, and Andalusia continued but could not coordinate their efforts. Serrano remained in power for one year, until an early 1875 coup by General

23 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 1

Arsenio Martínez Campos led to the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy under Alfonso XII. The new king was the sixteen-year-old son of Isabella II and a cadet at Sandhurst, a British military academy. He learned of plans for the restoration of the Bourbon family after the coup and made his way to Spain, where he was crowned. However, the new king did not remake the country’s political system. The key individual in the reorganization of Spain’s government was politician Antonio Cánovas del Castillo. According to Brenan, Cánovas was “guided by two main principles—one to exclude the Army from political power—the other on no account to trust to free elections.”16 Cánovas maintained political stability through repression and political fraud, excluding the groups that had enjoyed some participation in the federal republic, especially the federalists and their temporary allies, the anarchists. In 1878, when anarchist Juan Oliva Moncusí attempted to assassinate the king, the government arrested many anarchists as well as militant union members. This repression shattered the initial relationship between the anarchists and the labor movement: “The Spanish Federation, however, was in hopeless decline. . . . The Federal Commission, continually in flight from the police, clawed itself to shreds with internal bickering. A quarrelsome, unstable body with a waning following and obscure leaders, it had finally lost the respect of its small rank and file.”17 In addition, this repression led some Spanish anarchists to emigrate, many to Argentina. Members of the Spanish labor movement feared arrest and looked for opportunities abroad. Although immigrants from Spain came to Argentina throughout this period, they came in larger numbers during the upheavals of 1873–74 than at any other time during the decade. In 1872, approximately 4,000 Spaniards immigrated to Argentina. In 1873, that number more than doubled to 9,000, and it remained at 8,000 in 1874 (see Table 1). These immigrants chose to leave a chaotic and repressive Spain for Argentina. Tab l e 1.  

Year

Spanish Immigration to Argentina, 1871–1914 Total Immigration

Spanish Immigration

1871 20,933 1872 37,037 1873 76,332 1874 68,277 1875 42,036 1876 30,965 1877 36,325

Percentage

2,554 4,411 9,185 8,272 4,036 3,463 2,700

24 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

12.2 11.9 12.0 12.1 9.6 11.2 7.4

Tab l e 1.  Continued

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Year

Total Immigration

Spanish Immigration

Percentage

1878 42,958 3,371 1879 55,155 3,422 1880 41,651 3,112 1881 47,484 3,444 1882 51,503 3,520 1883 63,243 5,023 1884 77,805 6,832 1885 108,722 4,314 1886 93,116 9,895 1887 120,842 15,618 1888 155,632 25,485 1889 260,909 72,151 1890 110,594 13,560 1891 52,097 4,280 1892 73,294 5,650 1893 84,420 7,100 1894 80,671 8,122 1895 80,989 11,288 1896 135,205 18,051 1897 105,143 18,316 1898 95,190 18,716 1899 111,083 19,798 1900 105,902 20,383 1901 125,951 14,778 1902 96,080 12,218 1903 112,671 21,917 1904 161,078 39,851 1905 221,622 53,029 1906 302,249 79,517 1907 257,924 82,606 1908 303,112 125,497 1909 278,078 86,798 1910 345,275 131,466 1911 281,622 118,723 1912 379,117 165,662 1913 364,271 122,271 1914 182,292 52,186

7.8 6.2 7.5 7.3 6.8 7.9 8.8 3.4 10.6 12.9 16.4 27.7 12.3 8.2 7.7 8.4 10.1 13.9 13.4 17.4 19.7 17.8 19.2 11.7 12.7 19.5 24.7 23.9 26.3 32.0 41.4 31.2 38.1 42.1 43.7 33.6 28.6

Source: República Argentina, Tercer Censo Nacional (Buenos Aires: Rosso, 1916), vol. 10, “La Inmigración,” 399.

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Chapter 1

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Immigration from Spain to Argentina

The movement of people from Spain to Argentina increased in the 1870s for three reasons. First, railroads and steamships made traveling faster and easier. Railroad construction began in both countries at midcentury, and by the 1870s, railroads connected many parts of Spain and radiated out from Buenos Aires into the provinces, making travel to port cities cheaper and swifter. Steamships reduced the time needed to travel across the Atlantic by many weeks, allowing migrants to pay less for their tickets and lose less time en route. In a history of Spanish immigration to Argentina, José Moya identifies improvements in transportation as one of the revolutionary changes that sparked mass immigration.18 Second, the combination of the new technologies of refrigeration and of steam-powered ships allowed frozen meat to be shipped from Argentina to Europe, transforming Argentina into one of the world’s wealthiest nations by the end of the nineteenth century. Third, the resolution of political tensions in both Spain and Argentina increased political stability, permitting the two countries’ governments to regulate population movements. The Bourbon monarchy was restored to the Spanish throne in 1875. The new government arrested and jailed many anarchists. Others fled the country, becoming part of migratory exodus. In Argentina, Nicolás Avellaneda, a native of the interior city of Tucumán, became president in 1874. Bartolomé Mitre led one last rebellion, renewing the split between the province of Buenos Aires and the interior provinces that had kept the nation from unifying until midcentury. The revolt failed, and Avellaneda’s government went on to conquer the Patagonia by the end of the decade, strengthening the central government’s power and control. Steam-powered transportation dramatically changed the way people traveled. Spain had only five hundred miles of railroad track in 1858, more than three thousand miles by 1868, and double that by 1900. As railroad lines extended from city to city and region to region, they helped link port cities such as La Coruña and Vigo in Galicia with the rest of the country.19 Transportation costs dropped, making travel more affordable for larger numbers of people. Travel time also decreased. The trip from northern Spain to the Río de la Plata by sailing ship took sixty-one days in the 1860s but only twenty-two days by steamship the following decade . Railroad construction in Argentina likewise had a great impact on transportation costs and time. But it also helped to stimulate the export economy by bringing commodities to the port city of Buenos Aires for shipment abroad. The Western Railroad laid the first fifty-seven miles of track in 1857. The Central

26 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Origins of the Spanish Anarchist Movement

Railroad completed a line from Rosario to Córdoba in the 1860s. The Southern and Northern Railroads completed lines in the 1860s, and by 1900, Argentina had ten thousand miles of track. In the 1870s, the government allowed the Central Railroad in Santa Fe Province to take land along the right-of-way as an incentive. The company brought immigrants to settle the land, thus benefiting the railroad both via increased ridership and sales of the land. However, later national governments guaranteed profits for railroad companies rather than allocating land, making it more difficult for immigrants to obtain land and emphasizing urban settlement. Buenos Aires grew because all the railroads radiated out of the city, making it the hub of the transportation system. In addition, as more goods arrived in the port for shipment abroad, the city began to expand and modernize its port facilities. New technologies would have to be developed to enable Argentina’s greatest export, meat, to be shipped to Europe for consumption by the general public. The first attempt at shipping chilled meat in the 1870s failed: the meat spoiled on the journey. By the 1880s, however, refrigerator ships kept meat frozen and edible, enabling Argentina’s exports to nearly double from 106 million pesos the previous decade to 209 million pesos.20 The old port of Buenos Aires, with its long wharves and oxcarts unloading ships from the shallow Río de la Plata, needed to be deepened and enlarged. The construction in the port and in the city increased the need for immigrant workers. Spain and Argentina began to regulate the movement of people between their two countries in the last half of the nineteenth century. They ratified a treaty establishing diplomatic relations in 1864.21 However, the Spanish government did not encourage emigration: “Most politicians and intellectuals disapproved of immigration, and deeply regretted that Spain was thereby losing population.”22 In January 1865, the Spanish government issued a royal order giving the state authority to regulate emigration. Conversely, in 1869, the Argentine government created the Central Immigration Commission to foster immigration. On October 19, 1876, the Argentine government promulgated Law 817, “Immigration and Colonization Law,” which created the General Department of Immigration. Article 3 outlined the department’s duties: “Develop information materials, send free reports to those interested, certify the industrial aptitudes and conduct of immigrants, become involved in transportation contracts, and in some cases provide free passage.”23 In 1877, Spain’s population topped sixteen million, whereas Argentina had about one-eighth as many inhabitants and needed more. The Argentine government asked its consuls in European cities to encourage immigration. But according to a survey by the Spanish government, the best advertisements for

27 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 1

migration were returned immigrants, like Pellicer Paraire. The survey, undertaken in the Basque Provinces between 1876 and 1881, asked individuals why they had decided to emigrate. Thirty-two percent responded that they wanted to improve their lives and get rich, 30 percent said they were responding to an invitation from a friend or relative already in America, 18 percent cited business reasons, and only 5 percent reported that they were leaving Spain because of their poverty. These Basques were leaving, in the words of the investigator, primarily in “response to those individuals who had returned triumphantly to Spain after some years in America.”24 These immigrants helped to change Argentina in many ways. Buenos Aires’s population doubled from about 255,000 in 1874 to more than 500,000 in 1890. Immigrants brought with them ideas and experiences and created in Argentina a society that combined elements from their native lands. Italian and Spanish immigrants in particular shaped the anarchist movement in ways that would make Argentine anarchism very dynamic. As La Protesta argued in 1932, “Workers persecuted in France, Italy and Spain brought to these lands the seeds of revolution, which for over sixty years have been germinating.”25 In 1872, after the rupture of the First International, Bakuninist Spanish immigrants established a section in Argentina. By 1873, Buenos Aires had three sections, one each in French, Spanish, and Italian. The secretary-general of the Buenos Aires section of the International wrote to the general council in France, “The French section was established first; the Italian and Spanish sections immediately afterward. Each section has its own central committee, and questions of general interest are dealt with by a Federal Council made up of six members, two from each section.”26 The Marxists were most influential in the French section, while the Bakuninists dominated the others. These ideological divisions seem to have sprung from the happenstance of immigration. According to anarchist historian and writer Max Nettlau, “Sometimes, anarchist ideas were the first to be diffused in a locality, if the instigator who founded the first group came from Buenos Aires, or Montevideo, or had turned anarchist back in Spain, Portugal, sometimes Italy and France.”27 Zacarias Rabassa, a Catalan who had represented shoemakers in the Workers’ Congress in Barcelona in 1870, was among the first Spanish anarchists in Argentina. Feliciano Rey and Francisco Morales, both members of the Workers’ Federation of the Spanish Region, also migrated to Argentina. In Buenos Aires, many immigrants joined the Bakuninist International Workers’ Association, established in 1873. In 1876, the association created the Center for Workers’ Propaganda and began publishing a newspaper, La Voz del Obrero (Voice of the Worker). Other early anarchist publications included

28 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Origins of the Spanish Anarchist Movement

Le Revolutionaire (1875) and El Descamisado (1879). Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta, who lived in Argentina from 1885 to 1889, helped found the bakers’ union, the first anarchist union in Argentina, in 1887. That year, Il Socialista, an Italian-language anarchist weekly, also began publication. Through the end of the nineteenth century, anarchists continued to publish newspapers and manifestos, including one in 1888 that referred to events surrounding the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago, where anarchists were executed after a riot.28 In 1889, three anarchists were arrested for publishing a manifesto during an Argentine carpenters’ union strike. Nevertheless, Argentina had no strong federation that brought together the anarchist labor unions until the beginning of the twentieth century.

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Anarchist Movement in Spain in the 1870s and 1880s

In 1875, Pellicer Paraire returned to Barcelona to a nearly moribund anarchist movement. Nevertheless, he resumed his work as a typographer and as a militant anarchist, joining the clandestine Typographers’ Section in Barcelona. Anarchism had been crushed among the working class in the cities but survived in the villages of Andalusia in southern Spain. According to Brenan, “The character of the rural anarchism that grew up in the south of Spain differed, as one would expect, from that developed in the large cities of the north. The ‘idea,’ as it was called, was carried from village to village by Anarchist ‘apostles.’”29 Bookchin agrees: “But there were also marked differences between the Anarchism of the industrial cities and the Anarchism of the countryside.”30 Anarchists in Barcelona, Madrid, and Spain’s other cities were often skilled in trades, like Pellicer Paraire. Their focus on labor organizations came from participation in the International, despite the split between Marxists and Bakuninists and the International’s dissolution. However, the power of the communal village existence in rural Andalusia had a powerful effect on Spanish anarchists. This aspect of anarchism was expressed well by Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin. Kropotkin, a Russian noble and geographer, served as a member of a surveying party in Siberia and as government functionary before settling in Switzerland in 1867. There, he joined the International and began to write about anarchism, basing his ideas on the cooperation he had observed among animals and villagers in Siberia. Kropotkin accepted much of Bakunin’s teachings but emphasized a kind of individualist anarchism, anarcho-communism, that was not focused on the labor union and collectivist ideas. The primary differences between these two men arose in the question of wages. Bakunin had supported a

29 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 1

system in which wages were based on the type and amount of work performed. Kropotkin preferred the idea that the means of production and survival could be evenly divided among all those in a society. These ideas about mutual aid refuted nineteenth-century thinkers who advanced Social Darwinian ideas about competition and appealed to villagers in southern Spain. Anarchism in Andalusia was more individualist, while anarchism in Catalonia remained largely collectivist. Throughout the 1870s, as the anarchist idea spread among peasants in Andalusia, no sharp divide arose between these two approaches to anarchism. But by the early 1880s, a majority of Spanish anarchists lived in Andalusia, where anarcho-communism was widely accepted. The distinctions between the two approaches reflected the different organization of labor in these Spanish regions rather than a split between a modern, industrial worldview and a backward, communal mentality. Nevertheless, these differences persisted as irritants among the various members of the new national labor movement. Spain had no national anarchist movement to unite the regions until 1881, when the Sagasta’s Liberal government assumed power in Madrid. The new government offered workers an opportunity to emerge from underground if they renounced their militancy. The Federación Obrera Regional Española (Workers’ Federation of the Spanish Region), founded in Barcelona on September 24, 1881, reflected a mixture of ideas from republicanism to conventional unionism to anarchism. The 162 federations voted overwhelmingly to affirm anarchist principles but were cautious about antagonizing the government and recognized strikes only as a last resort. Throughout the 1880s, these differences continued to divide Spanish anarchists, not only along Bakuninist (collectivist) and Kropotkinist (individualist) lines but also over the dueling goals of violently overthrowing existing society and improving workers’ lives. These divisions resurfaced many times over the next half century and followed Spanish anarchists to Argentina. Of all these immigrants, Antonio Pellicer Paraire perhaps provided the most crucial link between Spanish and Argentine anarchism. Pellicer Paraire was accustomed to conflict. From the time of his return to Spain in 1875 at the age of twenty-four until 1891, Pellicer Paraire devoted himself to the anarchist movement, whether underground or in legal organizations. A photograph of him later in life shows him to be well dressed with his head held high. His eyes are dark and his nose is long and straight. His hairline is receding and he has a full beard, pointed at the chin. He was proud of his profession as a typographer and proud of his association with the anarchist movement, both as a militant and as a writer. From 1882 until 1888, he served as a member of the

30 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Origins of the Spanish Anarchist Movement

Federal Commission of the Workers’ Federation, and he edited the Barcelona anarchist magazine Acracia between 1886 and 1887. The second congress of the Workers’ Federation was held in Seville in 1882, recognizing the importance of Andalusia. A total of 218 federations met for three days and battled over the movement’s future direction. The Andalusians were incensed by the Catalans’ reformist tendencies, and the congress resulted in a compromise that satisfied no one and weakened the anarchist movement in Spain throughout the 1880s. Politics in Spain changed in 1885 when the Liberals and Conservatives agreed to alternate in power. In so doing, they monopolized control of Spain for an elite that did not wish to accommodate working-class demands. The members of the Workers’ Federation lost what support they had, and the anarchist movement became even more deeply embroiled in the debates over tactics and philosophy. In addition to Acracia, Pellicer Paraire wrote for La Crónica de los Trabajadores, Revista Social, and El Productor. He often decried those he called fanatics, individualists who advocated violent acts known as “propaganda of the deed.” Murders in Andalusia led to arrests of anarchists and the execution of seven in 1883. According to Gonzalo Zaragosa, Pellicer Paraire’s writing focused on clarifying and extending anarchist principles. He preferred the term acracia (antiauthoritarian) to anarquia (anarchy) because he wanted to distance himself from the more violent aspects of the movement and make the ideas more tolerable to a wider audience.31 Individualists, in turn, denounced Pellicer Paraire and his comrades in La Justicia Humana (1886) and Tierra y Libertad (1888–89), both of which were published in Barcelona. By 1890, Spain’s anarchist movement had become fractured and weak. The national organization disintegrated. Only sixteen delegates came to the third congress of the Workers’ Federation, held in Madrid in 1887, and by the end of the decade, the federation officially dissolved. But while the movement ebbed in Spain, it began to achieve importance in Argentina, in part as a consequence of the immigration of Spanish anarchist militants.

31 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Chapter 2

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Anarchists and Immigration from Spain to Argentina

W h e n A n t o n io P e l l ic e r Pa r a i r e left Spain for Argentina, he was following a pattern of movement that had developed over the last decades of the nineteenth century. Spanish workers responded to economic hardships and to political repression by seeking better opportunities abroad. Often, one member of the family traveled abroad to search for work, while the rest of the family remained in Spain. Spanish anarchist immigrants to Argentina brought with them the ideas and arguments that had divided their community in Spain and continued to influence individuals in both hemispheres. Though the dynamics of internecine conflict came to Argentina with the immigrants, the circumstances differed, and anarchism received nourishment from both Europe and America. The connections to migration provided Pellicer Paraire and others the opportunity to develop ideas on both continents. This chapter examines the events in Spain that divided anarchists and the repression that caused many anarchists to flee to Argentina, where they contributed to the development of that country’s anarchist movement. Divisions among anarchist workers increased in Argentina during the 1890s when collectivist anarchists, many from Spain’s more urban north, and individualist anarchists, who tended to come from the rural south, fled from increasing repression. In the late 1880s, Rafael Roca, one of the individualist writers for Tierra y Libertad, immigrated to Argentina, where the conflict among Spanish anarchists resurfaced. The debate continued in Buenos Aires, and this dissen-

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Anarchists and Immigration from Spain

sion complicated anarchists’ efforts to oppose organizing by rival Argentine socialist unions, which began to form new labor federations. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, Argentina’s anarchist movement began to resolve some of its differences. The mixing of Italian and Spanish ideologies through the organizing efforts by Errico Malatesta, the eloquent speeches of Pietro Gori, and the writings of Antonio Pellicer Paraire created a unique Argentine anarchism. The cooperation among Italian and Spanish anarchists also led to the 1897 creation of a new periodical, La Protesta Humana, and to the 1901 establishment of the Federación Obrera Argentina (Argentine Workers’ Federation). By the early twentieth century, anarchist unions were among the most influential in the country’s labor movement. These unions pressured the state through numerous strikes as the influential La Protesta Humana spread the ideas of anarchism. The state reacted to this activity by passing the 1902 Residency Law, which allowed the government to deport immigrants who threatened social peace. Officials enthusiastically took advantage of this new tool for controlling foreigners. Many anarchist deportees returned to Spain with new ideas and experiences that helped shape the anarchist movement in their native land.

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“Propaganda of the Deed” in Spain and Repression

Antonio Cánovas del Castillo still dominated the Spanish government in the 1890s. He oversaw an agreement between Liberals and Conservatives to alternate in power during the regency of Alfonso XIII between 1885 and 1902. This electoral fraud produced political stability and economic growth but did so at the expense of popular participation and support. As small-scale industry increased in Barcelona and the mining industry in Asturias grew, Spain’s working class continued to seek improvements, even after the dissolution of the Workers’ Federation in 1888. This era saw the emergence of two important regional organizations, the Organización Anarquista de la Región Española (Anarchist Organization of the Spanish Region) and the Pacto de Unión y Solidaridad de la Región Española (Pact of Union and Solidarity of the Spanish Region). Founded in Valencia in September 1888, the Anarchist Organization was a loose collection of anarchist groups, many of which had objected to the Workers’ Federation’s alliance with unions. These groups acted on their own, often focusing on debating theories, and the Anarchist Organization lacked a unified mission. Members favored the individualist teachings of Peter Kropotkin, emphasizing education over organization. Members met in cafés and held tertulias (intellectual discussions),

33 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 2

gaining the sympathy of many Barcelona intellectuals. “The desire to shake by some violent action the complacency of this huge, inert and stagnant mass of middle-class opinion became irresistible. Artists and writers shared this feeling,” wrote Gerald Brenan.1 By 1890, the term Propaganda of the Deed emerged among these anarchists to refer to terrorist acts designed to attack the old order and mobilize the general population to revolution. At first, Kropotkinists understood Propaganda of the Deed to mean local rebellions and propaganda to enlighten workers and others; after 1890, however, Spanish anarchists used the term to mean individual acts of terror. Thus began an era of increasing violence that created new divisions. The rival Pact of Union and Solidarity of the Spanish Region grew more directly out of the dissolved collectivist Workers’ Federation and the union movement. The Pact of Union and Solidarity called its first congress in March 1891 in Madrid. According to Murray Bookchin, it was “primarily a Catalan movement, influenced by Anarchist Collectivists and by militant syndicalists.”2 Brenan states that the differences between anarcho-communists (sometimes called individualists) and collectivists centered on whether to include only anarchists or to work with other groups.3 While this remained the key issue in Spain for much of the next four decades, the real question involved tactics: an era of bombings and assassinations had begun. Would dramatic acts of violence garner more success than did union organizing? On May 1, 1890, large demonstrations broke out in Andalusia. The authorities resurrected a discredited accusation of a conspiracy by a group known as La Mano Negra (the Black Hand). In 1891, 157 anarchists were arrested and accused of membership in the Black Hand. In response, 500 marched into the city of Jerez in January 1892 and tried to free the jailed anarchists. The Civil Guard captured several anarchists implicated in the conflict and garroted them in the city’s main square. Anarchists sought revenge against this government repression. Paulino Pallas was born in 1862 in Cambrils, south of Barcelona. He became an anarchist and traveled in France and Italy before heading to Argentina, where he met Errico Malatesta. Pallas lived for some time in Rosario, Argentina, but traveled to Brazil and set off a bomb on May 1, 1891. Pursued by the authorities, Pallas returned to Barcelona, and in September 1893, he attempted to assassinate the captain general of Catalonia, General Arsenio Martínez Campos. The attack killed two individuals and wounded twelve soldiers. Pallas was quickly subdued and was executed eight days later behind the walls of the Montjuich Fortress overlooking the city. The violence escalated throughout the 1890s. In 1893, anarchists threw two bombs in the Barcelona opera house, killing twenty-two people and wound-

34 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Anarchists and Immigration from Spain

ing dozens, a crime for which Santiago Salvador, an anarchist artisan, was caught, tried, and executed. In 1896, anarchists threw a bomb into the city’s Corpus Christi procession, killing eleven. The police created a new unit, the Social Brigade, to hunt down suspected terrorists. Hundreds were arrested and thrown into jail cells in Montjuich. J. Romero Maura, a historian of Spanish anarchism, suggests that indiscriminate arrests and torture occurred.4 Known as the Montjuich Affair, these trials and executions led to the August 1897 assassination of Spain’s prime minister, Cánovas del Castillo, by Italian anarchist Michele Angiolillo, who sympathized with his Spanish colleagues. This era of Propaganda of the Deed brought continuous government repression that in the words of George Esenwein, “precipitated the exodus of the anarchists themselves. Although small at first, this migration began to swell—perhaps climbing into the hundreds—as repression intensified. Some of those fleeing were the ablest of anarchist leaders—Pedro Esteve, for instance—who eventually found refuge in countries like Argentina, Mexico and the United States, settings that seemed to afford them better opportunities for continuing their revolutionary activities.”5

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Spanish Immigration to Argentina

Anarchist militants including Anselmo Lorenzo, Teresa Claramunt, Federico Urales, and Soledad Gustavo now joined the exodus of economic migrants from Spain. Some went to Paris, while others—among them Pellicer Paraire, José Prat, Gregorio Inglán y Lafarga, Indalecio Cuadrado, and Francisco Ros— immigrated to Argentina in the 1890s.6 While many of these emigrants were Catalan and all feared the government’s wrath, they represented a variety of opinions regarding Propaganda of the Deed and anarchist tactics. Both the individualists, and the collectivists brought their viewpoints across the Atlantic, resulting in the same divisions in the Argentine movement. Whether these immigrants remained in Argentina or returned to Spain depended mostly on the shifting opportunities present in each country and on their personal goals. In 1891, Pellicer Paraire left Spain and sailed to Argentina. An article in Barcelona’s Tierra y Libertad stated that he “had to emigrate to escape the clutches of Marzo, Portas, and the other tigers of Montjuich.”7 Family connections enabled Pellicer Paraire to find employment in Argentina despite the country’s economic difficulties. A European financial disaster had brought on a depression in Argentina, slowing immigration from all countries from 260,909 in 1889 to 110,594 in 1890 and only 52,097 in 1891. Spanish immigration also dwindled from about 72,000 to about 4,200 in those years (see table 1, pp. 24–25). Nevertheless,

35 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 2

F i g u r e 1 . Antonio Pellicer Paraire, 1906. Source: International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam

Pellicer Paraire’s ability to find work as an editor for a Buenos Aires technical journal demonstrates the importance of earlier immigrants to the success of later arrivals. Pellicer Paraire became one of the intellectual progenitors of the Argentine anarchist organization and remained in the country for the rest of his life. He brought with him his experience with Anselmo Lorenzo and the Spanish anarchist movement, and he continued to publish in Spain’s anarchist press while living in Argentina. In 1894, his En defensa de nuestros ideales (In Defense of Our Ideals) was published in Gijón, Spain. In this book, Pellicer Paraire wrote in support of anarchism, human rationality, and the need for workers’

36 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Anarchists and Immigration from Spain

rights. His focus on workers put him in the Bakuninist camp of collectivist anarchists, in Spain and in Argentina, and he defended his position in both countries. He published articles in several anarchist publications, including La Question Sociale and Ciencia Sociale in Buenos Aires and Titella in Barcelona. Pellicer Paraire recognized the need for individual rights but emphasized the need for organization. In Spain, he had been active in the Workers’ Federation of the Spanish Region. According to Abad de Santillán, in an 1881 document, the federation described itself as “purely economic and, as such, . . . totally different from, and opposed to, working-class political parties. These parties are created in order to capture the power of the state. We, on the other hand, have organized to reduce the functions of the state, politically and legally, to purely economic duties and to create in their place a free Federation of free associations of free producers.”8 After moving abroad, Pellicer Paraire continued his correspondence with anarchist friends in Barcelona, giving his opinions on people and events. La Protesta Humana published a series of Pellicer Paraire’s articles under the pseudonym “Pellico,” and those writings, along with his 1900 book, Conferencias populares de sociología (Popular Conferences on Sociology), helped form the intellectual foundation of the anarchist organization in Argentina, even though he retired from active participation in Argentina’s anarchist movement after the repression and deportations of 1905.9 Gregorio Inglán y Lafarga was another Spanish anarchist immigrant who made significant contributions to the movement in Argentina. He fled Spain in the late nineteenth century, when government repression was violent, and came to Argentina, a nation that needed immigrants and valued their skills. A cabinetmaker by trade, the Catalan Inglán y Lafarga helped to found the anarchist daily newspaper La Protesta Humana in 1897. He also served as secretary during many of the sessions that led to the 1901 creation of Argentina’s first anarchist federation, the Federación Obrera Argentina (FOA). However, for reasons that remain unclear, Inglán y Lafarga retired from active participation in the movement the following year. José Prat worked with Pellicer Paraire and Anselmo Lorenzo in Spain, and Prat and Ricardo Mella coauthored an 1897 attack on the Spanish government, La barbarie gobernamental en España (Governmental Barbarism in Spain). After Cánovas del Castillo’s assassination later that year, Prat fled to Argentina and became editor for La Protesta Humana. Prat returned to Barcelona in 1898 and continued his anarchist activities, serving as an administrator in Francisco Ferrer’s Model School and publishing articles in the anarchist press until ill health forced him to retire in the 1920s.10

37 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Chapter 2

While these men migrated for ideological reasons, economic factors led many other Spaniards to leave their native land. While Spain as a whole had begun to prosper in the 1880s and 1890s as a consequence of increasing industrialization in Barcelona and elsewhere in the north, the southern regions, especially those dependent on agriculture, stagnated. Relative poverty and desire for economic improvement stimulated migrations of individuals within Spain and emigration abroad. The owners of latifundia (large estates) in Andalusia employed rural laborers for only a few months each year, leaving them unemployed and impoverished for the rest of the year. According to Brenan, in a typical small town in Andalusia,

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the first impression is one of decay and stagnation. A few wretched shops selling only the bare necessities of life: one or two petty industries—soapmaking, weaving of esparto mats, potteries, oil-distilleries that between them employ some couple of hundred men: the ancestral houses of the absentee landowners, dilapidated and falling into ruin: then a few bourgeois families—the overseers of the large estates or the farmers who rent from them— and who only remain here because their interests compel them to: from eight to twelve hundred families, mostly poor, who own or rent a small property or have some settled employment. And then the landless proletariat. Threequarters of the population consists in these men and their families, who are hired by the day, by the month, by the season—rarely longer than that—by the overseers of the large estates or by the tenant farmers who rent from them. For more than half the year they are unemployed.11

Some of these workers began to migrate north to Barcelona or other industrial regions. From there, as José Moya has pointed out, many would take the next step and emigrate.12 The Argentine consul wrote from Barcelona that the terrible state of Spanish agriculture pushed many immigrants to Argentina.13 The same economic and population pressures that stimulated the growth of the anarchist movement in both Andalusia and in Catalonia also led to emigration. Two issues regarding population movement stand out here: why these Spanish workers left their native land, and why they chose particular destinations. Emigrants left for social as well as economic reasons, and chose Argentina when conditions there were better than in Spain. In 1895, the second war of independence broke out in Cuba, and Spain had to send troops there as well as continue to defend its interests in North Africa, where fighting against Moroccan tribal armies persisted. Fearing the loss of potential conscripts, the Spanish government passed an 1896 royal order requiring young men of age for military service to pay a deposit of two thousand pesetas before emigrating. Men appar-

38 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Anarchists and Immigration from Spain

ently continued to emigrate, because the Ministry of the Interior promulgated another royal order the following year that halted emigration by men who had not completed their military service.14 Pressure to stop the emigration of young males continued through the Spanish-American War in 1898, and not until 1901 was the bond of two thousand pesetas reduced to fifteen hundred. The Argentine consul in Spain reported that emigration figures were notoriously inaccurate.15 No visa or permission was needed to enter Argentina, and the government kept records based on ships’ registers and passenger lists. Spanish emigrants had to provide documentation before boarding ships to travel abroad. However, since passenger ship lines regarded immigrants as a commodity and sought to transport as many as possible, captains often failed to record all passengers’ names on manifests. On February 21, 1900, Governor Eduard Saenz Escerton signed a new law in Barcelona requiring Spaniards who wished to emigrate to meet strict requirements. Each male up to age fifteen needed a baptismal certificate, notarized permission from his parents, and a certificate indicating that he was not wanted by the authorities. Males between ages fifteen and nineteen needed these documents as well as identification and had to pay a tax of fifteen hundred pesetas in lieu of completing their military service. Males aged between nineteen and twenty-five did not need baptismal certificates or parental permission but had to demonstrate that they had completed their military service or paid the tax. Finally, males over twenty-five had to have identification and certificates proving that they were not wanted by the authorities.16 A married woman of any age needed identification, permission from her husband, a marriage certificate if she was traveling with her husband, and a certificate indicating that she was not wanted by the authorities. Unmarried women up to age twenty-five needed identification, parental permission, and certificates from the authorities. Finally, women over twenty-five needed the identification and certificates but not parental permission. Emigration varied by region as well as by year. Consular reports from Spain indicated that the largest number of immigrants to Argentina left from Catalonia and Galicia in the north. Of the almost four thousand immigrants from nine major Spanish port cities in the early 1890s, approximately thirteen hundred left from Catalonia, and more than twelve hundred others left from Galicia’s two port cities, La Coruña and Vigo.17 However, the people who embarked from those cities could have come from any part of Spain. The economic impact of emigration also reverberated throughout Spain. In the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century, 1.5 million Spaniards emigrated. Spanish immigrants to the Americas

39 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Chapter 2

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sent back cash that was an important part of Spain’s economy. Spanish immigrants abroad remitted 143,840,000 pesetas through the Banco Asturianas between 1881 and 1911, nearly half of it (more than 800,000 pesetas per year) from the Banco Español de la Río de la Plata in Buenos Aires.18 José Ramón García López concludes, “The phenomenon of remittances, perhaps the most representative effect of emigration to America, became the element that from an economic point of view united the two extremes of the migratory thread. It originated in the destination country as a consequence of the activities of the emigrant and of the conditions of production and was directed to the country of origin, where it thus produced its beneficial effects.”19 Argentina was the destination for most Spanish emigrants at the turn of the twentieth century.20 (See table 2.) More traveled to Buenos Aires when the Argentine economy was strong, while fewer went in times of economic distress, with totals ranging from a low of about one hundred thousand in the early 1880s to a high in excess of half a million between 1906 and 1910. The nineteenthcentury peak in Spanish immigration to Argentina occurred between 1886 and 1891, a time of turmoil in the Spanish labor movement and the beginning of the era of violence. However, Argentina suffered economically after 1890, so some Spanish émigrés chose other destinations. The Argentine consul wrote in 1892 that the Spanish government encouraged its citizens who wished to emigrate to go to Spanish territories abroad, such as Cuba.21 Fifty-two percent of all Spanish emigrants went to Argentina between 1886 and 1891, while only 13 percent did so between 1892 and 1896. These figures seem to show that Spaniards constantly evaluated their opportunities and changed their destinations depending on circumstances. Tab l e 2.  

Years

Spanish Immigration to Argentina and to Latin America, 1882–1910 Spanish Immigration to Argentina (% of Total)

Spanish Immigration to Latin America

1882–85 19,688 (18.4) 106,813 1886–90 136,709 (52.1) 262,420 1891–95 36,440 (12.9) 282,751 1896–1900 95,264 (34.4) 276,839 1901–5 141,793 (59.9) 236,910 1906–10 505,884 (86.2) 586,934 TOTAL 935,778 (53.4) 1,752,667 Sources: República Argentina, Tercer Censo Nacional (Buenos Aires: Rosso, 1916), vol. 10, “La Inmigración,” 399; Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, “La emigración española a la América en medio milenio: pautas sociales,” Historia Social 42 (2002): 41–58.

40 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Anarchists and Immigration from Spain

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Fig u re 2. Immigrants in Argentina, 1905. Source: Departamento de Documentos Fotográficos, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires

Many Spaniards chose Argentina during the 1890s because their compatriots had already established themselves in Buenos Aires. The percentage of immigrants who hailed from Spain grew from about 8 percent in 1891 to nearly 20 percent at the end of the decade. By contrast, Britons, whom the Argentine government had encouraged to immigrate, complained to their Foreign Office of economic hardship in Argentina, and Irish church officials began to discourage immigration after receiving reports about the lack of jobs.22 For Pellicer Paraire and other Spaniards who had friends or relatives in Argentina, a job offer was the critical factor encouraging immigration. For Spanish anarchists, the presence of fellow anarchists and a period of growth in Argentina’s labor movement played crucial roles. When Prat had to flee Spanish authorities, he went to Argentina and was welcomed there.

41 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Chapter 2

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Anarchism in Argentina

Spanish anarchist immigrants created labor organizations to defend the working class, which had no influence in the political system of the 1890s. In addition, by continuing the contentious debate between individualist and collectivist anarchists that had begun in Spain, they helped to create a uniquely Argentine brand of anarchism that combined elements of both Spanish and Italian anarchism. This blend gave Argentine anarchists a sense of energy and even superiority as their movement claimed a leadership role in early twentieth-century anarchism worldwide.23 Moreover, these immigrants’ ties to the movement in Spain remained important throughout the ensuing decades. Many immigrants from a variety of countries looked for work in Buenos Aires as construction laborers, port workers, or day laborers. Italian immigrants comprised 49 percent of Argentina’s new arrivals during the period of mass immigration, outnumbering Spaniards by 17 percent.24 These numbers included anarchist leaders from both European countries. Errico Malatesta, for example, left Italy and lived in Argentina from 1885 until 1889, helping to create anarchist unions. Malatesta is sometimes regarded as the founder of the Argentine movement because of his role in the formation of the bakers’ union, which became one of the mainstays of the country’s anarchism.25 In 1885, he founded La Questione Sociale, which continued publication for about a year. In 1888, as Malatesta argued for the formation of a workers’ federation, anarchists in Argentina split into the same factions as in Spain, with Malatesta and the collectivists opposing the anarcho-communist individualists. Other important Italian anarchists included Ettore Mattei, who helped to create the bakers’ union, and Fortunato Serantoni, who later revived La Questione Sociale and collaborated on it with Pellicer Paraire. Pietro Gori was already well known as a writer when he came to Argentina in June 1898 at age twentynine. Before leaving four years later, Gori helped to energize the movement with his speeches. The period from 1888 until 1902 was critical for the anarchist movement and in the development of Argentina. During these years, the country’s government was dominated by the Partido Autonomista Nacional (PAN). Since Bartolomé Mitre’s defeat and Buenos Aires’s integration into the federal republic in the 1860s, elections held every six years had brought members of Argentina’s elite to the presidency. Ever mistrustful of the interior provinces and jealous of Buenos Aires’s power, Mitre led an 1874 rebellion, charging that the elections were unfair. In truth, almost all of these elections were unfair in the sense that few Argentines were eligible to vote, opposition was not tolerated, and the PAN

42 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Anarchists and Immigration from Spain

candidate always won. Increasingly, however, this elite-dominated government was challenged by the rising middle class. Despite crises in the 1870s and early 1890s, economic growth brought new opportunities for professionals and merchants, many of whom were the sons of immigrants. Few of these members of Argentine society were welcomed into the Jockey Club or other institutions reserved for landowners and their retainers. Middle-class reformers representing this group, supported by the aging Mitre, helped to create the Civic Union in 1889. A year later, a radical wing of the group led by Leandro Alem rebelled against the government of Juárez Celman. After three days of fighting, President Celman resigned. Alem split the Civic Union in 1891 and formed the Radical Party (Unión Cívica Radical), which continued to push for greater transparency in government and a share of power. These political machinations, however, did little to address the needs of the immigrants who swelled the city of Buenos Aires. Many turned to labor organizations. The anarchist movement increased in importance over the 1890s as it moved from a series of groups and publications often divided by the same ideological and tactical differences that had divided anarchists in Spain to perhaps the country’s largest organized labor movement. In a report to the 1889 socialist conference in Paris, the German socialist newspaper Vorwärts reported on the weakness of labor organizations in general in Argentina: “There are trade unions and associations here and there; their numbers are insignificant and [the organizations] barely survive. There is one group of internationalists comprised principally of Italians, Spanish, and French that meets weekly. They profess anarchist tendencies and the money they collect is sent to Europe to help with propaganda.”26 In 1888 and 1889, many individualist anarcho-communists arrived in Argentina, bringing their debate with collectivists across the Atlantic Ocean. This group included Rafael Roca, an Andalusian writer for Tierra y Libertad.27 His ongoing dispute with Pellicer Paraire, who had been a writer for Barcelona’s El Productor (The Producer), a collectivist publication critical of Tierra y Libertad and the individualists, shifted to Argentina. Other individualist anarchists who came at this time include Victoriano San José and Bernardo Sánchez. Gonzalo Zaragoza suggests that between 1889 and 1895, individualist anarchists dominated the movement in Argentina under the leadership of the periodical El Perseguido (The Pursued). In his words, “The libertarian movement in Argentina was built on the foundation of Spanish anarchism, which emphasized spontaneity, even to the point of denying reality.”28 Continuing persecutions in Spain at the end of the nineteenth century also led many Catalan adherents of Bakunin to flee to Argentina. Among the anarchists who left Spain, Inglán y Lafarga, Indalecio Cuadrado, Francisco Ros, and

43 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Chapter 2

Prat sided with Pellicer Paraire in the polemic.29 Francisco Fo and Indalecio Cuadrado arrived on the same boat in 1889. The twenty-five-year-old Cuadrado was a typographer from Valladolid who had edited El Productor and served as secretary of the Federación Española in 1887. Cuadrado remained in Argentina and published in the anarchist press but eventually drifted away from the anarchist movement. Pellicer Paraire opposed the individualists because he felt that organization was necessary. Writing in La Protesta, he clearly explained the need for worker solidarity and union federation.

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There is nothing, from the infinitesimally small to the immensely large, that does not suggest the need for association, organization, or force. Applying this principle to social questions, we have a ruling elite, dominant, oppressors, exploiters (the minority) who exploit, oppress, dominate, and rule or govern the productive class (the great majority); the former depend on their great organization of interests and power to maintain their domination: the latter have neither organization nor power. Even though they are the majority, they are dominated by the minority. From this it follows that to combat and defeat the oppressing class, we need to organize and to create a force that is greater than that of the governing classes. This force resides in each of us, the oppressed. But this power is meaningless without association, without organization. Therefore, if we have the goal, we must organize to realize our objective.30

Pellicer Paraire advocated a national federation of anarchist workers along the lines of the Spanish organization of which he had been a part. Pellicer Paraire spoke of one organization with two parallel tracks: “one branch of the workers’ organization that can be called revolutionary, comprised of those militants who labor directly for the triumph of the ideal; the other branch could be called economic. This is to be made up of the masses of workers who struggle to improve their condition, responding to the abuses of their employers.”31 Each of these parallel tracks had a specific function, yet according to Pellicer Paraire, both were heading toward the same ultimate goal: “Each individual must maintain his liberty and rights, equal to the rights and the liberty of his comrades. He should not allow his [individual] liberty to be crushed underfoot by any acts, even in the heart of our organization, where we act for the good of all.”32 These ideas evolved from Pellicer Paraire’s articles in Acracia in Barcelona in the 1880s and demonstrated the continuity of circumstances for workers in Barcelona and Buenos Aires. Similarities between Spanish and Argentine cir-

44 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Anarchists and Immigration from Spain

cumstances in part follow the developing capitalist economy in both industrializing countries but also result from the immigration of Spaniards to Argentina. Among these early immigrants were Feliciano Rey and Francisco Morales, who had taken part in the Workers’ Federation of the Spanish Region; Zacarias Rabassa, a Catalan who had represented shoemakers in the Congreso Obrero de Barcelona in 1870; and Gabriel Abad, a collaborator in La Unión Obrera in his native El Ferrol in Galicia.33 These immigrants established several periodicals to publicize their views and influence the Argentine labor movement. During the 1889 carpenters’ union strike, Victoriano San José, Ettore Mattei, and Emilio Piette published a manifesto denouncing the Argentine state. All three were arrested and jailed for more than ten months. Argentine socialists also vied for control of the working class, seeking to influence the political process to benefit labor. The socialist-dominated International Workers’ Committee organized Argentina’s first labor federation, the Workers’ Federation of the Argentine Region, in 1890. Argentine anarchists participated in the federation but withdrew the following year to protest the federation’s political orientation. These anarchist workers created a series of periodicals to publicize their goal of a nonpolitical labor movement. One of the first was El Perseguido, which was published from 1890 to 1897 by Spanish individualist anarchists. El Oprimido (The Oppressed) was published by an Irish immigrant, Juan ( John) Creaghe from 1894 until 1897, when he folded the publication to work with the newly established La Protesta Humana. Other early publications included El Obrero Panadero (The Bakery Worker), established in 1894; La Unión Gremial (The Workers’ Union), begun in 1895; and La Federación Obrera (The Workers’ Federation), which first appeared in 1896. The mid-1890s saw a transition from the dominance of individualist anarchists who believed in Propaganda of the Deed to an increasing emphasis on organization that led to the creation of an anarchist labor federation after 1897.34 Jorge Solomonoff identifies three areas of disagreement among anarchists in Argentina in the 1890s.35 First, like Zaragoza, Solomonoff sees divisions between collectivists and individualists, with the individualists dominating. Second, Solomonoff sees a split between the “organizers” (who favored the creation of anarchist organizations to help create a libertarian society) and the “antiorganizers” (who countered that any such organization would be tainted by the environment in which it was created and that truly libertarian organizations could emerge only after the revolution). Finally, Solomonoff posits a division between those who sought to keep anarchist ideology pure and untainted by political or reformist considerations and those who wished to participate more fully in ongoing union organizing and activities.

45 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 2

The first two of these divisions appear to have reflected the basic differences between the Bakuninist and Kropotkinist interpretations of anarchism. In Spain, Bakuninists were divided about the nature of their participation in the labor movement and favored ideologically based cells over complete identification with the labor organization. However, the Italian influence seems to have been significant in Solomonoff ’s third division. Malatesta’s role in founding the bakers’ union in 1887 helped to bring Argentine anarchism more fully into the labor movement throughout the 1890s, while Gori’s speeches played a vital role in fusing these various anarchist groups into the Federación Obrera Argentina (FOA), and he served as a delegate to the FOA’s constitutional congress.36 Argentine anarchism developed a unique hybrid association from a disparate mix of immigrants, unlike Spanish anarchism, which remained divided over individualist versus collectivist approaches, and the Italian version, which emphasized union organization over ideological foundations. Perhaps the most important periodical leading Argentine anarchism’s transition from diverse groups to a powerful movement was La Protesta Humana, which published twice a month from June to October 1897 as the successor to La Revolución Social (1896–97). Published weekly from October 1897 until 1904, when it became a daily, La Protesta Humana brought together some of the country’s most influential anarchist writers, and circulation quickly doubled from two thousand at its inception to four thousand.37 Articles stressed the need for a nonpolitical revolutionary movement and the importance of a revolutionary organization, reflecting Bakuninist principles. Inglán y Lafarga served as the paper’s first editor, and Prat, Juan Creaghe, E. G. Gilimón, and Julio Camba contributed articles. Prominent Spanish anarchists Mella and Lorenzo also regularly contributed articles. La Protesta Humana helped to transform the Argentine anarchist movement into one of Latin America’s most powerful labor movements and for a time into the most successful anarchist movement in the world. On October 1, 1897, the editors of La Protesta Humana declared that they represented groups that rejected political solutions in favor of direct action, “recognizing that the goal of this struggle against Capital is the general strike.”38 Abad de Santillán reported that Argentina had forty thousand unemployed workers by 1899.39 Strikes increased in 1899 and 1900, many of them successful. Workers in the hat-making industry struck to protest reduced wages. In September and October 1899, stonecutters in Buenos Aires and construction workers in Mar del Plata struck for shorter hours. In January 1900, five thousand Buenos Aires stevedores walked out and demanded an eight-hour day and better wages. After two weeks, the strike paralyzed the port and spread to Bahia Blanca.40

46 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Anarchists and Immigration from Spain

Inglán y Lafarga supported the idea of bringing together all these unions in a common federation, a “formal organization of workers . . . from which should come a significant and vigorous federation, called to accomplish great actions in support of the improvement and the emancipation of the exploited working class.”41 This call for Argentine unity reflected Spanish anarchists’ increasing belief that their movement had been weakened by violence that had separated them from the masses of workers.42 Still in contact with the Spanish movement, immigrant anarchists overcame their particular differences to find common ground on which to build a strong movement, just as anarchists in Spain moved beyond the violence of the 1890s and internal divisions to meet in Madrid in 1900 to establish the Federación de Sociedades Obreras de la Región Española (Federation of Workers’ Societies of the Spanish Region). Argentine anarchists attended an international conference in Paris in 1900 where the program included discussions on the concepts of the general strike, sabotage and boycott, and the benefits of working within unions.43 By 1901, anarchists were ready to establish a new labor federation and called for a conference to begin on May 25, Argentina’s Independence Day. Fifty delegates representing more than thirty anarchist and socialist labor organizations from the capital and the interior met on May 25–26, with leaders of both movements helping to organize and run the congress. Socialist Dardo Cúneo shared the presidency with anarchist Francisco Ros, while socialist Adrián Patroni and anarchist Ettore Mattei were elected to the administrative committee. Inglán y Lafarga served as the secretary. Gori and Adrián Troitiño were among the delegates chosen to study the issues presented. The congress voted to observe May 1 as a holiday by refusing to work and using the day to advocate workers’ rights. The congress also voted to use general strikes, boycotts, and free schools to further workers’ goals and demanded a reduction in rents. The delegates named their new national group the Federación Obrera Argentina.44 Labor agitation intensified after the FOA’s creation. Later in 1901, the bakers’ union went out on strike in Buenos Aires for higher pay and employed tactics sanctioned by the FOA. Painters in Mar del Plata and port workers in Buenos Aires also staged strikes for shorter working hours and higher pay. In October 1901, police fired into a crowd of striking workers at the refinery in Rosario, killing one. Argentina’s first general strike followed, as did a campaign of meetings, marches, and attacks in the worker press. The militancy of workers coincided with sharp increases in immigration to Argentina as the economic downturn of the early 1890s eased (see table 1, pp. 24–25). Indeed, Roberto Korzeniewitz believes that the relative supply of labor had a greater influence on militancy and strike activity than did ideology.45

47 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 2

Workers’ cost of living was high, partly as a result of competition for housing. Monthly income varied, increasing on average from forty-one to sixty-six pesos per month for unskilled workers between 1896 and 1897 before finally dropping to fifty-six pesos per month in 1904. Skilled laborers’ wages declined from ninetyeight to ninety-four pesos per month between 1896 and 1897, but increased to 108 pesos per month in 1904.46 Working conditions were also difficult. In 1900, Franchini and Dellacha, a millinery, lowered wages from one peso per hundred hats to forty centavos per hundred. Female workers were required to make cash deposits to cover fines, medical expenses, or quitting without sufficient notice.47 Mella’s articles in the March 1902 issue of La Protesta Humana about the general strike in Barcelona and continued labor unrest also helped to radicalize Argentina’s working class.48 When the FOA called its second congress for June 1902, anarchists and socialists vied for control of the organization. The first day of the congress was marred by conflict over the vote to accept delegates who were not members of the unions they represented. According to Abad de Santillán, “Some delegates shouted to continue with the agenda, whereat the minority erupted in anger. A deafening uproar ensued. All those delegates who supported the seating of [socialist Alfredo J.] Torcelli rose from their seats, shouting out their anger. They walked out of the congress amid yells, applause, whistles, and all manner of reaction to the upheaval.”49 The FOA remained in the hands of the anarchists, whose supporters accounted for more of the associated unions. The dissident members of the congress met on June 22, 1902, and called for the creation of a socialist labor federation. On January 7, 1903, they established the Unión General de Trabajadores (General Union of Workers), which worked closely with the Socialist Party for legislative reforms and worker rights. The FOA continued to call for a militant antipolitical labor movement that applied methods of direct action. Immigrant workers from many countries joined both labor federations. Socialists eventually got some delegates elected to Argentina’s congress, but that congress and the government in general remained suspicious of a labor movement with so many foreign-born members and leaders. By the end of 1902, the Argentine congress passed the first of several laws to deport immigrant agitators. The pace of strikes and labor agitation quickened after the FOA’s June conference. The bakers’ union in Buenos Aires struck in July and August. After some strikebreakers were killed at La Princesa Bakery, the government arrested union head Francisco Berri, an action that drew protests throughout the city. The sense of crisis grew when stevedores in the port of Buenos Aires struck to demand a reduction in the weight they were required to load from more than one hundred kilos to below seventy kilos. Stevedores throughout Argentina

48 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Anarchists and Immigration from Spain

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Fig u re 3. Immigrants’ Hotel, Buenos Aires, early twentieth century. Source: Departamento de Documentos Fotográficos, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires

joined the strike, threatening the country’s export economy. Finally, in November 1902, workers at Buenos Aires’s Central Fruit Market struck, crippling the distribution of fruit and vegetables throughout the metropolitan area. The government responded to the accumulating sense of urgency with a residency law rushed through congress on November 22. Senator Miguel Cané submitted the bill at 6:00 in the evening. After a brief debate, the Senate passed the measure two hours later. The Chamber of Deputies convened at 9:30 and approved the bill by 11:30. President Julio Roca signed it into law before midnight. Article 1 of the Ley de Residencia (Residency Law) stated that the executive branch had the authority to deport any foreigner who committed a common crime. Article 2 permitted the expulsion of foreigners whose conduct compromised national security or disturbed public order. Article 3 allowed the executive branch to deny entry to any foreigner whose background was

49 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 2

covered by either of the previous articles. Finally, Article 4 declared that any foreigner detained under the provisions of this law had to leave the country within three days and could remain in detention until expelled.50 The government also declared a state of siege on November 24. It remained in effect until January 1903; after a brief interlude, it was reimposed on February 4. The anarchist movement and press were affected immediately. La Protesta Humana ceased publication after November 21, 1902, one of the first casualties of the Residency Law. Its editor, Inglán y Lafarga, went into hiding. Publication resumed on February 7, 1903, under the editorship of Argentine citizens Alcides Valenzuela, Mariano Cortes, and Alfredo C. López plus Florencio Sánchez, a Uruguayan. Inglán y Lafarga never returned to active participation in the anarchist movement. Other anarchist publications edited by immigrants subject to deportation under the Residency Law also closed, some permanently. Alberto Ghiraldo, an Argentine-born writer, continued publishing El Sol because he was not subject to deportation. The Residency Law represented more than an attempt to end the frequent strikes, although crippling the labor movement by deporting its leaders was one of the measure’s goal. The Argentine government promulgated the law in response to the overwhelming number of recent immigrants: in Buenos Aires alone, the population had grown from just under half a million in 1889 to nearly nine hundred thousand in 1901, an increase of 80 percent in eleven years. Most of that increase resulted from immigration. By 1900, approximately half of the city’s population was foreign-born.51 The Argentine government used the Residency Law to shape the population and to control immigration. Anarchists, socialists, and common criminals were deported to their countries of origin. The arrival of immigrants to Argentina in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century helped to populate the country, brought needed skills and labor, and resulted in a society that combined ideas and people from many countries. Some anarchists migrated from Spain because of the divisions among members of the movement, especially over the violence perpetrated as Propaganda of the Deed. Other anarchists fled repression by the Spanish government and came to Argentina because comrades established there welcomed them. These immigrants from Spain, along with others from Italy and France, helped to make Argentina’s emerging anarchist movement strong and unique that blended ideas and experiences from several countries. The Argentine anarchist movement became the preeminent champion of labor, and its unions formed a powerful federation in 1901. Feeling threatened, government officials passed the Residency Law and began deporting anarchists. Those who returned to Spain brought experiences and knowledge that helped shape the anarchist movement in their native land. The cycle of migration continued. 50

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Chapter 3

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Deportations and Reverse Migration, 1902–1910

S pa n i s h a na r c h i st i m m ig r a n t s who moved to Argentina followed a tradition of migration and return, voluntary or not, that reflected the economic and political conditions in both countries. The continuing exchange of migrants between Spain and Argentina strengthened the connections between the anarchist movements on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The 1902 Residency Law led to an exchange of militants that helped reinvigorate the moribund Spanish movement and brought somber critiques regarding the relationship of syndicalism and anarchism. The first decade of the twentieth century was a tumultuous period in Argentina, as upheavals in 1905, 1907, 1909, and 1910 brought government repression and the deportation of hundreds of Spanish anarchist immigrants. Many of those deported had families in Argentina and returned surreptitiously. Those who remained in Spain took part in debates, established themselves in critical posts, and brought their Argentine perspective to bear on Spanish issues. This chapter analyzes the reverse flow of migrants and their ideas to demonstrate the transnational nature of the anarchist movement during this time. In Argentina, the Residency Law had an impact on many anarchist immigrants. Some ended their active participation in the movement, and others were deported back to Spain. Antonio Pellicer Paraire, the theoretician whose writing had so effectively championed the need for both individual liberty and organizational structure, ceased participating in the anarchist movement after 1902. Thereafter, he led a middle-class life as an artisan who was recognized for

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 3

his leadership in the profession and who helped to establish the journal published by the typesetters’ professional organization. According to one biographer, “Pellicer was not an activist.”1 Perhaps that is one reason Pellicer Paraire did not participate in the founding conference of the FOA in 1901 and dropped out entirely after passage of the Residency Law. Pellicer Paraire was proud of his professional accomplishments. In a 1906 booklet published in honor of his fifty-fifth birthday, Pellicer Paraire never mentioned his participation in the anarchist movement.2 By the time of his death in 1916, the only obituary that appeared in the anarchist press was in the Spanish newspaper, Tierra y Libertad. In the 1920s, when Diego Abad de Santillán attempted to list Pellicer Paraire’s anarchist activities, few anarchists remembered him. Gregorio Inglán y Lafarga, one of the first editors of La Protesta Humana, went into hiding in the day before the enactment of the Residency Law. Other anarchists failed to avoid the authorities. Felix Basterra, Orestes Ristori, and Arturo Montesano were arrested on November 23, 1902. Teodoro Lupano was deported on December 2, and over the next few months Antonio Navarro; José López Margarida; Juan B. Calvo González; Juan Casademont; José Reguera and his son, Manuel; Orsini Bertani; Rómulo Ovidi; and Fernando Ros were expelled from the country. José Reguera had fled Spain in 1889 as “one who was involved in the movement in Andalusia that culminated in the persecutions in Jerez against the ‘mano negra.’”3 In Argentina, he had published El Rebelde between 1899 and 1902. Twenty-year-old Ricardo Alfonsín had arrived in Argentina in 1886 and become active in the bakers’ union. Police reports subsequently listed him as an “agitator,” and he was deported. Another baker, Calvo González, had arrived in Argentina in 1895 at age twenty-one and was arrested during the 1902 bakers’ strike for the crime of coercion, a term used by police to denote militancy. He, too, was sent back to Spain.4 Others who faced expulsion under the Residency Law included Ramón Palau, who had come to Argentina as an eighteen-year-old in 1885. He joined the bakers’ union and was arrested during a strike in 1902. Salvador Estrada, a mechanic, was nineteen when he came to Argentina in 1888, but according to police reports, he “hardly ever worked at his trade in order to dedicate himself to the struggle of labor.”5 Also deported were Adrián Troitiño, Benjamín García, Julio Camba, Miguel Ríos, Manuel Lago, and Antonio Navarro. Troitiño was born in Spain in 1860 and arrived in Argentina in 1880 as a stowaway. He worked as a baker and activist before his deportation to Cádiz in 1903. He left Spain again when Uruguayan workers paid his passage to Montevideo. There, he became a leader in the anarchist movement and played an instrumental role in helping deportees from Buenos Aires jump ship in Montevideo. Julio Camba

52 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Deportations and Reverse Migration

Cell block in the National Penitentiary, 1923. Source: Departamento de Documentos Fotográficos, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires

F i g u re 4.

was an anarchist writer and contributor to La Protesta who had immigrated to Argentina as a teenager in 1898. After his deportation to Spain, he continued his literary career, first in support of anarchist ideas and later in more general writings. In one short story, Camba wrote, “Of every thousand Gallegos one can say that at least nine hundred of them have been to Buenos Aires.”6 Though Camba’s statement was hyperbole, it was also insightful: Argentina had more immigrants from Galicia than from any other region.

53 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 3

Camba also commented on how he felt when he returned to Spain: “The first impression of Spain is one of confusion. At first we don’t exactly know our country, and do not find it the same as we had remembered it. Did Spain change? No, instead, we see it from a different perspective and with different eyes from that with which we had seen it before.”7 Camba, like many Spanish migrants, had changed; how much became apparent only when they returned, often after many years. Juan Suriano refers to Camba as reflecting Spanish individualist anarchist ideas reconciled with those of collectivists in Argentina.8 Writing about the theoretical foundations of Spain’s anarchist movement in Spain, José Álvarez Junco cites Camba as returning from Argentina and presenting a synthesis in his 1903–6 articles in El Rebelde between the individualistic and collectivist anarchism that still divided the Spanish movement.9 Ramón Palau was deported to Spain and wrote back to Argentina from exile, giving a clearer picture of what these forced returns meant.10 After landing in Barcelona, where comrades awaited him with open arms, Palau went to see his parents. He described the visit as a joy after sixteen years’ separation and thanked the state for paying for his passage.11 He did not regard his return as permanent, however, and planned to go back to Argentina. Like many other immigrants there, Palau had not applied for citizenship despite his long residence. Many immigrants found the process of becoming a citizen cumbersome, and, since civic participation was almost meaningless in a fraudulent political system, citizenship brought few benefits prior to the residency law. Even so, Palau and other anarchists did not believe in the power of the state over the individual and would not have sought citizenship as protection from deportation. Palau did not detail his relationship with anarchists in Spain, and when he told his Spanish colleagues that conditions in Argentina could be difficult, this information implied that resistance to authority in Spain was better than immigration and encouraged Spanish anarchists, a consequence feared by Spanish authorities.12 Like many others who had been deported from Argentina, Ramón Palau did not remain long in Spain. He traveled to Montevideo later in 1903, where he was reunited with his compañera and five children. This cycle of deportation and return continued throughout the first decade of the twentieth century, increasing during the peak years of upheaval. Only anecdotal records exist to show how many deportees remained and how many returned to Argentina, but each time immigrants returned to Spain, they reinforced this link between the two countries and their labor movements. This process became significant as syndicalism emerged as an ally of anarchism. As the gap between the two ideologies narrowed, subtle but important differences emerged, leading to con-

54 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Deportations and Reverse Migration

flict among anarchists within Argentina and Spain and between the anarchist movements of the two countries.

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Anarchism and Syndicalism

Spanish anarchist immigrants to Argentina were especially involved in conflicts over ideology. Their experiences abroad distanced them from the day-to-day struggles of Spanish workers. As a result, many Spanish anarchists in Argentina continued to stress the need for ideological purity, while unions in Spain struggled with organizational issues. José Prat spent a brief period in Buenos Aires before returning to Spain in 1898. He was considered one of the most important anarchist writers in Barcelona, although his views at times differed from those of other Spanish anarchists because he opposed syndicalism. In a series of articles published between July and October 1908 in Solidaridad Obrera, Prat wrote about the distinctive nature of socialism and syndicalism. Although none of his writing focuses specifically on Argentina or his experience there he was, according to J. Romero Maura, one of the few in the Spanish anarchist movement who understood the “the full theoretical and strategic implications of syndicalism before 1910.”13 Returning Spanish anarchists brought with them the perspective of Argentine anarchists, who had been among the most vocal in warning of the dangers of syndicalism within the labor movement unless it was linked to truly revolutionary goals.14 Syndicalism had developed in France as a revolutionary working-class movement not affiliated with any political party. It sought to create a working-class organization capable of leading a general strike that would destroy the old economic and political order. Syndicalism and anarchism shared a common purpose in creating a new order through direct action and a rejection of the state. Anarchists, however, differed from syndicalists in two important ways, and these differences created tension between the two groups in Argentina. The first and perhaps most important difference between syndicalists and anarchists was the concept of individual liberty. The debate between individualist anarchists and collectivists had only recently been resolved in Argentina in favor of what would become known as anarcho-communism, which accepted a degree of organization while preserving the liberty of each individual. Antonio Pellicer Paraire had earlier tried to bridge these two groups by identifying an organization that could not only protest, boycott, and strike but also recognize the importance of individual freedom among the workers. The anarchist federation’s 1904 Solidarity Pact reflected Pellicer Paraire’s views: “The

55 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 3

historic evolution has been that of individual liberty, which is indispensable for the establishment of social liberty; that this liberty will not be lost through syndicalization with other workers; but first one must increase the degree and magnitude of individual power; for humans are social animals and, therefore, the liberty of each is not limited by that of the other, as is the bourgeois concept; instead, the liberty of each is augmented by that of the others.”15 This concern for the individual had made many anarchists suspicious of all organizations, even those comprising members of the working class. Anarchists feared that the need for solidarity would restrict the freedom of each individual, notwithstanding Pellicer Paraire’s admonition that this idea was a false dichotomy created by a bourgeois concept of liberty. Argentine anarchists did not want a union bureaucracy and eschewed paid leadership positions wherever possible. Syndicalists wanted unions to form the core of what would become the new society, and as a practical matter, many anarchists agreed with the importance of working-class organizations. Nevertheless, anarchists in Argentina continuously raised concerns regarding the dangers of bureaucracy and organization as goals in themselves. One of Argentine anarchists’ principal fears was that labor organizations could become affiliated with political parties, as could be seen by the anarchist FOA’s rejection of ties to the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), a socialist labor federation. Anarchists believed in direct action and did not directly support any party or legislation. Indeed, anarchists vociferously objected to proposed labor laws in 1904, even though the laws sought to improve working conditions for laborers. Proposed by Joaquín V. González, the minister of justice, the laws regulated working hours and conditions, an intrusion by the state that anarchists opposed. At its 1904 congress, the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA), the successor confederation to the FOA, declared “that the proposed Labor Law is an unprecedented attack on collective and individual liberties.”16 Anarchists in Argentina did not want unions to become partners with the government in creating labor legislation that would affirm the state’s power. Instead, anarchists wanted all unions to be focused on revolutionary goals that would lead to a transformation of society. At the March 1907 unity congress, sixty-nine anarchist unions, thirty socialist unions, and thirty-six autonomous unions discussed measures that would bring them together. A spokesperson for the anarchists announced that labor unions “should not limit themselves to a purely economic struggle for small improvements but should seek to overthrow the capitalist system.”17 Syndicalists in Argentina associated first with the UGT when it was formed in 1902. Their belief in direct action, however, made syndicalism more compat-

56 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Deportations and Reverse Migration

ible with the anarchists, and unity talks in 1907 produced cooperation. But this collaboration only exposed the UGT’s weakness, and the syndicalists created the Confederación Obrera Regional Argentina (Workers’ Confederation of the Argentine Region) in September 1909. The split between Argentine anarchists (calling themselves anarcho-communists) and syndicalists continued into the next decade, coming to a head in 1915. In Spain, the differences between anarchists and syndicalists were less noticeable, as the Spanish movement was sympathetic to the syndicalist approach. When Prat returned to Spain and criticized syndicalism, he reflected more of an Argentine perspective. In 1904, he spoke to the goal of social revolution rather than political or material advancements: “Men do not do battle for their Rights,” wrote Prat. “They struggle for the possibility that these rights will become an accomplished Fact. And this can be achieved only through the possession of society’s wealth, now so unequally distributed among men.”18 Anarchists and syndicalists also differed in their approach to class. Syndicalists focused on the union as the incubator of a new society and as the leader of a general strike that would attack the capitalist system and its government.19 Anarchists, especially those who emphasized the role of individual liberty, did not seek an exclusively class-based revolution. Although many anarchists believed in the necessity of class conflict, they did not exclude any individual who sought liberty through anarchism. Anarchists welcomed writers and intellectuals as well as workers, although Jorge Solomonoff points out that many of the intellectual leaders of the Argentine movement were self-taught workers.20 In Spain, conversely, many important anarchist thinkers and writers were skilled tradesmen or intellectuals not from the working class.21 Nevertheless, several immigrant intellectuals had considerable influence on the Argentine anarchist movement, most notably among them Rafael Barrett. Barrett was the Spanish-born son of an English father and Spanish mother. He was tall, and his brown hair, oval face, and large, clear eyes helped him stand out among the well-to-do youth in Madrid at the turn of the century. Barrett’s sense of honor—or perhaps his homophobia—rather than any ideological predisposition led to his flight from Spain. After being publicly accused of homosexuality, Barrett found his accuser at the theater and struck him with a whip. Sanctioned by a Tribunal of Honor and disqualified as a gentleman, Barrett traveled to Argentina in 1904 and began to write for the newspaper of the Spanish community, El Diario Español. Barrett wrote scathing commentaries on the extreme contrasts between wealth and poverty in Buenos Aires. He soon moved on to Paraguay, where a company hired him to write a study of the plantations producing yerba mate, a popular herbal tea. Much to the chagrin

57 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 3

of the company, Barrett described the bestial exploitation of the workers and the extreme cruelty of the overseers. He later moved to Asunción, where he married and began writing for local periodicals. Barrett wrote honestly about the terrible exploitation of the workers, publishing articles with such titles as “The Pain of Paraguay,” and eventually espoused a pacifist village anarchism akin to that of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. Barrett participated in the local labor movement, holding conferences in union halls and editing pamphlets. He also sent articles to periodicals in Montevideo and Buenos Aires. In response to the upheavals of 1910, Barrett published “Terror in Argentina.” Barrett contracted tuberculosis and in 1910 left Paraguay for treatment in France, where he died at age thirty-five. His legacy of denouncing injustice and sympathy for the plight of the worker remained strong in South America, where he was considered an eloquent spokesperson for libertarian ideas even though he was not a member of the working class. Barrett represented the broad scope of anarchist sympathies that included writers and artists who concerned themselves with an array of issues faced by the working class. Anarchists in Argentina did not limit their activities to questions of employment and criticized syndicalists’ exclusive focus on working conditions and union organization. Anarchists were active regarding several social questions, including the high cost of housing, which was in short supply in Buenos Aires as a consequence of the massive influx of immigrants. By the beginning of the twentieth century, housing costs had become an issue among many of the city’s workers. In February 1905, a Tenants’ League formed. Though it disappeared the following year, a new organization, the League against Rents and Taxes, was established in October 1906. Anarchists, socialists, and some members of the Radical Party supported this league. However, internal squabbles and accusations that some members were police spies brought about the League’s demise. The failure of these organizations pointed out the difficulties tenants encountered in organizing regarding a topic that was not strictly a class issue. In August 1907, landlords significantly raised rents in response to increased property taxes, leading tenants to refuse to pay their rent. The action grew into a six-month rent strike that eventually encompassed nearly one-tenth of the city’s population.22 The strike ultimately failed to lower rents in Buenos Aires, but it gained anarchists’ support. Abad de Santillán complained that the anarchists suffered the most from poststrike government repression and reported that those deported included Roberto D’Angió, Mariano Forcat (who served on the editorial board of La Protesta), Ramón Antoñeda, José Pañeda, Guido Monachessi, José Pérez, Alfonso García de la Mata, and Manuel Lourido. According to Abad de

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Deportations and Reverse Migration

F i g u re 5. Conventillo detail, Buenos Aires, 1910. Source: Departamento de Documentos Fotográficos, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires

Santillán, “Some of these returned to this country, remaining until the next police repression; others left the movement, others remained active in their respective countries.”23 Questions of housing and broader issues affecting members of the working class drew participants from anarchist and syndicalist unions. However, Argentina’s anarchists rejected syndicalists’ political participation and focus on worker benefits. Anarchists in Argentina accepted participation by writers, and although most anarchists were workers organized in unions, the anarchists exhibited greater support for the rent strike and issues that were not exclusively class-based. Argentine anarchists believed in a revolutionary doctrine that remained suspicious of organizations, even working-class ones, and kept their

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F i g u re 6. Conventillo patio at Piedras 1268, early twentieth century. Source: Departamento de Documentos Fotográficos, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires

distance from syndicalists. In Spain, however, syndicalists gained influence, and the labor movement looked increasingly to revolutionary syndicalism. Spanish workers also took notice of Argentina’s syndicalist organization, the CORA, whose founding principles and articles influenced Spanish labor leaders’ organization of their new federation.24 Impact of Deportations on Spain

The deportation of Spanish immigrants from Argentina after the Residency Law of 1902 and continuing Spanish immigration to Argentina helped to reinforce the relationship between the anarchist movements in these two countries. Spanish immigration to Argentina increased from 95,264 in the period 1891–1895 to 505,884 in the period 1906–1910 (see table 2, p. 40). The anarchist press in both countries helped to increase the connection between the two anarchist move-

60 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Deportations and Reverse Migration

ments, printing reports of activities in the other country. Several reporters also wrote for newspapers in both countries. During 1906, La Protesta often printed a “Crónica de España” column. On April 10, 1906, for example, La Protesta reported on hunger in Spain, citing thirty-five thousand unemployed workers and employers who were lowering wages. Such conditions led to an increase in Spanish emigration. Between 1906 and 1910, 586,934 Spaniards departed for the Americas, with 86 percent of them going to Argentina. Both of Spain’s anarchist newspapers, Tierra y Libertad and Solidaridad Obrera, reported regularly on events in Argentina. Tierra y Libertad covered the 1907 rent strike and other events through the post-1910 repression, and ran nearly daily columns headed “Crónica de Buenos Aires” or “Desde la Argentina.” Yet despite the warnings and the call to militancy in Spain, workers left in ever-increasing numbers, hoping for a better future in Argentina. (See table 1, pp. 24–25.) The greatest problems facing Spanish workers and encouraging emigration in the first decade of the twentieth century were the threat of conscription because of the ongoing wars in Morocco between 1909 and 1926, unemployment, and daily living expenses such as housing. Spain’s emigration policies had eased with the 1900 reduction in the deposit required of men who wished to emigrate before completing their military service. On December 21, 1907, Spain passed a new emigration law that identified emigrants as “those Spaniards who propose to leave their native country, with third-class tickets purchased or given to them.”25 This law eased some restrictions on young males and encouraged the departure of many Spaniards, especially those who did not wish to complete their compulsory military service. Indeed, Spanish immigration to Argentina peaked in 1908, 1910, and 1912. Poor economic conditions also led many Spaniards to emigrate. Barcelona increased its population by 10 percent between 1910 and 1920, mostly as a result of new arrivals from the countryside. Some 3.6 million Spaniards left for America between 1882 and 1935, with approximately 824,000 (29 percent of the total) departing between 1901 and 1910.26 Of the 1.4 million Spaniards who emigrated from Spain to Argentina between 1871 and 1914, approximately 642,000 (just over 44 percent) came between 1901 and 1910 (see table 2). This outflow of workers provided an alternative to class struggle, and anarchists on both sides of the Atlantic wanted to reduce the number of immigrants. On February 3, 1910, Argentina’s La Protesta reported an “alarming increase” in emigration from Spain, claiming that four thousand campesinos from Andalusia had abandoned their country for Argentina in the preceding fifteen days.27 Barcelona’s anarchist newspaper, Tierra y Libertad, ran many stories about the brutality of Argentine authorities and the lack of opportunities there. One article warned

61 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Chapter 3

Tab l e 3.

Spanish Immigration and Return from Latin America, 1882–1940

Years 1882–85 1886–90 1891–95 1896–1900 1901–5 1906–10 1911–15 1916–20 1921–25 1926–30 1931–35 1936–40 TOTALS

Spanish Immigration 106,813 262,420 282,751 276,839 236,910 586,934 649,703 421,069 416,508 302,725 108,564 18,516 3,669,752

Returned to Spain (%)

Net Remaining Abroad (%)

67,018 (62.7) 101,139 (38.5) 137,707 (48.7) 291,625 (105.3) 115,638 (48.8) 213,542 (36.4) 409,539 (63.0) 283,503 (67.3) 311,823 (74.9) 248,067 (81.9) 192,495 (173.3) 16,245 (87.7) 2,388,341 (65.1)

39,795 (37.3) 161,281 (61.5) 145,044 (51.3) –14,785 (–5.3) 121,272 (51.2) 373,392 (63.6) 240,164 (37.0) 137,566 (32.7) 104,685 (25.1) 54,658 (18.1) –83,931 (–73.3) 2,271 (12.3) 1,281,411 (34.9)

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Source: Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, “La emigración española a la América en medio milenio: Pautas sociales,” Historia Social 42 (2002): 41–58.

potential immigrants about conditions, while another described how police attacked strikers.28 And Spain’s Solidaridad Obrera compared the Argentine government’s repression to that of Russia and Turkey.29 These reports painted an image of repression and poverty in Argentina equal to that of Spain. The message seemed to be that workers should remain in Spain and work to overturn the system through social revolution, a message that Spanish immigrants returning from Argentina often enhanced. In the first decade of the twentieth century, approximately three hundred thousand individuals left Argentina for other lands, about half as many as arrived during that period . Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz gives a similar picture of Spaniards returning from the Americas, identifying 329,180 returnees (about 40 percent of those who departed) (see table 3). Argentina deported the most active anarchists, those whose actions had brought them to the notice of the authorities. Their experience with the anarchist movement in Argentina had helped to shape their ideas. Anarchists and the Labor Movement in Argentina

Government repression and deportations after the enactment of the Residency Law removed many militants from Argentina’s anarchist ranks but did not

62 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Deportations and Reverse Migration

appreciably weaken the radical philosophy’s influence over workers. Despite the anti-immigrant activities and increasing involvement of Argentine-born radicals, migrations continued to develop the links between the Argentine anarchist movement and Spain. Between June 6 and 8, 1903, the FOA held its third congress. Only eighty delegates attended the Buenos Aires meeting, but they agreed that the tactical efficiency of their strikes had provoked such a great response from the government. This recognition led to many more strikes and increased the anarchists’ importance among the country’s working class. One representative at this congress, Alberto Ghiraldo, was born in the province of Buenos Aires in 1875 to a well-connected family. In 1893, he began writing for La Nación and met Rubén Darío, a famous Nicaraguan poet then in Argentina. In 1896, Ghiraldo left La Nación to found and edit one of the first workers’ newspapers in Buenos Aires, El Obrero, which was published between September 22 and November 14 of that year. In 1899, he founded El Sol, a literary and social magazine. He also edited La Protesta and was arrested briefly when the paper was closed in November 1902. He supported libertarian causes and defended the rights of the underclass. One biographer has described his ideas as “ghiraldista”—that is, unique.30 Ghiraldo gained the respect of the revolutionary proletariat. His career as an author united him with both Argentina’s labor movement and its literary world. He went on to publish Ideas y Figuras in Buenos Aires and become the president of the Argentine Association of Authors. In 1903, Ghiraldo was focusing on the working class, and he represented the longshoremen’s union at the anarchist congress. There, he witnessed a debate over issues of Sunday rest, night work, and timely payment of wages. In 1917, Ghiraldo traveled to Spain, where he unsuccessfully attempted to unite the Spanish and Argentine authors’ associations. He remained in Spain and continued to publish Ideas y Figuras from Madrid, writing nostalgically about the pampas and Buenos Aires. He moved back to Argentina in 1935 but left for Chile one year later. He died there in 1946. The first years of the twentieth century saw increasing labor conflict in Argentina. The longshoreman’s congress Ghiraldi attended opted for direct action, authorizing both boycott and sabotage as weapons against the capitalists. Abad de Santillán lists twelve strikes with fifty thousand participants between April 15 and July 15, 1903.31 Such militant activities brought recognition to the anarchists, and workers flocked to the movement. The police became increasingly alarmed about the perceived anarchist threat. On May 1, 1904, the FOA held a march from the plaza in front of Congress to the statue of Giuseppe Mazzini on the Paseo de Julio in downtown Buenos Aires. Just as the speakers were about to address the crowd, a gunshot rang out. The source was not clear, but

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Chapter 3

police began shooting into the crowd, and several armed anarchists responded in kind. More than twenty workers, including several women, were wounded, and one man was killed.32 The weekly La Protesta Humana was one of the most important anarchist organs during this period of conflict. The newspaper reopened in January under the editorship of Juan ( John) Creaghe, an Irishman who had published El Oprimido in Lujan, a small town in Buenos Aires province. He had folded his publication to support La Protesta Humana when it came into being in 1897. The police regularly arrested its editors, many of whom were deported. By 1904, so many staff members had been arrested and deported that the paper appointed a new editorial board. Its members included Antonio Loredo, Federico Gutiérrez, and J. Alberto Castro. In March 1904, the editors shortened the paper’s name to La Protesta and made it a daily publication. It then became the most successful anarchist newspaper in the world, continuing publication until the 1930s (despite occasional closings). Between July 30 and August 2, 1904, the anarchist FOA held its fourth congress in Buenos Aires, where the anarchists described their organization as a federation of unions and its fundamental purpose as social justice.33 They identified general strikes as “schools of rebellion” and recommended that participants make the walkouts as revolutionary as possible to provide an education in revolution that would “become the preamble to the great event that energizes the working class.”34 They also affirmed their support for mechanization when used to improve the lives of workers. Discussion about the nature of anarchist organization led to the declaration that the FOA opposed all political participation: “Our organization exists to reduce existing governments to purely economic functions, creating in their place a free Federation of voluntary associations of free workers.”35 This statement, according to Abad de Santillán, was taken directly from an 1881 document of the Federación de Trabajadores de la Región Española (Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region) and indicates how closely these two movements paralleled each other. Finally, the organization voted to rename itself the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina (Workers’ Federation of the Argentine Region) to recognize its connection with the movement in Spain, Europe, and the Americas. However, these links also included syndicalism and socialism, as Spanish workers had encountered those ideas in Spain and, as immigrants, brought them to Argentina. Tension arose among unions over the appropriate orientation for the Argentine labor movement. To resolve this tension, the FORA declared in 1905, “The Fifth Congress of the FORA, in light of the principles which have given rise to the organization of worker federations, declares: That the Congress approve and recommend

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Deportations and Reverse Migration

to all its member unions that it publicize and explain fully to inculcate workers with the economic and philosophical principles of Anarcho-communism.”36 After much debate, the organization rejected the political process and accommodation to the capitalist economic system in favor of a revolutionary and visionary goal that could be achieved only with the elimination of the state. That year was revolutionary in Argentina. In early 1905, Hipólito Yrigoyen and his Radical Party rebelled against the conservative government, which responded by declaring a thirty-day state of siege on February 4 and closing the offices of La Protesta. On August 11, an anarchist attempted to assassinate President Manuel Quintana, prompting the government to arrest and deport anarchists and to declare a ninety-day state of siege on October 3.37 The twentythree militants deported that year included Joaquín Hucha and Antonio Loredo, both of whom were writers and editors of La Protesta and both of whom returned to Buenos Aires through Montevideo.38 Both were subsequently expelled again. In response to FORA’s strategy, 323 strikes occurred in 1906.39 The government responded with many arrests: according to La Protesta, “The objective appears to be the jailing of every member of the Federal Committee of the Worker’s Federation.”40 On March 31, the paper reported that the police had arrested one of its editors, José de Maturana, and jailed him for twenty days on a charge of carrying a weapon.41 So many anarchists were jailed in the national penitentiary that prisoners began referring to it as the Montjuich Bonarense, comparing it to the infamous Barcelona fortress that had held anarchist prisoners in the 1890s.42 Despite the government’s attempted crackdown, FORA continued to increase in size and influence. By the time its sixth congress met in September 1906, more than one hundred unions participated. Two of the most militant unions were those of the bakers (panaderos) and teamsters (conductores de carros). Presiding over the congress were teamsters Esteban Almada and Santos Montagnoli and J. M. Acha, a baker. This congress opposed the residency law and voted to support a tenant organization for a rent strike and to demand a six-hour workday. This stance encouraged events that led to a teamsters’ strike in Rosario in 1907 and a January 1907 general strike of nearly 150,000 workers for more than forty-eight hours. Another August 1907 general strike occurred over the deaths of striking workers in Bahía Blanca in the province of Buenos Aires. The deportation of hundreds of anarchists in 1905–6 occurred while thousands of new Spanish immigrants arrived in Argentina. (See Appendix B.) Nervous as well as emboldened, FORA called for active resistance against the Argentine state, both nationally and internationally. The organization proposed recommending “to the Federal Council the convocation of a continental

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congress of South America, supporting and joining the international congress initiated by the Workers’ Federation of the Spanish Region.”43 A delegate read a note from the Spanish Federation in support of the proposal. And following the Spanish anarchists in Barcelona, whose 1902 general strike exemplified the power of a revolutionary movement to bring down the state and the entire old order, Argentine anarchists began a series of strikes, many of them general strikes designed not so much to gain demands as to encourage a total rejection of the state and its economic system. Anarchists hoped that a mobilized proletariat might act with such force that a general strike would bring the promised revolution. A total of 254 strikes took place in 1907.44 One of the most powerful of the 1907 strikes was a rent strike that mobilized 120,000 individuals through tenant committees, many of them headed by women. Anarchists had encouraged exactly this type of direct action and gave much support to the tenants. One of the leaders was Juana Rouco Buela, who spoke at rallies for the tenants. Born in Madrid in 1889, Rouco Buela immigrated to Argentina in 1900 when an aunt there sent money for her passage. She did not attend school but went with her older brother to meetings and discussions of anarchist workers. She was so taken with their ideas that she taught herself to read and write. In 1904, she and three friends, Teresa Caporaletti, María Reyes, and Elisa Leotar, participated in the May Day rally. When the police attacked the crowd and killed a young man, the girls placed his body on a door from a construction site and brought it to anarchist headquarters. Movement leaders later asked Rouco Buela to recruit among female workers, and she helped to found the Anarchist Women’s Center. Perhaps as a consequence of her highly visible role in the rent strike, she was deported under the Residency Law in January 1908.45 Authorities arrested and deported so many workers that anarchists called for a general strike in opposition to deportations on January 13 and 14, 1908. The effort did not attract the hoped-for support—police repression had been effective. However, a little over a month later, on February 28, Solano Reljis attempted to assassinate the Argentine president José Figueroa Alcorta. Reljis explained his actions at his trial: “In view of the Law of Residence, which discriminates against anarchists born abroad, I as a native-born anarchist unaffected by the law, protest the deportations of my comrades.”46 Anarchist action culminated in a May 1909 strike that involved nearly three hundred thousand workers and led to many deaths. The car and vehicle drivers’ unions decided to declare a general strike on May Day. About thirty thousand anarchist workers gathered in a plaza to mark the day, and Colonel Ramón Falcón, the chief of police, feared that greater disturbances would follow and

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Deportations and Reverse Migration

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Fig u re 7. Meeting of the car drivers (chófers) union, 1911. Source: Departamento de Documentos Fotográficos, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires

sought to respond with enough force to halt the movement completely. The police charged into the crowd, killing eight workers and wounding more than one hundred. Anarchists charged that police gunfire had caused the casualties. But instead of halting the planned general strike, Falcón’s action united the anarchist FORA and the socialist UGT, and the strike began on May 2, with leaders demanding that union halls be reopened. After nearly a week, the government relented and released about eight hundred workers from jail. Four months later, unions from various federations sought to overcome their differences with a unity congress. The FORA refused to participate, fearing that socialists and syndicalists would dominate the proceedings. These labor squabbles and increasingly violent strikes in Argentina were only a prelude to the fury that was unleashed after the Tragic Week in Barcelona, when the Spanish government executed Francisco Ferrer, an anarchist educa-

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tor, on October 13, 1909. The September unity congress in Argentina had been concerned about conditions in Spain and had passed a resolution condemning the war in Morocco and proposing a boycott of Spanish goods.47 After Ferrer’s execution, twenty thousand workers staged a protest strike in Buenos Aires, and a nationwide general strike began on October 14 and lasted three days. Then, on November 14, a young Ukrainian immigrant, Simón Radowitzky, threw a bomb that killed Falcón and his secretary. Radowitzky claimed to have acted because Falcón had “ordered the massacre of workers” at the May Day rally.48 The government responded with a state of siege, thousands of arrests, hundreds of deportations, and the closing of La Protesta and the jailing of its editors. The government also passed the Ley de Defensa Social (Law of Social Defense) to destroy FORA and the anarchist movement. Anarchists were prohibited from entering the country, and their organizations were forbidden to hold meetings. Those deported included well-known writer E. G. Gilimón, Leonardo Jesús Garrido, Juan Carretero, Alberto Zamorano, Antonio Loredo, A. Manresa Herrero, Antonio Fernández, Joaquín Hucha, Pablo Gil, José Troncoso, Francisco López, Salvador Garin, José Fonteche, Isaac B. González, José López, and Evaristo Galea.49 Gilimón wrote for La Protesta and was eloquent in his defense of workers. His deportation occurred even though he had a family in Argentina, and when he arrived in Barcelona, he immediately began planning his return voyage. While sailing west, Gilimón was speaking with another anarchist who had voluntarily returned to Spain to see his family when the man nodded toward a group of Spaniards headed for Argentina with high hopes: “See those?” the man said. “They are your future anarchists.”50 Gilimón was again arrested and deported from Argentina. This time, Spanish officials stripped him of his citizenship and paid his way to Montevideo. Gilimón’s experiences were fairly common, especially among those who had family in Argentina. The Spanish government did not want Argentina’s troublemakers and tried to ensure that these migrants would not become active in Spain and thus reinforce the militancy of both Spanish and Argentine anarchists. One deported Spaniard described the enthusiasm with which he and other deportees had been received in the Spanish port city of Vigo, where anarchist newspapers kept residents apprised of events in Argentina. The deportees then toured Spain, denouncing the Argentine government everywhere they went.51 The governments of Spain and Argentina also communicated with each other regarding the movements of anarchists. On March 21, 1903, Francisco Beasley, the chief of police in Buenos Aires, confidentially wrote to the minister pleni-

68 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Deportations and Reverse Migration

potentiary of Spain, Don Julio de Arellano y Arrospide, to warn that anarchist Manuel Rodríguez was traveling to Vigo on board the Cap Roca. The following July 18, Beasley again wrote to the Spanish authorities, this time asking for information about Manuel Miguens from Pontevedra, Domingo Saragoicochea of Bilbao, and Andrés Terra, also of Pontevedra.52 This communication between Argentine and Spanish authorities continued throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century. Attempting to keep track of anarchists, the Argentines informed Spanish authorities of those being deported, their ships, and their destinations, often including detailed descriptions of each deportee. For example, in 1903, Argentine authorities informed their Spanish counterparts that Manuel Narvaez and Baldomero Ripoll were sailing to Barcelona on the Reina María Cristina. Narvaez had come to Argentina from Montevideo and Ripoll from Taragona. Narvaez, born on September 20, 1876, was about five feet, five inches tall, with black hair and green eyes. He was single and worked as a barber. Ripoll, born on February 15, 1860, was five feet, two inches tall, with dark brown hair and green eyes. He was a widower and worked as a carpenter.53 The two governments were intent on keeping track of anarchists as they traveled back and forth between Spain and Argentina.

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Anarchists and the Labor Movement in Spain

Spanish anarchists faced a turbulent first decade of the twentieth century. Government repression in the face of anarchist terrorism caused many leaders to flee the country and weakened the relationship between labor and the anarchists. José Prat returned from his brief stay in Argentina and argued against a continuation of Propaganda of the Deed.54 After 1900, fewer acts of violence occurred, and many of those were the work of foreigners. Alfonso García, a twenty-five-year-old Argentine citizen born of Spanish parents, traveled from Buenos Aires to Spain in 1902 to assassinate the king. He found little support for his project. Instead, Spanish anarchists drew strength from organizational principles of syndicalism in France and the encouragement of anarchists in Argentina, who sent letters and copies of their periodicals. Spanish anarchists met in October 1900 to form the Federación de Sociedades Obreras de la Región Española (Federation of Workers’ Societies of the Spanish Region). Although the organization never enlisted the majority of the region’s workers, its contribution to the anarchist movement in Spain was the introduction of the general strike in February 1902 in Barcelona. One of the reasons anarchists had difficulty organizing in and around Barcelona was the preponderance of textile mills, where many employees were

69 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 3

women and children. Employers in the Ter Valley had begun to take advantage of the new spinning machines to replace men with lower-paid employees.55 But Catalonia’s labor unions were weakened by the region’s relatively small factory sizes and large number of factories. In addition, differences existed among various worker ideologies, as anarchists, socialists, and syndicalists disagreed on goals. At the beginning of December 1901, when metallurgical workers walked off the job and demanded an eight-hour day, their employers refused to give in. The stalemate lasted for weeks, with other unions moving to support the metallurgical workers. The Federation of Workers’ Societies of the Spanish Region in Barcelona called for a general strike on February 17, 1902. It lasted one week and included many of the city’s workers, even those not affiliated with the Federation. The metallurgical workers failed in their goal , but the general strike demonstrated that thousands of workers could cooperate. The Spanish labor movement subsequently began to use strikes as a class weapon, but many of these strikes failed, and the labor movement in Barcelona declined from forty-five thousand to seven thousand members between 1902 and 1909. Police repression was fierce, and more than 350 militants were jailed in 1903. The wave of strikes lasted through 1903 but subsided in 1904, and the Federation of Workers’ Societies ceased to function by the following year. J. Romero Maura suggests that these defeats may have led many workers to look to the Radical Republican Party under Alejandro Lerroux and to a period of withdrawal by anarchist militants: “Cut off from the working class, the anarchists turned in on themselves, and from 1903 to 1907 they lived apart in the inbred world of their threadbare centers and publications.”56 According to Murray Bookchin, the decline of the labor movement after the general strike of 1902 “shifted the center of conflict from the economic to the political arena. In the next few years, the workers of Barcelona were to shift their allegiances from the unions to Lerroux’s Radical Republican Party.”57 The left-wing Radical Republican Party drew much of its support from workers in Barcelona who listened to Lerroux’s denunciations of the church and the rich. Many Spanish anarchists opposed this turn toward political participation. Pellicer Paraire remained in Argentina but “continued his correspondence with friends in Barcelona, giving his opinions on men and events. He was, perhaps, the first to realize how great a danger the alliance with Señor Lerroux would be to the Catalan working-class organization.”58 This tension between anarchists who abjured political action and Lerroux was only one of the reasons that the labor movement remained lethargic through much of the first decade of the twentieth century.

70 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Deportations and Reverse Migration

While the notion of a revolutionary general strike to unite the working class originated in the French labor movement, the second influence on Spanish anarchism in the early twentieth century came from a Spaniard who resided in France. Francisco Ferrer y Guardia came from a Catalan family that owned a vineyard. Francisco Ferrer, as he was commonly known, became radicalized in his youth and joined the Republican movement. He later accepted libertarian ideas after meeting Anselmo Lorenzo in Paris and becoming interested in education. Anarchists stressed the need for education to prepare individuals for the coming social revolution and to take the monopoly on education from the church and the state. Ferrer returned to Spain after receiving a legacy from a wealthy woman to whom he had taught Spanish. In September 1901, Ferrer used the money to open Barcelona’s first Modern School, enrolling twelve girls and eighteen boys. The concept caught on, and Modern Schools were opened throughout Spain. Each followed the curriculum published by Ferrer. Students were to be educated in a manner appropriate to anarchist principles. Teachers were not to use corporal punishment but to allow students to pursue their own interests. The structured curriculum stressed science and rational thought, but there were no examinations or competitions. These schools provided opportunities for workers as well as middle-class youth to mix and spread anarchist ideas throughout the country. Ferrer took no leadership role in the movement but remained active behind the scenes, publishing and—according to the Spanish authorities who later arrested him— encouraging terrorism. Tomás Herreros, a worker and member of the anarchist movement who favored syndicalism, wrote that Ferrer may have joined in the 1905 plot to assassinate the king of Spain.59 Another attempt on the king’s life the following year involved Matteo Morral, a member of Ferrer’s staff. Ferrer was not implicated in the assassination attempt, but the authorities closed his Modern Schools and he was jailed for one year. He never reopened his Barcelona school, but the Modern Schools played an important role in sustaining the anarchist movement in Spain as well as in many other countries, including Argentina. Anarchist workers in Barcelona did not create another effective organization until 1907, when the syndicalist Solidaridad Obrera (Worker Solidarity) came into existence. The new group’s leaders declared that it was not under the tutelage of either Marxism or anarchism.60 Herreros and others in Solidaridad Obrera helped to fuse the two branches of socialism into anarcho-syndicalism, although the editors of Tierra y Libertad believed that anarcho-syndicalists were reformists.61 This tension among anarchists in Spain reflected that of anarchists

71 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 3

in Argentina, who also faced unions that favored syndicalism. The leaders of Solidaridad Obrera knew about Argentina’s FORA and the ongoing attempts to create a united labor movement there through newspaper articles that circulated throughout Catalonia.62 Spain’s anarchists quickly put aside their differences after violent protests shook Barcelona between July 26 and August 1, 1909, which was dubbed Tragic Week. Labor disputes in the Ter Valley in May had led to an employer lockout, and Solidaridad Obrera called for a general strike. In early July, the Spanish army suffered a terrible defeat in Morocco, and the government demanded increased conscription of young Catalan men. The move angered workers, but Solidaridad Obrera’s leaders did not agree on protest tactics. An insurrectionary movement erupted almost spontaneously. As Anselmo Lorenzo wrote, “This is amazing! A social revolution has broken out in Barcelona, initiated by an entity so ill-defined, -understood, or -recognized that it is sometimes vilified as a mob and other times hailed as The People. No one has instigated this revolution! And no one directs it!”63 Workers erected barricades, the government called in troops, and fighting ensued for the better part of a week—the Semana Trágica (Tragic Week). According to some estimates, hundreds died. The government responded by arresting nearly two thousand people, deporting many others, and imposing the death sentence on five individuals, among them Ferrer, who had nothing to do with the violence. The Tragic Week and subsequent repression weakened but did not destroy Spain’s anarchist movement. Solidaridad Obrera was closed for a time but resumed publication with Prat’s call for anarchists to take action.64 Prat also published his call in Tierra y Libertad.65 He, Ricardo Mella, and the aging Lorenzo mounted a spirited defense of anarchist principles that continued until the outbreak of war in 1914. Anarchists in the labor movement also rebounded. In December 1909, Solidaridad Obrera held a meeting of unions as a way to reestablish the federation, whose membership had declined from fifteen thousand to about forty-five hundred.66 Only twenty-seven unions sent delegates, and they seemed to have little enthusiasm for renewed activism. Bookchin attributes the ascendance of more militant anarchists by 1910 to the withdrawal of moderate leaders in the face of repression.67 But migration may have also played a role. In 1910, the number of Spanish immigrants going to Argentina spiked to 131,466, nearly 60 percent higher than the 1909 figure of 86,798. Prior to World War I, only 1912 would see more Spaniards migrate to Argentina (165,662).68 Emigration was one option for those concerned about government repression in Spain, although there is no way to know whether the more militant or the more timid were likely to be among these migrants. Conversely, government

72 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Deportations and Reverse Migration

repression in Argentina, especially with the 1910 Law of Social Defense reinforcing the Residency Law, resulted in the return of many Spanish anarchist immigrants from Argentina at this critical moment. Abad de Santillán estimates that about two thousand anarchists were arrested in Argentina during the upheavals of 1909–10.69 That group included twenty-eight Spaniards who were arrested after Falcón’s assassination and deported via the Roland from Buenos Aires to Vigo at the end of 1909.70 Prior to their deportation, the men spent a month imprisoned on another ship, the Guardia Nacional, during which time they claimed to have been beaten with the flat of machete blades.71 Three of the men jumped ship in Montevideo, while the others were detained by Spanish authorities after landing in Vigo. The deportees were later released without jobs or money, forcing them to find family members with whom to stay.72 Anarchists’ movements across the Atlantic in response to periods of anarchist activity and government repression in Spain and Argentina resulted in an exchange of militants that made them familiar with both countries’ movements. This interrelationship affected the development of the anarchist movement in Argentina, where Spanish immigrants helped build the largest and most powerful labor confederation. Argentine labor unions modeled their strike activity, in part, on the 1902 general strike in Barcelona that was a consequence of syndicalist ideology. The influence of syndicalism then became a point of contention within the labor movement and led to divisions in Argentina. In response to the threat of strikes and labor’s increasing power, the Argentine government passed the Residency Law. The resulting arrest and deportation of hundreds of anarchist immigrants, many of them of Spanish origin, led to an influx of confidence and an energy that helped reinvigorate the Spanish anarchist movement. The Tragic Week forced many anarchists to flee Spain for Argentina, only to be caught up in the repression that led to the Law of Social Defense. The cycle of migration and return continued to bring anarchists eager for new opportunities to a new shore, further intertwining the Spanish and Argentine anarchist movements.

73 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Chapter 4

The CNT and the War Years

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Anarchist Rivalries and New Leadership

T h e s e c o n d d e c a d e of the twentieth century began with calamities for both Spanish and Argentine anarchists and brought schisms that weakened both movements. Many of the immigrant anarchists who were deported from Argentina continued to work in Spain. The expanding influence of anarchists in Spanish labor organizations enlarged the movement but brought divergent ideas on tactics. In Argentina, the reduction in Spanish immigration during World War I allowed younger anarchists to rise to prominence, with Spanish immigrants Emilio López Arango and Diego Abad de Santillán the most important of this group. These changes in leadership brought out personal rivalries as well as ideological differences between those who adhered to anarcho-communism and the syndicalists. In this period, López Arango and Abad de Santillán emerged as champions of a pure anarchism that challenged the leadership of the Spanish movement over the influence of syndicalism. These same rivalries between syndicalists and anarcho-communists split the Argentine labor movement as well. Reaction by the state to revolution and violent labor strife brought repression in Spain and Argentina after the war. Yet throughout the decade, despite war and limited immigration, anarchists in both countries remained aware of what each country’s movement was facing and how it responded. This knowledge helped individuals decide whether to remain or migrate, continuing the cycle that linked the two anarchist movements.

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

The CNT and the War Years

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Fig u re 8. Shoemaker working in the conventillo patio, Buenos Aires, 1914. Source: Departamento de Documentos Fotográficos, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires

Some of the returning deportees from Argentina gave a negative picture of life and opportunities there that contrasted sharply with the positive picture painted by successful immigrants and with the promises made by Argentine consuls encouraging immigration (in part because they received “a commission from ship companies for every person they embarked”).1 Spanish anarchist and syndicalist newspapers used deportees’ accounts to discourage emigration and radicalize native workers. Emilio V. Santolaria cautioned his readers that the Argentine government wanted to exploit labor and mislead immigrants. He cited Spanish peasants who went to Argentina to work in agriculture but received lower wages than workers already there: “Comrade readers, you see how the number of immigrants fleeing from the misery of their lives in their native land to Argentina does not decrease, even though there they fall into the misery of life in a new land. They do not understand that of those workers who live here and dream of making money, few if any will realize their dreams. There is ter-

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Chapter 4

rible misery throughout Argentina, just as there is in all other countries where there is not enough work and too many workers. Many union members suffer an exorbitant rate of unemployment.”2 Spanish anarchists spread the news that emigration would not solve one’s problems and supported their claims with news from Argentina and from those deported by the Argentine authorities. Articles about labor unrest and government repression, along with tales by anarchists who had been deported from Argentina, helped slow Spanish immigration to Argentina from 131,466 in 1910 to 118,723 in 1911. Spanish immigration to Argentina rose again in 1912 and 1913 but fell significantly the following year with the outbreak of World War I.3 In Spain, the infusion of returning anarchists and the knowledge of events in Argentina stimulated workers, leading to the creation of what would become Spain’s largest and most powerful labor organization.

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Founding of the CNT and Spanish Anarchism after 1910

The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Labor), profoundly affected the nature of anarchist organization in Spain. Delegates from local confederations from all over the country met in Barcelona at the Palacio de Bellas Artes at the end of October 1910. The delegates agreed to create a new national labor confederation, the CNT, and it held its first congress eleven months later, again in Barcelona. The labor federation adhered to anarchist principles, organizing from the bottom up, with representatives from autonomous local and regional committees meeting in a national federation. The CNT was committed to the principle of direct action but would have no strike funds and only a few permanent officers. Dues were minimal but participation was paramount, and worker committees managed most local-level affairs. They organized classes, created libraries, held conferences, and tried to carry out the members’ wishes. The CNT fared poorly before World War I, in part because of the still undigested mixture of anarchism and syndicalism. Later, however, the emergence of anarcho-syndicalism enabled the federation to become a powerful force, albeit one that led to ideological conflict with Argentine anarchists who opposed the separate syndical organization. According to Murray Bookchin, “The CNT, it must be emphasized at this point, was not homogeneous in its outlook.”4 These nuances led to a growing split between anarchists who stressed the goal of more immediate improvements and those who wanted ultimately to destroy the state through a social revolution.

76 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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The CNT and the War Years

In creating their new federation, Spanish anarchists looked closely at Argentina’s anarcho-communist FORA and the socialist-syndicalist CORA. On February 19, 1910, Barcelona’s anarchist Solidaridad Obrera ran a front-page story on the CORA and reprinted the entirety of its founding document. The piece concludes, “As you can see, this is a document that is well thought-out and well written, and in giving our congratulations to our comrades in Argentina, we also recommend that our comrades of the Regional Confederation study it well, so that they may make use of it at our next Workers’ Congress, which will be held in September.”5 This conference established the CNT. The CNT faced problems a few days after that congress when it called a general strike to support workers who had walked off the job in Bilbao. The general strike began in Saragossa on September 16 and spread to several other cities. Barcelona’s police arrested many CNT leaders, and the government of the Liberal Party, headed by José Canalejas, moved to crush the federation. Canalejas had taken the reins of government in opposition to the Conservative Party’s harsh repression after Tragic Week. Canalejas imposed martial law and reacted harshly to the 1911 general strike. Five strike leaders were sentenced to death, although the king later commuted their sentences to life imprisonment. The CNT was forced underground, and its newspapers closed until 1914. These were difficult years for Spanish workers. In 1912, Canalejas drafted twelve thousand men into the army to avert a railroad strike, leading to his assassination the following year by Miguel Pardiñas, a young anarchist. This atmosphere made it difficult for the CNT to attract large numbers of workers, and its membership totaled only about fifteen thousand at the beginning of World War I. However, after the conflict began, the increasing demand for goods from neutral Spain and rising prices brought benefits to workers and reinvigorated the CNT. It regained its legal status, and Solidaridad Obrera resumed publication in 1915. Both that daily and the weekly Tierra y Libertad exhorted Spanish workers not to take sides in the war. The editors of Tierra y Libertad included Antonio Loredo, who had been deported from Argentina in 1905. Loredo took an active part in the events of Tragic Week and was jailed for several months and then expelled from the country. “You can deport me,” he told the police as they shipped him off to Uruguay, “but I will return to Spain.”6 From Montevideo, Loredo moved back to Buenos Aires, where he served on the editorial board of La Protesta before being arrested and again deported from Argentina, thus fulfilling his promise to return to Spain. Loredo did not miss a beat as he continued his polemics through Tierra y Libertad. He cautioned Spanish anarchists to avoid becoming sidetracked by

77 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 4

World War I and to adhere faithfully to their anarchist principles.7 He also appeared at union halls to give talks supporting anarchist unions. On September 11, 1915, he spoke at the Sociedad de Albañiles (Bricklayers’ Union) on “Social Problems in a Capitalist Society.”8 Letters to Tierra y Libertad demonstrate the importance of Loredo’s presence to Spanish anarchists. The paper printed an open letter to “My good comrade Antonio Loredo” as well as another missive complaining that Loredo’s denunciation of the Spanish Committee for Social Propaganda was unfair.9 Loredo became an important part of the Spanish anarchist movement. He helped to found the periodical Guerra Social (Social War) in Elda in Alicante. Loredo also wrote in opposition to the death penalty and traveled to Logroño to report on the strike there.10 Articles regarding Argentina regularly appeared in Tierra y Libertad. Regular contributors included Joaquín Hucha, a Spaniard deported from Buenos Aires to La Coruña before settling in Montevideo, and H. Grau, who also contributed to La Protesta.11 On August 21, 1912, Tierra y Libertad congratulated La Protesta on its good work.12 When the Argentine government closed La Protesta, Tierra y Libertad reported under the headline “Contra la barbarie argentina” (Against Argentine Barbarism).13 The periodical described problems faced by Spanish workers during World War I as higher salaries failed to keep up with increasing rents.14 Solidaridad Obrera also published many articles about events in Argentina, explaining how much anarchists from the two countries assisted each other. In reaction to the post–May 1910 repression in Argentina, Spanish anarchists called for a protest against the Argentine president, Roque Sáenz Peña, who visited later that year. Jesús Vega Fernández was one of the most notorious examples of the connection between Argentine deportees and Spanish anarchists. He was born in Spain but immigrated to Argentina to find work. As a result of his participation in the labor movement, he was arrested and deported in 1913 under the Residency Law. He arrived in Barcelona but could not find work because the Spanish police notified prospective employers of his anarchist background. The police apparently targeted Fernández, continuously following him and questioning him several times. The chief of police finally tried to recruit Fernández as a police informer, giving him a gun and some money. Fernández resisted but was told that he would never find a job and would be hounded incessantly if he did not become an informer. After several confrontations, Fernández shot and wounded the police chief. Fernández was immediately arrested, and his situation became well known throughout Spain.15 The world war brought division among anarchists. Anselmo Lorenzo died a few months after the outbreak of the war. He, José Prat, and Ricardo Mella

78 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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The CNT and the War Years

felt that Spanish anarchists and workers in general should not take sides in a war among imperialist powers. As Loredo forcefully wrote in a manifesto for Barcelona’s Ateneo Sindicalista, “Rather than war, revolution!”16 Yet when the greatest living anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, came out in support of the war and the Allied powers, some Spanish anarchists, including Mella, supported him. Another point of contention among anarchists was whether to emphasize worker salaries and working conditions. Salvador Seguí and Ángel Pestaña represented the syndicalist approach, believing that greater cooperation between the CNT and the socialist labor federation, the Unión General de Trabajadores (General Union of Workers), would help achieve improvements for Spanish workers. Pestaña, an editor of Solidaridad Obrera, used that organ to press his views, while Loredo, at Tierra y Libertad, continued to oppose cooperation with the socialists. This debate continued throughout 1915 and into 1916 before culminating in the Pact of Saragossa, in which the two labor federations pledged cooperation in urging the government to reduce the cost of living. In December of that year, the two organizations cooperated in a twenty-four-hour general strike to protest rising prices.17 This cooperation continued into 1917 before leading to catastrophic results. Eduardo Dato, the newly appointed Spanish premier, reacted to mounting labor unrest by dissolving the Cortes, Spain’s parliament, and suspending constitutional guarantees in June 1917. Shortly thereafter, railroad workers in Valencia went out on strike. When railroad management refused to reinstate forty-three militants after the strike ended, workers struck again. At the same time, nearly twenty-five thousand metallurgical workers walked off the job. On August 13, the Unión General de Trabajadores declared a general strike with the CNT’s support. Barricades went up in Barcelona, and heavy fighting broke out. Martial law was declared throughout Spain. Seventy people were killed in the fighting and approximately two thousand were arrested, making this a defeat for the workers. The socialists led the general strike and suffered significantly. Nevertheless, the CNT emerged with the realization that political pacts with other labor organizations had not proved beneficial. In addition to the urban anarcho-syndicalist movement of Barcelona and northern Spain represented by the CNT, southern Spain, especially Andalusia, had a rural anarchist tradition. In 1913, a congress in the city of Córdoba created the Federación Nacional de Agricultores Españoles (National Federation of Spanish Agricultural Laborers). For nearly six years, the group fought for the rights of rural workers, demanding “Land for those who work it.” At a 1918 conference in Valencia, amid postwar hopes for revolution, it merged with the CNT. The coordination among urban and rural anarchists created a national movement.

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Chapter 4

The story of Antonio Rosado illustrates the effects of this merger as well as the continuing role of immigration in Spanish anarchism. Rosado was born in 1889 to illiterate parents in Morón de la Frontera. When he was nine, he joined his father tending animals in the village. Two years later, Rosado’s father died, preventing him from attending school. But a village workers’ organization established a school for working-class children and adults along the lines of Francisco Ferrer’s secular Modern School. In 1905, authorities closed the school and arrested Rosado’s maternal grandmother, who had hidden the teacher, Abelard Saavedra, as well as an anarchist militant, Teresa Claramunt. In 1912, Rosado was twenty-three years old and not a member of any workers’ association when he was asked to help supervise a bread cooperative run by a local workers’ group. He began to hear about Kropotkin, Bakunin, Proudhon, and anarchist ideas, and he read the works of Julio Camba, a well-known Spanish writer who had spent four years in Argentina before being deported back to Spain in 1902. Camba published stories and articles in Spain’s El Rebelde. Rosaldo was called for military service in 1915 but discharged after writing an antimilitary article that was published in the anarchist press. Four years later, Rosado was arrested for organizing workers in Andalusia. In 1920, he was released while awaiting trial and decided to flee the country. He recalled, “My reaction formed slowly but resolutely. I would reject the tribunal’s judgment and send myself into exile for an indefinite period. I decided to go to South America, where they spoke Spanish.”18 Rosado fled to Las Palmas and from there to Bahia, Brazil. He then stowed away on board the Catalina and arrived in Buenos Aires in early 1922. He spent two years in Argentina but returned to Spain after learning that dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera had granted a general amnesty in 1924. He went back to his family’s village and joined a labor organization created by the government. Rosado joined the CNT near the end of the decade and continued his organizing efforts until the civil war. Rosado’s tale shows how emigration served as a safety valve for Spanish society, providing an escape route both for militants threatened with arrest and for laborers seeking better opportunities. Though anarchists had political and ideological motivations, they differed little from other temporary migrants. During World War I, many Spaniards migrated to work in belligerent countries where war industries provided higher incomes. By the end of the conflict, however, economic pressures had reduced opportunities abroad and in Spain. The result was increasing labor unrest, as evidenced by the 1917 general strike. Nevertheless, the CNT became Spain’s largest labor federation , with nearly one million members. In June 1918, the Catalan regional organization adopted the sindicato

80 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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The CNT and the War Years

único (single union) rather than the craft union as the basis for organization. This change allowed all workers in a factory or enterprise to become part of the same union, increasing their strength when dealing with their employer. According to Murray Bookchin, the single union concept showed the influence of Andalusian anarchists.19 The subsequent incorporation of Federación Nacional de Agricultores Españoles into the CNT represented the reemergence of a truly national federation, and the CNT developed a militancy that led to increasing confrontations with the authorities throughout Spain. The most important of these occurred in January 1917, when the Liberal premier, the Count of Romanones, suspended constitutional guarantees in Catalonia and arrested many CNT leaders. Instead of weakening the organization, however, Romanones’s actions eventually led to one of the largest strikes of the era. The foreign-owned hydroelectric company, Riegos y Fuerza del Ebro, was popularly called La Canadiense as a consequence of its Anglo-Canadian origins. Peter Lawton, the firm’s director, responded to union demands in January 1919 by firing eight workers. When the office staff walked off the job the following month, police were called in. Finally, the entire workforce went out on strike. When Romanones tried to draft all the striking workers into the military, the graphic arts workers refused to allow anything to be printed in the region’s newspapers. As the prime minister’s actions became known, railway and trolley workers went out on strike, leaving the entire region in the throes of a general strike. When the government finally allowed negotiations and announced a settlement, the workers accepted, but a congress of the employers’ federations in Barcelona did not, instituting a lockout and refusing to allow employees to return to work. In this critical situation, the CNT held a December 10, 1919, congress in Madrid and adopted a revolutionary anarcho-communist stance that emphasized the doctrine that had been overshadowed by syndicalism during the war years. The national CNT also adopted the single union as the basis for its organization. These dramatic measures signaled that the CNT was confident of its power to threaten the authorities. In response, Spanish industrialists, backed by the government, resisted labor demands and hired gunmen (pistoleros) to kill anarchist militants. In revenge, anarchists gunned down industrialists and their supporters. Several hundred persons were murdered during this period, including CNT leader Salvador Seguí and the archbishop of Saragossa.20 This violence limited the CNT’s effectiveness despite its increasing size and importance. Another challenge to the CNT came from the success of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the subsequent overshadowing of the country’s anarchists by the Bolsheviks. The CNT’s 1919 congress in Madrid gave provisional support to

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Chapter 4

the Communist Third International. Meeting in Lérida two years later, the CNT authorized Andrés Nin and Joaquín Maurín as delegates to Russia; however, a later congress in Logroño revoked their credentials. Ángel Pestaña went to Russia to initiate the relationship between the CNT and the communists but became disillusioned after speaking to Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, and Alexander Berkman.21 Vacillation over a response to events in Russia divided the Spanish movement, as did persistent criticism of the Russian Revolution by Argentine anarchists.22 After many years of mutual support, the Spanish and Argentine movements entered an era of confrontation in the 1920s.

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Anarchism in Argentina after 1910

The conflicts of 1909 and 1910 left Argentina’s anarchist movement weakened through arrests, imprisonments, and deportations. These new circumstances initiated struggles for personal and ideological control that divided the movement. Conflicts among strong personalities occurred among both immigrant and Argentine-born leaders. Most immigrants had come to Argentina before World War I, and immigration practically ceased during the conflict.23 The end of immigration and the deportations combined to produce a leadership vacuum that allowed others, immigrant and native-born, to come to the movement’s fore. Among these new leaders were Argentine natives Apolinario Barrera, Teodoro Antilli, and Rodolfo González Pacheco and Spanish immigrants Abad de Santillán and López Arango. González Pacheco had joined the editorial board of La Protesta in 1907 after editors Mariano Forcat and Roberto D’Angió were deported in the wake of a Buenos Aires rent strike. In March 1910, González Pacheco and Antilli took responsibility for the publication of a new afternoon daily newspaper, La Batalla, but the government closed it after upheavals in May of that year. González Pacheco returned to La Protesta and dominated its editorial board until 1915. Barrera also served on that board. According to Abad de Santillán, “Barrera, at least since that week in May 1910, was one of the symbolic anchors of the anarchist movement in Argentina. He was tall, imposing, valiant, yet selfdenying. He was not a writer; that was not his strength. But he was respected and admired for his total involvement in the cause, which he made the center of his life.”24 Barrera tried unsuccessfully to reopen La Protesta, publishing only a May 15, 1911, issue from Montevideo before moving on to a clandestine weekly with a circulation of seven thousand. The government finally permitted La Protesta to operate publicly again in June 1912, and Barrera and Antilli continued among

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The CNT and the War Years

Prison, Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, 1918. Source: Departamento de Documentos Fotográficos, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires

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Fig u re 9.

its editorial staff. In 1913, the two men were arrested and jailed after publishing an article about Simón Radowitsky, who had been imprisoned in Ushuaia for assassinating the Buenos Aires chief of police in 1909. In jail, they met López Arango, a young Spanish immigrant. Emilio López Arango was born in 1893 in Oviedo, Spain, the son of a fisherman from Cudillero, a coastal village. He left for Cuba as a youth but later returned. In 1910, he immigrated to Argentina, where he worked as a baker. Antonio Pellicer Paraire, José Maria Montero, and many other anarchist immigrants had tried their luck in Cuba, Mexico, the United States, or Panama before returning to Spain and then immigrating to Argentina. López Arango became active in the bakers’ union and was jailed as a result of his strike activity. Meeting Barrera and Antilli sparked López Arango’s interest in writing, and after his release from jail in 1916, he edited and published a newsletter, El Obrero Panadero (The Bakery Worker) and contributed to La Protesta. López Arango held strong views and expressed them forcefully. In a front-page article in La Protesta, he confronted the government over Radowitzky, precisely the

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Chapter 4

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issue that had led to the earlier suspension of the newspaper. Marking Radowitzky’s seventh year in jail in a far-off fortress in Argentina’s chilly Tierra del Fuego, López Arango boldly began his piece, “The pages of history are written in blood.”25 López Arango was not an intellectual. “He did not read much: in the years of his active militancy, he read very little: but he knew how to extract from everyday struggles his ideology, doctrine, and ideas.”26 By 1917 he had become one the editors of La Protesta and an important anarchist leader. Barrera and López Arango worked to make the anarchist daily newspaper successful financially as well as editorially but clashed with others on the editorial board. After the split between rival factions of FORA in 1915, La Protesta’s editorial board was purged, with Barrera taking control and González Pacheco ousted. In early 1916, an argument arose over Barrera’s handling of money. González Pacheco and Antilli started a rival newspaper, La Protesta Humana, choosing a name that evoked La Protesta’s original title to stake a claim to representing the true anarchist movement. Barrera and López Arango, in turn, attempted to prove they held the moral high ground by announcing in La Protesta in November 1916 that their policies had saved the newspaper from bankruptcy and debt accrued by earlier editors. The rift persisted for years, and González Pacheco eventually established La Antorcha in 1921. Out of these personal rivalries also emerged Diego Abad de Santillán, who had immigrated to Argentina with his family as a child but spent the war years in Spain. He could not heal all of the divisions among Argentina’s anarchists, but he did become a key player in Argentina’s postwar anarchist movement. Abad de Santillán and the Argentine Anarchist Movement

Diego Abad de Santillán (real name: Sinesio Baudilio García Fernández) was born on May 20, 1897, in Reyero, a small village in Spain’s northwestern province of León. In 1900, after the birth of his younger sister, his father, Donato García Paniagua, immigrated to Argentina to stay with his brother and found employment as an ironworker (herrero). He sent money back to his family, perhaps planning to rejoin them, since he instructed the family to buy more land in the village. Finally, when Abad de Santillán was eight, his father sent for the whole family. They traveled third-class on a steamship and settled in Santa Fé, Argentina, renting and farming fifty hectares outside the city. Though Abad de Santillán spent more than half his life in Argentina, he always felt himself to be rooted in the village of his birth, and he returned many times to Spain: “I have

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The CNT and the War Years

F i g u r e 1 0 .   Diego Abad de Santillán, mid-1920s. Source: International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam

known many countries and many different regions, but I will always remember those first years, in that forgotten village, lost in the mountains of León.”27 He thought of himself as both a Spaniard and an Argentine. Once his family settled in Santa Fé, Abad de Santillán attended school for only two years. After turning ten, he went to work to provide additional income for his family, finding employment as a carpenter’s assistant, a bricklayer’s helper, and finally building rail coaches. For about five years, Abad de Santillán read books in his free time, and he began to quarrel with his father about continuing his education. Finally, with the help of his mother, Angela Fernández, and largely ignoring the wrath of his father, Abad de Santillán left for Spain in

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Chapter 4

1912, returning to his grandparents’ house in Reyero and seeking admission to high school. He enrolled at the nearby Instituto de León and completed his secondary studies over the next two and a half years. To continue his education, Abad de Santillán did not consider returning to Argentina but instead headed to Madrid in 1915 and matriculated at the Facultad de Letras y Filosofía of the Universidad Central, surviving on funds earned by his mother in Argentina. He studied classical literature and languages, thinking more about the intellectual than the vocational aspects of his studies. His first experience with writing and editing, which ultimately became his occupation for much of his life, came in 1916 when he joined the staff of a magazine advocating for the blind. Shortly thereafter he wrote his first political essay, calling for a revolution in Spain. On the advice of a friend, he signed the article with a pen name, Diego Abad de Santillán. Abad de Santillán’s first political participation came during the 1917 general strike. Arrested and jailed for one year, he met many political prisoners and was most impressed by the anarchists. He recalled, “I did not become an anarchist by reading pamphlets or books by Kropotkin or other writers; I became an anarchist because of the moral qualities of the workers whom I knew and with whom I worked.”28 He explained, “It was not their ideas, which I thought altruistic but naive, that attracted me.”29 This personal relationship that led individuals to adopt anarchism was not unique to Abad de Santillán but was instrumental in the movement’s spread. After his release from jail in 1918, Abad de Santillán left Spain on a false passport to avoid military service, returning to Santa Fé. Abad de Santillán’s younger sister had also challenged their father’s desires and had obtained a position as a schoolteacher. Two younger siblings, born while Abad de Santillán was away, remained in school. Abad de Santillán recognized that his mother’s and sister’s employment, as well as his freedom to travel abroad, did not accord with the traditional values that his father had brought from Spain. The family that Abad de Santillán rejoined was “an immigrant family assimilated into the country of residence and developing a new set of norms that were not traditional.”30 Such strains were often a part of the immigrant experience and changed the family in unintended ways. Abad de Santillán combined his interests in journalism and his experience in Spain by publishing a short-lived magazine, La España Futura. The sixtyseven-page first issue gives a picture of the ideas of this young man as well as a sense of his personality.31 The journal has seven articles, all written by Abad de Santillán, and was priced at 3.50 Argentine pesos or 10 Spanish pesetas, making it available to residents in both countries. In “El impuesto de privilegio” (The

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The CNT and the War Years

Price of Privilege), written in prison in Spain, Abad de Santillán traces the history of the Spanish monarchy and calls for a revolution, although he does not yet employ anarchist rhetoric. He criticizes the Spanish royal family and refers to the king, Alfonso XIII, as the son of a tubercular and syphilitic man (Alfonso XII had died of tuberculosis) and the grandson of a whore (Isabel II was flagrant in her promiscuity). The back of the periodical features an announcement for “The Most Important Works of Diego Abad de Santillán”—El derecho de España a la revolución (The Right of Spain to a Revolution), Psicologia del pueblo español (Psychology of the Spanish People), and Discursos sobre los grandes hombres y sobre la existencia de un redentor de España (Discussions of Great Men and on the Existence of a Spanish Savior)—all of which could be purchased at Madrid’s A. Rubinos Bookstore. La España Futura shows that Abad de Santillán was already a prolific writer at the age of twenty-one and was confident in himself. Both of these characteristics served him well as he confronted many enemies and many difficult circumstances. As a young man recently returned to Argentina, Abad de Santillán was making a public statement that he supported changes in Spain. In Santa Fe, Abad de Santillán joined a libertarian library, Emilio Zola, and began working for a libertarian magazine, La Campana, where he met anarchists who had fled Buenos Aires following the violence of 1919 and government repression. A friend later recalled meeting him for the first time: “Tall, thin, pale, with a beard of at least fifteen days.”32 Abad de Santillán quickly became an integral part of the anarchist movement and continued with La Protesta after it reopened in Buenos Aires. There, he experienced the increasing acrimony over tactics and ideology that pervaded the Argentine movement. CORA had made little headway against the dominant FORA in the years leading up to World War I, and in 1914, CORA voted to disband and join its erstwhile rival to increase labor’s power through solidarity. However, at FORA’s ninth congress, in 1915, the syndicalists broke with the anarchists and took the name of FORA of the IX Congress (FORA IX), while the more doctrinaire anarchists remained faithful to the call for anarcho-communism that had been accepted at the fifth congress in 1905, taking the name FORA of the V Congress (FORA V). Barrera and the editorial staff of La Protesta supported FORA V, and Barrera represented the group at a meeting in São Paulo, Brazil, in late 1915. The two organizations remained separate but cooperated through the remainder of World War I as price increases made wage gains less significant and real wages for workers declined.33 The 1917 Russian Revolution also originally encouraged anarchists to cooperate with other labor organizations in the hope that world revolution would become possible. After all, outbreaks

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Chapter 4

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F i g u re 11. Prisoners on their way to cut timber, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, early twentieth century. Source: Departamento de Documentos Fotográficos, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires

of revolution in Bavaria and Hungary showed that support for revolution had become widespread. However, when FORA V went out on a general strike in support of railroad workers in July 1918, FORA IX did not support the action. In addition, FORA V demonstrated its militancy with a daring attempt to free Radowitsky from prison. Barrera obtained a small boat in southern Chile, and Radowitsky left the jail grounds and met Barrera. They sailed off through the Strait of Magellan, eluding Argentine authorities among the many islands of that region. However, both men eventually were captured: Radowitsky was sent back to Ushuaia, where he remained until 1930, and Barrera was jailed in the Patagonian city of Río Gallegos for a year and a half. Cooperation among the various organizations vanished after the end of World War I, when labor demands led to increased strike activity. In 1916, Argentina experienced 80 strikes encompassing 24,000 workers. For 1917, those

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The CNT and the War Years

numbers jumped to 138 strikes and 135,000 participants, and 1919 saw 397 walkouts involving more than 300,000 strikers.34 On January 7 of that year, Argentina experienced its own Tragic Week, after police fired on strikers at the Vasena Iron Works, killing four workers. FORA V immediately called for a general strike, and on January 8, nearly 200,000 workers marched in the streets during the funeral for those killed the previous day. Police again opened fire on the crowd, killing fifty, and then arrested labor leaders. Workers rioted, the Vasena factory burned, and gun battles broke out in the streets. FORA IX, in contrast, sought to limit violence and obtain benefits for workers by working with the government of Hipólito Yrigoyen and by seeking allies among labor unions. Yrigoyen’s middle-class Radical Party had captured the presidency in 1916, after four years of voting reforms that brought universal male suffrage. However, since many workers were immigrants and lacked citizenship, the government did not count on labor support. Nevertheless, to counter Socialist Party success in Buenos Aires, Yrigoyen had offered to have the government arbitrate labor disputes, especially when foreign companies were involved. FORA V rejected the offer in favor of direct action, but FORA IX was willing to accept government intervention if doing so would benefit members. In 1916, for example, FORA IX had accepted the Department of Labor’s mediation in a maritime strike. In 1919, the militancy of FORA V and the restraint of FORA IX marked their different philosophical approaches. FORA V later claimed that FORA IX had made a secret deal with the police and pulled out of the strike.35 This split in labor’s ranks also encouraged the government to end the strikes through repression. The Patriotic League, a group that opposed immigration and the perceived Bolshevik threat, joined government forces in opposing striking workers. On one occasion, a search of working-class neighborhoods in Buenos Aires led to hundreds of deaths, injuries, and arrests.36 Abad de Santillán later claimed that more than fifty-five thousand workers were jailed as a result of government repression.37 The Argentine government again sought to quell the unrest by closing anarchist newspapers and invoking the Residency Law to deport foreign workers. Between July 30 and September 30, 1919, the government deported ninety-two Spaniards. (See table 4.) More than one-third of those deported were from Galicia and northwestern Spain, including fourteen from La Coruña, eleven from Pontevedra, and eight from Orense.38 Most of the deportees were not young and may have been longtime residents of Argentina. The average age of those deported was thirty: the youngest was twenty and the oldest was forty-nine. The fact that 40 percent of those deported were over thirty years of age indicates that

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Chapter 4

Tab l e 4 .   Ages of Spaniards Deported from Argentina, July–September 1919

Ages

Number Percentage

20s 55 60 30s 27 29 40s 10 11 Total 92 100

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Source: “Españoles expulsados de Argentina,” Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Box 9159, Archivo General de la Administración, Alcalá de Henares, Spain.

the deportations represented the Argentine government’s effort to get rid of any perceived troublemaker, regardless of family ties or length of residency. The number and scope of these deportations startled even the Spanish government. “You cannot calculate there,” wrote the Spanish minister of state to the Argentine ambassador in Madrid, “the impression that so many and such a large number of expulsions makes, not only on our working class, but on all social classes, and the difficulties this presents for the advancement of good relations we wish to promote with the Argentine government.”39 The letter indicates that despite the reduction of immigration during the war years, anarchist militants were still circulating between the two nations. Strife continued to plague Argentina, most famously when strikes at La Forestal in the Chaco region of the far north and in Patagonia in the far south produced violent clashes and repression that subdued the country’s anarchist movement for years. These events emphasized the divide among Argentine anarchists, leading to further conflicts with Spanish anarchists. La Protesta’s editors saw themselves as the official voice of FORA V and what they termed the pure anarchist movement. In Abad de Santillán’s words, those working at the newspaper were “taking their duties seriously and, in this, they sacrificed everything; their lives, if necessary.”40 When La Protesta resumed publication in 1920, its editors and the anarchist movement in general strongly supported the rights of the Chaco and Patagonia workers, but the divisions among anarchists brought frustration. One speaker at a 1921 May Day rally said, “If it is true that no political or revolutionary entity can compare to the anarchists in power, it is also true that today we are no nearer the revolution than yesterday, because our forces are not arrayed in a common battle formation against our enemies, which would ensure the triumph of the proletariat.”41 The rural laborers at the Chaco facility operated by La Forestal, a large English company, struck to protest working conditions in April 1921. Police inter90

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The CNT and the War Years

vention led to the deaths of many and the strike failed, a defeat Abad de Santillán attributed to “the suicidal passivity of the Argentine proletariat, shackled in its ‘understandings’ resulting from recent congresses.” He also blamed the FORA V leadership, which did not intervene to support the striking workers because of an October 1920 solidarity pact between FORA V and FORA IX.42 Abad de Santillán and other members of FORA V sought to end cooperation between the two groups. An August 1921 regional meeting of FORA V led to a rejection of “all plans for unification.”43 The other significant labor struggle erupted among agricultural laborers in Patagonia in 1920.44 The strike lasted months, and President Yrigoyen called in federal troops. For a time, the issues were settled and troops withdrew. But the refusal of employers to carry out improvements led to another walkout, and federal troops under Lieutenant Colonel Héctor Varela returned in 1921. The army rounded up many of those involved in the strike and labor agitation, and “both federal troops and the police killed [workers] for fun, by instinct, as nothing and to rob their victims. All this was done with the approval of the local ranchers and large companies.”45 Estimates of the number massacred by the army and police reach into the thousands.46 La Protesta attempted to clarify the situation, but Patagonia was so far from the capital that the paper had difficulty conveying the magnitude of the repression. Antonio López claims that the anarchists “did not have the desired collaboration of the syndicalist federation, the FORA IX.”47 At this point, all semblance of unity had been dropped and the unions of FORA IX met in March 1922 to create a new syndicalist organization, the Unión Sindical Argentina (USA). The differences between the anarcho-communist labor federation and the syndicalist federation lay not only in their approaches toward government intervention but also in the nature of their leadership. Earlier, Mikhail Bakunin had supported the formation of leadership groups, not necessarily associated with labor federations, to help maintain the purity of anarchist beliefs. The syndicalist USA relied on the guidance of its labor union leaders, while FORA (no longer identifying itself as FORA V) looked to the editors of La Protesta. But in the early 1920s, FORA members split into factions based on support and opposition to the editors of La Protesta. González Pacheco claimed that a small group dominated La Protesta and did not necessarily speak for all of FORA’s members. Personal conflicts between González Pacheco and López Arango certainly fueled this break. Other Argentines agreed. In May 1924, one group, the Ateneo Anarquista (Anarchist Athenaeum), denounced La Protesta on the grounds that it had cut off all unions that sided with the Antorcha group.48 A 1924 broadsheet published by the Alianza Libertaria Argentina (Argentine Libertarian Alliance) charged that La Pro91

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Chapter 4

testa was too commercial and was “owned” by Barrera, who had been released from jail and had returned to the newspaper’s staff.49 The Alianza Libertaria Argentina associated itself with the USA, claiming to be made up of anarchist militants and identifying the Antorcha group as mostly intellectuals. González Pacheco, Antilli, and others believed La Protesta’s editors controlled FORA and refused to accept criticism from anyone outside their group. According to León Guerrero, the members of the Protesta group “seem to believe that only they can properly license anarchists by means of their identification cards and memberships.”50 The failures of the movement and the disagreements among its members weighed heavily on Abad de Santillán and other Argentine anarchists. Abad de Santillán recalled, “At the end of 1921 we had to confess that we had lost and that we in the rest of the country had abandoned our brothers from the south to their tragic destiny, to their death, without even a sign of protest, without an adequate response.”51 The responses of Abad de Santillán and his German roommate, Kurt Wilckens, however, demonstrate individual choices in actions and the place of migration in the face of repression. Wilckens said little to Abad de Santillán about the events in Patagonia but felt intense anger at the officer responsible for the deaths of so many workers. In January 1923, Kurt Wilckens threw a bomb at Varela, wounding him. Wilckens then pulled out a pistol and shot the colonel dead, taking vengeance on a man hated by Argentine workers. Wilckens was captured and imprisoned and was murdered while in custody. Abad de Santillán, in contrast, chose to leave Argentina in 1922, traveling to Berlin to study medicine. A friend later summed up Abad de Santillán’s emotions, telling him, “You left here thinking to escape from the routine of La Protesta and the useless repetition of propaganda to which it condemned you.”52 Abad de Santillán’s return to Europe reveals several aspects of migration. First, any move may be temporary. He had returned to Argentina to escape the draft in Spain, but when conditions in Argentina became more difficult, he left for Berlin, which had become the hub of the strong German anarchist movement, with refugees streaming in from Russia. Second, individuals respond to pressures and circumstances in many ways. Wilckens murdered a hated class enemy, while Abad de Santillán migrated. Just as any migrant would forsake a country with minimal job prospects in favor of one where conditions were better, Abad de Santillán took advantage of the opportunities in Germany. He accepted La Protesta’s offer to be its correspondent in Germany, writing about events in Europe, continuing his connection to the Argentine anarchist movement.

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Chapter 5

The FORA and the CNT

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Transnational Anarchist Rivalries

D i e g o A ba d d e Sa n t i l l á n left Argentina for Europe in 1922, ostensibly to study medicine at the University of Berlin. He was discouraged by Argentine anarchists’ inability to respond to the Patagonian massacres. Abad de Santillán’s move reflected the lack of opportunity to pursue anarchist goals in Argentina as well as the relative significance of Argentine anarchism during the 1920s, as European anarchist movements faced increasing challenges from dictatorships and from the communists as the Soviet Union emerged from civil war. This chapter describes the transnational conflict between the Argentine FORA and the Spanish CNT during the 1920s, when Abad de Santillán and other Spanish immigrants to Argentina attempted to steer the Spanish movement toward what the Argentines thought was their purer form of anarchism. The Yrigoyen administration’s repression lessened, presenting opportunities for Argentine anarchists, while Miguel Primo de Rivera’s Spanish dictatorship repressed the movement there. Later in the decade, Abad de Santillán returned to Argentina. But the creation of the International Workingmen’s Association in 1922 gave Abad de Santillán a forum in which to present the American emphasis on antipolitical anarchism and to oppose the reformist leadership of Ángel Pestaña and Salvador Seguí in Spain. The creation of the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) in 1927 resulted in part from the desire to create an organization to oversee the purity of Spanish anarchism, much as the editorial

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Chapter 5

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F i g u r e 1 2 . Card identifying Diego Abad de Santillán as the German correspondent for Argentina’s Argonauta publishing house, mid-1920s. Source: International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam

board of La Protesta had done in Buenos Aires under Abad de Santillán and Emilio López Arango. Abad de Santillán may have abandoned Argentina for Europe, but he was not abandoning the anarchist movement. He agreed to serve as a reporter for the Argentine newspaper La Protesta and as a representative of the Argonauta publishing house. On his way to Germany, Abad de Santillán stopped in the Spanish port city of Vigo, where he met Ricardo Mella, a noted anarchist theoretician. Abad de Santillán wanted to meet the elderly libertarian as well as commission him to translate the last work of Peter Kropotkin, Ethics, for Argonauta. However, Abad de Santillán had an ulterior motive: healing a breach in the Spanish movement. Mella had supported Kropotkin in opposing imperial Germany in World War I, while the majority of Spanish anarchists favored neutrality.1 Mella and Abad de Santillán spoke about the current situation in Spain, where

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The FORA and the CNT

the anarchist movement faced several serious problems. The deadly battle between right-wing and anarchist pistoleros (gunmen) resulted in the deaths of 230 persons over sixteen months in 1920 and 1921.2 The CNT’s members also debated the Spanish movement’s response to events in the Soviet Union and the increasing division between anarchists and syndicalists within the organization. But Mella was unwilling to break his silence and enter the debate against Pestaña and Seguí, who counseled greater political involvement for the Spanish CNT to achieve gains for labor. Abad de Santillán continued his voyage to Berlin, where he met Fritz Kater and Rudolf Rocker. Kater, a construction worker, had been one of the founders of Germany’s anarchist movement. He had assisted Gustav Kessler in separating syndicalists from the Social Democratic Party and steering them toward anarcho-syndicalism. Kater had also represented the German movement Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschland at the 1913 London conference. Rocker had been enthralled with Spain as a youth and had lived for a time in London, where he came to know Spanish anarchists who sought refuge there. Since Rocker spoke Spanish, Abad de Santillán found him to be very helpful as he got accustomed to life in Germany. Abad de Santillán divided his time between his studies at the College of Medicine at the University of Berlin and his participation in the anarchist movement. He shared with Kater and other German anarchists a concern over those imprisoned by the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union.3 Soviet refugees came to Germany, and Abad de Santillán prepared a Spanish-language edition of The History of the Makhnovist Movement with the help of Russian anarchist Volin (Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum).4 By 1922, Rocker was both a friend and a mentor to Abad de Santillán. Abad de Santillán attended a series of lectures by Rocker on the history of the Spanish anarchist movement, and “from that date I became interested in the history of the Spanish movement,” wrote Abad de Santillán.5 But Kater became more than a mentor. Abad de Santillán got to know the Kater family, particularly Kater’s twenty-year-old daughter, Elisa, who became his compañera (companion); bore him a son, Diego; and lived with him for nearly sixty years. Abad de Santillán’s interest in Spanish anarchism brought him into a debate that pitted the Argentine FORA against European anarchists, especially the Spanish CNT. The Argentine federation claimed the mantle of apolitical revolution and condemned any attempt to accommodate the state. Abad de Santillán and López Arango took the leading role in trying to preserve what they called pure anarchism. López Arango remained on La Protesta’s editorial board in Buenos Aires, while Abad de Santillán supported the FORA’s positions

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Chapter 5

from Europe. Both men attacked the Spanish CNT’s reformist tendencies. The conflict encompassed anarchists on both sides of the Atlantic. One of the issues that divided libertarians in the postwar years was the place of unions and the labor movement. Syndicalists envisioned unions federated into a powerful working-class force that would provide the foundation for the new libertarian society and favored general strikes as a class weapon. The founders of the CORA and later the USA believed that workers should influence the state to provide better working conditions and better pay and to guarantee labor’s rights. They proposed defending workers’ material and professional interests and struggling against all forms of exploitation and tyranny until the complete emancipation of the proletariat and the abolition of wages had been achieved.6 Anarcho-communists did not differ fundamentally in their support of syndicalists’ goals but regarded the bureaucratic nature of any institution, even a workers’ federation, with suspicion, questioning whether the libertarian revolution should be restricted only to the proletariat or should encompass all persons in a free society. In many respects, both factions reflected fundamental anarchist beliefs in the goal of a libertarian society, but they differed in their tactics and emphasis. Nevertheless, these differences were real and the polemic heated. Not only did these arguments divide the anarchist movements within Argentina and Spain, but the debate became multinational. “From 1915 until 1920, the anarchist press in Spain debated the conflict between revolutionary syndicalists and the anarchist-inspired syndicalists, like those of the FORA in Argentina. This conflict intensified during the years of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, bringing out more strongly the influence of Argentine anarchism on the Spanish movement.”7 In 1922, the International Workingmen’s Association (in Spanish, the Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores [AIT]) established a new international association of anarchist and syndicalist organizations at a congress in Berlin. The meeting provided the opportunity for anarchist movements throughout Europe and the Americas to assist each other and share information. But it also brought out major differences over how to respond to the communist Red International and how anarchists should participate in the state to achieve labor’s goals. Delegates to the Berlin conference discussed the tactical advantages of syndicalism. Abad de Santillán, representing the FORA, objected strenuously to any political involvement, a stance that eventually led to a direct confrontation with the Spanish CNT, which was struggling with the same issues. Anarchist movements throughout Europe had suffered in the aftermath of World War I, with opposition from fascists, socialists, and communists. Benito Mussolini’s Italian regime presented labor with an alternate system of power and 96

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The FORA and the CNT

repressed opponents, including anarchists. Camilo Berneri, Errico Malatesta, and Luigi Fabbri found themselves without the strong support they had previously enjoyed among Italian workers. Socialists eclipsed the French anarchists, while Bolsheviks attacked Russian anarchists. Spain’s anarchist movement was the only one in Europe to emerge from World War I with greater influence than before. But Spanish anarchists soon found that anarchists in Latin America, especially Argentina, challenged their organization and their leadership.

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The FORA-CNT Conflict

The hostility between the FORA and the CNT became apparent at the AIT’s founding conference, but the underlying conflict between anarcho-communists and syndicalists had been festering for several years on both sides of the Atlantic. Immigrant anarchists in Argentina believed that their fusion of Spanish and Italian anarchism represented a truer form of Bakuninism than the current European movement, which was influenced by the socialists and a politically oriented labor movement. Abad de Santillán and López Arango numbered among the most vociferous proponents of this American-style anarchism. López Arango wrote to Abad de Santillán on August 16, 1922, about the plans for the Berlin conference and suggested that he represent the FORA since no other representative would sail from Argentina. López Arango expressed his doubts about the new organization, fearing that finding common ground with the European organizations would require compromises with advocates of a political role for unions. López Arango rejected compromise at the conference in Berlin for the same reasons the FORA had rejected ties to the USA: fear of involvement with political parties and of compromising anarchist principles. He was also very critical of the Spanish CNT, which had met in Saragossa to hear reports from representatives in Moscow and had joined the Red International. López Arango denounced Pestaña and Seguí as chameleons for supporting Moscow.8 On November 6, 1922, López Arango again wrote to tell Abad de Santillán that Orlando Ángel would come from Argentina to attend the Berlin conference, warning, “With respect to the Berlin Conference, here we harbor few illusions. Our European comrades maintain a mistaken position and we have little interest in following them.” He recommended that Abad de Santillán attack the Spanish representatives “to drive out those opportunists from the CNT who want to go to Berlin.”9 In their book on anarchism, Abad de Santillán and López Arango wrote, “The one thing that distinguishes Argentine anarchism is its preoccupation with the anarchist movement in Europe.”10 They also suggested that Argen97

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Chapter 5

tine anarchists needed to help those in areas where the movement was less advanced and publicize the development of anarchist ideas in Argentina. They opposed any political coalitions and stressed what they considered to be pure anarchist ideals: “Anarchism, as a doctrine, can set no one free. Its mission is to inculcate in all human beings the idea that redemption cannot be achieved through magic or illusion, but must come from the efforts of each one of us.”11 They continued, “There are two countries supporting our thesis of the harmony between anarchism and the organization of the masses, two countries in which our ideas have always had more influence over the revolutionary proletariat: Spain and Argentina.”12 But López Arango and Abad de Santillán believed that the Spanish organization was in danger of sacrificing its revolutionary purity in favor of short-term reforms. The Argentine anarchists complained about the “deviations of Spanish syndicalists.” Writing to Abad de Santillán on FORA letterhead, Luis Jorge Rey wrote, “We are tired of playing games with the politics of the Red International and being instruments of such detested diplomacy.”13 In addition, the Argentines were suspicious of the new AIT. In May 1923, Rey again wrote to Abad de Santillán to complain that European syndicalism was less advanced than that of Argentina.14 Spanish anarchists, in turn, felt that the FORA’s criticism was misplaced. According to José Peirats’s history of the CNT, the members of the Spanish delegation to Moscow were jailed in Italy on their way home, so the organization did not know about the conditions facing anarchists in the Soviet Union.15 As a result, Peirats suggests, the CNT affiliated itself with the Red International in 1921. The CNT attempted to send a delegation to the AIT’s 1922 Berlin conference, but the representatives were detained in France. Had they reached Berlin, the CNT likely would have joined with the French delegation’s proposal to include the Soviet Red International. Argentine representatives strongly opposed the motion and spoke out against it: “The FORA has clearly signaled its point of view for several years, and if it agreed to the creation of a new International it was with the belief that revolutionary syndicalism throughout the entire world had understood and appreciated its actions over the last several years. In its decision to create a new International of revolutionary workers it absolutely rejects political entities such as those of the Internationals of Amsterdam [Social Democrats] and Moscow [Communists].”16 Despite the Argentines’ objections, the Red International was admitted into the AIT. The Argentines continued to oppose the communists’ inclusion. Abad de Santillán believed that the FORA could steer the organization away from political involvement and back toward revolutionary syndicalism at the AIT’s

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The FORA and the CNT

second congress, to be held in Amsterdam in 1925.17 According to Abad de Santillán, “For us, these daily struggles have a revolutionary value; in the hands of the reformers, these struggles only serve to take workers away from the goal of revolution.”18 In January 1925, J. M. Hacha, a member of La Protesta’s editorial board, told Abad de Santillán that copies of the paper had been sent to comrades in Barcelona to oppose the work of Pestaña and his allies. Hacha charged Abad de Santillán with the mission of “fighting these men whenever possible.”19

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Argentina and Spain in the 1920s

The conflict between the Argentine FORA and the Spanish CNT reflected the divergent political climates in the two countries. President Hipólito Yrigoyen and the middle-class Radical Party (Unión Cívica Radical) had governed Argentina since 1916, but the key to their success had been an electoral reform law enacted in 1912 under conservative president Roque Sáenz Peña. That law guaranteed universal male suffrage and a secret ballot. Male citizens who registered for military service not only became eligible to vote but were required to vote. After the war, the sons of earlier immigrants began to vote for the Radicals, but anarchists continued their antipolitical stance, refusing to register for military service or seek citizenship. But Yrigoyen and his party sought support from labor in an electoral coalition with the middle class and in rivalry with the Socialists. The Radical Party established caudillos de barrio (neighborhood bosses), who dispensed food and provided references for renters. Yrigoyen also enlarged the Buenos Aires electorate and declared May 1 to be Labor Day. In 1918, reform laws regulated working hours, and in 1919, arbitration and collective bargaining were permitted. The policies of Yrigoyen’s government led some labor leaders to seek more improvements for workers through legislation, although anarchists fiercely opposed plans for social security and minimum wage laws. By the early 1920s, a split occurred within the Unión Cívica Radical, and antipersonalists criticized Yrigoyen’s hold on the party and the government. Marcelo T. de Alvear headed the antipersonalist wing of the party and won a six-year term as president in 1922. Alvear’s administration did little to further labor’s goals. Nevertheless, with Socialist deputies in Congress and labor laws enacted by Radical administrations, anarchists in the FORA fought hard to preserve their antipolitical position and saw syndicalists as collaborators with the regime. The intense rhetoric within the anarchist movement in the early and mid-1920s resulted partly from Argentina’s new political and economic opportunities and affected both native and immigrant workers.

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Chapter 5

After several years of postwar increases, immigration to Argentina jumped dramatically to nearly 130,000 in 1922 and almost 200,000 in 1923 . (See table 5.) The increasing pool of laborers created tension among unions over social security legislation and arbitration boards. As the pace of immigration continued to rise, government representatives began to fear immigration as fuel for revolution, leading to a backlash against the labor movement in general and anarchists in particular. The 1919 Tragic Week was one result. In the aftermath of Tragic Week, Argentine workers debated the role of violence. Several migrants became notorious for their violent escapades in the early 1920s. Buenaventura Durruti, born in Spain in 1896 to working-class parents, learned the machinist trade as an apprentice. He joined the CNT during the 1917 general strike but soon left for Paris to avoid military service. In 1921, Durruti returned to Saragossa, Spain, where anarchist groups Via Libre (the Free Way), El Comunista (the Communist), Los Justicieros (the Seekers of Justice), Voluntad (Free Will), and Impulso (Impulse) met and organized a “national anarchist federation of resolute courageous individuals.”20 Durruti was a member of Los Justicieros, as were Francisco Ascaso, Rafael Torres Escartín, Gregorio Suberviela, and Marcelino del Campo. They traveled to Barcelona in August 1922 and reestablished themselves as Crisol (the Crucible) and ultimately Los Solidarios (Solidarity), one of Spain’s most famous anarchist groups. In 1923, members of Los Solidarios retaliated for the death of CNT leader Salvador Tab l e 5.  

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Year

Immigration to Argentina, 1915–1940 Number of Immigrants

1915 45,290 1916 32,990 1917 18,064 1918 13,701 1919 41,299 1920 87,032 1921 98,086 1922 129,263 1923 195,063 1924 159,939 1925 125,366 1926 135,011 1927 161,548

Year

Number of Immigrants

1928 129,047 1929 140,086 1930 157,104 1931 97,424 1932 63,669 1933 56,765 1934 n/a 1935 65,875 1936 72,146 1937 77,175 1938 74,785 1939 56,667 1940 48,230

Source: Graciela Swiderski and Jorge Luis Farjat, La Inmigración (Buenos Aires: Colección Arte y Memoria Audiovisual, 1999), 189.

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The FORA and the CNT

Seguí by assassinating the archbishop of Saragossa, Cardinal Juan Soldevilla y Romero. The government quickly arrested and jailed Ascaso, but he escaped and fled to France, where he joined Durruti. Authorities arrested or killed the other members of Los Solidarios. In 1924, Durruti and Ascaso sailed to Cuba, where they worked in the port of Havana and became active in the city’s labor movement, earning the ire of Cuban authorities. In 1925, they left for Mexico, where Gregorio Jover joined them. The three men began to “liberate” funds from banks for use in the anarchist movement. The men moved on to Chile and ultimately Argentina, committing a daring robbery of Buenos Aires’s Banco San Martín in broad daylight. Wanted by the Argentine authorities and under a death sentence, Durruti, Ascaso, and Jover fled to Montevideo in 1926. From Montevideo they eventually returned to France, which at the time was safer than either Argentina or Spain. Spain had suffered from political instability throughout 1923. The monarch had become frustrated with political coalitions that proved short-lived and labor strife that degenerated into open warfare, with gunslingers roaming the streets and assassinating labor leaders, government officials, and priests. The Spanish army had been defeated in Morocco, prompting an investigation by the Cortes (parliament), though the king blamed the army leadership. With the king’s encouragement, General Miguel Primo de Rivera assumed control of the government in September 1923 with a mandate to restore order, which he did by eventually dismissing the Cortes and ruling as a dictator. The CNT responded with a general strike, which was quickly suppressed. Nevertheless, Primo de Rivera’s government refrained from a direct attack on the CNT until May 1924, when an anarchist assassinated a police official in Barcelona. The dictatorship then drove the CNT underground and many of its members into exile. Repression continued through the end of the dictatorship in early 1930, although some restrictions were eased in 1925. The CNT faced the question of anarchist cooperation with political opposition to the dictatorship. The Socialists, who openly accommodated themselves to the dictatorship, had gained thousands of adherents. Ángel Pestaña urged the CNT to cooperate with the Socialist Party and its labor federation, the Unión General de Trabajadores. These issues exacerbated divisions within the CNT and, in the eyes of Argentine anarchists, weakened the Spanish federation’s resolve to adhere to the truest form of revolutionary anarchism. Abad de Santillán, López Arango, and their fellow editors at La Protesta criticized those who did not remain steadfast in opposition to all government and in favor of an anarchist revolution that would destroy the current system. Abad de Santillán and López Arango felt that anarchists within the CNT were retreating from these goals

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Chapter 5

and criticized them as well. Exhorted La Protesta, “Anarchists should not wait for orders from proletarian and revolutionary organizations; each revolutionary group or collective should advance on its own initiative. . . . Do what you can, however you can. But do something!”21 Eusebio C. Carbó was one of many anarchists forced to flee from Spain to France during Primo de Rivera’s rule. Carbó had been a disciple of one of the founding fathers of Spanish anarchism, Anselmo Lorenzo, and in 1919 had signed a declaration at the Madrid Congress in the Comedia Theater that affirmed anarcho-communism as the CNT’s goal.22 Carbó could hardly have been considered weak in his support of anarchist principles, yet he became one of Abad de Santillán’s principal enemies among the CNT leaders. Some of the animosity may have been personal. Carbó had written to Abad de Santillán saying that the Spanish government had arrested him, imprisoned him for three months, and then offered him a choice between remaining in jail or leaving the country.23 Carbó left for France but found few opportunities for employment as a consequence of what he called “his delicate health.” Carbó proposed that he would write a series of articles for La Protesta.24 There is no evidence that Abad de Santillán obliged Carbó with any opportunities. Abad de Santillán and Carbó bitterly denounced each other at the AIT’s 1925 Amsterdam meeting. Abad de Santillán later justified his actions, saying that he suspected Carbó of compromising Spanish comrades during the Vera de Bidasoa incident. In November 1924, a group of anarchist militants attacked the military barracks in Barcelona, while a small armed group crossed the border from France at Vera de Bidasoa. The attacks failed, and two anarchists were captured and executed. Carbó claimed that he had done all he could to dissuade the anarchists in France, led by Durruti, from crossing the border into Spain. Abad de Santillán, however, suggested that the Spanish authorities had been warned and that he suspected Carbó of involvement. In hindsight, Abad de Santillán admitted that he had been harsh: “However, the situation in which our friends in the peninsula found themselves was such that we felt obligated to intervene from afar to prevent the danger of deviations [from anarchist principles] we felt were too important to ignore.”25 The Amsterdam Conference of the AIT

The personal and ideological conflict that erupted between Spanish and Argentine anarchists at the Amsterdam conference intensified as a consequence of internecine struggles within each country’s movement. On May 16, 1925, López Arango told Abad de Santillán that La Protesta had become an organ

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The FORA and the CNT

for the Spanish CNT faction opposing cooperation with the state.26 Prior to his assassination in March 1923, Seguí criticized the CNT’s hard-line approach, which had brought repression instead of benefits to Spanish workers. Pestaña, who eventually split with the anarchists and created a syndicalist party, concurred. Pestaña also infuriated Abad de Santillán and supporters of the FORA by supporting the rival USA. Writing to Abad de Santillán on May 30, 1924, Enrique Nido criticized the “troublemaker, Pestaña in Barcelona, who has taken sides with the USA.”27 Later that year, Abad de Santillán complained, “I just read in the newspaper of the CNT in Spain the beginning of a long ‘historical’ study against La Protesta and against me; it was written by the Alianza Libertaria Argentina. This means a complete rupture with the Spanish.”28 Spanish support for FORA’s rival continued through the AIT’s March 1925 meeting in Amsterdam and sparked words between Abad de Santillán and Carbó. By the Amsterdam conference, the Spanish dictatorship had relaxed some of its constraints, and anarchist periodicals were being published. Nevertheless, the CNT was still not permitted to operate legally, and it hoped to find international support among comrades in the AIT. Abad de Santillán immediately dashed those hopes by attacking the Spanish organization for failing to pay its dues to the AIT. He also objected to Carbó’s placement on the commission slated to discuss the conflict between the USA and FORA. A USA representative attended the conference and sought recognition as an official delegate. Abad de Santillán objected, saying that such matters were internal questions and should be handled among the Argentine organizations rather than by an international congress. According to the conference minutes, “Santillán noted that Carbó, as a representative of the CNT in Spain, could not remain impartial due to the public and private polemic between the comrades of the FORA and those of the CNT.”29 The two men traded accusations throughout the conference. Carbó claimed that Abad de Santillán had misrepresented the CNT’s position and insisted that he prove his statements.30 Abad de Santillán countered by demanding that the CNT accept responsibility for newspaper articles in Solidaridad Proletaria attacking FORA. Abad de Santillán claimed to have letters as proof but refused to produce them.31 With the conference disrupted by this conflict, there was little hope for international cooperation. Rocker, who represented Brazil at the proceedings, gave the final address. He stressed the need to recognize the wide range of ideas, using as examples of the polar opposites among the member organizations “the purely anarchist unions of Argentina and the syndicalist unions of some parts of Europe.”32 López Arango and others in Argentina had criticized precisely this need to reconcile the various European member organizations’ approaches. Abad de Santillán,

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Chapter 5

living in Europe and friends with Rocker and Kater, had greater objectivity though no less intensity about the issues. “Argentina did play some part in the internal divisions,” he wrote to Max Nettlau, an Austrian historian of the anarchist movement. “The proposal put forward by some to reconcile FORA and the USA hurt us more than any other offense and instinctively provoked in us attitudes and reactions that make it impossible to cooperate amicably with [the Spanish] within the International.”33 Abad de Santillán became so embroiled in these polemics and in publishing that he abandoned his medical studies in 1923.34 The following year, he finished his translation of the Complete Works of Bakunin and turned to a collaborative effort with López Arango on a study of the anarchist movement. In their book, they opposed compromise with political regimes and described true revolution as an affirmation of human liberty: “FORA also rejects placing the leadership of the social revolution in the hands of an organization; human freedom does not respond to the voice of command; if it is not expressed as the natural result of the social life of the people themselves it will never occur. Liberty cannot be legislated by a political or economic apparatus, it depends not on an external institution but rather on the confirmation of the spirit.”35 The two men’s intransigence was directed at their opponents both in Europe and in Argentina.

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Internecine Strife among Anarchists in Argentina

Unlike Spain, where dictatorship had driven the CNT underground, FORA remained legal in Argentina. Anarchists could operate openly throughout the 1920s as long as they did not directly threaten the government. Yet precisely this openness brought out dissension and threatened the movement’s unity. Personal and ideological conflicts had led to a split between Apolinario Barrera and López Arango, editors of La Protesta, and Rodolfo Gonzáles Pacheco, founder of Antorcha. On February 24, 1926, a colleague named Fontana wrote to ask Abad de Santillán to return to Argentina, at least for a few months, to resolve the serious conflict between these groups. Once these problems were solved, Fontana assumed that Abad de Santillán could return to Europe. In an aside, Fontana admonished, “Enough with your histories and games, we need you here now more than ever.”36 Abad de Santillán was loath to leave Europe and tried to bring the two sides together through correspondence. Finally, in April, another of La Protesta’s editors, Mariano Torrente, wrote that Abad de Santillán’s attempts to promote reconciliation from Europe had failed and that José María Acha and López Arango opposed any compromise with the Antorcha group: “I spoke with Acha on one occasion, and he understood that it was

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The FORA and the CNT

necessary to ‘move’ spiritually and in the pages of the newspaper. But Arango does not see it that way, saying that writing the newspaper any other way would cease to make it La Protesta. Arango is stuck in his routine; not only does he not go out to the café, he doesn’t go to meetings or conferences. . . . One other note: Acha, on his part, has a very violent temperament which puts him at odds with everyone, especially those with tempers like his.”37 López Arango, too, had a strong temper and defended his principles in an uncompromising way.38 Abad de Santillán knew how important personalities and personal differences could become in the movement. In a letter to Nettlau, Abad de Santillán explained,

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The chief editor of La Protesta, Arango, is a comrade who never went to school. About six or seven years ago, he wrote with many spelling errors. Frankly, there are those among the intellectual anarchists who look down on him as an immigrant. González Pacheco will never recognize that Arango has a mind as well organized as his own. I have known Arango since 1918; he is the least egotistical and the most humble person there is. In July 1922 he was brought in [as chief editor of] La Protesta because he was the only one who could handle all its problems. Since it is his point of view that is generally reflected, he is silently hated by the priests of the many different chapels who systematically criticize everything that comes out in La Protesta because it comes from that “illiterate,” Arango.39

Abad de Santillán realized that he had to return to Argentina, where the situation was going “from bad to worse.”40 He sided with La Protesta and not Antorcha, but a failure to reconcile the two factions would undo years of work and create rancor. In May 1926, Abad de Santillán reluctantly left Germany and returned to Argentina, leaving Elisa and their son behind in Germany for what he believed would be a temporary sojourn in Argentina.41 The Argentine anarchist conflict was greater and more violent than he had imagined, and he ultimately remained in Argentina for more than four years, sending for his wife and child. This was his fifth trip across the Atlantic, and in a sense, it represented a homecoming: “I was not arriving in a foreign country,” he wrote, “nor did I feel like a foreigner.” He continued, “Argentina was my second homeland, and I identified as much with it as anyone born there. Without ever giving up my deep sense of being Spanish, even a Spanish patriot, I was also Argentine and an Argentine patriot. I felt simultaneously the sense of being both from the experiences and beliefs that I held based on the fortunes of my life.”42 Each time Abad de Santillán crossed the Atlantic, he had a purpose and a goal. But in 1926, he sailed into a whirlwind

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Chapter 5

of conflict and death. When Abad de Santillán arrived in Buenos Aires, he met with the members of La Protesta’s editorial board. He did not know them well, having spent nearly four years abroad. But almost everyone trusted him. In July 1922, shortly after the twenty-five-year-old Abad de Santillán arrived in Europe, José M. Fernández sent funds collected by Argentine anarchists to help comrades in Germany and in Russia. Fernández told Abad de Santillán, “There is no one better than you to know how to interpret the ideas of your comrades in Argentina.”43 Moreover, in 1924, the aging Nettlau became desperately short of cash and contacted Abad de Santillán for help. Married to a wealthy woman, Nettlau had devoted the better part of his life to research and writing about the anarchist movement. But after his wife’s death, according to Argentine León Guerrero, “Nettlau lives in dreadful misery. In one room two and a half meters wide, he has an old bed, a table, a wooden chair, an ancient oil lamp, and papers piled up to the ceiling. There he eats, sleeps, works . . . and relaxes.”44 Abad de Santillán attempted to help Nettlau negotiate the sale of his extensive library as quietly as possible to avoid embarrassment. When the sale information was nevertheless publicized, upsetting Nettlau, Abad de Santillán wrote to apologize to Nettlau and to accept responsibility for the error. At the bottom of the letter, Nettlau wrote in English, “This is the letter of a gentleman.”45 Another factor that enabled Abad de Santillán to assume leadership after returning to Argentina was the fact that he had been absent during the most intense period of partisan squabbling and remained on good terms with all sides, as the letters he received from Acha, López Arango, Nido, Barrera, Sergio Varela, and Rey attest.46 As a seemingly disinterested party, at least while abroad, Abad de Santillán maintained his authority as an anarchist rather than as a partisan of one particular group, although everyone involved must have known of his close ties to the La Protesta board.47 There is no evidence that González Pacheco or any member of the Antorcha group contacted Abad de Santillán directly at this time. For their part, the members of the La Protesta staff accepted Abad de Santillán as a leader as a consequence of his role as an international spokesperson for FORA and Argentine anarchism. He had been present at the AIT’s creation in Berlin in 1922 and spearheaded opposition to Spanish and French syndicalism. He had also been accredited by Mexico’s Confederación General del Trabajo at the 1925 Amsterdam conference and had written, “La Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores: Su historia, sus ideas, su porvenir (The International Workingmen’s Association: Its History, Its Ideas, Its Future).” Abad de Santillán’s comrades respected him, but when it came to dealing with his best friend, López Arango, other editors would have to push hard to get him to overcome his fondness for El Gallego. López Arango

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The FORA and the CNT

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offered to let his friend stay in the small home in Remedios de Escalada, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, where López Arango lived with his compañera, Carmen, and their three small children. Every day, the two men rode the train together to Constitution Station in the southern part of the city, near the La Protesta offices. Abad de Santillán began by shuffling the paper’s editorial board. He tried to convince the current board to reduce the level of discord by taking a less strident tone. López Arango accepted the directive, but Acha had difficulty refraining from attacking other groups, and when Abad de Santillán pulled one of Acha’s editorials in December 1926, Acha left La Protesta in anger. Abad de Santillán was saddened and “did not want to remain in Argentina but longed to return to Europe and to be closer to Spain.”48 His friendship with López Arango and the development of the literary supplement to La Protesta finally convinced Abad de Santillán to remain in Argentina. He sent for his wife and son and settled into building a stronger publication. For La Protesta, 1927 was a special year, marking the thirtieth anniversary of its birth as a weekly in 1897. Abad de Santillán was excited by the transformation of the paper’s literary supplement from a weekly to a larger bimonthly magazine dedicated to anarchist ideology and social history. By May, Abad de Santillán had given up his position as editor of La Protesta to work full time on the supplement.49 The literary supplement was becoming a forum for translations of theoretical works by anarchists from around the world as well as for addressing issues related to women and family life. Women in the Anarchist Movement in Argentina

The social questions on which Argentina’s anarchists took positions included the role of women. Anarchists accepted the idea of individual equality in general, but many male anarchists did not accept the full social equality of women. Women anarchists and their supporters struggled to keep their concerns from being subsumed within political and labor struggles. One of their greatest problems was gender and the question of family. Anarchist women called for the freedom of women to choose family, children, and home life or to seek fulfillment in other areas. Some spoke of free love, child care centers, and even the right of women to live apart from sexual partners. These issues upset middleclass society as well as some anarchist men. Consequently, anarchist women had to argue both within the movement and in the larger society. For one year beginning in January 1895, anarchist women in Buenos Aires published La Voz de la Mujer (Voice of the Woman), a periodical that supported

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Chapter 5

a distinctly feminist agenda. It expressed anarchist women’s desire for full participation in the revolution to produce a new society. Many of the writers for the periodical were Spanish immigrants. “Most of the signed articles bore the names of women, and most were written in Spanish, with only occasional items in Italian. Although the paper accepted articles in either language, the names of the editors, collaborators, and contributors indicated the paper’s affiliations with Spanish anarchism and with the Spanish immigrant community. This is not surprising as it was primarily from Spain that anarchist feminism came to Argentina.”50 While Argentine anarchists had begun to debate what they called the “social question,” some male anarchists regarded feminism as a diversion from the revolution that would emancipate all people, women and men. Yet the discussion highlighted women’s important role in the movement and the issues that concerned them. In an analysis of thirty years’ worth of La Protesta articles about women and love, Dora Barrancos found that the anarchist position subverted accepted customs.51 Both men and women participated in this discussion. In 1910, the paper printed an article by Pierre Quiroule, a pseudonym for Joaquín A. Falconnet, a well-known libertarian. In “How the Woman Will Conquer Her Independence,” Quiroule criticized the notion of free love because it left the woman vulnerable to abandonment. He noted that if a married woman were abandoned by her husband, she had some legal recourse. In a free union, she had none, and both she and her children would suffer. Instead, Quiroule believed that each individual must have equal access to education, jobs, and material goods so that he or she might maintain an independent life. “I also believe that if one wishes to achieve complete happiness in love. . . . If we wish to see women as free and independent as men. . . . If we wish to dispel this hateful and ugly idea that men control women; if women, for their part, really want to stop being the toys, the objects, momentary delights and slaves to men, married women should live by themselves, masters of themselves, their actions and thoughts, in absolute.”52 Quiroule began to distance the concept of free love from that of a free union in which two individuals accepted a monogamous relationship outside the authority of the state or church.53 Nevertheless, the question of women’s independence remained unresolved throughout this period, as anarchist women struggled to maintain themselves when their immigrant husbands were deported or arrested. Elisa Kater, Abad de Santillán’s compañera, was an important part of his life and influenced his actions. In May 1925, he wrote to Nettlau about a case of appendicitis that resulted in Kater’s hospitalization for nine days. “Misfortunes do not come one at a time,” he admitted, seemingly

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The FORA and the CNT

discouraged. He had recently had difficulties with the police at an international meeting in Amsterdam, and now “there is the lack of money, this illness, and who knows what next.”54 Abad de Santillán’s family was shaped by anarchist principles: he did not marry Elisa, for that was a legal contract defined by church and state. Abad de Santillán and López Arango entered into free unions with their compañeras. For these men, free love meant stable long-term relationships chosen by the participants rather than bestowed by external authority.55 But the question of love and family life was more complicated for women anarchists. Was a woman’s role, even in an anarchist society, to be the producer of new proletarians? “Any woman who refuses [her role] in procreation is less acceptable than one who accepts,” wrote one author in 1918.56 Or was she free to make love for her own enjoyment and refuse to become tied down to any man or a nuclear family? Should children be raised communally by those who wanted to devote themselves to child rearing, leaving the biological parents to pursue their lives as they wished? Some anarchists argued that women, freed from pregnancy through birth control, could achieve sexual equality with men: “Men and women are guided by desire. If a man and a woman desire each other they will lose all fear of social conventions. . . . All should interpret free love as they wish.”57 Milly Witkop-Rocker wrote in support of family planning in the literary supplement to La Protesta: “As long as women are degraded in the form of becoming a birthing machine, we cannot think about their spiritual emancipation. The first step to be taken is the right to birth control.”58 Many women anarchists struggled with the questions raised by the circumstances of their lives. In January 1919, Juana Rouco Buela, one of Argentina’s leading women anarchists, participated in the burial of a demonstrator who had been killed. She later recalled, Arriving at Chacarita Cemetery, gunfire broke out and put an end to the burial; there was a prolonged gun battle between the people and the police, because the workers came well armed and ready to defend themselves and their beliefs with force. Everywhere one heard the shouts of “La Protesta” and “Bandera Roja” in those moments of fear and sadness. Badaracco, García de la Mata and Rosales stood up and harangued the crowd with what was taking place, showing how the people were reacting in this revolutionary moment. We had to return from the cemetery on foot, and on the way, we encountered overturned trolleys and trucks formed into barricades. Workers attacked arms depots to get guns for the people to defend themselves. Arriving home, I encountered a comrade who was waiting for me. He informed me that we needed to go and take care of comrade Santana, who

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Chapter 5

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had been gravely wounded. We found him where our comrades had taken him and where Doctor Carulla, a trusted comrade, was attending him after removing a bullet.59

In the 1920s, she traveled throughout Argentina and helped to encourage workers in the interior of the country. As a woman, Rouco Buela felt the double oppression of capitalism and a male-dominated society. As an anarchist, she felt that the best way to overcome this oppression was to work for a libertarian revolution. She did not separate her feminism from her anarchism, and much like Emma Goldman in the United States and Federica Montseny in Spain, was unflinching in her determination to achieve an anarchist revolution. Rouco Buela expressed not only her desire for an anarchist revolution but also the special joy of being a woman anarchist. She found happiness on November 24, 1921, when she “established my home with a companion who was intelligent and involved in the struggle. I was no longer alone. I had a valiant collaborator at my side.”60 A few months later, she and her companion moved to Necochea, in southern Buenos Aires province, where Rouco Buela began her work with a women’s group. The previous year she had promised the women of that port city that she would return and help them establish their own anarchist newspaper. In January 1922, she met with Fidela Cuñado, Teresa Fernández, and María Fernández as the newly established editorial board. They planned a weekly periodical, Nuestra Tribuna (Our Tribunal), which would be written and published entirely by women. They formed the Center of Women’s Studies with twenty members. Rouco Buela recalled, “Arriving in Necochea and making direct contact with the women of the region, I came to realize that there were, although ignored until then, a group of women of unquestionable value for whom encouragement and direction were all that was lacking. They possessed a deep understanding of [anarchist] ideology and a willingness to work.”61 Rouco Buela and the women of Necochea printed announcements and sent them to anarchists all over the world. By the time they were ready to publish their first issue in August 1922, they had subscriptions from the United States, Germany, Spain, and Peru as well as throughout Argentina. They published contributions from women around the world, including the compañera of Ricardo Flores Magón, a Mexican anarchist jailed in the United States, and Milly Witkop-Rocker, the compañera of German anarchist Rudolf Rocker. The editors were soon sending fifteen hundred copies of each issue to the United States. Rouco Buela’s companion, a printer by trade, helped proofread the newspaper and make sure that it was printed properly. Rouco Buela and the other women completed their work in ways most comfortable to them. “I was surrounded

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The FORA and the CNT

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by so many and such good friends and comrades. Each issue of the periodical became a festive day. We, and our families all got together to complete our task, and everyone worked; some prepared food, and we ate a veritable banquet with all that was served. Others folded the pages or stuffed envelopes. Laughing and singing, we put out Nuestra Tribuna.”62 Rouco Buela and the women who worked with her laid the groundwork for an anarchist revolution, rejoicing in the friendship and communal participation the project afforded. But this approach did not make the periodical any less revolutionary. Rouco Buela commented on the terrible atrocities taking place in Patagonia, and when German immigrant Kurt Wilckens assassinated Colonel Héctor Varela, Rouco Buela published a paean to Wilckens, “Song for an Explosion.” The law is an iron hammer and the government a monster that devours without creating, the military is a hanging sword set to murder the people; here is the trinity that went to Santa Cruz to sow the seeds of desolation and spark the cry of fifteen hundred proletarian families! Here is the trinity that created the song for an explosion! Kurt Wilckens! Song for an explosion! Weapon for an ideal of love! Who made you strong, who made you seek justice, who forged you like an iron spear, who made you so sensitive to others’ pain? A woman! The death of one tyrant only clears the way for another—said someone—and he was wrong, for the cowardly murderer needs to be given his lesson in steel. Kurt Wilckens’s song for an explosion, sword for the offense and foundation of the ideal. . . . And now weep you puppets who indoctrinate and set upon the people with legalized robbery. What did Varela do in Santa Cruz? Our reactionary press should answer. The prevaricating judges should remember the deeds of Varela in the Argentine Patagonia before imposing the clauses of the penal code. Kurt Wilckens! Song for an explosion, son of our loving and nurturing strength. We are the mothers, the girlfriends, and the sisters of the victims of Santa Cruz. Forever engraved on our troubled hearts will be your holy name . . . and the song for an explosion. You are our son, because you responded to a mother’s pain, because you were the echo of a tragedy, a barbaric massacre. You are the echo of this terrible tragedy, the pain of so many mothers, the hunger and the weeping of children, which you transformed into a bomb . . . into the song for an explosion of justice. Kurt Wilckens! Sensitive and noble brother! We are your partners in captivity. Long life and anarchy!63

For Juana Rouco Buela, freedom meant not only revolutionary ideas but also love and motherhood. In December 1923, she delivered a baby girl she

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Chapter 5

named Poema, for “she was the poem of my life.”64 Rouco Buela’s activities in Necochea had brought her to the notice of its police chief, the brother of the assassinated Colonel Varela. Rouco Buela and her group found increasing difficulties in obtaining permits to mail their periodical, and authorities closed the Center for Women’s Studies. In March 1924, she and her family moved to Tandil, further in the interior of Buenos Aires province, where she continued to publish Nuestra Tribuna. But with the lack of help and a child to raise, she and her family soon moved back to Buenos Aires, where she gave birth to a son in 1925. Motherhood changed Rouco Buela’s life in many ways: “I was no longer the free woman, having acquired the responsibilities of child care and education. Nevertheless, I continued to be active in whatever way possible.”65 Other anarchist women and men raised issues of marriage, sexuality, and fairness. Writing in La Protesta in 1924, Italian anarchist Luiggi Fabbri said, “Anarchism proposes the abolition of official marriage, the laws that regulate it, and the economic slavery it imposes.”66 The idea that marriage enslaved women, however, had to be balanced with the protection that marriage offered both women and their children. Rouco Buela’s companion, for example, eventually left her and their children, and he had no obligation to provide any support or recognition. Fabbri counseled state-sanctioned marriage was acceptable as long as no religious observances were present to “subject the spirit.”67 The long-term goal, of course, was an anarchist society that treated women and men as social and economic equals. In the interim, anarchist women differed both from other feminists, who sought legislation that would give women the vote, access to birth control, and equal legal status, and from anarchist men, who often relegated women’s issues to a distant future after the revolution. La Protesta and its literary supplement published information about venereal disease and sexuality, taking a scientific and hygienic approach.68 Nevertheless, women did have access to information about sexuality. Anarchist women, however, had more difficulty overcoming the problem of fairness in a society where women were subject to male control, legally through the state and informally in their relationships with men. All the talk about free love, women’s economic equality, and an anarchist society where women and men were completely equal did nothing to change the fact that women bore children and were responsible for their care. Little was said about the abolition of the nuclear family, communal responsibility for children, and the right of a woman to abandon her children if she so chose. These social questions and the conflicts they created were very much a part of the anarchist dialogue that Abad de Santillán addressed in the literary supplement to La Protesta.

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The FORA and the CNT

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Death of López Arango

Anarchists in Argentina during the 1920s faced many serious issues in addition to women’s rights. It was a time of increasing labor violence, both in support of anarchists in Spain and in response to internal rivalries. The dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera and subsequent strikes opposing the regime in Spain brought a response from Argentine anarchists, who formed the Argentine Group in Support of Social Prisoners in Spain shortly after the coup and raised money to help two of those arrested, Pedro Matheu and Luis Nicolau. In late 1924, Argentine supporters of Matheu and Nicolau bombed the Spanish consulates in La Plata, Córboba, and Río Cuarto.69 Violence also flared as tensions increased among rival factions of the Argentine anarchist movement. On August 8, 1924, assailants attacked the editorial offices of Pampa Libre, severely injuring its editor, Jacobo Prince. But the most violent person associated with the movement was an Italian immigrant, Severino Di Giovanni. Di Giovanni’s 1923 arrival in Argentina led to further divisions among Argentine anarchists. Di Giovanni was an individualist anarchist who participated in a series of bombings of offices of the Italian government, theaters, and banks in Buenos Aires. Di Giovanni became notorious for his cold-blooded, vicious attacks. By 1928, he had become Argentina’s Public Enemy No. 1, and the La Protesta group began to criticize the indiscriminate nature of this kind of violence fearing that his actions would justify the government’s repression of anarchists. They also accused Di Giovanni of robbing banks for his own benefit rather than as a method of raising funds for the anarchist movement.70 Some of the money Di Giovanni “liberated” helped to finance his own newspaper, Cúlmine, which defended his position. The editors of La Protesta criticized those who remained silent on the question of violence. As the conflict escalated, López Arango and Abad de Santillán received threats. Abad de Santillán wrote to Nettlau in February 1929 that the threats “mean little to me. They have threatened me with death . . . and my friends . . . tell me not to go out at night and to be prepared.”71 A short time later, Miguel Ángel Roscigna, a baker, asked López Arango and Abad de Santillán to tone down their criticisms of Di Giovanni. For a time, the arguments remained verbal and in print. But on the night of October 25, 1929, the thirty-four-year-old López Arango was gunned down in his home by unknown assailants. At first, suspicion fell on members of a bakers’ union, but Abad de Santillán felt that Di Giovanni played a role.72 This murder capped a decade of increasing divisions among anarchists in Argentina and, despite Abad de Santillán’s attempts to resolve the personal

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Chapter 5

and ideological differences, the weakened movement could not withstand the onslaught by the state after the 1930 military coup.

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The Creation of the FAI in Spain

Among those Spanish anarchists who sided with the Argentine FORA and its concept of revolutionary anarcho-communism were those who met and created the National Federation of Anarchist Groups in April 1923. This National Federation and the Regional Committee in Catalonia helped lay the groundwork for the foundation of the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (Iberian Anarchist Federation) in 1927 by establishing a relationship among small groups of anarchist militant cells known as affinity groups. The concept of affinity groups went back to the nineteenth century and the Alliance for Social Democracy created by Mikhail Bakunin. He wanted these groups to provide leadership and maintain ideological purity among anarchists. The affinity groups in Spain in the 1920s played a role similar to that of the editors of La Protesta in Argentina. As Abad de Santillán explained, “The editorial group of La Protesta was not created by or controlled by the vote of the affinity groups or unions that followed its direction. It arose at a critical moment from a meeting of militants facing the difficult circumstances of internal divisions, both economic and ideological. From that time on, it was an autonomous group, taking action as it saw fit. It evolved by itself, as there were no mechanisms to alter its makeup or to dismantle it other than support or rejection by the readers of and subscribers to its publications.”73 The similarity between these two groups became manifest in the 1930s, when several Argentines, including Abad de Santillán, returned to Spain and became FAI members and even leaders. Groups such as Durruti’s Solidarios maintained ideological purity. At a 1922 regional plenum, Durruti’s group met with others in Catalonia and established a commission that, with changing members, “maintained the organized movement in Spain until 1927, when the F.A.I. was established.”74 The fifty members of the various groups pursued their goals separately, attacking symbols of the state by robbing banks and assaulting “enemies of the people.” In 1923, after the assassination of the CNT’s Salvador Seguí, Saragossa’s Via Libre group called for a national anarchist congress in Madrid. That meeting, held in March, created the National Federation of Anarchist Groups, which was distinct from the CNT and was not involved daily with labor organizations. The groups that formed the FAI were composed of anarchist militants, but they were not elites in the sense that they had significant power over the anarcho-syndicalist unions and the CNT. Rather, like La Protesta’s editors, the FAI members saw themselves as guarding

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The FORA and the CNT

“the essence of the Spanish libertarian movement” and “preventing the danger of deviations which we faced.”75 One of the main reasons for the FAI’s formation was the increased influence of Pestaña and the moderates who dominated the CNT during these last years of the dictatorship. Anarchist exiles who had fled to France formed the Federation of Spanish-Language Anarchist Groups in 1924. They created the Paris publishing house, the International Library, and the Revista International Anarquista (International Anarchist Review). However, according to Juan Gómez Casas, the influence of overseas publications, such as La Protesta in Buenos Aires, “was greater than that of the anarchist exiles in France in 1926–1927.”76 After the arrest of members of the National Committees in Seville and Saragossa necessitated the creation of a new committee in Barcelona, the National Federation of Anarchist Groups was forced to meet clandestinely. Its members organized family excursions to the beach, where they coordinated their opposition to the dictatorship while their wives watched the children play in the waves. They helped to orchestrate the attack on Vera de Bidasoa that failed so spectacularly. Conflict arose with the underground CNT over the question of the correct response to repression and dictatorship. The groups in the Anarchist Federation wanted actively to attack the dictatorship, while Pestaña argued for cooperation with other opposition groups, including political parties. Abad de Santillán and the editors of La Protesta sided with the National Federation of Anarchist Groups. On April 5, 1927, they condemned Pestaña, Carbó, and Juan Peiró as unfaithful to anarchist principles: “In Solidaridad Proletaria, that flexible organ which is trying to transform the C.N.T. into a mongrel entity open to all political changes and ready to accept all economic possibilities in its platform—including governmental solutions—they have a school for neutral unionism. Preachers like Pestaña, Carbó and Peiró, anarchists who have forgotten the most elementary rules of anarchism, are emphasizing the benefits of adjustment and transformation by their frequent change of position.”77 Gómez Casas notes that this argument represents a discussion among anarchists rather than one among those who follow the true path and those who deviate. Abad de Santillán’s position is within the range of anarchist thinking, though both the position and the thinking would change by 1936. Nevertheless, this disagreement created tension among CNT leaders. In 1927, Peiró criticized Pestaña for attempting to persuade the CNT to join with other groups in political opposition to the dictatorship. “Federal congresses can modify any of the principles of the CNT that they think need to be changed. What no congress can do, far less any man, however much his ‘realistic vision’ and ‘practical spirit,’ is deny the principles which are the foundation and

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Chapter 5

the very reason for the existence of the CNT: its apolitical stand and its belief in direct action.”78 Nevertheless, these two moderates together continued to oppose the violent tactics of anarchist affinity groups and support the role of unions as the appropriate body to defend workers’ rights. A regional plenum of the Federation of Anarchist Groups of Catalonia met in March 1927 and helped organize what would become an international meeting of Iberian anarchist groups in Valencia later that year. According to José Peirats, “The idea of a peninsula-wide association was put forward by a number of people such as [Manuel] Buenacasa and [ Jaime Rosquillas] Magriñá, and from various places, among them Marseilles, Paris, Barcelona, and Seville. The proposal for a peninsular organization arose because comrades from Portugal attended our meetings, although we recognized that work across the frontier would be very difficult.”79 At the July 1927 gathering, organizers created the FAI, dedicated to preserving anarchist principles of antipolitical social revolution and to opposing any attempt to collaborate with political parties of any ideology.80 The FAI would preserve the affinity group structure but encourage all its members to continue as members of the CNT to influence its policies. Attendees formed the Peninsular Committee but did not publish or make public its proceedings. Its members opposed Pestaña, who “suggested that the dictatorship’s ‘comités proletarios’ (workers’ committees) were compatible with the CNT’s principles.”81 Groups within the CNT held a January 1928 national plenum in Madrid where they accepted the concept of close ties with the FAI. In response, Pestaña created Solidarity, which proposed a broad alliance of factions to re-create the CNT within the legal system of the dictatorship but with strong anarchist principles. Among Solidarity’s members were Peiró, Buenacasa, and Germinal Souza. This was a curious mix: Pestaña and Peiró had long pushed for some form of political participation by the CNT, even if only to oppose the dictatorship, while Buenacasa and Souza were members of the FAI Peninsular Committee and opposed any common action with political parties or their unions. The growing distance between Peiró and Pestaña eventually divided the Solidarity group, and it broke up. In 1929, the FAI challenged the moderates to accept its leadership within the CNT: “The CNT, if it truly desires that its actions be transcendent and destructive of the old order, in the greatest sense of that phrase, must find the correct relationship with that organization that coincides with its tactics and concurs with its beliefs, without, of course, losing its own independence.”82 The pressure from militant anarchists eventually forced the members of the CNT’s National Committee to resign.

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The FORA and the CNT

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The polemic between Peiró and Pestaña became heated in 1929 after Peiró’s resignation from the National Committee. Pestaña argued for “possibilism,” claiming that the organization should do whatever possible to obtain benefits for its members, while Peiró countered that the CNT should maintain its anarchist principles and avoid compromising with the dictatorship.83 Carbó echoed Peiró’s criticism, and the CNT did not seek legalization under the dictatorship. By the time the dictatorship fell in January 1930, the FAI’s influence had increased and the CNT leadership remained divided between moderates and militants. By the beginning of the 1930s, the anarchist movements in both Argentina and Spain had experienced serious divisions among their members. The La Protesta group in Buenos Aires, led by Abad de Santillán and López Arango, not only fought with the syndicalists and dissidents within their own movement but carried on a debate with Spanish anarchists. The CNT in Spain had suffered from repression under the dictatorship and from internal divisions over the best response to repression. Spain’s FAI played a role similar to that of the La Protesta editorial board, as Spain and Argentina shared a transnational debate over anarchism despite the unique events in each country. However, no one was prepared for the dramatic changes that took place in 1930, when the Primo de Rivera dictatorship fell and a republic emerged, bringing opportunities as well as challenges to the CNT and the FAI. In Argentina, a military coup ended elected government and resulted in a war against the anarchist movement. Spaniards, immigrants, Argentines, and anarchists in both countries now had to reevaluate their circumstances and adapt to the new reality.

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Chapter 6

Changing Political Climates and Return Migration

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Abad de Santillán and the FAI in Spain

I n b o t h A r g e n t i na a n d S pa i n, leading anarchists and immigrants reevaluated their circumstances during 1930. A September military coup led by General José Félix Uriburu deposed Argentina’s Hipólito Yrigoyen, creating a new political climate in which anarchists were hunted down, arrested, and deported. In Spain, Miguel Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship ended in late January; a little more than one year later, municipal elections demonstrated that the king had lost the support of his people and the monarchy fell and was replaced by a republic. Spanish immigration to Argentina declined as the world economic situation deteriorated and anarchists in Argentina sought to escape increased repression. In response to these changing political and social climates, anarchists fled from Argentina to Spain, becoming significant participants in the Spanish movement. Diego Abad de Santillán was among those who made this journey voluntarily, while the new Argentine government deported hundreds of other Spaniards, most notably Manuel Villar, who became important in Spain’s anarchist movement before and during that country’s civil war. According to Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, between 1931 and 1935, only 108,564 Spaniards emigrated, while 192,495 returned from the Americas.1 (See table 3, p. 62.) Wrote Abad de Santillán, “My greatest desire at that time was like that of peasants of old, who wanted a little bit of land for security and sustenance. I had suffered too many deceptions in Argentina and wanted to recover for a

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Changing Political Climates

time from the recent disappointments and defeats, which were not easy to overcome quickly.”2 The anarchist movement in Argentina was critically weakened by the 1930 coup and subsequent repression, while Spanish anarchism grew vigorously during the Second Republic. Argentina experienced regime change for two reasons. First, the aging Yrigoyen’s Radical Party administration could not protect Argentina and its citizens from the effects of the world economic depression. As exports and government revenue fell, he could no longer provide the patronage that brought support through increased wages and a stable cost of living. Government workers were laid off, the economy declined, and real wages fell precipitously in 1930. Second, two years into his second term, Yrigoyen intervened unsuccessfully in senatorial elections in the interior provinces. The Senate remained in the hands of his conservative opponents, many of whom now turned to the military and some of whom claimed that the president was senile. Mentally incompetent or not, Yrigoyen had lost the support of unions, much of the middle class, and the military. Nationalists, who aspired to a strong regime like that of Mussolini in Italy, openly negotiated with members of the military to overthrow the president. The coup came on September 6, 1930, when Uriburu led a column of military cadets into the city, a move that surprised no one but found the government unprepared. Almost without opposition, the troops marched to the Congress. There, they met some resistance, as other units of the army did not immediately support Uriburu. Several soldiers died in the fighting in the plaza, but the troops encountered little opposition as they marched down the Avenida de Mayo to the Government House, where General Uriburu confronted Vice President Enrique Martínez and General Severo Toranzo. They surrendered, and other army units came over to Uriburu. By the end of the day, Yrigoyen had been removed as president and Uriburu had taken over as head of state. Many groups supported the military coup against Yrigoyen. However, Uriburu did not intend immediately to turn over the government to civilians. Instead, he sought to create a corporate regime that changed the nature of government in Argentina. Uriburu ruled Argentina until 1932 and seriously weakened the anarchist movement through mass arrests and deportations. In many ways, this period represented the coup de grâce for anarchist influence on the Argentine labor movement. Anarchists opposed the newly formed Confederación General del Trabajo (General Confederation of Labor), a merger of the Argentine Confederation of Workers, independent unions, and the syndicalist USA. Leaders of the CGT adopted a neutral stance toward the military regime and sought to consolidate worker benefits through negotiation. In contrast,

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Chapter 6

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F i g u re 13. General José Félix Uriburu, president of Argentina, 1930. Source: Departamento de Documentos Fotográficos, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires

Abad de Santillán and the anarchists in FORA tried unsuccessfully to unite the working class to attack the military regime. Soon after the coup, Abad de Santillán met with Rodolfo González Pacheco, editor of La Protesta’s archrival anarchist publication, La Antorcha, and Juan Antonio Morán of the port workers union, who agreed with the need to oppose the military regime. The question they now asked of each other was how to do so. The three men proposed a revolutionary general strike, hoping to stimulate a nationwide revolt against the military regime. Abad de Santillán met with railroad workers and the organization of state workers, trying to fuse together a united opposition front. But when these groups demanded that FORA sign a manifesto supporting this alliance, Abad de Santillán shook his head and said that he “thought that would not be possible.” González Pacheco responded, “Tell me where I can find the Central Committee of the FORA and I will go

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Changing Political Climates

to them, begging on my knees that they consider the situation and that they not betray the Argentine people with their passivity.”3 The next morning, as Abad de Santillán was heading toward the meeting, González Pacheco pulled up in a taxi and reported that the plot had been discovered. The police would be waiting at the meeting site to arrest its participants. Abad de Santillán went to the editorial offices of La Protesta, where he found an anonymous note shoved under the door telling him to flee the country. Abad de Santillán had been identified as one of the plotters, a crime for which, under martial law, he would be sentenced to death. Initially reluctant to leave the country, Abad de Santillán returned home, determined to continue at the newspaper. But when he arrived at his office the next morning, he had to hide nearby while police searched for him inside the building. Finally, Abad de Santillán and his family took a ferryboat across the Río de la Plata to Montevideo, where fellow anarchists concealed him. Abad de Santillán wrote bitterly about Argentine anarchists’ inability to put aside partisan feelings and cooperate in the face of such dangerous opponents: “I needn’t explain the events in Buenos Aires nor describe our shameful defeat, without a fight, without resistance. It is enough to say that despite everything I did to encourage the unions and working-class organizations to mount a general campaign against the dictatorship, I was unsuccessful and almost alone until fleeing to escape being shot. That would have been a futile gesture in general and fatal for me.”4 The repression devastated the anarchists. Government agents attacked La Protesta’s office and closed the newspaper; FORA was declared illegal. In response, Abad de Santillán and several others created Nervio (Nerve, Strength). Published monthly, Nervio counseled opponents of the regime to work together. Foreshadowing the approach taken by Spanish anarchists facing General Francisco Franco’s 1936 military uprising, a 1933 article in Nervio said, “This is how we got the Uriburu dictatorship. It was an unpleasant surprise for comrades who lived peacefully on the moon, debating whether or not human nature is good or bad, or whether Lombroso or Mella were correct.”5 The author characterized the lack of coordination among groups representing workers and the divisions among various periodicals as a failure. He called for ties with the CGT’s syndicalist groups and for the creation of armed neighborhood squads that would replace affinity groups too involved with “juvenile” discussions. Despite the courage of its editors, who were arrested in early 1933 when Nervio lost its franking privileges and suspended publication for several months, the periodical and the anarchists were overwhelmed by the military regime’s power.

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Chapter 6

The government passed a law declaring that anyone belonging to anarchist or other organizations thought to be subversive would be arrested for “illicit association.” The movement remained underground for several years, and many of its leaders were arrested, deported, or forced to flee.6 Manuel Villar, another of Nervio’s editors, also fled to Montevideo, where he worked with Abad de Santillán to maintain contact with an underground in Argentina and to free political prisoners. Villar later returned to Argentina by sailing on a cargo ship through the Strait of Magellan to a port in Chile and then crossing the Andes into Mendoza. From that border city he returned to his family’s home in Chacarita in Buenos Aires province. Authorities arrested him in 1932 for attempting to publish La Protesta, and they deported him to Spain the following year.7 He then became an editor for the CNT newspaper Solidaridad Obrera in Barcelona. La Antorcha reported that deportations began almost immediately after the coup.8 On February 4, 1932, La Protesta published a list of those deported. Six anarchists were deported to Spain on the Cap Norte on October 12, 1930, barely one month after the coup. Five others were deported to Spain on the Baden on November 4, 1930. Three were from the car drivers’ union (chófers), four from the graphic arts union (gráficos), and one each was a mechanic, a port worker, a baker, and a car wash attendant. (See table 6.) According to La Protesta, 123 anarchists were deported between October and December 1930. Of these, 11 arrived in Spain and were arrested by Spanish authorities, 2 arrived in Italy, and 6 escaped in Santos during the revolution in Brazil. The remaining 104 individuals escaped in Montevideo, largely with the help of Uruguayan port workers. Abad de Santillán estimated that in January 1931, the regime had deported 200 people and imprisoned 150 others, 50 of them on Martín García Island in the Río de la Plata and the remainder in the Villa Devoto jail.9 Uriburu’s government wanted to destroy the anarchist movement. In one extreme case, a young Spanish immigrant in Rosario, Joaquín Penina, was arrested on September 10, 1930, just days after the coup, for putting up leaflets calling for a strike against the military regime. Penina, a twenty-nine-year-old bricklayer, had immigrated to Argentina from Ginronella, Spain. He became active in the anarchist movement, holding various offices in the Federación Obrera Local Rosario (Local Workers Federation of Rosario). One of his favorite pastimes was gathering anarchist literature. Instead of asking others for money or soliciting funds from unions, he purchased books and pamphlets with his own money and gave them away every afternoon after he left work. On September 11, he was shot dead while in custody in the Rosario police station. The anarchist press called it an execution and demanded an accounting, but the government never clearly explained Penina’s death.10 Martial law

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Tab le 6.  

Spanish Anarchist Immigrants Deported, October–November 1930

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Last Name First Name Source Álvarez Nieto Manuel IWMA/Protesta Cajido Ramón IWMA/Protesta Carballo Florentino IWMA/Protesta López Avelino Protesta Rodríguez Jeronimo IWMA/Protesta Vendrell Edmundo IWMA/Protesta Mancebo Pedro Protesta Mancebo Benigno Protesta Musgo Francisco R. Protesta Ondagaray Luis Protesta Orgay Felix Protesta Agra Silvestre IWMA Barbetti Lino IWMA Borrego José IWMA Britos Manuel IWMA Cajide Ramón IWMA IWMA Candamoni Tulio Carballo Florentino IWMA Carrasco Juan IWMA Cervino Manuel IWMA Díaz Francisco IWMA Freire Tomás IWMA González Manuel IWMA Hernández Aurilio IWMA Herrero Pablo IWMA López Aurelino IWMA López Rogelio IWMA Martínez Telésforo IWMA Mendez Ramiro IWMA IWMA Menendez José Ortega Manuel IWMA Rodríguez Antonio IWMA Sobrino Teofanes IWMA Stefani Julio IWMA Thomas García IWMA Vázquez Eduardo IWMA Vendrell Edmundo IWMA Villalba Jorge Rey IWMA

Date deported Destination Oct. 12 Oct. 12 Oct. 12 Oct. 12 Oct. 12 Oct. 12 Nov. 4 Nov. 4 Nov. 4 Nov. 4 Nov. 4 [Nov. 1930]

Spain Spain Spain Spain Spain Spain Spain Spain Spain Spain Spain

Ship

Profession

Cap Norte driver Cap Norte graphic arts Cap Norte port worker Cap Norte driver Cap Norte driver Cap Norte graphic arts Baden graphic arts Baden graphic arts Baden mechanic Baden Baden baker

Sources: IWMA = “Al proletario de América y del mundo: La dictadura militar en la Argentina,” [November 1930], International Workingmen’s Association Archives, Folder 60, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam; Protesta = La Protesta, February 4, 1932. Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 6

meant that individuals could be arrested and executed without judicial review. There is no evidence that the government shot opponents as a matter of official policy, and Penina’s death appears to be unusual. However, paramilitary groups such as the Patriotic League and the newly formed Civic Legion did attack anarchists. The day after Morán, who had met with Abad de Santillán to organize resistance to the regime, was let out of jail, his body was discovered with a bullet in the back of the head.11 All told, the government arrested many hundreds, perhaps thousands of anarchists in the early 1930s, disrupting the movement and removing many of its most active members. In one notorious September 1930 incident, officials arrested and condemned to death Spanish immigrants José Santos Ares, Florindo Goyoso, and José María Montero, all of whom were members of the car drivers’ union. According to Montero’s account, the three men went out in a car one night to put up posters denouncing the military regime and came across a burning automobile. Although they had no part in any violent act, a police car happened by the scene and chased them. When the police opened fire, the driver of Montero’s car became nervous, lost control, and crashed.12 Officials charged them with sedition for fleeing and resisting arrest. Ares, the youngest of the three, was twenty-five years old. He had immigrated from La Coruña, working first as a baker, then a car driver. Gayoso was from the province of Lugo in Galicia. He was married and had three small children. Montero exemplifies both the activist and the immigrant. He was born on May 4, 1897, in San Salvador de Cecebre, in Galicia, one of fourteen children born to humble workers and anarchists. As a youth, Montero refused to do his obligatory military service and fled to Cuba, where he worked in a Havana café. Through a friend who was a sailor, Montero then stowed away on board a ship bound for New York, where friends got him a job as an elevator operator. He lost his job in 1922 and became a prizefighter, participating in ten fights. After traveling for some time, Montero went to Detroit and got a job with General Motors. Like many migrants, Montero traveled to several countries, looking for opportunities, and like many Gallegos, he missed his homeland. In 1925, Montero returned to Spain to visit his family. He did not remain long, however, and soon left for Argentina, where several of his brothers had already emigrated. Montero got a job with General Motors, but when he helped organize a FORA-affiliated union among the workers, he was fired. A ten-month strike later broke out at the General Motors plant, after which Montero was reinstated. He resigned shortly thereafter because of the factory’s hostile climate. He then purchased an automobile and turned it into a taxi. This experience with public transportation led Montero to become involved in creating Buenos

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Changing Political Climates

Aires’s colectivo bus system. When a strike against the foreign-owned bus company shut down the city’s transportation system, Montero and the car drivers’ union created a cooperative transport system that permanently replaced the foreign bus companies by 1928. In 1930, he married a Gallega, Elena Fernández. Later that year, he Ares, and Goyoso found themselves in trouble. After initially being condemned to death, the three men’s sentences were commuted to life in prison at Ushuaia in remote Tierra del Fuego. The climate was harsh and there was no chance of family visits. Prisoners were put to work in the scrub forests, clearing soil and felling trees. Ares, Goyoso, and Montero spent two years there before a new government reduced their sentences and permitted them to return to Buenos Aires. Authorities continued to monitor their movements, however, and in 1935 deported Ares and Montero to Spain. Ares quickly returned to Argentina. Montero was sent to La Coruña, in his native Galicia, where he made contact with CNT members. With their assistance, he stowed away on an English ship bound for Argentina, using the name Ramón Galán Lafuente, and reentered the country in disguise and got a job as a bus driver. Goyoso was in and out of jail in the 1930s and deported to Spain in 1938 before ultimately returning to Argentina. The military regime also jailed native Argentines. When a young Argentine, José Grunfeld, whose parents had emigrated from Bessarabia (Romania), was arrested, he gave them his mother’s maiden name, Jasid, to identify himself. The regime sent Grunfeld and hundreds of other arrested anarchists, socialists, and communists to the Villa Devoto jail. Grunfeld told the authorities there that he was a Romanian citizen and demanded to see the Romanian consul in hopes that doing so would get him released. Authorities indeed called the Romanian consul to identify Grunfeld, but they intended to deport rather than release him. When the consul arrived and began speaking in Romanian, Grunfeld could not understand a word. He remained imprisoned for nearly a year.13 Benito Sak, another prisoner, described conditions in Villa Devoto jail after his arrest in 1931: They fed us twice a day. The first meal was at eleven o’clock in the morning and the second at six in the afternoon. It was terrible food, old meat with a lot of fat; we called it “the cadaver, ” and it had more fat than meat. They woke us up at six o’clock in the morning, when they changed the guard and called roll. We were all hungry because we had to wait from six in the afternoon of one day until eleven the following morning for something to eat.14

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Chapter 6

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F i g u re 14. Villa Devoto Jail, Buenos Aires, 1939. Source: Departamento de Documentos Fotográficos, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires

While Grunfeld remained at Villa Devoto, his brother, who had been arrested separately, and others were sent to Ushuaia on board the transport ship Chaco. Toward the end of 1931, the government began deporting anarchist militants. Alarmed prisoners sent a letter to the minister of the interior, Octavio Pico, announcing the beginning of a hunger strike on December 5, 1931. This order of expulsion is unquestionably criminal if one realizes that the provisional government has become an agent for countries like Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, etc., whose brutality does not coincide with the ideals of liberty. . . . We demand the immediate release of social prisoners and students now incarcerated in this country’s jails and those confined in Ushuaia.15

The strike lasted six days and demonstrated prisoners’ solidarity. However, it did not deter the government from pressing ahead with mass deportations. On January 13, 1932, the minister of the navy, Vice Admiral Abel Renard, an-

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Changing Political Climates

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nounced that foreign-born prisoners at Villa Devoto would be deported under the 1902 residency law. According to a 1938 study of police files, between 1930 and 1938, the Argentine government deported 3,689 individuals, 365 of them identified as anarchists.16 In one of the most notorious examples of mass deportations, the government took eighty-nine prisoners out of the Villa Devoto jail at four o’clock on the morning of February 10, 1932, and loaded them onto the Chaco. The ship was not built to transport passengers, so the prisoners were housed in the hold. The Chaco then lay at anchor outside the city for three days until it was cleared to sail for Europe. The Chaco left Buenos Aires with 150 prisoners on board. Ordinarily, its first port of call would have been Montevideo, across the Río de la Plata. However, sympathetic anarchist dockworkers there often helped deportees disembark surreptitiously in Montevideo so that they could slip back into Argentina.17 The Chaco consequently sailed past Montevideo and did not stop for eight days, when it reached Salvador, in northern Brazil. According to Gonzalo Comeron, one of the anarchists aboard, the Chaco spent two days in Salvador, during which time the prisoners were not allowed to go up on deck, before sailing for San Vicente in the Cape Verde Islands, where they again were not permitted on deck. After stopping in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, the Chaco arrived in Cádiz, where enthusiastic crowds greeted the deportees. Comeron and his companions were at sea for thirty-two days; as soon as they landed, Spanish authorities took the Spaniards aboard into custody.18 Another prisoner, Nat Cohen, also penned an account of the voyage: They took us out of Villa Devoto on the night of February 9 and transported us quietly—with a free helping of kicks and beatings with rifle butts and swords—to the Chaco, which slipped out of the dock immediately and dropped anchor in the river, waiting for the last of the paperwork for some of the prisoners whose consuls did not want to accept them. Some of these were returned to Villa Devoto. After waiting what seemed like a century, the Chaco weighed anchor on the 13th, a day with much sun and sorrow, and while the city awoke as if ashamed of itself, our ship set out for the north with a cargo of proletarian meat to be delivered to the vultures of the fascist dictators in Europe. They put us all in the forward hold, separated by barbed wire. They stationed twelve soldiers as guards, one officer was armed to the teeth, and they watched us like hawks. If we took the opportunity to talk in whispers with each other, they immediately threatened us with their automatic weapons, pointing them at us and ordering, “Everyone back into your bed.”

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Chapter 6

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F i g u re 15. The Chaco, a ship used to deport anarchists to Spain, 1930s. Source: Departamento de Documentos Fotográficos, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires

On the first night, for amusement, our comrade Caganovich was beaten by an officer in front of all of us. Imagine how we felt seeing them mistreat one of our comrades without the power to stop it. Two soldiers came to feed us; after giving us the food and on any pretext whatever, they then beat us with their swords. You can’t imagine what physical and mental torture we have endured until now. The ship’s crew, on the whole, are good fellows and we can talk to them. The crew calls me “the Englishman.” I am very popular among them. The crew hates the soldiers and calls them “dirty Indians.” They always try to show us how different they are from these soldiers. The crew asked me why I was being deported, and I explained that I am a tailor and work for 7 pesos a day, that they reduced my wages due to the depression, and I wanted to oppose the wage reduction. Then we talked about the Chilean navy. You ought to see how these sailors listen to us, absorbing with unusual interest our ideas.

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Changing Political Climates

Life in the hold is insupportable. We have four large buckets in which to relieve ourselves. Since there are so many of us, you can imagine the terrible smell. Fortunately, they let us up on deck for half an hour in the sun. They even let us “bathe” with a jar of fresh water, then shower in seawater. If we are not fast enough, the soldiers hurry us along with blows. After eight days at sea, we arrived at Bahia; took on fresh water, fuel, and provisions; then continued northward. We crossed the equator in terrible heat. Seven days later, we arrived in San Vicente, on the tropical African coast, where we waited almost an entire day for fuel and water. On Saturday, March 5th we arrived in Las Palmas, ignorant as to our fate but with rumors abounding. My health, taking into account all that has happened, is good. I hope to recover when I reach London. Our spirits are high.19

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In addition to Cohen, an English citizen, the prisoners on board included citizens of Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland as well as Spain. The prisoners were not sure what to expect when they returned to their native countries. Wrote one Spaniard after the ship’s arrival at Cádiz, Yesterday at one in the afternoon we disembarked from that damned Chaco. Only the Spanish got off, about 28 of us. So far, everything here has been promises and pleasantries by the authorities, who say they will free us from detention in a few days. About 5,000 workers were waiting for us when we arrived in the port. They clapped and cheered our revolutionary organizations. Our arrival had been announced the night before, and they had waited until three in the morning. Here, we have found that they will take care of us.20

Among those deported to Spain, seven left relatives in Argentina.21 As the Chaco sailed further north toward Italy, England, and then Danzig in the Baltic, Argentine public opinion began to turn against the mass deportations. Many observers feared that these deported anarchists, communists, and socialists would receive harsh treatment in Mussolini’s Italy or in Eastern Europe. Attorneys for FORA filed petitions to bring back the deportees, and one congressional deputy introduced a bill to abrogate the residency law. The Argentine government eventually allowed thirty-three of the prisoners, mostly from Eastern Europe, to return to Argentina on board the Cabo San Agustín, and they arrived in Buenos Aires on May 10, 1932. In a belated response to the military coup, anarchists jailed in the Villa Devoto attempted to overcome their internal differences as well as those between

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Chapter 6

anarchists and other opposition groups. According to Grunfeld, prisoners worked “to analyze the problems faced by our movement.”22 They adopted several motions, wrote them down, and smuggled them out of jail. In September 1932, anarchists held a conference in Rosario at which approximately fifty delegates attempted to defend the concept of social revolution in the midst of dictatorship. The gathering created the Comité Regional de Relaciones Anarquistas (Regional Committee of Anarchist Relations), and La Protesta tried to put anarchism in perspective: “As a result of the ephemeral triumphs over capitalism in the daily skirmishes of the social war, anarchist workers have accomplished what is, in reality, their greatest and most lasting victory; the value of organizing the efforts of the exploited as an expression of the dignity of the individual, and of a clear and thoughtful class consciousness as an effective vehicle to achieve a truly free society.”23 Grunfeld felt the meeting represented a moral victory, since most anarchists continued to hold fast to their beliefs, even though these ideas were beginning to marginalize the movement in Argentina.24 By 1935, however, Grunfeld and others broke from the FORA, establishing the Federación Anarco-Comunista Argentina (Argentine AnarchoCommunist Federation). The 1930s proved to be the end of a powerful anarchist movement in Argentina but the beginning of a period of promise for those in Spain, including those who had been deported from Argentina. One deportee, Bartolomé Lorda from the city of Mercedes in Buenos Aires province, later became secretary of the CNT regional office in Andalusia.

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Anarchism under the Second Republic in Spain

When the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera ended in Spain in 1930, King Alfonso XIII hoped to establish a transitional government that would bring back constitutional rule. But support for the monarchy had dwindled among a majority of Spaniards. A block of liberals under Manuel Azaña and Niceto Alcalá Zamora joined socialists Indalecio Prieto and Francisco Largo Caballero and the Radical Republican Party led by Alejandro Lerroux in calling for elections. The king announced that municipal elections would take place on April 12, 1931, and they became a referendum on the monarchy itself. Voter turnout of about 90 percent brought returns that supported a new Republican government. On April 14, 1931, the Republican politicians proclaimed the Second Spanish Republic, and Alfonso XIII went into exile. The following July, Spain held parliamentary elections to create a new government under a liberal Republican-Socialist coalition. This Cortes contained a majority of Republican and Socialist deputies. Although they represented a spectrum of political ideas that spanned from

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Changing Political Climates

the Lerroux’s Radical Republican Party on the right through Azaña’s Republicans in the middle to Largo Caballero’s Socialists on the left, they agreed that major reforms were necessary. Regional autonomy gave provinces a greater measure of control. The Catholic Church was stripped of its official status, the Society of Jesus in Spain (the Jesuits) was dissolved, and the clergy’s salaries would no longer be paid by the state. Other measures reformed the military and limited its role to professional duties. Public education was established, and priests were no longer permitted to teach. Land reform was initiated. The CNT regained its legal status, and restrictions on anarchist periodicals ended. As minister of labor, Largo Caballero promulgated a law that established mixed tribunals representing labor, employers, and representatives of the state. This legislation effectively abolished the right to strike, since arbitration would be required. While many of these reforms pleased Spanish anarchists, they did not support the creation of the Spanish Republic and continued to push for revolution. “Concerning the Constitution,” began a resolution passed at the FAI’s June 1931 meeting in Madrid, “we are in open warfare with the state. It is our sacred mission to educate the people so that they will see that they must join us and help gain total emancipation through social revolution.”25 Two months later, thirty activists, led by Ángel Pestaña and Juan Peiró and known as the Treintistas, challenged the FAI’s role within the CNT. The group published the Manifesto of the Thirty, arguing against what they viewed as an extremist position favored by the FAI and its supporters. “The revolution cannot trust exclusively in the audacity of its militants but must concern itself with the mobilization of the people en masse. . . . Opposed to the chaotic and incoherent version of the revolution . . . we present a more ordered, planned, and coherent concept.”26 Historian Juan Gómez Casas has claimed that this document did not truly divide the anarchist movement but set forth an alternate and equally anarcho-syndicalist, plan for revolutionary organization.27 Nevertheless, the Treintistas’ supporters were expelled from the CNT, and the split among anarchists persisted. Gómez Casas also argues that the Manifesto of the Thirty helped to create the “myth” that the FAI controlled the CNT, with each side hurling accusations at the other.28 This hostility was reflected in several anarchist periodicals. Tierra y Libertad excoriated the Treintistas until Abad de Santillán became its editor in 1934. Manuel Villar also stopped publishing these personal attacks when he became editor of Solidaridad Obrera. The return of two immigrants from Argentina finally helped to break the cycle of vituperation among Spanish anarchists. Thus, during a critical period of the Second Republic, the CNT and its members suffered from a lack of unity among Spanish anarchists. In a regional plenary of CNT member unions held

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Chapter 6

at Sabadell, the unions of the local federation withdrew from the CNT. Also withdrawing were the metal workers, woodworkers, and transportation unions in the Levante. In part, these withdrawals explain the CNT’s ineffective and inconsistent response to government policies during the early Republican period. Many local uprisings occurred in 1932 and 1933 in uncoordinated efforts to oppose the new government. Reaction from monarchists, the church, some of the military, and conservative politicians showed that Spain was becoming polarized by liberal reforms and anarchist pressure for greater change. General José Sanjurjo attempted an August 1932 military coup in protest of the agrarian law and Catalan autonomy.29 Sanjurjo had become well known for his exploits in Morocco and was now in charge of the Civil Guard. The insurgents gained control of Seville until the combined forces of the government and anarchist workers defeated them. At the same time, a monarchist uprising began in Madrid, with an attempted assault on the Ministry of War and the Palace of Communications. With the rebellion’s failure, 157 conspirators were exiled to Spanish possessions in Africa. As a final insult, the rebels’ property was confiscated and given to the Institute of Agrarian Reform. This defeat bolstered the reputation of the Republican government but did not signify anarchist acceptance of the regime. One pamphlet circulated in the summer of 1932 urged, “Workers! Soldiers! Surge forth, united, to fight in the streets. The CNT calls you to the battle. Long live the social war! To the revolution!”30 Anarchists later opposed the military coup but continued to challenge the Republican government with a series of uprisings. Buenaventura Durruti and his comrades in the Solidarity affinity group did not join the FAI but remained active within the CNT in Catalonia, especially in the Textile Workers’ Union in Barcelona. The Catalan regional committee of the CNT charged Solidarity (now renamed Nosotros [We]) with receiving the delegates of international anarchist groups who arrived in Barcelona for the 1931 May Day activities. In early 1932, Nosotros sponsored an uprising in Alto Llobregat in Catalonia that some anarchists hoped would unleash the great social revolution.31 “‘They will die,’ said Federica Montseny, ‘perhaps many of us will die . . . What does it matter!’”32 In the wake of this revolt, officials arrested Durruti and Joaquín Ascaso and summarily exiled them to Spanish Guinea. More than one hundred FAI and CNT leaders also found themselves under arrest. In July 1932, telephone workers went on strike, disrupting service in the major cities. The government called out the Civil Guard to stop the strike, and the result was much the same as under the monarchy—armed workers instigated guerrilla action against the Civil Guard. Nearly two thousand anarchist

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Changing Political Climates

arrests resulted. Hardly noticed in that summer of upheaval was the death of José Prat in Barcelona on July 17. He had long suffered from ill health and had not played an active role in the anarchist movement for many years, but La Protesta, the newspaper he had helped to create while in Argentina, nevertheless noted his passing. In January 1933, Juan García Oliver led an armed insurgency in Barcelona and Valencia, among other cities. While the insurgents ostensibly sought the release of political prisoners, they merely created more. Churches often were burned in these disturbances, and public disorder increased. In many rural areas, villagers believed that the hoped-for revolution had begun, seizing land. Perhaps the most notorious incident occurred in an Andalusian village, Casas Viejas. There, an anarchist militant known as Six Fingers participated in a 1933 uprising. Villagers took over the town. However, similar uprisings in nearby towns failed, and the police and army imposed order. Some Casas Viejas residents fled into the surrounding hills as the Assault Guards arrived and searched each house. Six Fingers barricaded himself and his family in his home and shot dead the first Assault Guard who attacked. More guards arrived and positioned themselves around the house. They set up machine guns and requested grenades. The siege continued all night until the guards decided to burn the house down. In the dawn, as the house burned, one man ran from the house but was cut down in a burst of machine gun fire. A woman followed and was also shot dead. Everyone else in the house died in the fire. The government defended its actions. The minister of war, Manuel Azaña, declared, “Neither wounded nor prisoners—shoot them all.” He labeled accusations against the government “witches’ tales.”33 But the government came under increasing criticism from both the left and the right, and the incident led to a call for new elections. Many CNT members criticized the FAI’s approach as extreme, although the situation was complicated. The Nosotros group, with Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver, did not join the FAI until 1933 and operated within a militant wing of the CNT itself in what Gómez Casas called a “sort of super-F.A.I.”34 The violence and repression in 1932 and 1933 divided anarchists on tactics but united them in opposition to the current government. At a plenum of regional federations in Madrid in late January and early February 1933, the CNT decided to initiate a series of strikes to demand amnesty for members arrested in earlier disturbances. On May 7, the CNT called a general strike. The anarchists hoped to force the government to recognize its power, and they succeeded in a way: Azaña’s government used weapons to suppress the strikes and jailed many of the movement’s most militant leaders. That spring,

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Chapter 6

the CNT and FAI recognized the national Revolutionary Committee, which included Durruti, Isaac Puente, Cipriano Mera, and Joaquín Ascaso. Azaña’s government fell during the incessant civil unrest that plagued Spain during the summer of 1933. Azaña refused to grant amnesty to any political prisoners, and the number of anarchists in jail continued to rise, reaching an estimated nine thousand. Agitation continued, and a September rally in support of amnesty drew nearly sixty thousand people to the bullring in Barcelona to demand the release of political prisoners. With new elections called for in November, the anarchists decided to abstain from supporting any political faction. The result of this strategy was a campaign to convince anarchists not to vote. The campaign’s backers argued that by participating in the election two years earlier, anarchists had helped to elect the left-wing coalition that went on to repress anarchists. Durruti surmised that the likely election of a more conservative government would actually help the anarchists’ cause: “If the socialists were defeated, in the November election, this could enlarge the revolutionary base for a revolutionary attempt.”35 A coalition of right-wing political groups emerged victorious from the November elections and began to disassemble its predecessor’s reforms. The “Black Biennium” of the next two years further alienated anarchists, as repression increased. Anarchists hoped to spark a social revolution with an armed uprising in Saragossa on December 8 as well as violent outbreaks throughout Aragon and La Rioja in northern Spain. Workers in various towns declared libertarian communism, but only until Assault Guards and the army restored order. A total of eighty-seven activists were killed, many more were wounded, and about seven hundred were taken prisoner. The outbreaks of violence at the beginning and end of 1933 showed that anarchists were unalterably opposed to any government, whether led by Socialists or by the right wing. The enthusiasm for revolution by those involved was not noticeably dampened by the repression, although many of the movement’s leaders were arrested and jailed. A growing awareness of the government’s power and its opposition to the working class brought calls for reconciliation among diverse anarchist groups and for cooperation between the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores and the CNT. Several returnees from Argentina became key figures in these attempts to promote greater harmony among factions, with Abad de Santillán again playing a notable role. Abad de Santillán and the FAI

As conditions changed, Abad de Santillán reevaluated his circumstances in the Americas and his options elsewhere. After fleeing Buenos Aires, Abad de Santil134

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Changing Political Climates

lán took up residency in Montevideo, a close-by haven where he could remain in contact with the movement in Argentina and surreptitiously travel to Santa Fe to visit his family. He also traveled briefly to Spain as a FORA representative in June and July 1931 to attend a CNT congress and an AIT meeting. The trip was a disappointment, however, as Abad de Santillán found Spanish anarchists divided about whether to accept the Republic as legitimate and work within the system to build up the anarchist organization or to oppose the Republic and pursue social revolution as the immediate goal. He was glad to leave Spain and return to South America after witnessing the disarray among anarchists. Abad de Santillán later wrote that remaining in America gave him the opportunity to reflect dispassionately on events in Spain and guided his actions when he returned in 1934: “If I had remained in Spain in 1931, most likely I would not have come to the quiet reflections I was able to make and would have joined with those who fought so enthusiastically and valiantly for economic, political, and social change.”36 The period between 1930 and 1934 was critical in Abad de Santillán’s thinking. Throughout the 1920s, he had supported an anarchist doctrine that was inflexible in its opposition to any political participation or cooperation with nonanarchist groups. He had criticized the CNT for considering joining other groups in opposing the Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship. But after the 1930 coup in Argentina and the devastation it brought, he seems to have undergone a personal and ideological transition. From Montevideo, Abad de Santillán now wrote of the need for toleration and cooperation.37 Abad de Santillán attempted to work with Uruguayan anarchists, among them Simón Radowitzky, who had famously assassinated Colonel Ramón Falcón. After twenty years in jail in Ushuaia, Radowitzky had been released and exiled to Uruguay. But Abad de Santillán felt that his place was in Argentina, so he crossed the border with false documents and made his way to a small town near Buenos Aires. There, he went to the family home of Manuel Villar, who had earlier left Uruguay on a different path back to Argentina. The two talked of the situation in Argentina and agreed that no matter what, they would have the support of their families.38 The next day Abad de Santillán left for Santa Fe to be with his family. He was greeted warmly by his sisters, brother, and mother, but his father remained cool. Abad de Santillán spent a year in Santa Fe, and although he failed to organize any significant threat to end the dictatorship in Argentina, he remained active, writing his book, La FORA: Ideología y trayectoria del movimiento obrero revolucionario en la Argentina (The FORA: Ideology and Course of the Revolutionary Movement in Argentina). With a collaborator, Dr. Juan Lazarte, Abad de Santillán also wrote Reconstrucción social: Nueva edificación económica argentina (Social Reconstruction: A New 135

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Chapter 6

Economic Structure in Argentina), in which he began to formulate the ideas on revolutionary economic organization that would guide the revolution in Spain in 1936. Finally, in 1932, when Uriburu’s dictatorship gave way to a conservative regime elected with widespread fraud, Abad de Santillán decided to return to Buenos Aires and risk reopening La Protesta. He met with Villar and, although no funds were available, they decided to publish the newspaper after more than a year’s hiatus. Martial law had been lifted, and the government no longer persecuted labor organizations. Villar and Abad de Santillán brought Jacobo Maguid, a young man from Santa Fe, onto the editorial board. Maguid, an engineering student at La Plata, later joined Abad de Santillán and Villar in Spain during the civil war to become the editor of the FAI’s newspaper, Tierra y Libertad. When La Protesta returned to newsstands and its subscribers, the government revoked the periodical’s franking privileges, and without the ability to mail copies, La Protesta could publish only biweekly, sending copies via bus or railroad. One of the prisoners returning from Ushuaia, José Berenguer, suggested that La Protesta be incorporated as a business to give it legal status. Doing so provided a basis for the newspaper to continue, and Abad de Santillán began to feel that he had accomplished all that he could in Argentina and to think of moving to Spain. Since leaving Spain as a young child, Abad de Santillán had spent only a small amount of time there. He spoke of Argentina as his adopted land and criticized Spanish anarchists from an Argentine perspective. After returning to Montevideo from a two-month visit to Spain in 1931, he wrote, “I attended the first sessions of the Spanish [anarchist] congress. They are not very advanced. But with a bit of intelligence and a better understanding of events, perhaps Spain could be the beginning of a new moment in history.”39 He referred to the Spanish as they and implied that he might be able to provide them with the necessary knowledge and understanding. His time in Montevideo caused him to think of himself as more of a Spaniard. He later wrote, “After that last stage of repression in Argentina, the frustration of so much hope, and with the despair after so many efforts to change the course of history in that country, which was like a native land to me, I resolved to dedicate the rest of my life to Spain.”40 In July 1932, Abad de Santillán wrote, “I think it is worth the effort to do something in a country like Spain, which offers better opportunities than in Argentina.”41 In early 1934, he moved to Spain. Soon after arriving in Barcelona, he met with Villar and other FORA members who had left Argentina. In need of employment, Abad de Santillán went to see a man who had once offered

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Changing Political Climates

him equipment to set up his own periodical. He asked for a job “as a printer, a page-turner, collator, proofreader, whatever.”42 Abad de Santillán needed a period of transition between Argentina and Spain, which may explain why he joined other returnees in living a hand-to-mouth existence in Barcelona. “In Chinatown, cheap restaurants rented out pots, pans, fuel, and utensils for improvising meals of potatoes, vegetables, and a little bit of meat. It all came to a couple of pesetas. That was how the Buenos Aires colony found something to eat while we enjoyed the privilege of being free and in the street.”43 However, Abad de Santillán soon found himself confronting authorities when he and Villar attempted to publish Solidaridad Obrera. The newspaper had been shut down after the December 1933 upheavals, and many of its editors had been jailed. Villar had escaped arrest in Barcelona, and with the arrival of his friend and comrade, he pressed ahead with Solidaridad Obrera, “the same way we had published La Protesta the day after General Justo had assumed power as president” in Argentina.44 Three times they attempted to publish Solidaridad Obrera. Three times they were arrested and the newspaper shut down. Each time, they changed the name slightly—first to Solidaridad, then to Soli—hoping to avoid the same fate. Abad de Santillán finally accepted a position with Tierra y Libertad, enabling him to resume his writing. He turned one of his articles for Tierra y Libertad into a book, El organismo económico de la revolución (The Economic Organization of the Revolution), that would help explain the structure of an anarchist-led revolution in Spain. Abad de Santillán and others whom he had known in Argentina now became part of the Spanish anarchist organization. He created an affinity group within the FAI, Nervio, with Pedro Herrera, Orobón Fernández, Idelfonso González, Fidel Miró, and Germinal de Souza.45 The group took its name from a publication on which several members had worked in Argentina, reflecting a conscious decision to link themselves, as Spanish anarchists, with Argentina. Group members may also have chosen the name because it represented active opposition to dictatorship as well as the need for anarchists to unite and work with other groups, lessons they thought would benefit Spanish anarchists. Abad de Santillán also joined the Graphic Arts Union affiliated with the CNT so that he would be part of that federation in his capacity as a worker. Almost all members of the FAI were also members of the CNT. Membership not only provided a way to infiltrate each union but reflected the working-class roots of FAI members. They were first and foremost laborers, distinguishing themselves from paid bureaucrats in many socialist unions. They belonged in their union, but they chose to become part of the FAI. Observers have debated the FAI’s role in the Spanish labor movement, with some calling it elitist.46

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Chapter 6

Others, including Gómez Casas, have described the FAI simply as a continuation of the affinity group concept that had long been a part of anarchism.47 Spanish anarchism was not controlled by any one group in the early 1930s but instead remained divided among Treintistas, the FAI, and the CNT. Nosotros positioned itself among the most militant of the affinity groups. They formed the Revolutionary Committee that instigated the December 1933 uprisings and criticized both the FAI and the CNT for their reluctance openly to challenge the Republican government. In November 1933, Durruti told seventy-five thousand people at a Barcelona rally, “Workers . . . if they told you that the Republic was going to jail 9,000 working men, would you have voted?” The crowd roared back, “No!”48

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Anarchists and the Two Black Years, 1933–1935

The new government elected in 1933 to lead the Spanish republic contrasted starkly with the previous one. Azaña had created and tried to govern with a center-left coalition. After the November elections, Lerroux and his Radical Republican Party, the second-largest bloc in the new Cortes, with 110 seats, created a center-right coalition with the Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (Confederation of Autonomous Parties of the Right), the largest group, with 110 deputies. Many Spaniards still regarded CEDA’s leader, José María Gil Robles, as too conservative to head a government, so Lerroux became prime minister. He immediately began to dismantle many of the previous government’s reforms. The property confiscated from the church was returned, Catholic schools reopened, and the clergy again received their salaries from the state. Agrarian reform halted, and agricultural wages were reduced. These actions did not go far enough to satisfy many on the right yet profoundly worried socialists and anarchists. In 1934, Lerroux was replaced as prime minister by a fellow Radical, Ricardo Semper, largely as a result of the increasing opposition from Catalan and Basque nationalists, who wanted greater autonomy. Murray Bookchin puts the events of 1934 into perspective by pointing out that socialists and anarchists had been decimated in Germany after Adolf Hitler’s takeover in 1933. In Austria, where Engelbert Dollfuss had taken dictatorial powers, a socialist uprising in Vienna had been severely repressed. With such warnings from abroad, Spanish anarchists and socialists were afraid that a government dominated by the CEDA could bring fascism to their country.49 On October 1, 1934, when the Cortes opened, Gil Robles and the CEDA demanded more seats in the government. This pressure led to the fall of Sem-

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Changing Political Climates

per’s government and heightened the concerns of the Left. Spanish president Niceto Alcalá Zamora refused to allow Gil Robles to form a government but instead called back Lerroux and instructed him to give the CEDA three ministries. These events pushed socialists to action. They had already been seeking closer ties with other labor and left-wing groups in an alianza obrera (workers’ alliance). The CNT remained suspicious of uncomfortably close ties with socialists but did not object when regional anarchist unions cooperated. On October 4, 1934, an uprising broke out in Madrid. Although a revolutionary committee of Unión General de Trabajadores (socialist) unions and CNT (anarchist) unions had been formed, the two groups had no effective leadership. The insurrection in Madrid failed dismally. However, in Asturias, heavily armed miners began a strike by attacking and occupying the Civil Guard and Assault Guard barracks. They disarmed these guards and moved on to the provincial capital at Oviedo, attacking the city with eight thousand workers on October 6. For several days, these workers, most of them associated with the Unión General de Trabajadores, occupied towns. Little coordination took place between socialist and anarchist workers, and when government troops assaulted the coastal towns of Avilés and Gijón, local anarchists did not have the weapons to resist. The miners had used dynamite very effectively as their principal weapon, but when government troops took the seaport towns, resistance throughout Asturias began to crumble. By October 18, the government had put down the uprising and begun a period of brutal repression that not only had a great impact on workers but also led to criticism of the right-wing government throughout Spain. More than thirty thousand prisoners were taken; many were tortured, and most of the leaders who were not shot on the spot were quickly sentenced to death. The CNT sent Villar to investigate the insurrection in Asturias, and he found that the greatest mistake had been a lack of coordination in Asturias and at the national level. Anarchists in Catalonia rose in support of the Asturian miners, but elsewhere in Spain, there was little more than a general strike.50 Under the pseudonym Ignotus, Villar later wrote about the repression after the insurrection. He produced photographs and lists of those tortured and executed. Perhaps as much as the repression that followed the uprising, the government’s use of African troops to put down the insurrection galled many Spaniards and brought mounting criticism of the government. In response, Lerroux and President Alcalá Zamora stopped the executions of participants who were only peripherally involved in the rebellion. The CEDA, in turn, objected and withdraw from the government in March 1935, creating a political crisis. Gil Robles used the occasion to demand a CEDA-dominated govern-

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Chapter 6

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ment and created a CEDA-dominated cabinet. The Spanish Left’s worst fears seemed about to be realized. By 1935, both Argentina and Spain had undergone political transformations that altered their political landscape and forced anarchists and immigrants to determine where their best opportunities lay. The military dominated the government in Argentina, and the Concordancia, a coalition of military and conservative politicians, began a decade of electoral fraud and attacks on anarchists that decimated the movement and forced many to return to Spain. Spain’s new Republican government initially offered hope and freedom, but those hopes were dashed by 1933, when the conservative government overturned its predecessor’s reforms. Failed uprisings and increasingly harsh reprisals further exacerbated the divisions between the Left and the Right, resulting in what the Left referred to as the Two Black Years. Spain’s increasing turmoil brought to the fore the need for cooperation among anarchists, who remained divided over the Manifesto of the Thirty. In 1935, Abad de Santillán, Villar, and González, all recently returned from Argentina, became leaders in the anarchist movement, trying to put into practice the lessons they had learned about the need for unity. Their influence helped to shape the course of events leading up to the outbreak of the civil war in Spain and the resultant anarchist revolution in Catalonia.

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Chapter 7

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Abad de Santillán and the Anarchist Revolution in Spain

T h e fat e of t h e Spanish Republic hinged on decisions made by anarchists, political parties, and the military as the February 1936 elections approached. Among the anarchists who influenced the CNT’s response were two returning immigrants, Diego Abad de Santillán and Manuel Villar. Their argument on behalf of participation in the elections influenced the CNT’s stance and prompted workers to vote for the Popular Front, whose election led to a military rebellion. In addition, as workers fought rebel soldiers in Barcelona, anarchists unleashed a spontaneous revolution whose structure had been recently outlined in a book by Abad de Santillán. His pivotal role in Spain was shaped by events in Argentina. The Spanish Republic remained unstable as political parties on both the left and the right prepared for the elections. The leftist parties sought an electoral alliance that could challenge the current government, while those on the right hoped to increase their hold on power. And the election’s outcome was important enough that the real possibility of an uprising existed no matter which side lost. In January 1936, a coalition of left-wing parties and groups created the Popular Front, which unified the Socialist Party and the Unión General de Trabajadores with the Left Republicans, the Communist Party, and several smaller groups. The Syndicalist Party, created by Ángel Pestaña when he finally split with the anarchists, also joined. José María Gil Robles and the right-wing CEDA vowed that a victory by the leftist coalition would lead to an uprising

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Chapter 7

by conservative forces, while the Left was no less sure that a right-wing victory would ignite a mass revolution. One of the most important questions asked at the time involved the CNT’s stance. In 1931, the CNT had officially ignored elections, while many of its followers voted for a reformist Republican government. In 1933, the CNT had come out against electoral participation, and the lack of worker support for the liberal Republican government helped the right-wing government win. Since late 1935, the CNT had explored the possibility of joint action with the Unión General de Trabajadores and seemed willing to support the Popular Front. Federico Urales, an important anarchist and the father of militant Federica Montseny, said, “I would consider it a great error on the part of the anarchists if, as a consequence of their action during the electoral period, the rightists triumphed over the leftists.”1 Juan García Oliver openly advocated seizure of power by anarchists who would initiate a social revolution.2 Many of the FAI’s affinity groups opposed this stance, including the Nervio group, which had been designated as the Peninsular Committee of the FAI in 1935.3 Abad de Santillán struggled with the question of participation in elections in 1936. He called a meeting of his closest comrades and some of the most important Spanish anarchists, among them Tomás Herreros, Francisco Ascaso, Pedro Herrera, Buenaventura Durruti, and Manuel Villar, two of whom had recently returned from many years in Argentina.4 Abad de Santillán explained that the anarchists could expect nothing from a victory of the Right. Nor would a victory by the Left be welcomed, even though the Popular Front promised an amnesty for political prisoners, many of them anarchists. “The outlook was clear, very clear,” wrote Abad de Santillán. “We held the key to victory in the elections. Our abstention would surely have brought the triumph of the fascists or the fascist sympathizers; with our possible participation, we would give power to the Left, with whom we had no contact. They had not even attempted to enter into a dialogue with us.”5 He saw nothing good coming from the triumph of either side, but in light of the 1933 elections, Abad de Santillán believed that the Popular Front had to win the election and that a policy of abstention by anarchists would be counterproductive.6 According to Frank Mintz, Abad de Santillán remembered the consequences of Argentine anarchists’ inability to cooperate with other groups after the 1930 military coup.7 Abad de Santillán later recounted that some of Spain’s anarchist leaders did not agree with his ideas. Eusebio C. Carbó and Juanel ( Juan Manuel Molina) opposed the FAI plan to participate in the 1936 elections. Yet at a CNT plenum in Catalonia, two thousand delegates approved the plan, including Durruti and Ascaso.8

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Abad de Santillán and the Anarchist Revolution

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Fig u re 16. Manuel Villar, Spain, 1936. Source: International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam

The FAI did not control the CNT, but all of the FAI’s members were also members of unions federated with the CNT and therefore were part of that organization. The FAI was not a monolithic bloc that directed the CNT. Instead, members of the FAI were among the most respected anarchists, so their opinions carried great weight. The CNT was already wavering on the issue of the election, and the FAI’s unwillingness to abstain from participating helped influence the role of anarchists in the coming elections. Most historians of the period have written that the CNT did not encourage its members to abstain from voting as it had done in 1933 because so many anarchists were in jail and the Popular Front would be more likely to declare an amnesty.9 However, a look at the role of Abad de Santillán and the Nervio group suggests that their experience in Argentina was also a part of that decision. The Popular Front victory was a momentous event. “What turned the balance,” in Gerald Brenan’s view, “was the Anarcho-Syndicalists’ vote.”10 The Popular Front victory made a right-wing coup inevitable, and all sides spent the spring of 1936 preparing for some kind of confrontation. Moderates simply hoped for the best. The new Cortes dismissed President Niceto Alcalá Zamora and replaced him with Manuel Azaña, who seemed to be a stronger

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Chapter 7

leader. But Azaña governed with only moderate Republican parties, as the Socialists had refused to enter the government. He was unable to halt the increasing polarization within Spain. The Socialists split into two groups. One, under Francisco Largo Caballero, became more radical and called for a dictatorship of the proletariat. The other, under Indalecio Prieto, was unwilling to advocate such a step. The Communists remained a small group compared to the Socialists and anarchists but encouraged Largo Caballero and sought alliances with his Unión General de Trabajadores unions. Right-wing groups were also divided. José Calvo Sotelo, recently returned from exile, challenged Gil Robles and the CEDA. Calvo Sotelo, head of the Nationalist Bloc, became one of the most outspoken critics of the government. Another party, the Spanish Falange, was founded in 1933 by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, son of the late dictator. The Falange espoused a mixture of fascism and Spanish nationalism. No single leader or party united the Right. The army would have to step in and lead the attack on the Spanish government. The Spanish army mistrusted the Republic. Some generals were monarchists, while others, including Francisco Franco, were “accidentalists” who “cared little for political forms, provided they maintained ‘order.’”11 The government feared these generals and transferred them to remote regions. General Manuel Goded, for example, went to the Balearic Islands and General Franco was sent to the Canary Islands. These generals bided their time while the government faced increasing opposition from both the Left and the Right during the spring of 1936. Gunfights and revenge killings took place among political factions. Strikes by workers in Madrid and peasant demands for land redistribution threatened the economic order. Spaniards of every persuasion looked at these events with a mixture of horror and hope. Finally, after the July 17, 1936, murder of Calvo Sotelo, the generals acted. A military insurrection broke out in Morocco on July 17, spreading to Spain by the next day. The long-anticipated conflict had begun. The Ingenuous Revolution

Spanish anarchists now had the opportunity they had sought for many years, and anarchists from many lands came to join them. Among the arrivals were Spaniards returning from Argentina as well as Argentine anarchists, and despite their relatively small numbers, they played many important roles during the revolution and civil war. The anarchist-inspired revolution that erupted in Spain in July 1936 was unique in modern history. It began in Catalonia as a spontaneous response

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Abad de Santillán and the Anarchist Revolution

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to a military rebellion that challenged the Republican government but went on to establish a libertarian society based on anarchist principles of voluntary association without the coercive power of the state. Earlier twentieth-century revolutions in Mexico and Russia had destroyed old regimes and replaced them with new institutions and leadership, revealing the power of a people aroused by injustice and oppression. But they also demonstrated the state’s ability to retain control under new leadership. Diego Abad de Santillán addressed the question of revolution and the state: “The suppression of the State cannot be a slow process of withering away: it must be suppressed in the revolution itself. Either the revolution gives the wealth of the society to the producers or it does not. If the wealth goes to the people, who organize themselves to produce and distribute goods effectively, then the State serves no purpose. If the wealth does not go to the people, then the revolution has been a lie, and the State endures.”12 The anarchists were one of Spain’s most powerful working-class groups at the outbreak of the civil war. Catalan workers armed themselves and put down the military rebellion that triumphed over much of the rest of the country. For the next year, Catalonia constituted one of the most revolutionary parts of the Spanish republic, and anarchist workers led a transformation of the region’s economy. This opportunity for change arose in response to Franco’s rebellion against the Republican government. But the anarchist movement had for years nurtured the sentiment, spirit, and organization shown by workers in taking over factories and businesses. These events provide one of the best examples of the act of revolution in its most ingenuous form—direct, natural, and genuine—yet planned, organized, and intentional. One anonymous worker expressed the prevailing revolutionary idealism: There are fundamental changes to be made in our factory. Some here still act as if we were under the old management [but] we are no longer simply workers who do something in a factory; we are workers who are fighting for the triumph of our cause, for revolution. . . . We must bring about this revolution through our daily work. We must make this revolution with our hammers, our shovels, at the forge, with the plow. We must work with tangible things . . . and strive with all the dedication and enthusiasm we have to give.13

But as this “Dear Comrade” letter from the workers’ committee that managed the telephone company illustrates, a contradictory need for order and control also existed: In checking over our paid-up accounts, we do not find your name, although our collectors have visited your home twice and we have telephoned you various times recommending payment.

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Chapter 7

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As a last resort, we have had to disconnect your phone. However, it is not possible under present circumstances to permit cancellations of service by subscribers without the best of reasons. Such action could be interpreted as a move to obstruct the progress of the revolution, so we invite you to come to this office within forty-eight hours to pay your bill and continue among our subscribers. In the event this advice is not heeded, we shall see ourselves obliged, although it would grieve us deeply, to resort to those extreme measures which present circumstances make advisable for the protection of such an important public service as the telephone. Those measures to which we refer have been given publicity in the daily press accounts of treatment accorded to counterrevolutionaries. Assured that it will receive the cooperation for which the present situation calls, the Central Committee of the Workers of the Telephone Company salutes you.14

The collapse of government in Barcelona and the outbreak of civil war created paradoxical circumstances. Some anarchists saw a choice between creating the social revolution for which they had long dreamed and planned and dominating the institutions of the state to unite the disparate groups opposing the military rebellion. Many observers have judged the anarchists’ refusal to grab political power when armed workers took control of Barcelona as a failure of resolve or a naive unwillingness to maintain a governmental organization that could defeat the military rebels. The spontaneity of this upheaval, anarchists believed, reflected human freedom. The anarchist movement refused power because, as Herbert Read says, “the exercise of power is the denial of spontaneity.”15 Apparently changing his mind about an anarchist takeover, García Oliver reflected that the choice involved “either libertarian communism, which is equal to anarchist dictatorship, or democracy, which means collaboration.”16 The anarchist leaders joined a coalition that sought to coordinate an armed response to the military, while anarchist workers throughout Catalonia took control of businesses and industries without regard to political compromise. This quixotic response made little sense to those who did not share the anarchists’ goals—the Republicans and Communist Party members who sought first to shore up a failing republic to fight the fascist attack. The literature on the Spanish Civil War is extensive. Participants from both sides have written memoirs, justifications, and explanations of positions and actions taken. The partisan nature of these histories is difficult to overcome. Many historians and participants who focus on Barcelona’s 1936 anarchist revolution

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Abad de Santillán and the Anarchist Revolution

dismiss it as impractical, especially in wartime.17 Anarchist apologists counter that the communists and the central government destroyed the revolution, and the debate has continued for decades.18 Yet subsequent research on Spain, Spanish workers, and the circumstances surrounding the civil war show a much more nuanced situation. Michael Seidman has shown that many Spanish workers who belonged to anarchist unions were far from ideologues infused with enthusiasm for revolutionary change.19 Instead, they ranged from those who reluctantly endured to those who subverted revolutionary gains with obstructionism, stealing, or malingering. In addition, Temma Kaplan has shown that the anarchist revolution in Spain did not materially change the role of women in society, despite revolutionary rhetoric and the participation of women in revolutionary organizations such as Mujeres Libres (Free Women).20 However, a brief review of the opening days of the civil war and revolution demonstrates the important role played by returning immigrants. Spain’s anarchists put into practice their goal of worker participation. In Barcelona, throughout Catalonia, in Asturias, and in parts of Valencia and Andalusia, anarchist workers and peasants implemented the ideas they had debated. Two documents help explain these goals. One was a definition of libertarian communism by Isaac Puente delivered at the CNT’s May meeting in Saragossa. The other was Abad de Santillán’s book, El organismo económico de la revolución (The Economic Organization of the Revolution).

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Outline of the Anarchist Revolution

A national congress of the CNT met in Saragossa in May 1936 to attempt to resolve serious splits among the factions within the confederation. A total of 650 delegates representing more than half a million members met at Iris Park for ten days, addressing divisive issues as well as questions about libertarian communism. The Treintistas and the unions they represented reconciled with the CNT at the congress. The interplay of ideas among anarchists in Spain and Argentina helped form the concepts that shaped the revolution. Puente presented a detailed proposal for building the revolutionary process on the twin pillars of the individual and the union while recognizing individual sovereignty. Puente, a medical doctor from Rioja and an intellectual who supported a working-class revolution, had taken part in the 1933 Saragossa uprising. “The revolution begins,” he wrote, “the moment the individual understands the difference between his beliefs and the organization of society and, by instinct or analysis, is forced to rebel against that society.”

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ORGANIZATION OF THE NEW SOCIETY AFTER THE REVOLUTIONARY ACT. As soon as the violence of the revolution is over, the following will be abolished: private property; the state; the principle of authority and, therefore, economic and social classes that divide men into exploiters and exploited, oppressors and oppressed. . . . Once resources are socialized, organizations of producers, now free, will be in charge of the direct administration of production and consumption. A new social order will operate when the libertarian commune has been established in each town. PLAN FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCERS. Whatever form the national economy assumes, it will be organized under the principles of socialism and directly administered by the representatives of the workers elected through their unions and subject to their control. . . . The worker in the shop or factory, in the union, the commune, in all organizations of the new society will be, individually and as a member of a group, the cornerstone of all social, economic, and moral achievements. LIBERTARIAN COMMUNES AND THEIR ORGANIZATION. The political beliefs of our revolution are based on the following: THE INDIVIDUAL, THE COMMUNE, AND THE FEDERATION. . . . The organization of the peninsular economy will be entirely communal in character. . . . The basis of all organization will be the commune. These communes will be autonomous and will be federated regionally and nationally. The right of autonomy, however, does not exclude the duty of the completion of necessary collective agreements that are assigned for good reasons and should be accepted completely as the political and administrative entity. . . . These communes will federate by district and region, voluntarily establishing their geographic boundaries. When convenient, several small towns or villages will unite in one commune. The sum of these communes will constitute the Iberian Confederation of Autonomous Libertarian Communes. COORDINATION AND EXCHANGE OF PRODUCTS. The inhabitants of the commune will discuss their own affairs among themselves: production, consumption, education, hygiene, and whatever else is necessary for the moral and economic development of the commune. . . . If the matter is regional in scope, the regional federation will carry out the agreements that represent the sovereign will of the inhabitants of the region. We begin with the individual, then the commune, next the federation, and finally arrive at the confederation. . . . Exchanges of products between communes will be conducted through the Confederal Council of Production and Distribution. Within the commune, the producer’s card, issued by factory and shop councils, will be necessary for a member to meet his needs. . . . The communal council will issue cards to those who do not work.

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Abad de Santillán and the Anarchist Revolution

DUTIES OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE COMMUNE AND THE CONCEPT OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. Libertarian communism is totally incompatible with all penal systems. That would mean the end of the present system of justice and all its instruments of punishment, such as jails, penitentiaries, etc. . . . This committee believes that society causes the so-called crimes we have today. Once the causes of these crimes disappear, the crimes, in most cases, will cease. . . . We believe that when a man does not fulfill his duties, either socially or economically, the popular assemblies should find a solution. THE FAMILY AND SEXUAL REVOLUTION. The revolution should not violently change the family except in those cases where it is living in an unhealthy way and will recognize and aid in its change. . . . The first measure of the libertarian revolution will be to assure the economic independence of all, without regard to gender. THE QUESTION OF RELIGION. Religion is a purely subjective manifestation of the human being and will be recognized as long as it remains a matter of conscience. It will not be tolerated in any public demonstration or as morally or intellectually coercive. . . . The individual will be free to believe in whatever code of ethics he chooses, but all religious rites will disappear. ON EDUCATION, ART, SCIENCE, AND FREE EXPERIMENTATION. Education, as the mission of creating a new humanity, will be free, scientific, and equal for both sexes. The school will also give attention to sex education as an important function in the continuance of the species. All punishment and rewards will be excluded within the educational system of libertarian communism, as they are the bases of inequalities. In the libertarian communist society, producers will not be divided into manual and intellectual workers but will be both. Access to the arts and science will be free. The time a man spends in these areas belongs to him as an individual and brings him out of his role as a producer after work. THE DEFENSE OF THE REVOLUTION. We realize the need to defend the achievements of the revolution. Therefore, until the social revolution has triumphed in other countries, necessary measures will have to be adopted to defend the new regime against either the danger of foreign capitalist invasion or counterrevolution within the country. . . . The armed people will be the greatest guarantee against all attempts to restore the old regime by forces from within or without. Both sexes capable of fighting will be called up in this general mobilization and will perform all combat duties. CLOSING REMARKS. We will close here without placing any definite proposals before this congress, for we believe that our thoughts should be used as a guide in the constructive actions of the revolutionary proletariat.

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We hope that our work will be improved on by all those with the intelligence, spirit, and capacity to do so.21

Puente’s stirring language seems odd decades after the heat of the moment and outside the environment of crisis. Nevertheless, his explanation provides a sense that the workers were building something that at least in its basic concepts had been discussed and planned. Not all workers shared this vision, and Seidman points out that many more were interested in their own circumstances rather than the general good.22 But this experiment in worker control succeeded for a time as a consequence of the detailed outline of how such a revolution could be organized. Abad de Santillán’s El organismo económico de la revolución, translated into English in 1937 as After the Revolution, explained the structure and benefits of the anticipated revolution. In the matter of housing, which was expensive and in short supply, Abad de Santillán stressed the practical nature of the postrevolutionary order. After the revolution, housing problems would be addressed rationally through planning, and the outcome would benefit the people, not a corporation’s profits. Moving on from that specific example, the book described how each industrial activity would be organized by committees of workers. However, Abad de Santillán recognized that these problems could not be solved ahead of time but would require a structure that permitted flexibility. The outline called for economic councils at the local, regional, and federal levels. Local economic councils would represent the labor force and the consumers in a given locality, replacing the municipal political organization. These local councils would comprise representatives from each branch of industry: food supplies, textile, agriculture, transportation, communication, publishing, credit, sanitation, industrial, and cultural activities. They would have no administrative functions; they would be coordinating councils. The system would depend on the voluntary participation of men and women. Social coercion would come from peer pressure rather than force. This distinction would set anarchist society apart from the bourgeois or proletarian state, although Abad de Santillán recognized the absence of any inherent guarantee that the council would use its authority for good in all cases. He did not prescribe limitations on the councils’ powers of coercion, assuming that humans were likely to act for the good of society when the goal was cooperation rather than self-interest. Economic coordination would continue at the regional level through economic councils made up of representatives from the local councils. Abad de Santillán anticipated a Balearic Economic Council, a Catalan Economic Council, and a Navarre-Basque Economic Council, among others. These regions

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Abad de Santillán and the Anarchist Revolution

would have complete autonomy but would be economically interdependent. He recognized that effective economic activity could not occur in isolation but thought that local solutions to the unique circumstances of each region would be more effective than a national program. This idea recognized the power of Spanish regionalism, which the Republican government had not adequately addressed, and may also have constituted an attempt to garner support from regionalists sympathetic to the labor movement. Finally, the regional economic councils would send delegates to a federal economic council that would coordinate economic activity throughout the country. This council would collect information about all aspects of the economy, encourage adoption of modern methods of production, and create centers for learning and research with the ultimate goal of producing more goods and distributing them more effectively. Puente’s proposal and Abad de Santillán’s book provided specific plans for the factory takeovers, building committees, and industry coordination that occurred after the defeat of the military insurrection in Barcelona and throughout much of Catalonia just two months after the Saragossa congress. The revolution did not result simply from spontaneous actions of workers caught up in the spirit of revolution; rather, it was based on ideas presented, studied, and debated in advance.

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The Military Uprising in Barcelona

By July 18, 1936, rumors of a military insurrection in Morocco spread throughout Barcelona, making residents nervous. Union leaders demanded arms. Workers were ready to defend the Republic, and they needed to defend themselves. On July 17, Lluís Companys, president of the government of Catalonia, the Generalidad, had refused to issue arms to a delegation of worker representatives that included Aurelio Fernández, Durruti, Abad de Santillán, José Ansens, and García Oliver. That night, the workers of the CNT’s port transportation local boarded four ships in Barcelona Harbor and took guns and ammunition. Catalan authorities learned of the raid and surrounded the transportation local, demanding that they surrender their arms. The workers refused, and the situation became tense until the authorities agreed to accept a token surrender, leaving workers with most of the weapons. The CNT’s National Committee in Madrid broadcast a call for a revolutionary general strike. It ordered workers to arm themselves and maintain contact with their locals. As news arrived of the revolt in Morocco, workers prepared to defend Barcelona, posting guards at union locals and around the Generalidad.

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Chapter 7

Companys left the Generalidad after receiving assurances from Francisco Llano de la Encomienda, the general in charge of a division of troops in Barcelona and a loyal Republican, that all was quiet in the barracks. But at four o’clock on the morning of July 19, the troops left their barracks, heading for the Plaza de Cataluña. General Goded, a supporter of General Franco’s rebellion, arrived from Majorca by midmorning and imprisoned Llano de la Encomienda. The army captured such key points in the city as the Plaza España, the Universidad de Cataluña, major hotels, and the telephone exchange. Troops from the Atarazanas and La Maestranza barracks occupied the port from the post office to the Paralelo, but the detachments could not link up as a consequence of the furious resistance by the people of Barcelona. Armed workers resisted as best they could. The unions organized a counterattack. Scrawled everywhere were the letters CNT-FAI—on buildings, cars, and artillery. The anarchists were the most visible leaders of the resistance to the military uprising. The counterattack began at noon on July 20, and workers retook many parts of the city. Loyal government troops, Assault Guards, and Civil Guards joined workers and surrounded rebel troops in the Plaza de Cataluña. Reinforcements from rebel units at San Andrés and the port were unable to break through and turned back. Rebel military resistance was overcome in fierce, hand-to-hand combat. At times, rebel soldiers discarded their uniforms and fled or joined workers. The Plaza de Cataluña and the streets around it were littered with the dead. Workers captured weapons from fallen soldiers; the initiative passed to the people. With captured artillery trained on General Goded’s headquarters, he surrendered. Only the Atarazanas fort remained in rebel hands, and it proved difficult to take. Loyalist air force planes bombed the fort, and workers launched an assault that resulted in many deaths, including that of Ascaso. The workers were exhausted from the fighting. Many had gone forty hours or more without food or rest. Now, as the fighting subsided, Companys called anarchist leaders to the Generalidad for what would prove to be one of the most important decisions they would make in the war. According to García Oliver, “We went armed to the teeth: rifles, machine guns, pistols. Shirtless, dirty from the dust and the smoke. ‘We are the representatives of the CNT and the FAI whom Companys has called,’ we told the palace guard.”23 Companys told the anarchists, “Today you are the rulers of the city and of Catalonia, because you alone have defeated the fascist military.”24 He would defer to their wishes and put himself at their disposal should they want him to continue in his office and work with them against the military insurrection.25 Companys then proposed collaboration among all antifascist political parties and trade unions. This idea presented the anarchists with a dilemma. If they 152

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Abad de Santillán and the Anarchist Revolution

took control of Catalonia to create libertarian communism, they would have done so not through social revolution by the masses but by conquest. That approach ran counter to anarchist principles. But if they chose to collaborate, they would become a part of the same state structure they opposed. Companys told García Oliver that a decision was needed immediately, as the representatives of other political groups were waiting in the other room. Companys acted as if pressure would persuade the anarchists, forcing the issue before they had time to consider all the ramifications. The anarchists agreed to work with other groups, forming the Antifascist Militias Committee as Catalonia’s true government. The Central Committee of the Antifascist Militias comprised ten representatives from workers’ organizations, five Republicans, and four members of the Generalidad. The central committee established technical committees of war, health and provisions, transportation, economy, and security, all of them chaired by respected political and labor leaders. Henri Rabasseire, a German eyewitness to many of these events, suggested that political naïveté kept the members of the Antifascist Militias Committee from breaking with the government in Madrid and establishing the committee as the de jure as well as de facto government.26 Committee members thought they could use Companys to intercede with foreign governments and firms and believed that Madrid would be unable to regain control. Eventually, however, the anarchists lost power to government officials from Catalonia and Madrid whose primary objective was to win the war and end the social revolution. Long after 1936, anarchists still debated the decision not to impose a revolutionary system by force. Nevertheless, even Abad de Santillán, who served as an economic counselor in the Antifascist Militias Committee, felt that the anarchists really had no other choice given the circumstances.27 As of July 22, the Antifascist Militias Committee became the virtual government of Catalonia. As volunteer columns of anarchist troops marched off to the front in Asturias, a revolutionary regime was set up in Catalonia. Its first communiqué read, The Committee of Antifascist Militias of Catalonia, in accordance with the decree published by the government of the Generalidad in the Boletín Oficial today, has taken the following steps that all citizens are obliged to fulfill: 1) A revolutionary regime is established and all member organizations of the Committee have promised to maintain it. 2) The Committee has named patrols necessary for control and vigilance and to ensure the rigorous obedience to the orders that will emanate from the Committee. Therefore, the patrols will carry identifying credentials. 153

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Chapter 7

3) These patrols will be the only ones accredited by the Committee. Any other groups will be considered rebels and will be dealt with as the Committee advises. 4) The night patrol will act rigorously against any who disturb the revolutionary order. 5) Between the hours of one and five in the morning, only the following will be allowed to be abroad: a) All who are accredited members of any of the groups that make up the Committee of Militias. b) Persons who are accompanied by one of the above whose character is vouched for by his companions. c) Those who can prove an extreme emergency that obliges them to go out.

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6) To recruit for the antifascist militias, the organizations that comprise the Committee are authorized to open enlistment and recruitment centers. The conditions of recruitment will be detailed in separate regulations. 7) The Committee hopes that, given the necessity to establish a revolutionary order to face the fascist centers, it will not be necessary to revert to disciplinary measures to achieve obedience.28

However, the social and economic revolution quickly overwhelmed the Antifascist Militias Committee’s coalition of Republican, socialist, and anarchist leaders. In revolutionary Barcelona, power belonged to the workers’ committees, at least for the moment. Committees of workers took over and ran the industrial and commercial firms whose owners had disappeared or fled. In the words of Burnett Bolloten, “Where the Anarchosyndicalists were in almost unchecked ascendancy during the first months of the revolution, collectivization in many towns was carried out so thoroughly that it embraced not only the large factories but the least important branches of handicraft.”29 Although these takeovers were spontaneous and each occurrence was unique, they followed a pattern that had been established in anarchist thought.30 The revolutionary economy was to be based on collectives for both production and consumption. Locally and regionally elected committees ran these establishments. Shop and factory committees controlled production. Raw materials were provided, and a hierarchy of committees coordinated production and distribution. Economic councils would be established in each locality, zone, and region to coordinate efforts among all industries within their areas and to see to the population’s needs. The revolution had been planned; now it

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Abad de Santillán and the Anarchist Revolution

was being put into place, but with the serious complication of a military uprising that had turned into a civil war. The Antifascist Militias Committee took on all the functions of government: public order and safety, food distribution, economic planning and coordination, and control of the militias. But the workers ran most of Barcelona by themselves.

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Worker Control in Barcelona

In July 1936, many anarchists found themselves struggling with the question of whether the war came before the revolution. Participants and later historians frequently believed that government control from Madrid and Barcelona was necessary for the successful prosecution of the war. Anarchist militants believed that their political enemies were using the war as an opportunity to destroy libertarian communism.31 The anarchists defended their actions and claimed that the anarchist revolution helped the war effort, especially in 1936, when the Republican government was most vulnerable to the military uprising. The revolutionary events evolved in four stages. First, the workers, flush from the fighting and victory, turned their effective control over events to control over their place of employment. This focus was natural because workers were organized by and fought as part of their unions and because anarcho-syndicalists thought economic activity was the basis of the new revolutionary order. Workers understood that they were finally putting their principles into action by taking over their factories and offices. For example, trolley workers found only the company lawyer in the office when they went to take over. He attempted to negotiate with the workers, led by a man named Sánchez. The same lawyer had previously sent Sánchez to prison for seventeen years for participating in a lengthy strike. The lawyer now called him “Señor” and tried to resist the worker takeover. He was finally forced to concede, and faced with workers who wanted to execute him on the spot, the lawyer asked for safe passage. He was never seen again. Workers on the Madrid-Zaragoza-Alicante railroad line called for a meeting with management while the fighting still raged in Barcelona on July 20. These workers had previously met with management in the administrative offices to negotiate for their union. Now, when management arrived, they found the workers sitting in armchairs, backed by armed workers, and making demands: “‘We have called you here to demand your resignations,’ they said, ‘both of your positions and of all rights you have received in the company.’”32 Several ways to take over a company existed. The construction industry in Barcelona had its property transferred to the city. The workers’ committee

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Chapter 7

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contracted with the former owner of a glass factory to operate the business. The gas and water companies and communications industries were expropriated. Consequently, making generalizations about the takeovers is difficult. Nevertheless, in 1936 the workers of Barcelona, through their committees, controlled most economic activity. In the second phase, workers established committees to run the businesses they now controlled. In some cases, this happened immediately. On July 20, before the fighting had ceased, a group of armed workers broke into the offices of the largely Belgian-owned Compañía General de Tranvías. The trolleys had not been functioning during the fighting, and some were used as barricades. The local union appointed a seven-man committee to occupy the administrative offices, while other groups were sent out to inspect damage to the system and report on the repairs needed. Later in the day, delegates from the electric plant, cable, repair shop, traffic control, ticket taker, storage, accounting, office, and administrative sections met to approve the takeover. The workers agreed to reestablish services on the following day. Since sixty-five hundred of the company’s seven thousand workers were CNT members, there was little disagreement.33 The railroads were expropriated, and railroad workers elected the twelveman Revolutionary Central Committee. The anarchist CNT and socialist Unión General de Trabajadores each had six delegates. Ten technical sections were created: commerce, operations, electrical services, accounting, repair shop, freight, health services, rail beds, legal services, and administration. Each station elected a delegate to a coordinating committee, which met monthly. On November 5, 1936, the committee announced, The enormous socioeconomic transformation occurring in our country obliges us to seek new ways of operating the railroads. To do so, we must develop new activities and gather together all information that will aid us in a detailed study of the process of production and consumption, which is closely allied to the railroads wherever lines exist, so the collective can receive the benefits. Therefore, the workers in general and the station committees in particular should reaffirm their desire for progress and a constructive spirit by submitting to this committee as soon as possible a report covering the following points: 1) The inhabitants of the areas around each station. 2) The regional zone of influence of the railroad.

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Abad de Santillán and the Anarchist Revolution

3) Means of communication between this station and the towns along the perimeter of the zone of influence. 4) Industrial and agricultural production of the area and the locations where excess production is consumed. 5) General means of transport of goods. 6) If goods are not shipped by rail, the reasons for this and suggestions for a solution to this problem. 7) Whether rail and truck service is coordinated, and in what way. 8) If rail and truck service is not coordinated, suggestions for establishing coordinated service.

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We do not believe it is necessary to repeat how important this information is. This committee hopes that the station committees will appreciate this importance and will give us complete cooperation in obtaining the most reliable information possible.34

Railroad traffic suffered from a loss of markets due to the war, insufficient spare parts, and a lack of coal, which came from parts of Spain occupied by the enemy. Nevertheless, rates for passengers and cargo were not raised at the beginning of the war, and more than 25 percent of the Madrid-Zaragoza-Alicante line’s income was given to aid other Catalan lines. In the water, gas, and electricity industries, worker control was not complete until August. A transition period allowed the continuation of the “capitalist” organization without expropriation. In August, however, a worker coordinating committee took control of operations in the Catalan provinces of Barcelona, Tarragona, Lérida, and Gerona. A technical section of fifteen members in each shop or building formed the basis for plant organization. Each section elected two representatives, a technician, who became a member of the factory committee, and a worker, who became the section’s foreman. Overall operations in each building were run by a three- or four-person building committee composed of one worker, one technician, one administrator, and an additional worker if socialist and anarchist unions needed to be represented separately. In the textile industry, the Committee of Control was to “know the following: a) existence and type of machinery and its value in pesetas; b) amount of raw material used weekly; c) weekly production figures on type and quantity; d) where raw materials necessary for production came from and their price.”35 The third phase of worker control came as individuals began to feel a sense of ownership in the company. While this was initially expressed as revolutionary

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Chapter 7

fervor, in some cases it eventually led to a kind of factory capitalism. Barcelona’s lumber workers opposed collectivization for this reason. They began to create a “socialized” industry that linked all timber cutting, hauling, and distribution. Throughout the summer and fall of 1936, enthusiasm remained high. Workers continued to focus on their individual businesses. Many employees worked overtime and made improvements, often without cost to the company. Five days after the fighting ended, seven hundred trolleys operated in Barcelona. Laboring night and day, workers repaired one hundred cars that the previous management had scrapped as unserviceable. In addition, workers removed poles and rehung overhead wires to improve traffic. They installed a new signal and safety system. They used the money earned via these improvements to purchase new capital equipment. Ticket prices were reduced, and ridership increased by about 28 percent. The trolley system was being run as a revolutionary enterprise. Workers toiled overtime and Sundays for no additional income. Wages increased to cover rising cost of living, but administrative salaries were minimal. Workers and their families received health benefits, and absence due to illness was reduced. Those absent without an excuse were fined one week’s pay, whereas those who were sick received full pay. At the water and gas works, employees saved 240,000 pesetas by abolishing high salaries and useless posts.36 Most of the directors had been foreigners, and they received salaries of up to 33,000 pesetas per month, while laborers received 250 pesetas per month.37 Money saved in this way went toward system improvements. Technicians resolved to dissolve their union and merge with the union of manual laborers into the Technical Section of the CNT’s local industrial union. According to a German refugee, Henry Patcher, writing under the name Henri Rabasseire, “The workers were especially happy about the improvements in working conditions, which was achieved through collectivization. Workers who had previously protested the use of modern machinery outdid one another in advocating its use once they had lost their fear of losing their jobs. A rational organization of work progressed marvelously under the direction of committees that wanted to ease the burdens of their comrades and achieve more efficient methods of production.”38 There were also disappointments. One worker in the trolley shop was caught stealing and selling copper. The factory committee fired the worker, but agreed to reassign him when his wife begged them to reconsider for the sake of the couple’s child.39 The fourth phase of the anarchist revolution entailed economic integration. At the beginning of the revolution, the CNT in Barcelona had created the

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Abad de Santillán and the Anarchist Revolution

Committee of Industrial Coordination. On August 11, the Antifascist Militias Committee created the Economic Council, comprising three members of the Catalan left political party, one member representing small farmers, one from the Trotskyite Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (Unified Marxist Workers’ Party), one communist, two anarchists, and three representatives from the socialist and anarchist unions. The council sought worker control of banking leading to nationalization, union control of all private industries, increased agricultural production, the creation of industries to produce goods difficult to import, and the complete electrification of the railroads. A December 1936 plan said, “It is of the utmost importance to organize administrative councils to ensure the smooth operation of production and distribution. These councils will also serve as a revolutionary orientation to the new economic and social structure, which will exploit the natural resources, both artistic and intellectual, of the Iberian people for the common good.”40 Layers of coordinating councils were established. Workers in the trolley industry were organized by section, each led by an engineer and a union representative. These delegates formed the local committee of trolley workers, which was empowered to operate the company. Eventually, general councils of industry within an economic area and local economic councils among industries in a town or region operated to coordinate production, distribution, and consumption. At the local level, this structure enabled one business to assist others. Trolley workers received help from the Union of Water, Gas, and Electricity Workers, which installed new transformers in better locations and built new lines. Trolley workers, in turn, aided other worker-controlled businesses, providing the bus company with 865,212 pesetas, the subways with 400,000 pesetas, and the port transport company with 100,000 pesetas by the end of 1936.41 The enthusiasm, success, and coordination peaked with the publication of the Collectivization Decree in Catalonia in October 1936. The decree, published by the resurgent Generalidad, did little to further the revolutionary process but rather summarized what had been accomplished to date. It also marked the beginning of the decline of worker control. The Collectivization Decree recognized two types of worker participation: Those industries where workers’ industrial or factory councils existed were deemed collectivized, while industries operated by owners or managers in collaboration with a workers’ control committee were considered private (Article 1). This provision effectively halted further takeovers and ultimately led toward an imposition of government control because of the continuing civil war. Barcelona’s anarchist workers responded to the July 1936 insurrection by opposing the military revolt and taking steps to implement their revolution

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Chapter 7

as expounded by Abad de Santillán and Puente. Workers in Barcelona turned from the fighting to their places of employment, taking over offices and factories and setting up committees of control. Workers serving on committees put in a full day’s work before attending to committee matters and received no extra pay or prestige. This approach worked in some industries, such as the trolley lines, where workers’ technical skills were sufficient to overcome immediate problems, but not in large, interregional operations such as the railroads. These realities forced the anarchists to change some of their theories and accept paid technical leaders. The events of the summer and fall of 1936 showed anarchists not only opportunities for implementing their revolution but also the problems inherent in doing so. Military and political events forced the anarchists to make compromises that ran counter to their basic antipolitical philosophy. The militarization of the militias and the resurgence of the Catalan government with the Collectivization Decree marked a shift that eventually overwhelmed the anarchists. They were sometimes naive, as in agreeing to share power when they had taken control of the streets of Barcelona and in believing that enthusiasm could overcome technical and economic problems. Anarchists refused to see that politics meant much more than the formal parties and alliances they had eschewed. It meant understanding how to maintain power. Anarchists had offered workers the chance to make the kind of world of which they had heretofore only dreamed. They could not create the perfect world they had envisioned because, as the workers came to see, they were not perfect. Among the staunchest supporters of this anarchist revolution were anarchists who had returned from Argentina and three representatives of the Federación Anarco-Comunista Argentina. In 1937, this revolution was threatened, not just by the military revolt but by other groups defending the Republic.

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Chapter 8

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Argentine and Spanish Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War

T h e a na r c h i st r e vo lu t io n that began in reaction to the military uprising by General Francisco Franco brought many Spaniards home from abroad. They saw their native land as a crucible for change and wanted to participate both as anarchists and as Spaniards. Anarchists in Argentina supported the CNT and the FAI in their revolutionary activities, raising money, helping refugees, and authorizing representatives to go to Spain to assist the anarchist movement there. Several Argentines played important roles in the Spanish movement during the civil war, and although sympathetic individuals came from many countries and fought in the International Brigades, few were as significant in leadership positions as these Argentines. The long association between the Spanish and Argentine anarchist movements gave these outsiders undue influence at a critical moment in Spanish history. By far, the most important link between the anarchists of Spain and Argentina was Diego Abad de Santillán. In addition, several Argentine groups aided the anarchist revolution in Spain and assisted refugees, demonstrating Argentine anarchists’ general support for the war effort. Participation by Spaniards Returning from Argentina

Many Spanish immigrants in Argentina were members of the anarchist movement, which had been weakened through arrests, deportations, and divisions

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Chapter 8

after the 1930 coup by General José Félix Uriburu. They saw the anarchist revolution emerging in Catalonia as the fulfillment of their desires for social and economic change, and many returned to Spain to participate. Antonio Casanova was born June 7, 1898, in Betanzos, Spain. He migrated to Argentina without documentation and joined FORA. Because he had no passport, he assumed the identity of a friend who had been arrested in 1932 by the Argentine military regime.1 Casanova returned to Spain under the name Manuel Freire, edited Solidaridad Obrera, and fought on the Aragon front. Another Spanish immigrant to Argentina, José María Montero, returned in February 1937 to join the revolution. Montero had previously been deported by the Argentine dictatorship but returned. His 1937 journey to Spain began in the port city of Rosario, Argentina, where colleagues slipped him on board a ship bound for Spain. On the high seas, the crew mutinied against the captain, accusing him of failing to support the Republican government. The ship continued to North Africa, where Montero took a French ship to Marseilles. He traveled on to Barcelona and joined the Republican forces, fighting under the command of Francisco Galán. Manuel Villar, who had returned to Spain from Argentina in 1932, remained active throughout the civil war, first editing Solidaridad Obrera in Barcelona, then in Madrid, where he edited the newspaper CNT. Later in the war, when Madrid was under siege, he moved to Valencia and edited Fragua Social (Society’s Forge). Villar was well respected by Spanish anarchists, and his opinions mattered. When the civil war broke out and several anarchists joined the Catalan government, Villar wrote, “The CNT was compelled to participate in the government for the specific purpose of . . . preventing an attack on the conquests of the workers and peasants . . . , of preventing the war from being conducted in a sectarian manner and the army from being transformed into an instrument of a single party, of eliminating the danger of dictatorship, and of preventing totalitarian tendencies in every aspect of our economic and social life.”2 Campio Carpio (Campio Pérez Pérez) was born in Vigo, Spain, in 1902, and arrived in Argentina when he was seventeen. He joined the anarchist movement in Buenos Aires before returning to Spain in 1936 to fight against Franco’s forces. Several other immigrants from Galicia returned to fight in the civil war.3 David Rodríguez, for one, left Argentina in 1936, fought in Spain with other Gallegos, and was jailed and tortured after the war. Jéronimo Rodríguez Sánchez, who worked as a shoemaker and a driver, joined the anarchist movement in Argentina in the second decade of the twentieth century. He was deported by the Uriburu dictatorship and fought in Spain until 1939, when he escaped to France and then to Argentina. Other returning Spanish anarchist immigrants

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Argentine and Spanish Anarchists

during the civil war included Bartolomé Lorda, José Fernández, and Laureano Riera Díaz.4

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FACA and Argentine Support for Anarchists in Spain

Anarchists in Argentina closely followed events in Spain and were excited about the possibility of an anarchist revolution, particularly since the Argentine anarchist movement had been decimated by the military government and its successor during the 1930s, the Concordancia (see chapter 6). In addition, Argentine anarchists were disappointed that other working-class organizations had refused to fight against the military. The Confederación General del Trabajo (General Confederation of Labor) was willing to accept government oversight in return for improved working conditions. Anarchists and FORA opposed this organization. On September 13, 1932, Rosario hosted a meeting of fifty-three delegates representing thirty different anarchist organizations who were disappointed with FORA’s anemic response after the deportations and arrests of many of its leaders. The gathering was difficult because the older FORA comrades disagreed fundamentally with suggestions that the organization represent industrial unions as well as distinct anarchist groups.5 They argued against what they called specificism and in favor of a strong central organization structured by craft, which had been FORA’s role for several decades prior to 1930. They feared that quasi-autonomous groups would engage in political alliances with nonaffiliated unions or other labor organizations.6 José Grunfeld and the younger members of the anarchist movement had created the Provincial Workers’ Federation, which contained sixty unions, only twelve of which were affiliated with FORA. He believed the new era called for new tactics and that the older FORA leaders did not understand the need for cooperation. Divisions within FORA led to the creation of a new group, the Comité Regional de Relaciones Anarquistas (Regional Committee of Anarchist Relations), with its national headquarters in Buenos Aires. The leadership group included Jacobo Maguid, Ángel Geracci, Natalio Saltarelli, Arón Cupit, and Enrique Balbuena. The CRRA sent Grunfeld and Alberto Balbuena on a nationwide tour to meet with and interest comrades in creating groups “to spread the ideals of anarchism and participate in working-class activities, modernizing the language of propaganda and increasing the range of activities to include all the problems faced by these communities.”7 Their efforts met with some success, as the original six area committees grew to sixteen by 1933 and eventually reached thirty.8 When the next regional FORA congress met in Rosario in

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Chapter 8

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September 1934, FORA leaders and those representing the CRRA could not reconcile their differences. The critical issue was whether to maintain a purely apolitical stance at the risk of becoming marginalized within the Argentine labor movement or to accept trade union organization that was not wholly anarchist but work within the unions as anarchists. The CRRA continued its campaign to make inroads within the labor movement and fostered close relations with Spanish anarchists. The Spanish national organization, the CNT, organized workers by trades, with the FAI focusing on ideological issues. In 1934, CRRA officials corresponded with FAI leaders, requesting information about the FAI and its structure for use in creating a new organization in Argentina. The CRRA also said that Abad de Santillán should be considered its representative in Spain, recognizing him as a link between the two movements.9 In October 1935, the CRRA became the Federación Anarco-Comunista Argentina (Argentine Anarcho-Communist Federation) and formally separated from FORA. FACA members included many of those associated with La Protesta and continued its close ties to Abad de Santillán in Spain. In 1936, FACA sent several members to Spain to participate in the revolution and civil war. The following year, these members mailed a sevenpage document to the FAI indicating their support for the FAI/CNT struggle in Spain. Jacobo Prince, Grunfeld, and Maguid signed the document as leading FACA members. Also signing were Riera Díaz, Antonio Casanova, Nita Nahuel, Aldo Aguzzi, Pedro Di Césare, and Adolfo Laina.10 According to Grunfeld, Many libertarians came from Argentina: Engineer Jacobo Maguid, Prof. José María Lunazzi (La Plata), Laureano Riera Díaz (Cap. Federal); Arturo Tomás García (C. Fed.); Jacobo Prinzman (Prince); Villamor, I can’t remember his first name (Rosario); Dr. Anita Piacenza (my wife from Rosario); Rodolfo González Pacheco (playwright, Cap. Federal), there were others, but I don’t remember their names. Of those listed, J. Maguid, J. Prince, Villamor, Grunfeld, and A. T. García stayed until the end, some in Catalonia and the others in the south-central. . . . Lunazzi, González Pacheco, and others only stayed a few weeks. Anita Piacenza returned to Argentina in 1938 due to heart problems. Laureano Riera Díaz arrived much later than the rest of us. I am forgetting another compañero, Casanova, Antonio Casanova Picado, who was born in Galicia but lived a long time in Argentina. The same was true of Riera, who arrived in Argentina as a child.11

Jacobo Prince (Prinzman) had edited Pampa Libre in Argentina during the 1920s. In 1924, anarchists from a rival group broke into his office and shot him, wounding him severely. In the 1930s, he belonged to FACA and was one of the

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Argentine and Spanish Anarchists

three representatives the organization sent to Spain. Prince took responsibility for sending CNT/FAI information to Argentina for distribution.12 Prince also joined the FAI and represented it at several important meetings in 1938. In May of that year, Prince joined Germinal de Sousa, secretary of the FAI’s Peninsular Committee, at a meeting of the CNT’s National Committee in Barcelona. Members of the CNT pressured the FAI to join the Popular Front.13 This was a delicate and important moment for the Spanish anarchist movement, and the inclusion of an Argentine in these decisions demonstrates the influence of Argentine anarchism in Spain. Argentine José Grunfeld also held important posts during the Spanish Civil War. In 1924, when Grunfeld was seventeen, Argentina held many rallies to protest the convictions of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists who were sentenced to death in Massachusetts for murder and armed robbery. The evidence for their guilt was unclear, and the verdict had much to do with Americans’ anti-immigrant and antiradical feelings. Grunfeld became active in the movement and was first jailed in 1926. “Thereafter, I was active in the painters’ organization, part of the commercial employees union. But I left Rosario because I did not want to do my obligatory military service.”14 He fled to live with the uncle of one of the activists who had introduced him to the anarchist movement. Throughout the 1920s, Grunfeld worked as a linyero, traveled from town to town via freight train to bring the message of social revolution. After the 1930 coup, Grunfeld was arrested and sent to the Villa Devoto jail with many other militants. FACA authorized Grunfeld, Prince, and Maguid to go to Spain in the fall of 1936. Their ship stopped in Montevideo, Uruguay; Santos, Rio de Janeiro, and Recife, Brazil; Dakar, Senegal; and Gibraltar, before they finally disembarked at Marseilles and boarded a train for Barcelona. Their arrival in revolutionary Catalonia thrilled them: “At last, we were living the long-awaited revolution, in whose cause we were so immersed.”15 Grunfeld was taken to the Hotel Oriente, where he met other foreign anarchists, among them French-born Gastón Leval, who had lived many years in Rosario. “We did not form a separate group,” Grunfeld recalled. “We were integrated with the Spanish in various anarchist groups in Barcelona. My compañera and I belonged to ‘Grupo C’ [of the FAI]. I joined the construction union, painters’ section, of the CNT in Barcelona.”16 Leval immediately took Grunfeld to the CNT-FAI’s regional offices in Catalonia, and on his first evening in Barcelona, he was appointed the city’s provisional secretary of the FAI. Grunfeld was surprised at his quick incorporation into the leadership of the Spanish anarchist movement.17 Another foreign militant who identified himself

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Chapter 8

only as Pablo, complained to the FAI that the Peninsular Committee had not answered his letters and he felt isolated. He mentioned that Grunfeld would be meeting with him later that week, as if this meeting would help his integration into the Spanish movement.18 Grunfeld’s immediate acceptance into the Spanish movement resulted from his close association with Abad de Santillán, Leval, Villar, and other militants who had returned from Argentina. Grunfeld continued as the FAI’s Barcelona secretary for several months before being replaced by a returned Spanish militant. In early 1937, Grunfeld was chosen, again at Leval’s insistence, as one of the members of the CNT-FAI’s newly formed Secretariat of Defense for the Catalonia region. The secretariat also included Domingo Ascaso and representatives of the CNT and the FAI. Since the three men had many other duties, Grunfeld was designated secretary, responsible principally for overseeing the provisioning and support of troops and coordinating volunteers, publicity, and record keeping for the Aragon front in what was called the War Commission. One observer commented that Grunfeld was “admirable in his work habits, with the regularity and calmness of a machine. He is a serious compañero who has no time for anything other than completing his assignment. However, he is lacking in two areas: sufficient understanding of many antecedents and small details, so that an allusion or misinformation can make him misunderstand the issue. . . . Second, he lacks the energy to impose himself at times, or better said, to give himself sufficient importance, something necessary in this screwed-up world where people are judged more by appearances than by more important qualities.”19 Grunfeld continued in this post throughout the war, resigning in 1939 as a result of a disagreement with Juan García Oliver over foreign volunteers that made Grunfeld feel that he was becoming isolated from his Spanish comrades. He transferred to the peninsular subcommittee in Valencia to coordinate relations among regional committees. This tension between a universal anarchist ideal and a Spanish movement rarely occurred among Argentine anarchists in Spain. The most significant incident occurred in February 1939 when Juan Negrín, then head of the Republican government, asked to meet with representatives of the anarchist movement. Juan López represented the CNT, Lorenzo Iñigo represented the Libertarian Youth, and Grunfeld represented the FAI. According to Grunfeld, “We were received by Negrín in a standard-sized room. I was the last to shake his hand, and just as we were about to begin the discussion, which was the point of our visit, he asked me my nationality. I replied that I was a citizen of Argentina but that I had come as the representative of the FAI. As if it was something that he had planned, Negrín told me that he could not discuss matters of state with a foreigner and that I should leave the room.”20 Negrín’s reaction may have

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Argentine and Spanish Anarchists

resulted from Grunfeld’s role as an anarchist, his foreign birth, or his Jewish heritage. Abad de Santillán, in contrast, was not singled out as a foreigner, although he had lived most of his life in Argentina. Grunfeld allowed his colleagues to continue with the meeting, although Negrín did not accomplish his goal of gaining strong support from the anarchists. This issue of foreigners in Spain had many aspects. The International Brigades under Emilio Kléber (Lazar Stern), who took command in 1936, were often identified with communists. Anarchists posted along the international border with France tried to reduce communist influence by preventing foreigners from crossing the Pyrenees to join the International Brigades.21 Spanish anarchists welcomed anarchists from Russia, Italy, Germany, and South America but regarded them with some suspicion.22 Only Argentine foreigners achieved positions of authority: Grunfeld and Prince in the FAI and Maguid as the editor of Tierra y Libertad. Jacobo Maguid was one of eight children of Ukrainian immigrants to Argentina. Born in Santa Fe on October 9, 1907, he went on to study engineering at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. There, he came to know anarchist militants including Grunfeld and was jailed by the dictatorship in 1931. After being jailed with other anarchists at Villa Devoto, Maguid was released in February 1932. He returned to Rosario, where he worked with Abad de Santillán and became an editor of La Protesta until authorities closed it again near the end of 1932. He participated in the creation of the CRRA. In between speaking trips, Maguid earned his diploma as an engineer in 1934. He then resumed his travels, speaking throughout the country on behalf of imprisoned anarchists until 1936, when he went to Spain. Like Grunfeld, Maguid was greeted in Spain by friends from Argentina. Abad de Santillán put up Maguid in a home commandeered from a wealthy businessman who had fled. Maguid marveled at the original paintings and artwork, covered by Abad de Santillán to avoid damage: “‘Now,’ Santillán said, ‘they belong to the people.’”23 In Barcelona, a surprised Maguid learned that he had already been chosen to edit Tierra y Libertad and to serve as a member of the FAI’s Catalan regional committee. Maguid had assumed that he would have no leadership role in Spain and had spent his time sailing across the Atlantic brushing up on his engineering skills so that he could contribute in a technical capacity to Spain’s rebuilding effort.24 He might have been less surprised by his appointment as editor, however, if he had known that one of the men he would be joining was Adolfo Verde, a Spaniard with whom Maguid had worked on La Protesta. Despite his personal connections, Maguid’s new assignment did not go unremarked: colleagues nicknamed him the Argentine. Maguid seemed

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Chapter 8

to take the moniker as a challenge and drew heavily on Spanish thinkers and writers in his first series of articles, winning over his new comrades.25 Maguid’s newspaper columns continuously supported the cause of Spanish anarchism and counseled against divisions that could weaken the movement. This theme commonly appeared among the Argentines and Spaniards who had returned from Argentina. Other anarchists, including Emma Goldman, with whom Maguid met, were more critical of cooperation with other groups in Spain.26 “We must make judgments calmly and put aside preconceptions,” Maguid wrote.27 He also suggested that Tierra y Libertad should focus on the fundamentals of anarchism in addition to war news.28 Maguid joined the FAI’s Nervio group and lived with Grunfeld, who also worked for Tierra y Libertad, and Jacobo Prince, the editor of Solidaridad Obrera. All three of them were Argentines and had known each other for years, and they perhaps still felt a bit distant from their Spanish colleagues. Maguid continued as the editor of Tierra y Libertad from late 1936 through 1938, traveling widely around Republican territory and meeting many distinguished foreigners, including Camilo Berneri. As divisions within the movement intensified, Maguid, who sided with the FAI militants against the more labor-oriented CNT, resigned to avoid becoming embroiled in these battles. He then took on the assignment of collecting and organizing the CNT-FAI’s archives. He was still working on these documents in January 1939 when Barcelona fell and he and tens of thousands of others fled into France. Grunfeld, Maguid, and Prince served as FACA’s representatives in Spain but also held positions of trust and authority in the Spanish movement, an integration of Argentine and Spanish anarchism that worked for the success of the anarchist revolution in Spain. Even more important, however, was the work of Abad de Santillán and Villar, who were not identified as foreigners even though they had been among the most vocal Argentine critics of the Spanish movement. They were not considered Argentines even though their group, Nervio, reflected the ideals of Argentine anarchism and included Argentines as well as Spanish immigrants who had lived for many years in the South American country. Militants of both countries had united, and they focused their energies on the difficult task of making the anarchist revolution in Spain a success. Bloody Days in May: Barcelona, 1937

Within Spain, the enthusiasm for revolution was tempered by the realities of war. Leaders of the Spanish anarchist movement constantly had to balance their goal of an anarchist society with the need to work with other groups to

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maintain the war effort. This led to anarchist participation in government, first in Catalonia, then in Madrid. During the fall of 1936, events in Catalonia and the militias’ success in Aragon helped bolster the anarchists. But Abad de Santillán and the anarchists recognized that the October 1936 Collectivization Decree constituted an attempt to limit the effects of the revolution in Catalonia and in other parts of Republican-controlled Spain. “I was an enemy of the Decree because I thought it premature,” wrote Abad de Santillán.29 He had resigned his position as an economic counselor in the Catalan government, the Generalidad, on October 1, 1936, citing his “disagreement with the actions of comrade Fábregas” regarding the decree.30 Although another member of the anarchist movement continued as an economic counselor and anarchists served in the national government, anarchist enthusiasm and influence began to wane in the fall of 1936. The Collectivization Decree recognized the extent of collectivization that had occurred at the outbreak of the revolution but limited workers’ and peasants’ ability to continue to take over properties and businesses and gave the government more control over the economy. Other groups opposed to anarchism, especially the communists, slowly began to use their influence in the government to limit the anarchist revolution in the name of winning the war. As part of this shift from ad hoc measures to a more powerful central authority, the anarchist-dominated militias were brought under government control. Though they had fought bravely in the civil war, they were perceived as undisciplined and ineffective compared to trained soldiers under military command.31 Nevertheless, the Republican government, supported by communists, began to pressure anarchists to submit to military discipline. By March 1937 the government in Valencia demanded that Catalan militias submit to federal control and issued militarization decrees. Many anarchist militias accepted military discipline as long as their commanders were anarchists deemed acceptable by the CNT, but their influence within the Republican army decreased. While anarchists continued to exert some influence throughout the civil war and were active until the very end, their power to create a new world through anarchism waned. Francisco Iglesias, the CNT’s representative in the Generalidad, resigned to protest the militarization decrees, creating a cabinet crisis. One interim government held power from April 3 to April 16, when a new cabinet was established, with four of the eleven members representing the CNT. Nevertheless, a bloody May 1937 incident in Barcelona dramatically shifted power toward the communists, who continued to wield influence until the end of the civil war in 1939. As the communists—in reality, Spanish Stalinists—became increasingly powerful in the Republican government, they challenged the role of the Par-

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Chapter 8

tido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (Unified Marxist Workers’ Party) and finally the anarchists. The communist-controlled Partido Socialista Unificado de Cataluña (Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia) gained influence when the Soviet Union alone responded with military aid for the Republican government. The party closely followed Moscow’s line by supporting the United Front government against the anarchists and their revolution, increasing tensions between working-class factions throughout Catalonia. At the end of April 1937, the murders of party member Roldán Cortada and of Antonio Martín and several other anarchists signaled the beginning of the violence. The tension in Barcelona was great, leading the government to cancel the May Day celebrations. On May 3, Barcelona’s chief of police, Eusebio Rodríguez Salas, a member of the Partido Socialista Unificado de Cataluña, led the Assault Guard and the National Republican Guard in an assault on the central telephone exchange in the Plaza Cataluña. The building and its equipment belonged to the Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España, a subsidiary of International Telephone and Telegraph, and had been taken over by its workers during the fighting on July 19. These workers had formed a committee to run the company, comprised of both anarchist CNT members and Socialist UGT members. After the Collectivization Decree, the Generalidad appointed one delegate to the committee, but the workers effectively ran the company. Control of the telephone company enabled anarchists to listen in on all telephone conversations, even those of the head of the Generalidad and the president of the Republic, Manuel Azaña, who had fled Madrid for Barcelona. The attack resulted from this power. The Guards stormed into the building and occupied the first floor. Telephone workers blocked the invaders from taking over the rest of the building, while anarchist workers took up arms and stationed themselves throughout the city, ready to fight the police. Catalan government forces also responded, and the city divided into two armed camps. The streets were deserted, and cars that ventured out came under fire. Two Italian anarchists living in Barcelona, Camilo Berneri and Francesco Barbieri, were murdered on May 5; the Red Cross later found their bullet-riddled bodies dumped on the street. One anarchist group in particular, the Friends of Durruti, expressed outrage at the attack on the telephone exchange and on anarchist influence in general. The Friends of Durruti had been militiamen at the Aragon front who quit when their units were mobilized as part of the government army under the militarization decrees. They returned to Barcelona and published a newspaper, The Friend of the People, which called for a complete social revolution. The Friends of Durruti had no direct part in the May Days, as these days of

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Argentine and Spanish Anarchists

violence in Barcelona came to be called, but they helped to crystallize some anarchists’ growing discomfort with the movement’s participation in the regional and national governments. Jamie Balius and Félix Martínez, the leaders of the Friends of Durruti, had not previously been active members of the CNT. Robert Alexander also mentions two other leaders of the Friends of Durruti, Pablo Ruiz and Francisco Carreño, an Argentine who had met Buenaventura Durruti when he, Gregorio Jover, and Domingo Ascaso were in Argentina in the late 1920s.32 Carreño had returned to Spain with Durruti, fought with him, and now joined the Friends of Durruti. Carreño spoke at a large April 18, 1837, meeting, at the Poliorama Theater, on the timely topic of “Trade Union Unity and Political Collaboration.” According to an account in La Noche, Carreño, “like the rest of the speakers, was very warmly applauded” by the four to five thousand listeners.33 The FAI did not accept the Friends of Durruti as an affinity group, but the radical anarchist group provided an alternate voice at the time when both the FAI and the CNT leadership continued to accept collaboration with political parties and the Republican government. Fighting in the streets of Barcelona continued for several days. Anarchists threw up street barricades and called on workers to defend the revolution, while the Catalan government’s Assault and National Republican Guards attempted to impose order on the city. Abad de Santillán and the CNT-FAI leadership in Barcelona appealed for calm and tried to arrange a cease-fire, demanding that Salas be dismissed. The Friends of Durruti did not want to compromise, and violence continued. Lluís Companys, head of the Generalidad, asked for troops from the government in Valencia. But in exchange, the Republican government wanted full control of security in Catalonia, effectively ending the region’s autonomy since the beginning of the civil war. Eventually, Companys accepted the government’s demands. Two anarchist members of the Republican government, García Oliver and Frederica Montseny, came to Barcelona to try to calm the anarchists. For the anarchist rank and file this confrontation was about control of the revolution, and they did not want to be outmaneuvered politically if they still had the power in the streets. Abad de Santillán and Pedro Herrera met with Companys in the Generalidad to urge a local resolution to the conflict. During the meeting, Companys heard that anarchists had captured eight Catalan guards. He then demanded that Abad de Santillán and Herrera guarantee the guards’ safety and announced that if any guards were harmed, Abad de Santillán and Herrera might be subject to reprisals by guards in the Generalidad. With that, Herrera called the fort at Montjuich, which was occupied by anarchist forces with artillery. “Hold your fire, we are here,” he said. “But call back regularly, and if we do not respond, fire at will.”34 That ended

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Chapter 8

the personal threat to Abad de Santillán and Herrera, but it did not stop the Republican government from taking greater control in Catalonia. By May 7, the fighting had stopped, with neither side completely victorious. Approximately five hundred people died in street battles, and more than one thousand were wounded.35 The anarchists maintained control of the telephone exchange. But government forces had established greater control in Catalonia, and with communist influence increasing in the government in Valencia, the anarchist revolution was further curtailed. Anarchists continued to fight in the war, and anarchist collectives continued to operate in industry, in services, and in the countryside. Notable successes occurred, especially in the war industries, and anarchist workers continued to create the society to which they aspired. But their enthusiasm for the war weakened when they realized that the Republican government, their ally, was also an enemy of their revolution. By the end of June, anarchist participation in the Catalan government ended. And with Francisco Largo Caballero’s ouster from the Republican government in 1937, anarchist participation at the national level ended as well. May 1937 was a watershed for the anarchist revolution in Spain and for Abad de Santillán personally. His attempts to end the fighting and maintain the alliance of anarchists with Catalan political parties reflected his belief that the goals of the anarchist revolution could be achieved only with the Spanish republic’s victory over General Franco and the military. Yet this approach gradually seemed to become fruitless as Abad de Santillán watched the Collectivization Decree and the militarization decrees take power away from anarchist workers and soldiers. The machinations of Spain’s communists and the collusion of other parties eventually led him to revert to his ideological beliefs and become critical of political maneuvers. Abad de Santillán disengaged from direct involvement in the war and government and began to concentrate on ideological issues. He and several colleagues founded a new periodical, Timón: Síntesis de Orientación Político-Social (Rudder: Synthesis on Political-Social Perspectives). The title suggested that the Spanish movement needed guidance. Two of the most frequent contributors were Abad de Santillán and Maguid, who had resigned his position as Tierra y Libertad’s editor in response to increased internecine fighting among the FAI and the CNT over collaboration with Republican political parties and the government. Abad de Santillán cautioned anarchists about taking positions in the government during the war, arguing that people, not government institutions, endure.36 He also devoted several issues to a bibliography of Argentine anarchism. Maguid criticized the AIT for not being powerful enough to influence its member countries’ governments’ nonintervention policies, which hurt the Spanish cause. He also wrote about

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Argentine and Spanish Anarchists

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the ideas of Errico Malatesta and Mikhail Bakunin, while Abad de Santillán penned a tribute to Buenaventura Durruti. This focus on ideology did not represent a disengagement from active participation in events in Spain by either of these two individuals. Instead, it signaled a recognition that the revolution and civil war represented a truly unique moment and that Maguid’s and Abad de Santillán’s experiences resisting General Uriburu’s Argentine military dictatorship no longer applied. They would have to return to their basic principles of anarchism, recognizing that neither a Republican nor a military victory would ensure the success of an anarchist revolution. Abad de Santillán wrote an eloquent defense of anarchist ideals in the December 1938 issue of Timón: We have brought our ideas of what is a greater and better vision to the press, to the courts, into conversation, into books and pamphlets. In a word, when we thought it necessary to propose a correction or amplification of our ideology, we have done so publicly. We have presented these ideas to all our members, giving them the freedom to decide what they think is right. We have always moved ahead when the truth was on our side. . . . What we are saying is that there is no committee, no plenum, no part of this libertarian movement that has the power to change its tactics and ideological direction, that has characterized us, without the express wishes of each one of its active members. [Today] we are on the wrong path, and we cannot recover until we reclaim the sense of revolutionary solidarity of our struggle and our organization. . . . A period of distancing ourselves from all state functions would be an excellent cure and great remedy for many of us. Only by working every day in the trenches or in the factories to achieve what we planned before July 1936 will we restore our true identity and see things for what they really are.37

Timón, true to its spirit of open dialogue, published an article by Horacio Prieto, former secretary of the CNT national committee, in which he suggested that Spain’s libertarian movement needed to become more, not less, political. In his view, the movement “needs a unifying force, a party, which will assume political representation for it.”38 This was an extreme statement for most anarchists, but Abad de Santillán believed that the idea needed to be debated. A regional plenum of the libertarian movement met in Barcelona on October 16–30, 1938, to discuss many of the issues that had arisen. Represented were the three major organizations that formed the libertarian movement: the CNT, the FAI, and Libertarian Youth. As a sign of the international importance of this meeting, those present included Emma Goldman, representing the AIT, as well as a representative of the Portuguese labor confederation, the União

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Chapter 8

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Geral do Trabalho. Prieto reaffirmed his position that “the FAI ought to be the ‘political organ of the movement and the CNT ought to limit itself to economic issues.’”39 A long and “very crude” debate followed, with the FAI’s Peninsular Committee and the CNT’s National Committee exchanging recriminations.40 In Burnett Bolloten’s words, “No debate among the upper echelons of the CNT and the FAI, such as occurred at the plenum of the libertarian movement in October 1938, could have illustrated more dramatically the contradictions and unbridgeable divisions that had developed within the libertarian movement since the beginning of the Civil War and Anarchism’s insoluble dilemma that in order to survive it must compete for power, yet by so doing it must negate hallowed principles.”41 Abad de Santillán and the Nervio affinity group sided with the FAI in this debate. On December 7, 1938, Juan Negrín, head of the Republican government, asked for a meeting with leaders of the Popular Front. Mariano Vázquez, current secretary of the CNT’s National Committee, and Horacio Prieto, its former secretary, represented that organization, while Pedro Herrera and Abad de Santillán represented the FAI. They listened to Negrín explain that the recent losses in the Ebro Valley, which most observers recognized as the last hope to save Barcelona, were not so desperate and that all groups should unite behind the government. After leaving this meeting, the two anarchist groups adopted very different tactics. The CNT demanded participation in the Catalan government, while Herrera and Abad de Santillán met with Manuel Azaña, president of the Republic, to discuss the possibilities for staging a coup against Negrín.42 Azaña heard them out but responded that it was too late for such measures.43 Barcelona fell to the Nationalist army on January 29, 1939. International Support for Spanish Anarchists and the Course of the War

The international anarcho-syndicalist organization, the AIT, supported the Spanish Revolution and called on its member organizations to prepare for international general strikes in support of Spanish workers.44 However, it also criticized Spanish anarchists for joining the government in Madrid: García Oliver was minister of justice, Federica Montseny was minister of health, Juan Peiró was minister of Industry, and Juan López Sánchez was minister of commerce. Participation in the government had become a contentious issue among Spanish anarchists, some of whom completely disagreed with the decision to join. A report by A. Schapiro lamented the divisions among Spanish anarchists despite the fact that the FAI provided ideological support to the CNT.45 After

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Argentine and Spanish Anarchists

the events of May, the AIT called an Extraordinary Congress in Paris in June 1937 and issued a statement: “While leading a revolutionary war and a simultaneous transformation of society, the CNT should reject all direct participation and all indirect pacts with the governments of Barcelona and Valencia. This means the complete abandonment by the CNT of all political, economic, and doctrinal concessions granted to these governments. While these were made with the intent of maintaining intact the so-called antifascist front, it contains groups who negotiate with our class enemies to put an end to the war and strangle the revolution.”46 This particular criticism soon became moot, as the cabinets of the governments in both Valencia and in Barcelona excluded CNT anarchists by the middle of 1937. On the other side of the front, Franco headed a military junta and directed the war against the Republican government. When armed resistance defeated the military in Barcelona, Madrid, and other cities, General Franco began to receive massive assistance from Mussolini’s Italian army and Hitler’s air force. Great Britain, France, and the United States chose not to intervene in Spain, eventually creating the Nonintervention Committee. Although those three countries continued to regard the Republic as Spain’s official government, the only major power assisting the Spanish Republic was the Soviet Union. Franco, conversely, benefited from Italian and German troops, arms, and other assistance throughout the war. In January 1938, Franco formally assumed the position of supreme commander and generalissimo and became head of state for a government in the city of Burgos, although neither Great Britain nor France recognized his government until February 1939, after the fall of Barcelona. The international situation always remained uppermost in world leaders’ minds, and for them, Spain was a sideshow. For Spaniards, especially anarchists, however, the war and revolution were everything. Those anarchists who joined the government did so to further the war effort. Those who opposed participation believed that anarchists would be more effective as a fighting force without government constraints. Still others, including Maguid, urged a greater focus on the fundamentals of anarchism.47 The anarchist realized that the revolution they had begun would fail if the war were lost. However, cooperation with other groups supporting the Republican government jeopardized the anarchist revolution even if the war were won. Throughout the war, anarchist workers continued to operate factories, shops, and farms, and anarchist soldiers continued to fight in the ranks. Spanish anarchists supported the revolution even as news from the front became more discouraging. In July 1936, the Republican government controlled approximately 50 percent of Spain, including most of the Mediterranean coast, Madrid and La Man-

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Chapter 8

cha in the center, and Asturias in the north. General Franco and the army controlled parts of the south and a swath from Vigo in the northwest to the Pyrenees along the French border. In the early stages of the war, Madrid was the prize and the November 1936 battle for the city was intense. Franco’s army was supported by German airplanes and an Italian army, but his forces failed to break through the defenses of the International Brigades, the militias, and the Republican army. The Republican government evacuated Madrid and left for Valencia, but its defenses held until 1939. Instead, Franco’s army concentrated on taking the mineral-rich north, which was cut off from the rest of Republican territory, and consolidated its hold on the south in Andalusia. By October 1937, the Republican government controlled a little more than one-third of Spain, although working-class morale remained high, especially in areas transformed by the anarchists.48 Anarchist militias had marched off to the Aragon front in northeastern Spain in the summer of 1936 and with great enthusiasm but little training had managed to hold that front. Durruti’s death in Madrid on November 20, 1936, was a great blow, but Jover continued to lead anarchist troops. Although the militarization of the army weakened some worker-soldiers’ enthusiasm, anarchist troops continued to fight in defense of their revolution and incidentally the Republic. Abad de Santillán supported the idea of a guerrilla attack on Zaragoza by fifteen hundred troops from the CNT’s Aragon, Rioja, and Navarre confederation. The Republican government considered the idea but did not follow through.49 The Republic did register some military successes: in February 1937, Republican forces counterattacked at Jarama and maintained control of the Valencia road. The following month, Republican forces stopped an attack on Guadalajara by Italian troops attempting to encircle Madrid. Although neither of these battles constituted a clear Republican victory, the army’s strength gave heart to those fighting fascism. Hugh Thomas calls the period between December 1937 and November 1938 the War of Attrition.50 The Soviet Union was the Republic’s only major ally and source of war materiel, but that support came with a price—Spain’s gold reserves were sent to the Soviet Union for safekeeping. The Republican air force challenged German airplanes over Spain for a time but could not stop the Nationalists without replacement planes and parts. In December 1937, Republican forces attacked the town of Teruel in southern Aragon, hoping to take the offensive. Franco’s forces counterattacked on December 29, but the town fell to the Republican army on January 8. The victory was short-lived and fighting continued until Franco’s army retook Teruel by the end of February. The corpses of ten thousand Republican soldiers were discovered in the city.51

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Argentine and Spanish Anarchists

Over the next several months, the Republican army lost much of Aragon, and Barcelona became cut off from the rest of the Republic in the south. The next major series of battles took place along the Ebro River between Barcelona and Valencia from July through October 1938. Republican forces attempted to break through and reunite Barcelona with the Republic. The death toll was great, especially on the Republican side, but Republican forces gained territory over the summer, and hope flickered. On October 30, 1938, however, Franco’s forces struck along the Ebro. With air support and better equipment, the Nationalists pushed back Republican forces all along the line. Republican forces gradually ceded territory until they lost seventy thousand men and eventually the battle. Franco then focused on capturing Catalonia and its industries in Barcelona. His forces continuously bombed the city until it fell in January 1939, sending hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing north toward France. All that remained of the Republic was the Levante along the Mediterranean, including the capital in Valencia and La Mancha and Old Castile in the center; Madrid was still threatened. With these events, the Republic’s leaders knew that they had lost the war, and many in the region, especially those most closely associated with the anarchist revolution, knew they had to flee.

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Refugees and the End of the War

During the war, a variety of groups sprang into existence on both sides of the Atlantic to raise money to help anarchists fighting in Spain; after the Republic’s defeat, these organizations shifted their focus to assisting refugees. In Spain, anarchists created Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista (International Antifascist Solidarity) “to assemble and disburse humanitarian aid both to the anarchist troops at the front and to civilians behind the Loyalist lines.”52 Affiliated groups were established in France, Great Britain, and the United States. Sections opened in Buenos Aires, probably in April 1938, and in Rosario, Argentina, the following July.53 In Argentina, the SIA was associated with FACA and attempted to coordinate aid to Spanish refugees. The Comisión de Ayuda a Exiliados Antifascistas (Commission to Assist Antifascist Exiles) was created in Buenos Aires in September 1939 to assist refugees in France who wished to leave for Latin America. Riera Díaz, a Spanish immigrant who had returned to Spain during the war and was now back in Argentina, served as its secretary. It was allied with and subject to the SIA. Another Argentine organization, the Patronato Español de Ayuda a las Víctimas de Agresión (Office to Assist Spanish Victims of Aggression), was founded by a Spanish anarchist, Orencio

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Chapter 8

Conesa, who had immigrated to Argentina in 1925, and worked independently from the SIA.54 In August 1939, Patronato Español de Ayuda a las Víctimas de Agresión secured the release of Juan José Villamor, an anarchist militant, from a French concentration camp. He traveled to Argentina on board the Formosa, arriving on August 19.55 A document dated August 3, 1939, outlined the assistance that the Comisión de Ayuda a Exiliados Antifascistas provided to refugees: a) Refugees will be welcomed at the port b) Each one will have a file created c) Attention will be focused on those still incarcerated in Europe d) Housing, food, and medical assistance will be provided e) Refugees will be referred to local unions for jobs f) Refugees will have access to the press g) Refugees will receive help with government forms, documentation, and family assistance56

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The SIA also contacted its counterpart in France, remarking on the disturbing news that the French government had ceased repatriating Argentines as a consequence of lack of funds. The Argentine SIA suggested a campaign to push for more French government funds and for French unions to provide money to assist Argentine refugees.57 The organization’s other activities included assisting Spanish refugees petitioning the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for legal residency and locating refugees for friends and relatives in Argentina.58

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Chapter 9

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Exile and Homecoming

Spa i n was devastat e d by the civil war. Two hundred thousand Spaniards died in the fighting, and another 200,000 were murdered or executed during the conflict. Many more died of disease or starvation, making a total of at least 500,000 dead. In addition, more than 450,000 refugees fled the country, and many found themselves trapped in France when World War II began. Some later returned to Spain, while others fled abroad. In Spain, General Francisco Franco imprisoned 2,000,000, shot tens of thousands, and created a regime where no opponent could threaten his power. Spain did not return to its prewar economic levels until the 1950s, as the bombing of cities destroyed homes and factories. And in the aftermath of war, Diego Abad de Santillán and other anarchist refugees again crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Nearly four decades later, as Argentina began its worst period of military dictatorships, Franco died. Spain slowly became safe for many aging exiles. Abad de Santillán’s decision to return to Spain near the end of his life was emotional, ideological, and practical. After World War II, anarchists’ influence on the labor movement in both countries deteriorated, with the charismatic Juan Perón dominating Argentina’s largest labor organization, the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT), and Franco’s repressive regime securely entrenched in Spain. The Argentine movement that had emerged from the FORA V to become the FACA was now the Federación Libertaria Argentina (Argentine Libertarian Federation). Its members opposed Perón, and it became a small

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Chapter 9

organization dedicated to human rights. The Spanish labor organization remained underground through most of the Franco era, finally emerging after his death as a significant representative of Spanish labor. But the ties between Spanish and Argentine anarchism through migration and return effectively ended with Abad de Santillán’s death in 1983.

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Anarchism and the Franco Regime

For practical purposes, the Spanish anarchist movement ceased to exist with the fall of Barcelona and the end of the Spanish Republic. Manuel Villar and a few other anarchists remained in Spain, determined to resist, but many others fled to France, taking with them the records maintained by Jacobo Maguid and hoping to use France as a base from which to mount opposition to the Franco regime. But divisions among the members of the CNT and the outbreak of World War II made that goal impossible in most cases. Eventually, Spanish exiles spread through Europe and the Americas, while the CNT continued clandestinely in Spain. In the 1940s, Mexico City became the capital of the Spanish anarchist movement. After the war, representatives of the libertarian movement and the CNT met in France, but the persistence of disagreements about leadership meant that anarchists remained divided. The movement held its first international conference in 1947 in Toulouse, as ever-hopeful anarchist immigrants returned from the Americas to debate the familiar issues that separated them. Gradually, however, these anarchists died off. Villar was arrested and sent to the Albatera concentration camp in Alicante along with tens of thousands of other prisoners. He remained there until October 1939, when the camp closed. He then spent a year and a half in Madrid’s Modelo Prison before being paroled in 1941. Villar continued to work against the regime, clandestinely rebuilding the CNT. He was arrested again and imprisoned for eighteen years. Upon his release in the 1960s, Villar moved to Argentina to be with his family. There, he worked for a publishing company and continued his contacts with the Spanish opposition until his death in 1972. Spain’s repressive policies led to its rejection as a member of the United Nations in 1945, and the U.S. Marshall Plan, which provided millions of dollars for the reconstruction of war-torn Europe, refused to give funds to Franco’s government. Loans and shipments of food from the Perón regime in Argentina helped Franco through these difficult years. Franco responded to pressure by slowly reducing the fascist-inspired Falange Party’s importance in government. Nevertheless, he continued to rule Spain autocratically as the generalissimo and regent for an absent monarchy. Franco quarreled with the son of the exiled

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Exile and Homecoming

Alfonso XIII, Spain’s last king, but in 1969 accepted Alfonso’s grandson, Juan Carlos de Borbón, as heir to the throne.

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Exile and Migration

Diego Abad de Santillán left Barcelona for France in February 1939. José Grunfeld, Pedro Herrera, Germinal de Sousa, and Jacobo Maguid also escaped, along with Republican soldiers fleeing the advancing forces of the Nationalist Army as it conquered Catalonia. Hundreds of thousands of Spanish refugees headed for the French border, overwhelming authorities there. The French set up camps to house the refugees, and Abad de Santillán was sent to the camp at Saint-Cyprien, along the Mediterranean coast just north of the Spanish border. Originally meant as a temporary shelter, these camps were little more than open beaches. French authorities were worried that refugees might use the camps to launch raids into Spain, so the camps became detention centers. As refugees continued to arrive throughout 1939, the French facilities could not keep up, especially after World War II began in September. After France fell to German troops in 1940, southern France retained some autonomy under the Vichy government, which began to send captured Belgians, Jews, and others to the camps, further swelling their populations. The camp at Saint-Cyprien was nothing but a deserted stretch of beach with barbed wire keeping the refugees from escaping. The Spanish had to dig holes in the beach to provide some protection from the elements. Describing his first sight of what became a concentration camp for tens of thousands of Spanish refugees, Lluís Ferrán de Pol said of Saint-Cyprien, “Our only welcome was the distant sight of an immense beach, darkened by the crowd of first arrivals. Suddenly, we are in front of a barbed-wire fence that encloses the beach. . . . We are just prisoners and will have to get used to the idea.”1 Abad de Santillán wrote little about this period and his experiences, but according to another prisoner, “The barbed wire closed in on us. But about 60 meters further down, another fence ran parallel to the first one. Behind this there were the tents and the guard posts that they kept separate from the lake and the fields of freedom, that led to cities with homes, to movie theaters, with restaurants, all full of life! And they built an avenue in the concentration camp. It was dangerous to keep the men shut up in their huts, always forced to walk in shifting, sinking sand.”2 Spanish refugees, especially those without documents, and Republican soldiers had difficulty obtaining visas to emigrate. Mexico was among the most welcoming American countries; some Spanish refugees obtained visas, and a few escaped, but many were interned throughout World War II. Abad de San-

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Chapter 9

tillán was among those who escaped. He traveled to Chile, where he began editing a new version of the periodical Timón, publishing seven issues before leaving for Uruguay. The border crossings between Uruguay and Argentina were lightly guarded and poorly monitored, so he crossed the Río de la Plata by ferry to Buenos Aires in 1940 and made his way back into Argentina. He recalled, “At first everything was very difficult; every door was closed to me, for fear of whatever. It was a bad time for me.”3 The Concordancia, the military-civilian alliance that governed the country from 1932 to 1943, was not sympathetic to those who had fought for the Spanish Republic. During that “Infamous Decade,” governments continued the policy of deporting foreign-born opponents and activists. Indeed, the residency law remained in effect until Arturo Frondizi’s administration in the late 1950s. Such an atmosphere had a chilling effect on migrations of anarchists, although many Spaniards with family and friends in Argentina returned, migrating as changing conditions dictated. The threat of arrest and execution by the Franco regime led Antonio Casanova to flee into France, where he was imprisoned in a concentration camp. He escaped, joined the French resistance, and later participated in the liberation of Paris. After World War II, Casanova remained in France and served with the exiled CNT as editor of Solidaridad Obrera. Casanova finally returned to Argentina, where his son resided, and worked as a baker. He remained active in the anarchist movement, translating, speaking, and defending workers’ rights until his death at age sixty-eight on July 8, 1966, in Buenos Aires. José María Montero escaped to a French refugee camp. From there, he went to Paris and then to Mexico, where he owned and operated a small meatpacking plant. He remained there for most of the rest of his life and did not return to activism in the exile community or the anarchist movement. He ultimately returned to his native village in Spain and died there. Jacobo Maguid and José Grunfeld eventually wrote about their experiences and the circumstances that led many anarchists to migrate at the end of the Civil War. Maguid lived in Barcelona throughout the war and in January 1939 went to the CNT-FAI offices to find a means to escape from Spain, but he was too late—a truck filled with men, including Simón Radowitzky, departed just as he arrived. He went home and burned any documents that might prove incriminating. On January 26, however, he received transport on another vehicle as far as Girona, on the road to France. He took a train north to the town of Figueras, where he got off and boarded another train to take him closer to the border. He attempted to walk across, but the Senegalese soldiers guarding the French border were admitting only the wounded. Maguid then attempted to

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Exile and Homecoming

enter surreptitiously via the Pyrenees Mountains but fell from the path and was knocked unconscious. He was found and loaded onto an ambulance, and since he was now wounded, he was permitted to enter France. Maguid recovered and after failing to get help from the SIA was interned in the concentration camp at Argelés sur Mer, just north of the Spanish border. Maguid worked with other anarchists in the camp to plan his escape. Maguid secured an armband that permitted him to leave the camp to get water from the nearby village and then was picked up by a car that took him to Marseilles. There he was reunited with other anarchist leaders, among them Pedro Herrera. Maguid began working with a clandestine organization preparing false documents to enable Spanish anarchists to leave France. However, the injuries to his arm sustained in the fall in the Pyrenees did not heal, and others persuaded Maguid to leave France and return to Argentina. He received money from Buenos Aires to pay for his voyage, and with a new passport from the Argentine consulate, he set sail from Cherbourg, returning to Buenos Aires after more than two years in Spain. Maguid found that his reputation as a participant in the Spanish Civil War made him suspect in Argentina, and he had difficulty finding work before finally gaining a position as a civil engineer.4 He remained active with FACA and its successor, the Federación Libertaria Argentina; wrote for Acción Libertaria and Solidaridad Obrera; and worked in opposition to the military government after 1943 and to Juan Perón’s regime after 1946. Maguid was in constant contact with Jacobo Prince, Abad de Santillán, Casanova, and Grunfeld, and wrote tributes for the first three when each of them died. Maguid himself died in Buenos Aires in 1997. Grunfeld was one of the last anarchist militants to leave Madrid, heading for Valencia by car with a colleague. They found that the port of Alicante, already crowded with fifteen thousand militants, was their best hope for escape from Spain. As they drove south along the coast they stopped in the town of Gandía when they heard that a British warship lay off the coast and was prepared to take on refugees. Grunfeld boarded the vessel and was taken to Marseilles, where the English Committee to Aid Refugees put him on a train for Paris. Grunfeld continued on to the English Channel, crossed to Dover, and finally reached London. There, he met with colleagues from the local SIA and received some money from the British. After a short stay in Britain, Grunfeld returned to Paris, working with Spanish exiles to help Maguid and others interned in Argelés. Grunfeld returned to Argentina at the end of July 1939. The police in Argentina were curious about his proposed activities, but Grunfeld assured them that “for the moment,” he would rest and recover his health after his arduous activities in Europe.5 Once he had found a job and be-

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Chapter 9

came settled, Grunfeld resumed his activities with the FACA. He was jailed for a year in the mid-1940s for his activities against the military regime and after his release collaborated with Abad de Santillán on a book project. Grunfeld kept in contact with other FACA members who had served in Spain and maintained his core beliefs in individual liberty throughout his life. He opposed Perón’s regime and subsequent military governments, writing to protest government control over the CGT. He remained active until his death in 2005. As Argentine citizens, Maguid and Grunfeld had an advantage over Spanish anarchists. Other refugees, such as those arriving in Chile on the Winnipeg, were also lucky.6 Some anarchists complained that Pablo Neruda, the famous poet serving as the Chilean ambassador to France, was a communist sympathizer and tried to assist communist refugees rather than anarchist refugees.7 Tens of thousands of refugees settled in Latin America, while 140,000 remained in France.8

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Abad de Santillán in Argentina

When Abad de Santillán returned to Argentina in 1940, he was vulnerable and under police surveillance, as were many anarchists who had returned from Spain. Grunfeld later recalled, “I had to go to the Central Police Headquarters (where I had been held years before) to indicate my intentions as an anarchist militant.”9 According to Maguid, “As I stepped off the boat, two police officers took me to headquarters. Police Chief Morano interrogated me the next day, holding a large notebook” of police files.” For the most part, Abad de Santillán remained largely above local political events during and after World War II. However, several issues caught his attention. The first was an effort to procure the release of the three imprisoned anarchists, the “Prisoners of Bragado.” In 1931, the daughter and sister-in-law of powerful Buenos Aires politician José M. Blanch were killed by a package bomb delivered to their home. The police rounded up anarchists Pascual Vuotto, Santiago Mainini, and Reclus de Diago and quickly condemned the three to life in prison based on flimsy evidence. Justicia, a FACA publication, led the call for the men’s release, and FACA organized meetings and rallies to protest the injustice of their continued imprisonment. The effort continued throughout the 1930s, and Abad de Santillán joined in after returning to Argentina. Continued pressure on the government finally led the Supreme Court to release the three prisoners in 1942. The other local issue that brought Abad de Santillán into active participation with the FACA was the rise of Colonel Juan D. Perón. A coup toppled Ramón Castillo’s discredited government in 1943, and Perón headed the Labor Department in the military government that followed. Perón used his position to

184 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Exile and Homecoming

curry favor with and to control organized labor, much to the disgust of FACA’s anarchists.10 In 1945, Perón was elected president. FACA and Argentina’s anarchist movement continued their criticism of the populist colonel, particularly through the pages of a new periodical, Reconstruir.11 In 1946, the government arrested some of Perón’s opponents and suspended Reconstruir’s publication. Abad de Santillán joined in this opposition and played a key role in organizing another anti-Peronist periodical, Americalee, in the mid-1940s. In 1947, Prince edited a FACA pamphlet, One Year of Peronism, that criticized the regime.12 While continuing to support FACA, Abad de Santillán focused more on writing than militancy, publishing Por qué perdimos la guerra (Why We Lost the War), a 1940 analysis of the Spanish Civil War and the anarchists’ role. He focused on his experiences in Spain and the defeat of the anarchist revolution there. He maintained membership in several exile associations, among them Movimiento Popular de Resistencia, Comité Nacional de la CNT en el Exilio, and Centro Republicano Español.13 On November 29, 1941, he attended a meeting of the subdelegation of the Spanish CNT in Argentina.14 During this time, Abad de Santillán wrote works of political theory and economics such as 1944’s El pensamiento político de Roosevelt (The Political Thought of Roosevelt) and 1945’s Los fundamentos de la geografía económica de América (The Fundamentals of American Economic Geography). He also wrote about the anarchist movement and its ideas in La crisis del capitalismo (The Crisis of Capitalism), Mensaje acerca de la situación actual el movimiento libertario español (Message Pertaining to the Current Situation of the Spanish Libertarian Movement), both published in 1946, and Historia y significado del movimiento confederal español (History and Significance of the Spanish Confederal [Labor] Movement), released the following year. His major works were on Argentina and required many years of research and writing. The Gran Enciclopedia Argentina (Complete Encyclopedia of Argentina) was published in nine volumes between 1957 and 1964, and the five-volume Historia Argentina (History of Argentina) was published between 1965 and 1971. Abad de Santillán’s interests continued to affirm his sense of being both Argentine and Spaniard, although he apparently was not completely satisfied with his life in Argentina. In 1952, he contacted Florida’s Live Oaks Farm seeking employment. He received a response indicating that the farm needed an agricultural manager and was willing to pay a salary of one hundred dollars per week. Abad de Santillán did not follow up on the offer.15 Abad de Santillán maintained correspondence with many individuals, among them Spanish exiles living in Mexico and people writing about the libertarian movements in various countries. Abad de Santillán received a letter

185 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Chapter 9

from Ethel Duffy Turner, who was preparing a manuscript on Ricardo Flores Magón, an early twentieth-century Mexican libertarian and precursor of the Mexican Revolution. Abad de Santillán had written a book on Flores Magón in 1925, and Turner identified herself as Flores Magón’s secretary and asked for advice.16 He also continued to work with members of FACA and later the Federación Libertaria Argentina, including his longtime colleagues Grunfeld and Maguid. According to Grunfeld, Abad de Santillán “achieved an impressive intellectual contribution” to the anarchist movement, “accompanied by an extraordinary moral compass.”17 Maguid, for his part, remembered that Abad de Santillán frequently received visits from young scholars seeking information or clarification on a variety of topics, receiving all of them and patiently answering their questions.18 From the 1950s through the 1970s, Abad de Santillán devoted the majority of his time to writing. Between 1962 and 1971, he published the three volumes of his Contribución a la historia del movimiento obrero español (Contribution to the History of the Spanish Labor Movement). His simultaneous studies on Argentina and Spain reflected his life in two worlds separated by the Atlantic Ocean but united by his peregrinations. In the aftermath of the Argentine military’s 1955 “Liberating Revolution,” Argentina’s government began a period of truncated democracy. The military withdrew from power in 1958, bringing many Argentines hope that the political system would function democratically. However, the military vetoed any attempt to integrate the Peronist movement into the political system. In 1962, when President Frondizi made overtures to the Peronists despite the generals’ disapproval, he was overthrown and the military returned to power. Another new president was elected in 1963, with all Peronists proscribed from open participation in the political process. Arturo Illia remained in office until 1966, when he, too, was overthrown by the military, which remained in power through the rest of the decade. The military finally stepped aside in 1972 and allowed an open election in which Peronists were permitted to vote for their candidate, a stand-in for the aging Perón, still living in exile. Throughout this period Abad de Santillán and most of his colleagues remained critical of both the military regimes and the Peronist opposition. The antagonism between the two groups, however, made it almost impossible for anyone to govern Argentina effectively. Abad de Santillán continued working on his books, publishing Juan Lazarte: Militante social, médico, humanista ( Juan Lazarte: Social Activist, Medical Doctor, Humanist) in 1964 about one of his colleagues in the anarchist movement. He also wrote Historia institutional argentina (Institutional History of Argentina) in 1966 and Estudios sobre la

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Exile and Homecoming

Argentina (hasta el fin del peronismo en 1955) (A study of Argentina to the end of Peronism in 1955), published in 1967. His political interests, however, seem increasingly to have involved Spain, especially in the 1970s as the country prepared for the end of Franco’s rule. Abad de Santillán and his colleagues, many of them exiled from Spain since 1939, were anxious to see an end to the era and curious about the fate of the country’s remaining anarchist movement. Abad de Santillán demonstrated his interest in Spanish history by publishing Historia del movimiento obrero español (History of the Spanish Labor Movement) in 1967 and De Alfonso XIII a Franco: Apuntes de historia pólitica de la España Moderna (From Alfonso XIII to Franco: Notes on the Political History of Modern Spain) in 1974. He published El anarquismo y la revolución en España (Anarchism and the Revolution in Spain) in 1976 and Alfonso XIII, la segunda república, Francisco Franco (Alfonso XIII, the Second Republic, Francisco Franco) three years later. Abad de Santillán remained in contact with other Spanish anarchist exiles— including some with whom he had previously disagreed—for more than thirty years after the civil war. The CNT had subdelegations not only in Argentina but also in the United States, Great Britain, Mexico, Chile, and the Dominican Republic.19 These militants were not ready to give up on changing Spain and continued to believe that the anarchist movement could play a role in the country’s future. In 1967, Juan López, a CNT leader who in the 1920s had tried to gain official recognition from Spanish dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera and who was a proponent of syndicalism, wrote to Abad de Santillán, “I am thankful that you were one of those who encouraged me to return to Spain” after twenty-six years of exile in Mexico.20 Abad de Santillán had encouraged López to return but nevertheless seemed to harbor revolutionary notions regarding Franco: in 1968, Carmen Pastor wrote to Abad de Santillán arguing that the best way to destroy Franco was not by launching a guerrilla war but by educating the masses.21 By the mid-1970s Argentina was descending into political and economic chaos, while Spain remained in limbo pending Franco’s death. Argentine elections in 1972 elevated a Peronist, Héctor Campora, to the presidency. Campora almost immediately issued a decree allowing Juan Perón to return to Argentina from his exile in Spain and run for office. Campora then resigned and called for new elections, which Perón won. The seventy-eight-year-old returned to the presidency in October but died the following July. His vice president was his third wife, María Estela (Isabel) de Perón, and she took over the office, though she lacked the skills to hold the nation together. Increasing inflation and economic problems were overshadowed by a violent upsurge in communist guerrilla groups that kidnapped wealthy industrialists and attacked army

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Chapter 9

depots. In 1976, the generals removed Isabel Perón from office and initiated a military regime that lasted until 1983. This regime waged a brutal “Dirty War” against suspected leftists, killing tens of thousands. In 1975, Abad de Santillán traveled to Mexico to do research for yet another book, Historia de la revolución mexicana (History of the Mexican Revolution), which was published in 1976. While he was in Mexico, Franco died, prompting Abad de Santillán to write to a colleague, “You will understand that for me there is a moral obligation to be present in Spain at this hour.”22 Abad de Santillán had refused to go back to Spain as long as Franco was alive but returned in 1977. He was disappointed that colleagues did not greet him warmly, harboring resentment about his collaboration with the government during the civil war.23 Abad de Santillán attempted to publish Timón in Spain, just as he had forty years earlier. The effort failed, and Abad de Santillán became discouraged, returning to Argentina after a year. His health deteriorated over the next few years, though he remained active. In 1982, Abad de Santillán and his compañera, Elisa, moved back to Spain to live in a retirement community near their son. Abad de Santillán died in Barcelona on October 18, 1983.

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Conclusion

Migrations of anarchists between Spain and Argentina changed anarchist ideology and influenced organizations on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Since circumstances frequently change, migrants must continually evaluate their opportunities and move as necessary, establishing transnational networks to support them in both countries. These supranational connections are affected by national events but are not limited to national boundaries. The national anarchist federations—FORA in Argentina and the CNT in Spain—were part of the International Workingmen’s Association, and their members supported or argued with each other regarding tactics and regarding the best applications of anarchist principles to their nation. Argentine anarchist periodicals circulated in Spain, while Spanish periodicals were available in Argentina. And some contributors published in both sets of papers. Spaniards who left Spain became important members of the anarchist movement in Argentina and helped to shape the organization of labor federations, bringing skills and ideas from Spain but often merging them with ideas brought by other immigrant groups. Many of them subsequently returned to Spain—voluntarily or not—demonstrating not only an attachment to their native land but also a desire to further the goals of anarchism worldwide: transnational ties did not eliminate a sense of national identity.

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Exile and Homecoming

The transnational aspects of migration mean that Spanish immigrants brought to Argentina ideas and attitudes, developed them further, and then transferred that synthesis back to Spain. Antonio Pellicer Paraire, José Prat, and Gregorio Inglán y Lafarga helped to create a bond between the anarchist movements of Spain and Argentina. They left Spain at the end of the nineteenth century when repression weakened the Spanish anarchist movement. They traveled to Argentina because the other side of the Atlantic Ocean offered more opportunities to express their ideological beliefs. In Argentina, Spanish anarchists continued the debates over individualism and collectivism that had often divided them in Spain. But they also met anarchist immigrants from Italy, among them Pietro Gori and Errico Malatesta, whose emphasis on organization helped to create a fusion of ideas that led to the establishment of FOA and later FORA, the most powerful labor organization in Argentina in the early twentieth century. Pellicer Paraire drew on his Spanish experiences to bring together individualists and collectivists in Argentina. Inglán y Lafarga became an editor of La Protesta. Prat, however, returned to Spain and remained involved in the anarchist movement. Other Spanish immigrants such as Antonio Loredo and Ramón Palau played important roles in the Argentine anarchist movement until their deportations after passage of the 1902 Residency Law. Palau eventually returned to Argentina because he had family and more extensive prospects there, while Loredo remained in Spain, serving among the leaders of the growing anarchist movement. The labor organizations created through these immigrant connections in both countries combined a rejection of political participation that distinguished them from socialists, revolutionary goals that aimed for a total reshaping of society and the economy rather than immediate improvements sought by syndicalists, and effective organization that that brought large numbers of workers together within the broad outlines of anarchist ideology. The anarchist movements in Spain and Argentina are intertwined and cannot be separated into discrete national narratives because their memberships and ideologies were based on a constant flow of people and ideas between these two countries. The prosopography of individuals over many decades shows how anarchists’ experiences in Spain influenced their participation in the anarchist movement in Argentina, and vice versa. Taking a transnational perspective provides new insight into the development of anarchist movements in Spain and Argentina through social, organizational, and ideological networks. Diego Abad de Santillán epitomizes the transnational nature of anarchism. Abad de Santillán was born and died a Spaniard but spent most of his life in Argentina, and he saw no distinction between being a Spaniard and being an

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Chapter 9

Argentine because he believed that Latin America was shaped by Spain. In 1967, he wrote, “Any time is a good time to speak of Spain and the Spanish legacy, especially in Latin America, which is always Spain and always Spanish, despite the attributes brought by other people.”24 However, Abad de Santillán also believed that the fundamental problems of modern society were not restricted by national boundaries. By serving on the editorial board of La Protesta in Argentina and as an important member of the FAI in Spain, Abad de Santillán helped to shape the histories of two countries. Abad de Santillán’s life also demonstrates one aspect of transnational migration that needs further study: his devotion to his homeland and his identity as a Spaniard and his concurrent Argentine identity. An interdisciplinary focus on institutions, ideology, and labor movements helps link the various aspects of these networks in ways that transcend national boundaries. The formation of the AIT gave Abad de Santillán the opportunity to express what he claimed was a purer form of anarchism than existed in European movements, which had blended syndicalist emphasis on union benefits for workers with direct action toward a revolutionary goal. The CNT in Spain was struggling with the same issues, and Abad de Santillán’s sometimes harsh criticisms ironically made him seem more of an integral part of the Spanish movement than a foreigner. This status had profound implications when Abad de Santillán returned to Spain a decade later and allowed him immediately to become an important participant in the Spanish movement in the critical years of the Republic and civil war. The Argentine military coup in 1930 demonstrated to Abad de Santillán how devastating anarchist squabbles had become to the movement, preventing activists from organizing resistance to Uriburu’s regime. When Abad de Santillán returned to Spain, he changed his attitude about ideological purity and advocated unity among the various sections of anarchists. His decision not to oppose the election of a leftist government in 1936 was one of the reasons many anarchists supported the Popular Front. The reaction by conservatives, monarchists, and the military quickly led to the uprising that brought civil war to Spain and altered the country’s history. Abad de Santillán alone certainly did not create all these circumstances. But his experience with the coup in Argentina, his return to Spain, his stature among the anarchists, and his desire that Spanish anarchists not face the repression that had forced him out of Argentina contributed to the course of these events. In 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, a popular revolution occurred in Barcelona and in much of Catalonia and in parts of Aragon. Spanish anarchists viewed this revolution as the culmination of decades of prepara-

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Exile and Homecoming

tion and planning, some of which had been presented in Abad de Santillán’s book, After the Revolution. Enthusiasm for this revolution drew anarchists from abroad, including some from Argentina who quickly assumed key roles in the FAI, uniting the two worlds. Some tensions arose between native Spaniards and Argentine anarchists, demonstrating the persistence of a sense of nationality mixed with the transnational aspects of anarchism. By 1937, however, many anarchists concluded that the civil war was more important than the anarchist revolution, which continued only with local efforts and some worker-controlled factories and collective farms. When the Nationalists won the war in 1939, the revolution and the anarchist movement in Spain ceased. Those who could flee left Spain, many for Latin America. Those who went to Argentina reinvigorated the movement there. For the rest of the twentieth century, the FACA and its successor, the Federación Libertaria Argentina, supported civil, political, and human rights. Anarchist traditions came to influence other contemporary Argentine groups, perhaps most notably the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who championed the cause of the disappeared in the 1980s. As Marguerite Guzmán Bouvard has noted, “What characterizes the Mothers as anarchists is their rebelliousness and their aim of a complete transformation of Argentine society” through direct action.25 The Argentine protesters who took to the streets in late 2001 to denounce the government’s role in the economic implosion also exemplified anarchist practices and principles. While the anarchist movement in Argentina reached a low point in the 1930s, it did not disappear. In Spain, the repression of the Franco years made resistance difficult, and Spanish anarchists had to re-create their organizations in exile. Diego Abad de Santillán returned to Spain after Franco’s death hoping to see anarchist principles retake their place at the forefront of the labor movement but instead discovered that the organizations claiming the legacy of anarchism had adapted to new realities. Many anarchists who had been involved in the civil war either were dead or had lost touch with the working-class movement, and the CNT never regained its preeminent place as a labor federation. However, its perspective differs from that of the Socialist Unión General de Trabajadores regarding union relationships with government agencies and speaks vaguely of a social revolution, echoing the days when Spanish and Argentine anarchists dominated the labor movements in their respective countries. Spain and Argentina were no longer connected by the transnational ties of anarchist ideas and immigrant networks. Each country proceeded on its own trajectory with regard to the working class. Abad de Santillán’s death represented the severing of the final thread connecting the two worlds.

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Appendix A

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List of Spanish Refugees aboard the Winnipeg

These refugees arrived in Argentina on August 19, 1939, and were helped by the SIA— specifically, the Comisión de Ayuda a Exiliados Antifascistas. The first ten people on the list were met at the port, while the others were picked up from relatives on Isla Demarchi. They received food and a place to stay, and then all except Carlota Asensio and Rafaela Fernández and her daughters were passed to the Patronato Español de Ayuda a las Víctimas de Agresión. As a result of a misunderstanding, a donation from the Comisión de Ayuda of the Federación Obreros y Empleados Telefónicos (Committee of Assistance of the Federation of Telephone Workers and Employees) was not available to help these repatriated individuals. Number Name

Information



Age: 41, compañero, repatriated Age: 41, wife Age: 16, child, Spanish Age: 13, child, Spanish Age: 13, child, Spanish Age: 48, compañero, Spanish Age: 44, wife Age: 16, child, Argentine Age: 14, child, Argentine Age: 62, Argentine Age: 27

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

González, Florencio Collado, Francisca González, Miguel González, Florencio González, Josefina Casanovas, Francisco Vilanova, Victoria N. Casanovas, Enrique Casanovas, Angelita M., Carlota Asensio Fernández, Rafaela

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Appendix A

Number Name

Information

12 13 14 Gómez, Armando 15 Llas, Jaime R. 16 Villamor, Juan José 17 Urra, Hector 18 Tolmes, A. Daura 19 B., Magin Vendrell 20 Molto, Antonio 21 N., Gatel

Two daughters, ages 4 and 2 Age: 30, compañero, repatriated Age: 26, compañero, Argentine Age: 26, compañero, Argentine Age: 26 Age: 26 Age: 26 Age: 26 Age: 44

Source: L. Riera Díaz to Junta Ejecutiva Nacional of the SIA, September 10, 1939, Federación Libertaria Argentina Archives, Buenos Aires These refugees arrived in Chile on the Winnipeg.

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Number Name

Information

1 Sánchez, Felix Plaza Farmworker, 1 family member 2 Meiz, Ramón Malla Farmworker, 1 family member 3 Salvado, Fructuoso Rebull Farmworker, 3 family members 4 Castelli, Palmiro Rebull Farmworker 5 Martí, Francisco Nogués Farmworker, 4 family members 6 Carseller, Candido Espada Farmworker 7 Font, Juan Tes Farmworker, 2 family members 8 Odeono, Antonio Caldere Farmworker 9 Rodríguez, Juan Peña Farmworker 10 Sánchez, Manuel Soto Farmworker 11 Alonso, Jesús Méndez Farmworker 12 Rodríguez, Urbano Rodríguez Farmworker 13 Sevilla, Secundino Luis Farmworker 14 De Gracia, Jorge Farmworker, 2 family members 15 Pean, Alfonso González Farmworker 16 Rios, Diego José Farmworker 17 San Martín, José Urricelgui Farmworker 18 Vázquez, José Arias Farmworker 19 Olavarra, Eugenio Carrera Distribution and Administration,   2 family members 20 Mateu, Manuel Barcacel Distribution and Administration 21 Riera, Carlos Ribas Distribution and Administration 22 Andreu, José Coma Distribution and Administration

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Spanish Refugees aboard the Winnipeg

Number Name

Information



Distribution and Administration Metalworker Metalworker, 4 family members Metalworker Metalworker Metalworker Metalworker Metalworker Metalworker, 4 family members Metalworker Metalworker Metalworker Metalworker Metalworker Metalworker, battalion chief Metalworker Metalworker Metalworker Metalworker Metalworker Metalworker, 3 family members Metalworker Metalworker, 4 family members Metalworker, 3 family members Metalworker Metalworker Bricklayer Mason Mason, 1 family member Mason Mason, 2 family members Carpenter Carpenter, 1 family member Heating Carpenter Mason Carpenter Mosaic maker Mason Cabinetmaker

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Olivia, Floreal Amor Pulido, Manuel García Álvarez, José Pérez Paz, Manuel Álvarez Amor, Joaquín Solsona Fernández, Felipe Vázquez López, Rosendo Mendez Buendia, Juan García Ramos, Geronimo Martín Hernández, Jesús Méndez Méndez, Antonio Montalvet González, Aurelio Díaz Menchaca, Esteban Benito Palacio, Fernando González del Amo, Filemón Espinaco Fernández, Francisco Menéndez Aznar, Emeterio González, Salvador Álvarez García, Florencio Esteban Rodríguez, Servando Fernández Lorca, José Antonio González, Ovidio Diez Gonzalo, Victor Álvaro Abestegui, Guillermo Elduayen Abatt, Antonio Redondo, Benito Abad Royo, Roque Barberán Martín, Roberto Barberán Gevera, Alfredo Romero Carmona, Antonio Sola Gual, Francisco Alberto Subiza, Joaquín Fernández Lobato, Tomás Infesta Velazco, Francisco Alonso Sancho, José Tudela López, José Palacio Anton, Francisco Madrid Aguilar, Antonio Lunio Martí, José Company Gil, Ángel Pablo

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Appendix A

Number Name

Information



Cabinetmaker, 5 family members Day laborer Mason Mason Plumber Painter Painter Day laborer Mason Mason Fisherman Fisherman Fisherman Fisherman Fisherman Fisherman, 1 family member Fisherman Fisherman Sailor Sailor Sailor Sailor Sailor Sailor Sailor Sailor Driver Sailor Sailor Sailor, 1 family member Sailor Sailor, 4 family members Sailor Journalist Various crafts Various crafts Various crafts, 1 family member Various crafts Various crafts Various crafts

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102

Morales, José Barueto Naso, César Flores G., Francisco Bellido Lostal, Gregorio Vayes López, Manuel Martín Balluria, Luis Yoldi Forneilles, José Dequieros Monje, Felix Díaz, Estanislao Rubio Llopis, Miguel Hoyenert Raino, Manuel Ragenjo Gómez, Antonio Otero Armada, Vicente Pita Armada, José Pita Armada, Manuel Pita Pena, Vicente Pérez Breijo, Manuel Onal Cacadel, Manuel Otero Villaverde, José Riva Calvino, Manuel Donsion Álvarez, Leanardo Fernández Esposito, Guillermo López Sánchez, Juan Castro Pérez, Manuel Tinico Rodríguez, Ernesto Fernández Fernández, Ramón Gómez Seijo, José González Ruiz, Valentin Herrans González, Manuel Souza Rojas, Octavio Blanco, Raymundo Ruiz, Francisco Molina López, Manuel Baleanisel Muñoz, Santiago López Urreselgui, José Mosota, Luis Gay Buen Dia, Juan García Gault, Dolores Albert Oliver, Juan Gausch Sola, Joaquín Starli

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Spanish Refugees aboard the Winnipeg

Number Name

Information



Various crafts, 2 family members Various crafts, 3 family members Various crafts Various crafts, 4 family members Various crafts Various crafts Various crafts Various crafts Various crafts Various crafts Various crafts Various crafts Various crafts Various crafts Various crafts Various crafts Various crafts Various crafts

103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120

Rey, Luis Campo Rodríguez, Ángel Rondino, Fe Fernández Espert, Rafael Puyol Blanco, José Gutiérrez S., Maximo Quiniellas Cueto, Geronimo Martí Castillo, Benjamin Tobias, Maria Tervel Barcia, Manuel del Río Tort, Narciso García, Conrado Trigo Ruiz, Francisco Herrero Gómez, Domingo Crescenero Rodríguez, Salvador Fernández Palacio, Fernando Solano Nieto, Manuel Fernández Castelo, Francisco García

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Source: SIA–Comisión de Ayuda a Exiliados Antifascistas, Consejo Nacional, Circular Informativa, no. 3, September 9, 1939, Archives of the Federación Libertaria Argentina, Buenos Aires.

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Appendix B

La Protesta

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Prisoners in or Deported from Argentina, 1905–1906

Acuna, Evaristo Agara, Luis Aldatti, Honorio Álvarez, Ramiro Andrade, Julio Arena, Miguel Barros, Castro Baudraco, Lorenzo Baudraco, Miguel Benedetti, Antonio Bernard, Luis Bernardoni, A. Bevuzzi, Luis Biagiotti, Gabriel Bianchi, Juan Biondi, Atilio Blanco, Ángel E. Bonilla, Pedro Bossio, Bartolomé Buonafalce, Adolfo Cabrera, Zenón Cames, Manuel

Camilo, Francisco Campana, Victorio Campos, Antonio Campos, Luis Capanelli, Roque Carneiro, Segundo Caro, Francisco Carregado, Evaristo Carreras, Segundo Carreras, Tómas Casares, Carlos Casares, Juan Casot, Adolfo Castilla, Gerónimo Castro, Antonio Catanino, Antonio Ciminaghi, Juan Cisneros, Alfredo Coch, José Colmidio, Vicente Colmos, Juan Colombo, Luis

Conde, Rosarino Costa, Mario Costa, Vicente Cox, Eduardo Cruz, Juan Cura, José Curia, Rafael Dávila, Segundo de la Cruz, Juan Delarosa, Juan de la Rosa, Pedro del Costa, José de Luca, Miguel de Maturana, José Desiderio, N. Dubuch, Luis Eredia, Alfonso Esnal, José Esquirre, Juan Esquivel, Pedro Exposito, Francisco Faccio, Juan

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Appendix B

Farina, Juan Federico, Constanzo Fernández, Ángel Fernández, Manuel Fernández, Miguel Fernández, N. Fernández, Pedro Ferrer, José Rosario Ferreyra, Pedro A. Fonseca, José Fuente, José A. Fussatti, Juan Galán, Alfonso García, Andrés García, Enrique García, Jesús García, José García de la Mata, A. Gil, Enrique Gil, José Gil, Pablo Gilimón, Eduardo Gimenez, Ramón Giraldo, Leopoldo A. Gómez, Eduardo Gómez, Juan Gómez, Luis M. Gómez, Pedro Gondín, Antonio González, Almancio González, Dalmacio González, Ismael González, Ramón González, Salvador Gotin, J. Griani, Pascual Guasone, Carlos Guevara, Benito Gutiérrez, Domingo A. Hiriani, José Inglán, Gregorio Jaquet, Francisco

Jardín, Narciso Lafera, Carlos Ledesma, Teodoro Lencio, Antonio Lescano, Felipe López, Andrés López, Antonio López, Cosme López, Francisco López, Hermenegildo López, José López, Juan López, Manuel López, Zenón Loubet, Alberto Ludzon, Carlos Luna, Francisco Madeyra, Martin Magrassi, Luis Maloni, Mario Mantouani, Atila Marino, José Marrey, Amilcar Martínez, Enrique Matturo, José Meda, Juan Mesa, Irineo Mirando, Faustino Moleche, Horacio Molina, Diego Moncamps, Daniel Moncamps, Francisco Mondaine, Eduardo Montagnoli, Santos Montero, Juan Moscaro, Manuel Motta, Juan Muñoz, Ramón Muruba, E. Gomez Navarro, Francisco Niancuchi, Francisco Niex, Federico

Nimos, José Nobile, Ángel Nope, Fermín Noya, M. Orsini, Beltran Ortega, Juan Otano, Pedro Otero, Carmelo Ovidi, Romulo Paez, Nicolás Paganelli, Aurelio Parravicini, C. Pauletti, Juan Pera, Alejandro Peralta, Andelón Peralta, J. Perrota, Juan Petroch, Antonio Pineyro, Juan C. Piot, Ernesto Pizarro, Manuel Pomes, Francisco Posatti, Juan Puentes, José M. Quiruga, Zacarías Raffetón, Guillermo Rejas, Santiago Rodríguez, Antonio Rodríguez, Ramón Romero, Jesús Rosales, Benjamín Roselli, Juan Rosinola, José Ross, Jaime Russo, Carmelo Salerno, Francisco J. Salud, Joaquín Sanao, José Sánchez, Abelardo Sánchez, Manuel Santeros, Carlos Seijo, Manuel

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Prisoners in or Deported from Argentina

Trabulsi, Elian Urdes, Juan Vázquez, Saturnino Ventura, Mariano

Villagán, Germán Fernández Villanueva, Francisco Viola, Vicente Yazulo, Antonio

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Serantoni, Fortunato Suárez, Emilio V. Tacella, José Tiboldi, Andrés Torres, Marcelino

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Notes

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Introduction

1. Deacon, Russell, and Woollacott, Transnational Lives, 2. 2. Berry and Bantman, New Perspectives. Berry and Bantman emphasize the transnational links among French, English, Swedish, Polish, and Spanish anarchists at the turn of the twentieth century and describe how the relationship between British and French revolutionary syndicalism affected the labor movements in both countries. 3. Hatton and Williamson, “What Drove the Mass Migrations?” 4. For a detailed analysis of immigration theories over time, see Massey et al., “Theories of International Migration.” The authors do not attempt to prove that one approach is correct. Instead, they counsel that each theory, with its assumptions, has implications, and that policymakers need to understand that solutions to problems raised by population movements are complex. 5. Sánchez-Alonso, “Those Who Left.” 6. Argentine rates of return can be found in Bourdé, Buenos Aires, 132. For return rates for different ethnic groups in the United States, see Wyman, Round-Trip to America, 10, 11 (ranging from 5 to 89 percent). 7. Thistlethwaite, “Migration from Europe,” 73–74. 8. Wyman, Round-Trip to America. 9. Gregory, “Algunas observaciones,” 184. 10. Iriye, Global Community, 8. 11. Tilly, “Trust Networks.” 12. Ibid., 5.

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Notes to Introduction and Chapter 1

13. Moretti, “Social Networks and Migrations,” 640. 14. Turcato, “Italian Anarchism.” 15. Tarrow, New Transnational Activism, 51, 53. 16. Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists; Gómez Casas, Historia; Morato, Líderes. 17. Smith, Anarchism, Revolution, and Reaction. 18. Ealham, Anarchism and the City. 19. Casanova, Tierra y Libertad, 98. Loredo cautioned Spanish anarchists to avoid becoming sidetracked by World War I and to adhere faithfully to their anarchist principles (Tierra y Libertad, August 18, 1915). 20. See Zaragoza, Anarquismo argentino; López, FORA; Penelas, Gallegos anarquistas; Abad de Santillán, FORA. 21. Moya, Cousins and Strangers. 22. Anderson, Under Three Flags. See also Ealham, Anarchism and the City, 45. 23. Hirsch and van der Walt, Anarchism and Syndicalism, xxxii. 24. Gabaccia, “Is Everywhere Nowhere?”

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Chapter 1. Origins of the Spanish Anarchist Movement

1. Vincent, Spain, 23. 2. Joll, Anarchists, 42. 3. Quoted in Avrich, Anarchist Portraits, 11. 4. See Nikolaevskij and Maenchen-Helfen, Karl Marx, 288. 5. Quoted in Morato, Líderes, 84. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are by the author. 6. Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists, 41. 7. Quoted in Joll, Anarchists, 226. 8. Carr, Spain, 311. 9. Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists, 44. 10. Ibid., 46–47. 11. Quoted in Morato, Lideres, 164. 12. Ibid., 165. 13. Information from Pellicer Paraire’s obituary in Tierra y Libertad, May 31, 1916. 14. Carr, Spain, 332. 15. Brenan, Spanish Labyrinth, 145n. 16. Ibid., 3. 17. Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists, 92. 18. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, chapter 1. 19. Ibid.; for a discussion of the impact of railroads on Spanish emigration, see 41–43. 20. Statistics from Scobie, Argentina, table 3, 277. 21. See Rama, Historia, 162–63. 22. Sánchez-Alonso, “Those Who Left,” 732. 23. Quoted in Historia general, 1:264.

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Notes to Chapters 1 and 2

24. Ibid., 239. The other 15 percent was not reported. 25. La Protesta, August 12, 1932 (“Obreros perseguidos en Francia, Italia y España trajeron a estas tierras la semilla de la revolución y desde hace sesenta años no dejado germinar”). 26. Quoted in Quesada, Argentine Anarchism, 9. 27. Nettlau, Contribution, 1. 28. La Protesta, August 12, 1932. 29. Brenan, Spanish Labyrinth, 157. 30. Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists, 81. 31. Zaragoza, “Antonio Pellicer,” 102.

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Chapter 2. Anarchists and Immigration from Spain

1. Brenan, Spanish Labyrinth, 152–63. Brenan mentions that the term libertarian was invented in 1898 by Sebastien Faure as a way to describe anarchist ideas, which were proscribed (162n). 2. Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists, 105. 3. Brenan, Spanish Labyrinth, 161. 4. Romero Maura, “Terrorism in Barcelona.” 5. Esenwein, Anarchist Ideology, 189. 6. See Zaragoza, Anarquismo argentino, 112. 7. Tierra y Libertad, May 31, 1916. 8. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 119–20. 9. Ibid., chapter 2. 10. Boyd, “Anarchists and Education,” 149. 11. Brenan, Spanish Labyrinth, 118. 12. For a discussion of “stepping stones in stage migration,” see Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 33. 13. Memoria de relaciones (1892), 704 14. Historia general. 15. Memoria de relaciones (1897–98). The consul claims that passenger lists compiled by the shipping companies showed 9,179 Spaniards had immigrated to Argentina in 1897. However, 18,316 Spaniards actually arrived in Argentina and were processed through the Hotel de Inmigrantes. That means 50 percent of Spaniards left Spain without being recorded officially that year. 16. Memoria de relaciones (1900), 273–74. 17. Memoria de relaciones (1893), 267. 18. García López, Remesas, 122, table 16. 19. Ibid., 95. 20. Historia general, 1:180. Figures for 1882–1930 show that 48.36 percent of Spaniards going to the Americas went to Argentina, 33.93 percent went to Cuba, 7 percent went to Brazil, 2.5 percent went to Uruguay, and 8.1 percent went to other countries.

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Notes to Chapter 2

21. Memoria de relaciones (1892), 561–62. See also November 26, 1891: Real Orden sobre auxilios a la emigración a Cuba (Royal Order Concerning Assistance for Emigration to Cuba), Historia general. 22. Richmond, Carlos Pellegrini, 39. 23. See Oved, “Influencia.” 24. República Argentina, Tercer Censo Nacional, vol. 10, “La Inmigración,” 399. 25. Nido, Informe general. 26. Abad de Santillán Archives, File 12, Institute for Social History, Amsterdam. 27. Zaragoza, “Anarquistas españoles,” 112. 28. Ibid., 114. Zaragoza also mentions the fusion of Italian and Spanish anarchism in Argentina. 29. Zaragoza, Anarquismo argentino, 112. 30. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 53. 31. Ibid., 54. 32. Ibid., 55. 33. Zaragoza, Anarquismo argentino, 80–81. 34. Zaragoza, “Anarquistas españoles.” 35. Solomonoff, Ideologías, 193–94. 36. Ibid., 198. 37. Yerrill and Rosser, Revolutionary Unionism, 14. 38. La Protesta Humana, October 1, 1897, quoted in Abad de Santillán, FORA, 49. 39. Ibid., 47. 40. Yerrill and Rosser, Revolutionary Unionism, 16. 41. La Protesta Humana, March 23, 1901, quoted in Abad de Santillán, FORA, 67. 42. Mella and Prat (returned from Argentina) declared that Spanish anarchists had lost the sympathy of the workers and should reject the violence of “propaganda of the deed” (Romero Maura, “Terrorism in Barcelona,” 133). When Alfonso García, an Argentine born to Spanish immigrant parents, came back to Spain in early 1900s to assassinate the king, he found little support among Spanish anarchists. By 1904, a new period of violence had begun. 43. Abad de Santillán Archives, File 12. 44. Abad de Santillán, FORA, chapter 3. 45. Korzeniewicz, “Labor Unrest.” 46. Baer, “Tenant Contention,” 47, table 7, 47. 47. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 63–64. 48. Abad de Santillán, Movimiento anarquista, 86. 49. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 82; chapter 4 has a complete summary of the proceedings. 50. Abad de Santillán, Movimiento anarquista, 95–96. 51. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 149, table 14, “Total and Spanish-Born Population in Buenos Aires, 1855–1936.”

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Notes to Chapter 3

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Chapter 3. Deportations and Reverse Migration

1. Zaragoza, “Antonio Pellicer,” 104. 2. Pellicer, Memorándum. 3. La Protesta, August 17, 1932; Zaragoza, “Anarquistas españoles.” 4. I thank Professor José Moya for providing me with a list of anarchists from police records in Buenos Aires. 5. Information about these individual anarchists comes from lists in Abad de Santillán, FORA, and from information compiled by José Moya. 6. Camba, Rana viajera, 65. 7. Ibid., 11. 8. For a discussion of ideological differences among anarchists and the role of Camba, see Suriano, Anarquistas. According to Suriano, the anti-organizational El Rebelde ceased publication in 1903, after Camba and many other Spanish anarchists were deported (66). 9. Álvarez Junco, Ideología política, 151. 10. La Protesta Humana, March 28, 1903. 11. Ibid. 12. Epifanio Portela, ambassador to Spain, to José A. Terry, Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto, April 8, 1904, wrote that the Argentine socialist Adrian Patroni was in Spain giving talks to workers on conditions in Argentina to discourage Spanish immigration. Spanish authorities prohibited these lectures. See Memoria de relaciones (1904), 429. 13. Romero Maura, “Terrorism in Barcelona,” 156. 14. See E. G. Gilimón, “Los sindicalistas,” in López, FORA, 191–94. Gilimón links Argentine syndicalists with the Socialist Party and accuses them of attacking anarchist principles. 15. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 116. 16. Quoted in ibid., 113. 17. Ibid., 157. 18. Álvarez Junco, Ideología política, 20. 19. For a discussion of syndicalist unions, their relationship with the state, and the role of the port workers, see Adelman, “State and Labour.” 20. “In reality, almost all the influential leaders of the working class were originally from that socio-economic group. The political orientation of these militants was predominantly self-taught, since many of them had only become literate as adults” (Solomonoff, Ideologías, 202). 21. Ricardo Mella, one of the most notable Spanish anarchist thinkers, was an engineer, José Prat was a writer, Antonio Pellicer Paraire was a typographer, and Tarrida de Marmol, who coined the phrase “anarchism without adjectives,” was an engineer. In the twentieth century, the CNT’s leaders were workers, but few of them ever emerged as writers or theoreticians analogous to such self-educated laborers as Manuel Villar or Emilio López Arango in Argentina. 22. See Baer, “Tenant Mobilization,” 343–68; Suriano, Huelga.

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Notes to Chapter 3

23. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 167. 24. Solidaridad Obrera, February 19, 1910. A front-page article on the creation of the CORA comments on its founding document: “Como veis, es un documento meditado y bien escrito, y al dar nuestra enhorabuena a los compañeros de la Argentina, recomendamos a todos los compañeros de nuestra Confederación Regional lo estudien detenidamente, por si quieren aprovechar algo para el próximo Congreso Obrero que se celebrará en septiembre [As you can see, this is a thoughtful and well-written document. We congratulate our Argentine comrades and recommend to all our comrades in the Regional Confederation that they carefully study this document if they wish to accomplish something in the Workers’ Congress that will meet in September].” That congress created the CNT. 25. Rodríguez Galdo, “Cruzando el Atlántico.” Rodríguez Galdo indicates that statistics from passenger lists are very incomplete; they do not identify Spaniards who emigrated from French ports or illegal immigrants. 26. Sánchez-Albornoz, “Emigración española.” 27. La Protesta, February 3, 1910. 28. Tierra y Libertad, March 19, 1908, July 25, 1907. 29. Solidaridad Obrera, August 12, 1910. 30. Rey, Estampas bravas, 32. 31. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 109–11. 32. Ibid., 108. 33. See López, FORA. The appendixes list resolutions and documents from the FORA congresses. 34. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 113. 35. Ibid., 120. 36. Quoted in López, FORA, 88. 37. Registro Nacional, 1:681 (February), 3:575 (October). 38. Abad de Santillán, Movimiento anarquista, 176. 39. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 165. 40. La Protesta, March 18, 1906. 41. Ibid., March 31, 1906. 42. Ibid., April 3, 1906. 43. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 137. 44. Ibid., 165. 45. Rouco Buela, Historia. 46. Quoted in Yerrill and Rosser, Revolutionary Unionism, 22. 47. “Haciendose solidario con los compañeros encarcelados por el reciente movimiento revolucionario español, por su actitud enérgica con motivo de la Guerra de Marruecos, proponiéndose desplegar todas las fuerzas que están al su alcance a fin de hacer práctico el boicot a los productos procedencia española” (quoted in Abad de Santillán, FORA, 181). 48. Quoted in Yerrill and Rosser, Revolutionary Unionism, 23. 49. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 198–99. Abad de Santillán states that deportations “in-

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Notes to Chapters 3 and 4

creased considerably in succeeding years, when such expulsions became the order of the day” (199). La Protesta, January 20, 1910, listed eight anarchists recently deported; four more were listed on January 22, 1910. 50. Gilimón, Hechos y comentarios, 103–4. 51. La Protesta, March 17, 1910. 52. Topografía 54/Asuntos Exteriores, No. 11. 53. Ibid., February 3, 1903. 54. Romero Maura, “Terrorism in Barcelona,” 133. 55. See quote by Teresa Claramunt that Spanish women should not help employers by taking jobs from men in Smith, Anarchism, Revolution, and Reaction, 121. 56. Romero Maura, “Terrorism in Barcelona,” 153–54. 57. Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists, 129. 58. Morato, Líderes, 168. 59. Romero Maura, “Terrorism in Barcelona.” 60. Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists, 131. 61. For a discussion of the fusion of the syndicalist-supported general strike with the Bakuninist view of insurrection, see Smith, Anarchism, Revolution, and Reaction, 129. 62. See Ernesto P. Piot, “Propositos del Sindicalismo,” Solidaridad Obrera, April 16, 1909. Piot was a member of the Union Obrera in Buenos Aires. 63. Quoted in Montseny, Precursores, Anselmo Lorenzo, 30. 64. Solidaridad Obrera, February 12, 1910. 65. Tierra y Libertad, February 24, 1910. 66. Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists, 143. 67. Ibid., 144. 68. República Argentina, Tercer Censo Nacional, vol. 10, “La Inmigración,” 399. 69. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 198. 70. The Argentine government sent a list to the Spanish Embassy in Buenos Aires on January 3, 1910, giving the names of all those deported. See Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Box 9116. 71. “Argentine Barbarism for the World to See,” Solidaridad Obrera, February 12, 1910. 72. Ibid. Chapter 4. The CNT and the War Years

1. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 61. 2. Solidaridad Obrera, October 21, 1910. 3. República Argentina, Tercer Censo Nacional, vol. 10, “La Inmigración,” 399. 4. Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists, 150. 5. Solidaridad Obrera, February 19, 1910. 6. Tierra y Libertad, March 29, 1916. 7. Ibid., August 18, 1915. 8. Ibid., September 8, 1915.

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Notes to Chapter 4

9. Ibid., October 20, 1915. 10. For Loredo’s article on the death penalty, see Tierra y Libertad, December 1, 1915; his reports on events in Logroño began on March 22, 1916. Loredo died after suddenly becoming ill while in Logroño. 11. Hucha must have returned to Argentina from Montevideo because his name is reported among those deported from Argentina on board the Cap Finisterre in August 1913 (Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Box 9129, Dispatch 241). 12. “La Protesta de Buenos Aires,” Tierra y Libertad, August 21, 1912. 13. Ibid., March 14, 1914. 14. Ibid., May 17, 1916. 15. See Solidaridad Obrera, May 27, 1915. 16. Quoted in Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists, 148. 17. On May 17, 1916, Tierra y Libertad published a front-page article, “The Problem of Housing and Rent in Spain,” that suggested that tenants should press their landlords for rent reductions and that labor unions should lead the movement. 18. Rosado, Tierra y Libertad, 46. 19. Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists, 155. 20. Brenan sets the number of political assassinations in Catalonia between 1919 and 1923 at seven hundred (Spanish Labyrinth, 74n). 21. Peirats, C.N.T., 1:30n. Peirats explains that Pestaña was imprisoned in Italy on his return to Spain, implying that the adherence by the CNT to the Third International continued only as long as its members remained ignorant of events in Russia and did not signal approval of the communist state. 22. Historia general, 1:329. 23. In 1913, Argentina received 364,271 immigrants. In 1914, that number dropped by about half, to 182,292 (República Argentina, Tercer Censo Nacional, vol. 10, “La Inmigración,” 399). 24. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 49. Abad de Santillán describes an incident during the 1910 May Day riots when a group of workers were threatened by gun-wielding police. Barrera yelled “Halt! Put down your rifles!” in a commanding voice that reflected his service as a naval officer. Abad de Santillán believed that Barrera probably saved the workers from being shot on the spot. 25. La Protesta, November 14, 1916. 26. Abad de Santillán quoted in La Continental Obrera, December 1929–January 1930. 27. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 16. 28. Abad de Santillán, Por qué perdimos, 8. 29. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 40. 30. Ibid., 48. 31. Abad de Santillán donated this issue as well as the rest of his private library to the Biblioteca Pública Arús in Barcelona. 32. Laureano Riera to Diego Abad de Santillán, May 5, 1962, Abad de Santillán Archives, File 11.

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Notes to Chapters 4 and 5

33. Baily, Labor, Nationalism, and Politics, 31, table I. 34. Rotondaro, Realidad y cambio, 98. 35. López, FORA, 51–52. 36. Baily, Labor, Nationalism, and Politics, 38. 37. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 245. 38. “Españoles expulsados de Argentina,” Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Box 9159. 39. Letter, June 24, 1919, in ibid. This letter was written before the July–September 1919 wave of deportations, indicating that significant numbers of earlier expulsions must have occurred. 40. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 55. 41. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 260. 42. Ibid., 256. 43. López, FORA, 54. 44. See Bayer, Patagonia. 45. Union Sindical, April 8, 1922, quoted in Penelas, Gallegos anarquistas, 152. 46. See Spalding, Organized Labor, 69; Abad de Santillán, FORA, 259. 47. López, FORA, 56. 48. Abad de Santillán Archives, File 12. 49. Ibid. 50. León J. Guerrero to Diego Abad de Santillán, February 23, 1923, in ibid., File 11. 51. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 69. 52. León J. Guerrero to Diego Abad de Santillán, September 26, 1922, Abad de Santillán Archives, File 11.

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Chapter 5. The FORA and the CNT

1. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 76. 2. Brenan, Spanish Labyrinth, 73. 3. Fritz Kater, “Joint Committee for the Defense of Revolutionists Imprisoned in Russia,” Abad de Santillán Archives, File 3, Folder 4. 4. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 80. 5. Ibid., 83. 6. Abad de Santillán, FORA, 182. 7. Historia general, 1:329. 8. Emilio López Arango to Diego Abad de Santillán, August 16, 1922, Abad de Santillán Archives, File 11. 9. Ibid., November 6, 1922. 10. López Arango and Abad de Santillán, Anarquismo, 5. 11. Ibid., 124. 12. Ibid., 158. 13. Luis Jorge Rey to Diego Abad de Santillán, February 3, 1923, Abad de Santillán Archives, File 11.

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Notes to Chapter 5

14. Ibid., May 1923 (“Como ser imposible que esté a nuestra altura el sindicalismo europeo”). 15. Peirats, C.N.T., 1:30. 16. Quoted from an attached “Addendum” to the “Estatuos de la Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores” of the 1922 Berlin Conference, International Workingmen’s Association Archives, Folder 37. 17. Abad de Santillán, “Asociación internacional.” 18. Ibid., 132. 19. J. M. Hacha to Diego Abad de Santillán, January 1925, Abad de Santillán Archives, File 37. 20. Gómez Casas, Anarchist Organisation, 62. 21. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 70. 22. Peirats, C.N.T., 1:28. 23. Eusebio C. Carbó to Diego Abad de Santillán, March 31, 1924, Abad de Santillán Archives, File 10. 24. Ibid., February 5, 1924. 25. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 92. 26. Emilio López Arango to Diego Abad de Santillán, May 16, 1925, Abad de Santillán Archives, File 10. 27. Enrique Nido to Diego Abad de Santillán, May 30, 1924, in ibid. 28. Diego Abad de Santillán to Max Nettlau, October 30, 1924, Max Nettlau Archives, File 122. 29. Minutes, Amsterdam conference of the AIT, March 21, 1925, Abad de Santillán Archives, File 4. 30. Ibid., March 25, 1925. 31. Ibid., March 27, 1925. 32. Ibid. 33. Diego Abad de Santillán to Max Nettlau, April 15, 1925, Max Nettlau Archives, File 122. 34. Julia García Fernández to Diego Abad de Santillán, March 2, 1924, Abad de Santillán Archives, File 10; for transcripts showing courses he took in Berlin in 1922 and 1923 but none for 1924, see File 3. 35. López Arango and Abad de Santillán, Anarquismo, 114. 36. Fontana to Diego Abad de Santillán, February 24, 1926, Abad de Santillán Archives, File 8. 37. Mariano Torrente to Diego Abad de Santillán (on La Protesta letterhead), April 24, 1926, in ibid. 38. Enrique Nido described how a hoped-for reconciliation between the La Protesta group and that of La Antorcha under González Pacheco failed because López Arango and Acha rebuffed the Antorcha group so strongly that all hope was lost (Enrique Nido to Diego Abad de Santillán, December 5, 1925, Abad de Santillán Archives, File 7).

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Notes to Chapter 5

39. Diego Abad de Santillán to Max Nettlau, April 9, 1924, Max Nettlau Archives, File 122. 40. Ibid., November 20, 1924. 41. Ibid., July 1925. 42. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 106. 43. José M. Fernández to Diego Abad de Santillán, July 8, 1922, Abad de Santillán Archives, File 11. 44. León Guerrero to Diego Abad de Santillán, December 18, 1923, in ibid. 45. Diego Abad de Santillán to Max Nettlau, August 6, 1924, Max Nettlau Archives, File 122. 46. Abad de Santillán Archives. 47. In a note to Fritz Kater, representatives of the Alianza Libertaria Argentina complained that Abad de Santillán only represented the FORA at the AIT conference in Berlin rather than the Alianza Libertaria Argentina, who were also Argentine anarchists (February 1, 1924, Abad de Santillán Archives). 48. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 108. 49. Diego Abad de Santillán to Max Nettlau, May 22, 1927, Max Nettlau Archives, File 122. 50. Molyneux, “No God, No Boss, No Husband,” 131. 51. Barrancos, “Anarquismo y sexualidad,” 15–37. 52. La Protesta, February 19, 1910. 53. See Barrancos, “Anarquismo y sexualidad.” 54. Diego Abad de Santillán to Max Nettlau, May 13, 1925, Max Nettlau Archives, File 122. 55. See DeWeerdt, “Free Love = Free Marriage?” 56. Barrancos, “Anarquismo y sexualidad,” 31. 57. Ibid., 20. 58. Ibid., 32. 59. Rouco Buela, Historia, 58. 60. Ibid., 79. 61. Ibid., 74. 62. Ibid., 85. 63. Ibid., 86, 87. 64. Ibid., 91. 65. Ibid., 94. 66. Quoted in Barrancos, “Anarquismo y sexualidad,” 29. 67. Ibid. 68. Barrancos lists several publications in the 1920s: “La vida sexual y las enfermidades venéras,” by Dr. Erhard Rieke; “La higiene de la vida sexual,” by Dr. Max Gruber; “La vida sexual contemporánea,” by Dr. Irwin Bloch; and “La guía de la salud,” by Dr. Werner Fisher-Defogy.

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Notes to Chapters 5 and 6

69. Sergio Varela to Diego Abad de Santillán, January 14, 1925, Abad de Santillán Archives, File 12. 70. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 119. 71. Diego Abad de Santillán to Max Nettlau, February 12, 1929, Max Nettlau Archives, File 122. 72. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 133–34. 73. Ibid., 106. 74. Gómez Casas, Anarchist Organisation, 65. 75. Peirats, C.N.T., 1:41. 76. Gómez Casas, Anarchist Organisation, 75. 77. Quoted in ibid., 80. 78. Quoted in Peirats, C.N.T., 1:40. 79. Quoted in Gómez Casas, Anarchist Organisation, 94. 80. For a version of the program and a report of the meeting, see Gómez Casas, Anarchist Organisation, 107–12. 81. Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists, 198. 82. Peirats, C.N.T., 1:42. 83. Gómez Casas, Anarchist Organisation, 116, 117.

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Chapter 6. Changing Political Climates

1. Sánchez-Albornoz, “La emigración española.” 2. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 171. 3. Ibid., 140. 4. Diego Abad de Santillán to Max Nettlau, September 18, 1930, Max Nettlau Archives, File 122. 5. Nervio, October 1933, 26. 6. On July 15, 1932, La Protesta reported the arrests of hundreds of individuals the previous day and seventy more that day. On November 29, 1932, the paper reported that President General Augustín Pedro Justo had signed a decree authorizing the deportation of ninety-three undesirables. 7. Abad de Santillán wrote hopefully to Max Nettlau that Villar would be able to continue editorship of La Protesta (Diego Abad de Santillán to Max Nettlau, July 4, 1932, Max Nettlau Archives, File 122). 8. La Antorcha, October 25, 1930, lists forty workers who were deported. Those on the Cap Arcona on October 10, 1930, were taken directly to Spain. Those on board the French ship Campana managed to get off in Montevideo. The Spanish ship Cabo Palos took six deportees to Spain on October 15. Deportees on board the German ship Wertemburgo, which sailed on October 16, also disembarked in Montevideo, but Argentine government ordered the German ship Belgrano, which sailed on October 20, not to stop at Montevideo so that no deportees could get off. A report to the AIT in Amsterdam recorded

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Notes to Chapter 6

the names of twenty-nine of these deportees (International Workingmen’s Association Archive, Folder 60). 9. Diego Abad de Santillán to Max Nettlau, January 25, 1931. Max Nettlau Archives, File 122. 10. Manzanares, Vidas anarquistas, 77, claims that Jorge Rodríguez, a Rosario police officer, witnessed Penina’s killing and that he was summarily executed by the police. 11. Penelas, Gallegos anarquistas, 95. 12. Ibid., 252–53. 13. José Grunfeld, interview by the author, Buenos Aires, July 25, 2000. 14. Quoted in Mendoza and Scandizzo, “Crucero,” 60. 15. La Vanguardia, December 5, 1931. 16. The study was done by Dr. Miguel Jantus of the University of Buenos Aires Law School, 1938. I thank Hernán Scandizzo for providing me with this information. Other categories of deportees included communists (338), mafiosos (326), thieves (728), and ruffians (397). 17. I thank Hernán Scandizzo for generously sharing his research on the Chaco with me. 18. La Protesta, April 6, 1932. 19. Bandera Roja, April 1, 1932. 20. Ibid., May 4, 1932. 21. La Vanguardia, February 11, 13, 1932. 22. Grunfeld, Memorias, 121. 23. La Protesta, July 8, 1932. 24. Grunfeld, Memorias; for details of the 1932 conference in Rosario, see chapter 9. 25. Gómez Casas, Anarchist Organisation, 121. 26. Peirats, C.N.T., 1:62. 27. Gómez Casas, Anarchist Organisation, 125–26. 28. Ibid., 134. 29. Brenan, Spanish Labyrinth, 242. 30. Peirats, C.N.T., 1:69. 31. Gómez Casas cited Abad de Santillán and Juan Manuel Molina as his sources (Anarchist Organisation, 137). 32. Quoted in ibid., 135. 33. Ibid., 71. 34. Ibid., 137. 35. Ibid., 150. 36. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 175. 37. “We proposed the idea of toleration among all revolutionary parties and the possibility of working together with all the strength we had, and of free choice, if necessary, among all economic and social plans, which naturally implied the recognition among anarchists of the widest possible variety of economic undertakings” (Diego Abad de Santillán to Max Nettlau, October 12, 1931, Max Nettlau Archives, File 122).

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Notes to Chapters 6 and 7

38. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 166. 39. Diego Abad de Santillán to Max Nettlau, June 12, 1931, Max Nettlau Archives, File 122. 40. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 181. 41. Diego Abad de Santillán to Max Nettlau, July 4, 1932, Max Nettlau Archives, File 122. 42. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 185. 43. Ibid., 182. 44. Ibid. 45. According to Abad de Santillán, González had been involved with the anarchist press in Argentina since his youth and had been deported after returning to Buenos Aires from exile in Montevideo. Miró was the youngest member of the group but had been active in the Caribbean before returning to Spain. In Abad de Santillán’s words, “We made a perfect affinity group, each one with absolute confidence in the other and each one able to think for himself ” (Memorias, 185). 46. Payne, Spanish Revolution, 19. “Henceforth, such direction by a special anarchist elite became characteristic of the syndicalist movement in Spain, and was continued by the regional anarchist groups of the next generation and the organized Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) of 1927, which dominated the syndicalist movement of the 1930s.” 47. Gómez Casas, Anarchist Organisation. 48. Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists, 232. 49. Ibid., 242. 50. Peirats, C.N.T., 1:97. Peirats based his account of the uprising on Villar’s book, written under the pseudonym Ignotus, Anarquismo.

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Chapter 7. Abad de Santillán and the Anarchist Revolution

1. Quoted in Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists, 257. 2. In mid-1935, Ricardo Mestre met at Soli’s offices with Abad de Santillán, Pedro Herrera, Juanel, and García Oliver. García Oliver proposed a plan to take over the government and declare libertarian communism. Mestre “awaited an immediate response from Santillán to that astounding proposition, so opposed to libertarian ideas. I thought he was the most knowledgeable and experienced one to reply to García Oliver and reject his proposal.” When Abad de Santillán did not give an immediate reply, Mestre said that García Oliver sounded like a communist. At that point Abad de Santillán “spoke up, brilliantly crushing the proposition with irrefutable arguments” (Ricardo Mestre to Jacinto Torhyo, July 29, 1975, Diego Abad de Santillán Archives, File 11). 3. Alexander, Anarchists, 1:87. 4. Abad de Santillán, Memorias, 253. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Frank Mintz, a French academic and student of the Spanish anarchist movement, suggests that Abad de Santillán’s shift from “pure” anarchism in the 1920s in Argentina to

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Notes to Chapter 7

anarcho-syndicalism in the 1930s in Spain resulted from his inability to motivate disparate groups to oppose the military dictatorship after September 6, 1930 (“Pensamiento”). 8. Diego Abad de Santillán to Juan López, March 20, 1968, Abad de Santillán Archives, Addendum, Folio B. 9. See Bolloten, Grand Camouflage; Alexander, Anarchists; Brenan, Spanish Labyrinth; Thomas, Spanish Civil War; Bookchin, Spanish Anarchists. 10. Brenan, Spanish Labyrinth, 299. 11. Carr, Spain, 649. 12. Abad de Santillán, Organismo económico, 180–81. 13. Quoted in Salas Viu, Primeras jornadas, 49. 14. Quoted in H. Edward Knoblaugh, Correspondent in Spain, 149–50. 15. Ibid., 17. 16. Quoted in Peirats, C.N.T., 1:158. 17. Jackson, Spanish Republic, is an excellent liberal account of the period and favors the socialists and Republicans over the scheming communists and idealistic anarchists. See also Payne, Spanish Revolution. James Joll says, “The inconvenience and inefficiency of an economy run by independent committees became increasingly apparent” (Anarchists, 259). 18. For an anarchist perspective, see Abad de Santillán, Por qué perdimos. George Orwell fought for a communist splinter group, the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista; see Orwell, Homage. Thomas, Spanish Civil War, offers criticism of the revolution. 19. Seidman, “Individualisms.” 20. Kaplan, “Spanish Anarchism.” 21. Quoted in Peirats, C.N.T., 1:125–33. 22. Seidman, Republic of Egos. 23. De julio a julio: Un año de lucha (Barcelona: Editorial Tierra y Libertad, 1937), quoted in Peirats, C.N.T., 1:159. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Rabasseire, España, 136–37. 27. Abad de Santillán, interview by author. I asked Abad de Santillán how he could have collaborated with a government. He replied that at the time, he felt that a revolution imposed by force would not be a libertarian one. A true revolution emanated from the people. In July 1936, the exigencies of war overwhelmed everything else. 28. Quoted in Peirats, C.N.T., 1:160. 29. Bolloten, Grand Camouflage, 48–49. 30. Abad de Santillán, Organismo económico, provides a detailed account of the Congress of Saragossa, where the revolutionary economy had been devised. 31. Grunfeld, interview by author. 32. Laval, Colectividades, 2:37. 33. Ibid., 37.

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Notes to Chapters 7 and 8

34. Ibid., 58–59. 35. Peirats, C.N.T., 1:319–20. 36. Spanish Revolution, September 5, 1936. 37. Laval, Colectividades, 2:32. 38. Rabasseire, España, 157. 39. Laval, Colectividades, 2:47. 40. Ibid., appendix. 41. Ibid., 44.

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Chapter 8. Argentine and Spanish Anarchists

1. Penelas, Gallegos anarquistas, 74. 2. Quoted in Bolloten, Spanish Civil War, 210. Villar explained anarchists’ participation as a means of defending the revolution (324). 3. See Penelas, Gallegos anarquistas. 4. Grunfeld, interview by author. 5. Grunfeld, Memorias, 141. 6. For a defense of FORA, see López, FORA, 77–78. For comments on these differences, see Solomonoff, Ideologías, 194. 7. Grunfeld, Memorias, 152. 8. See Pérez, “Anarchist Movement.” 9. CRRA to FAI Secretariat, May 8, 1934, Federación Anarquista Ibérica, Peninsular Committee, Archives, Microfilm 154, Packet 20. 10. Document included in Federación Anarquista Ibérica, Peninsular Committee, Archives, Propaganda, November 1937, File 239. 11. José Grunfeld to author, April 27, 1992. 12. Jacobo Prince to secretary of the Peninsular Committee of the FAI (on FACA letterhead), October 8, 1937, Federación Anarquista Ibérica, Peninsular Committee, Archives, File 239, indicates that FACA had distributed FAI information in Argentina. 13. Peirats, C.N.T., 3:97. 14. José Grunfeld to author, February 18, 1991. 15. Grunfeld, Memorias, 174. 16. José Grunfeld to author, April 27, 1992. 17. Grunfeld, Memorias, 176. 18. Letter No. 3, Valencia, September 11, 1938, Federación Anarquista Ibérica, Peninsular Committee, Archives, Microfilm 150, Packet 15, No. 6B3. 19. Letter No. 1, August 9, 1938, in ibid. 20. Grunfeld, Memorias, 223. 21. Thomas, Spanish Civil War, 387–88 n. 2. 22. For animosity against Grunfeld and other foreigners, see Pablo [?], letter, November 8, 1938, Federación Anarquista Ibérica, Peninsular Committee, Archives, Microfilm 150, Packet 15, No. 6B3.

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Notes to Chapter 8

23. Cimazo, Recuerdos, 42. 24. Cimazo, Revolución, 132. 25. Cimazo, Recuerdos, 43. 26. According to Maguid, he met Goldman when she visited Tierra y Libertad’s offices: “The dialogue began in English, in which I could barely jabber, stringing together poorly worded sentences. I found the solution when I suggested that we speak in Yiddish, a language she understood quite well and one I could manage passably” (ibid., 48). 27. Cimazo, Revolución, 118. 28. Jacobo Maguid to the Peninsular Committee of the FAI, February 1937, Federación Anarquista Ibérica, Peninsular Committee, Archives, Microfilm 213, Packet 48, No. 4A. 29. Diego Abad de Santillán to Alberto Pérez Baró quoted in Alexander, Anarchists, 1:505. 30. Diego Abad de Santillán, resignation letter, October 1, 1936, Federación Anarquista Ibérica, Peninsular Committee, Archives, Microfilm 207, Packet 46, No. A. 31. Thomas, Spanish Civil War, 340–42. Alexander, Anarchists, 1:167–71, has challenged this long-held view, suggesting that anarchist troops fought well and effectively. 32. Alexander, Anarchists, 2:928. 33. La Noche, April 19, 1937, quoted in “The Friends of Durruti Group from Its Inception up to the May Events,” chapter 5, n. 9, http://www.spunk.org/library/places/spain/ sp001780/chap5.html (accessed August 7, 2003); Bolloten, Spanish Civil War, 640. 34. Quoted in Abad de Santillán, De Alfonso XIII a Franco, 469. 35. Peirats, C.N.T., 2:156. 36. Timón, September 1938. 37. “En voz baja,” Timón, December 1938, reprinted in Suplementos 36 ( January 1993): 85–88. 38. “Estudio polémico,” Timón, September 1938, in Peirats, C.N.T., 3:255–56. 39. Quoted in ibid., 3:243. 40. Ibid., 247. 41. Bolloten, Spanish Civil War, 626. 42. The CNT’s demands as expressed in an article in Solidaridad Obrera, can be found in Peirats, C.N.T., 3:261. 43. Alexander, Anarchists, 2:1054. 44. Declaration by the Extraordinary Congress of the AIT, Paris, June 1937, in Peirats, C.N.T., 2:235. 45. “Confidential Report on the CNT in Spain,” February 1937, International Workingmen’s Association Archives, Folder 19. 46. Quoted in Peirats, C.N.T., 2:234. 47. Federación Anarquista Ibérica, Peninsular Committee, Archives, February 1937, Microfilm 213, Packet 48, No. A4. 48. See González, “Politics of Betrayal.” 49. Alexander, Anarchists, 1:277. 50. Thomas, Spanish Civil War, 633.

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Notes to Chapters 8 and 9

51. Ibid., 649. 52. Alexander, Anarchists, 1:98–99. 53. “Informe de la Comisión Organizadora Nacional,” José María Lunazzi, letter, July 16, 1938, both in Federación Libertaria Argentina Archives, Buenos Aires. 54. Letter, July 17, 1939, in ibid. 55. “Relación con el patronato español,” August 21, 1939, in ibid. 56. Laureano Riera Díaz to Manuel Martín Fernández, August 3, 1939, in ibid. 57. Laureano Riera Díaz to the French Section of the SIA, August 17, 1939, in ibid. 58. Laureano Riera Díaz to the Secretary of the Local Committee of the SIA in Rosario, August 15, 1939 (indicating assistance to Marcelino Fernández and Leonor González with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs); SIA, Comisión de Ayuda a Exiliados Antifascistas in Argentina to Compañera Matilde, delegate to the SIA in France, August 11, 1939, both in ibid. (“Family members are looking for Manuel Tur, who has disappeared. . . . Señora Monserrat Avis de Gelaver is searching for Anita Imbers Gelaver, single woman from Catalonia, who is a kindergarten teacher.”)

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Chapter 9. Exile and Homecoming

1. Quoted in Cate-Arries, Spanish Culture, 146. 2. Ibid., 139. 3. “Diego Abad de Santillán,” 22 (“Los primeros tiempos fueron muy duros; todas las puertas se me cerraban, por temor a no sé qué. Lo pasé mal”). 4. Cimazo, Recuerdos, 60–61. 5. Grunfeld, Memorias, 240. 6. For a list of those arriving on the Winnipeg and receiving assistance from the SIA, see appendix A. 7. See Grunfeld, Memorias, 233–34; Peirats, Appendix, 3. 8. The countries in the Americas with the greatest number of Spanish refugees were Mexico (30,000), the Dominican Republic (5,000), Venezuela (5,000), Chile (3,500), and Argentina (10,000). 9. Grunfeld, Memorias, 240 (“Mientras tanto, tuve que concurrir al Departamento Central de Policía (yo lo había conocido años atrás) para verificar cuáles eran mis intenciones militantes”). 10. “El clima político creado por Perón motiva alarma por sus actitudes amenazantes,” Reconstruir 20 (August 1947). 11. Cimazo, Recuerdos, 64. 12. See Grunfeld, Memorias, 279. 13. de la Rosa and de Pelosi, “Vientos de cambio.” 14. Abad de Santillán Archives, File 15, No. 20. The group claimed to have fifty members in 1941. 15. Manager at Live Oak Farm to Diego Abad de Santillán, July 1952, Abad de Santillán Archives, Addendum, Folder 1.

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Notes to Chapter 9

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16. Ethel Duffy Turner to Diego Abad de Santillán, December 31, 1955, Abad de Santillán Archives, Addendum, Folio B. 17. José Grunfeld to author, February 18, 1991. 18. Noted in Maguid, “Diego Abad de Santillán,” 68–70. 19. Abad de Santillán Archives, File 20. 20. Juan López to Diego Abad de Santillán, October 21, 1967, Abad de Santillán Archives, Addendum, Folio B. 21. Carmen Pastor to Diego Abad de Santillán, March 19, 1968, in ibid. 22. Abad de Santillán to J. M. Cajica, November 25, 1975, in ibid. (“Ud comprenderá que para mí es una obligación moral estar presente en España en esta hora y voy a procurar que el asunto no se dilate demasiado”). 23. Cappelletti, “Vida e ideario,” 14. 24. “Cualquier oportunidad es buena para hablar de España, y de lo español, y sobre todo en América, en la América hispánica, que es siempre España y siempre española, a pesar de los aportes llegados de otros pueblos” (Comunidad Ibérica 29–30 [ July–October 1967], quoted in Antropos 36 [ January 1993]: 161). 25. Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood, 226.

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Bibliography

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Periodicals

La Antorcha (Buenos Aires) Antropos (Barcelona) Bandera Roja (Buenos Aires) La Continental Obrera (Buenos Aires) Nervio (Buenos Aires) La Noche (Barcelona) La Protesta (Buenos Aires) La Protesta Humana (Buenos Aires) Solidaridad Obrera (Barcelona) Spanish Revolution (Barcelona) Tierra y Libertad (Barcelona) Timón (Barcelona) La Vanguardia (Buenos Aires) Personal Interviews

Diego Abad de Santillán, 1973, Buenos Aires José Grunfeld, 1984, 1993, 2000, Buenos Aires Jacobo Maguid, 1993, Buenos Aires

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Abad de Santillán Archives, International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam. Federación Anarquista Ibérica, Peninsular Committee, Archives, International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam. Federación Libertaria Argentina Archives, Buenos Aires. International Workingmen’s Association Archives, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. Max Nettlau Archives, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. Memoria de relaciones exteriores y culto. Buenos Aires: Taller Tipográfico de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1892. Memoria de relaciones exteriores y culto. Buenos Aires: Taller Tipográfico de la Penitenciaría Nacional, 1893. Memoria de relaciones exteriores y culto. Buenos Aires: Taller Tipográfico de la Penitenciaria Nacional, 1897–98. Memoria de relaciones exteriores y culto. Buenos Aires: Taller Tipográfico de la Penitenciaria Nacional, 1900. Memoria de relaciones exteriores y culto. Buenos Aires: Taller Tipográfico de la Penitenciaria Nacional, 1904. Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Archivo General de la Administración, Alcalá de Henares, Spain. Registro Nacional, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires. República Argentina, Tercer Censo Nacional. Buenos Aires: Rosso, 1916. Topografía 54/Asuntos Exteriores, no. 11: Embajada de España en Buenos Aires 1852–1937, Box 9094: Embajada de España en Buenos Aires, 1903, Archivo General de la Administración, Alcalá de Henares, Spain. Copyright © 2015. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Secondary Sources

Abad de Santillán, Diego. After the Revolution. New York: Greenberg, 1937. ———. “La Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores: Su historia, sus ideas, su porvenir.” Revista Internacional Anarquista, n.d. Copy in International Workingmen’s Association Archives, International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam, file 73. ———. Alfonso XIII, la segunda república, Francisco Franco. Gijón: Júcar, 1979. ———. Contribución a la historia del movimiento obrero español. 3 vols. Puebla: Cajica, 1962–71. ———. De Alfonso XIII a Franco. Buenos Aires: Tipográfica Editora Argentina, 1974. ———. El anarquismo y la revolución en España. Madrid: Ayuso, 1976. ———. El pensamiento político de Roosevelt. Buenos Aires: Toryho, 1944. ———. Estudios sobre la Argentina (hasta el fin del peronismo en 1955). Puebla: Cajica, 1967. ———. Gran Enciclopedia Argentina. Buenos Aires: Ediar, 1956–63. ———. Historia Argentina. Buenos Aires: Tipográfica Editora Argentina, 1965. ———. Historia del movimiento obrero español. Madrid: ZYX, 1967.

224 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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———. Historia de la revolución Mexicana. Madrid: Lidisa, Difusión Librera, 1976. ———. Historia institucional argentina. Buenos Aires: Tipográfica Editora Argentina, 1966. ———. Historia y significado del movimiento confederal español. Puebla: Cajica, 1971. ———. Juan Lazarte: Militante social, médico, humanista. Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor de Estudios Sociales, 1964. ———. La crisis del capitalismo y la misión del proletariado organizado. Buenos Aires: Unión Socialista, 1946. ———. La FORA: Ideología y trayectoria del movimiento obrero revolucionario en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Editorial Proyección, 1971. ———. Los fundamentos de la geografía económica de América. Buenos Aires: Americalee, 1945. ———. Memorias, 1897–1936. Barcelona: Planeta, 1977. ———. Mensaje acerca de la situación actual el movimiento libertario español. Buenos Aires: CNT Subdelegación en Argentina, 1946. ———. El movimiento anarquista en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Argonauta, 1930. ———. El organismo económico de la revolución. Barcelona: CNT, 1936. ———. Por qué perdimos la guerra. Buenos Aires: Imám, 1940. ———. Reconstrucción social: Bases para una nueva edificación económica argentina. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nervio, 1933. Adelman, Jeremy. “State and Labour in Argentina: The Portworkers of Buenos Aires, 1910–1921.” Journal of Latin American Studies 25.1 (February 1993): 73–102. Alexander, Robert J. The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. London: Janus, 1999. Álvarez Junco, José. La ideología política del anarquismo español, 1868–1910. Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1976. Anderson, Benedict. Under Three Flags: Anarchism and Anti-Colonial Imagination. New York: Verso, 2007. Armus, Diego, ed. Mundo urbano y cultura popular: Estudios de historia social Argentina. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1990. Avrich, Paul. Anarchist Portraits. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Baer, James A. “Tenant Contention and the 1907 Rent Strike in Buenos Aires.” Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1990. Baily, Samuel L. Labor, Nationalism, and Politics in Argentina. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1967. Barrancos, Dora. “Anarquismo y sexualidad.” In Mundo urbano y cultura popular: Estudios de historia social Argentina, ed. Diego Armus. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1990. Bayer, Osvaldo. “The Influence of Italian Immigration on the Argentine Anarchist Movement.” In Gli Italiani fuori d’Italia, ed. Bruno Bezza. Milan: Angeli Franco Editore, 1983. ———. La Patagonia rebelde. Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1992. Berry, David, and Constance Bantman, eds. New Perspectives on Anarchism, New Labour, and Syndicalism: The Individual, the National, and the Transnational. Newcastle, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars, 2010.

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Bolloten, Burnett. The Grand Camouflage. London, New York: Praeger, 1961. ———. The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Bookchin, Murray. The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years, 1868–1936. San Francisco: AK, 1998. Bourdé, Guy. Buenos Aires: Urbanización e Inmigración. Buenos Aires: Huemul, 1977. Bouvard, Marguerite Guzman. Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1994. Boyd, Carolyn P. “The Anarchists and Education in Spain, 1868–1909.” Journal of Modern History 48.4 (December 1976): 125–70. Brenan, Gerald. The Spanish Labyrinth: An Account of the Social and Political Background of the Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Camba, Julio. La rana viajera. Madrid: CALPE, 1920. Cappelletti, Ángel J. “Vida e ideario de Diego Abad de Santillán.” Antropos 138 (November 1992): 10–15. Carr, Raymond. Spain, 1808–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. Casanova, Julián. Tierra y Libertad: Cien años de anarquismo en España. Barcelona: Crítica, 2010. Cate-Arries, Francie. Spanish Culture behind Barbed Wire: Memory and Representation in the French Concentration Camps 1939–1945. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 2004. Cimazo, Jacinto (pseud. Jacobo Maguid). Recuerdos de un libertario. Buenos Aires: Editorial Reconstruir, 1995. ———. La revolución libertaria española (1936–1939). Buenos Aires: Editorial Reconstruir, 1994. Costanzo, Gabriela Anahí. “The Inadmissible Turned History: The 1902 Law of Residence and the 1910 Law of Social Defense.” Trans. Marta Inés Merajver. Sociedad (2007), doi:10.1590/s0327-77122007000200001. Deacon, Delsey, Penny Russell, and Angela Woollacott, eds. Transnational Lives: Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700-Present. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. de la Rosa, María Fernanda, and Hebe Carmen de Pelosi. “Vientos de cambio: El concepto de capitalismo en el pensamiento de Diego Abad de Santillán.” In El pensamiento alternativo en la Argentina del siglo XX, ed. Hugo Edgardo Biagini and Arturo Andrés Roig. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2006. DeWeerdt, Denise. “Free Love = Free Marriage?: Free Love and the Belgian Socialists.” Paper presented at a workshop, “Free Love and the Labour Movement,” International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, October 6, 2000. Ealham, Chris. Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counterrevolution in Barcelona, 1898–1937. Oakland, Calif.: AK, 2010. Esenwein, George Richard. Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain, 1868–1898. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

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Gabaccia, Donna R. “Is Everywhere Nowhere?: Nomads, Nations, and the Immigrant Paradigm of United States History.” Journal of American History 86.3 (December 1999): 1115–34. García López, José Ramón. Las remesas de los emigrantes españoles en América, siglos xix y xx. Asturias, Spain: Fundación Archivo de Indianas Columbres, 1992. Gilimón, E. G. Hechos y comentarios. Buenos Aires: Historia Popular, 1972. Gómez Casas, Juan. Anarchist Organization: The History of the F.A.I. Montreal: Black Rose, 1986. ———. Historia del anarco sindicalismo español. Madrid: Editorial ZYX, 1968. González, Manolo. “The Politics of Betrayal: Part Two of Life in Revolutionary Barcelona.” Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed 36 (Spring 1993): 5–15. Gregory, David. “Algunas observaciones sobre el papel de los retornados en Andalucía.” In Emigración y retornos: una perspectiva Europea, ed. José Cazorla Pérez. Madrid: Instituto Español de Emigración, 1998. Grunfeld, José. Memorias de un anarquista. Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 2000. Hatton, Timothy J., and Jeffrey G. Williamson. “What Drove the Mass Migrations from Europe in the Late Nineteenth Century?” Population and Development Review 20.3 (September 1994): 533–55. Hirsch, Steven, and Lucien van der Walt, eds. Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870–1940: The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Revolution. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Historia general de la emigración española a Iberoamérica. 2 vols. Madrid: CEPEAL, 1992. Ignotus (pseud. Manuel Villar). El anarquismo en la insurrección de Asturias. Barcelona: Ediciones Tierra y Libertad, 1935. Iriye, Akira. Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. ———. Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Jackson, Gabriel. The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931–1939. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965. Joll, James. The Anarchists. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964. Kaplan, Temma E. “Spanish Anarchism and Women’s Liberation.” Journal of Contemporary History 6.2 (1971): 101–10. Knoblaugh, H. Edward. Correspondent in Spain. London: Sheed and Ward, 1937. Korzeniewicz, Roberto. “Labor Unrest in Argentina, 1887–1907.” Latin American Research Review 24.3 (1989): 71–98. Laval, Gaston. Colectividades libertarias en España. Buenos Aires: Editorial Proyección, 1974. López, Antonio. La FORA en el movimiento obrero. Buenos Aires: Tupac Ediciones, 1988. López Arango, Emilio, and Diego Abad de Santillán. El anarquismo en el movimiento obrero. Barcelona: Cosmos, 1925.

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Bibliography

López Trujillo, Fernando. Vidas en rojo y negro: Una historia del anarquismo en la Década Infame. Buenos Aires: Letra Libre, 2005. Maguid, Jacobo. “Diego Abad de Santillán, Semblanza de un trabajador infatigable.” Antropos 138 (November 1992): 68–70. Manzanares, Gustavo Vidal. Vidas anarquistas. Madrid: Fundación de Estudios Libertarios Anselmo Lorenzo, 2000. Massey, Douglas S., Joaquín Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouci, Adela Pellegrino, and J. Edward Taylor. “Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal.” Population and Development Review 19.3 (September 1993): 431–66. Mendoza, Juan, and Hernán Scandizzo. “El crucero de los indeseables.” Todo es historia 384 ( July 1999): 56–63. Mintz, Frank. “El pensamiento de Santillán sobre la transformación económica revolucionaria, la guerra civil y la violencia.” Antropos 138 (November 1992): 23–43. Molyneux, Maxine. “No God, No Boss, No Husband: Anarchist Feminism in NineteenthCentury Argentina.” Latin American Perspectives 13.1 (Winter 1986): 119–45. Montseny, Federica. Los precursores, Anselmo Lorenzo: El hombre y la obra. Madrid: Ediciones Españolas, 1938. Morato, Juan José. Líderes del movimiento obrero Español. Madrid: Editorial Cuadernos para el Diálogo, 1972. Moretti, Enrico. “Social Networks and Migrations: Italy, 1876–1913.” International Migration Review 33.3 (Autumn 1999): 640–57. Moya, José C. Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Nettlau, Max. A Contribution to an Anarchist Bibliography of Latin America. 2nd ed. Trans. Paul Sharkey. London: Kate Sharpley Library, 2000. Nido, Enrique (pseud. Amadeo Luan). Informe general del movimiento anarquista de la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Ediciones FORA, 1991. Nikolaevskij, Boris, and Otto Maenchen-Helfen. Karl Marx: Man and Fighter. London: Methuen, 1936. Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1952. Oved, Yaacov. “Influencia del anarquismo español sobre la formación del anarquismo argentino.” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 2.1 ( January–June 1991): 5–17. ———. “The Uniqueness of Anarchism in Argentina.” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 8.1 ( January–June 1997): 63–76. Payne, Stanley. The Spanish Revolution. New York: Norton, 1970. Peirats, José. Appendix to Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution. Detroit: Black and Red, 1993. ———. La C.N.T. en la revolución española. 3 vols. Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1971. Pellicer, Antonio. En defensa de nuestros ideales. Gijón: Imprenta “El Porvenir,” 1894. ———. Memorándum: Con motivo y en celebración de mi 55. cumpleaños. Buenos Aires, 1906.

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Bibliography

Penelas, Carlos. Los gallegos anarquistas en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Valle, 1999. Pérez, Pablo M. “The Anarchist Movement and the Origins of the Argentinian Libertarian Federation.” N.d. International of Anarchist Federations online archive, www.iaf-ifa.org. Prince, Jacobo. Un año de Peronismo. Buenos Aires: Federación Anarco-Comunista Argentina, 1947. Quesada, Fernando. Argentine Anarchism and “La Protesta.” Trans. Scott Johnson. New York: Gordon, 1979. Rabasseire, Henri (pseud. Henry Maximilian Pachter). España, crisol político. Buenos Aires: Editorial Proyección, 1966. Rama, Carlos M. Historia de las relaciones culturales entre España y la América Latina, siglo XIX. Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982. Rey, Alfonso. Estampas bravas. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Cooproart, 1973. Richmond, Douglas W. Carlos Pellegrini and the Crisis of the Argentine Elites, 1880–1916. New York: Praeger, 1989. Rodríguez Galdo, María Xosé. “Cruzando el Atlántico, ¿solas o en familia?: Migraciones españoles en las ‘Listas de pasajeros’ argentinas (1882–1926).” Historia Social 42 (2002): 59–79. Romero Maura, J. “Terrorism in Barcelona and Its Impact on Spanish Politics, 1904–1909.” Past and Present 41 (December 1968): 130–83. Rosado, Antonio. Tierra y Libertad: Memorias de un campesino anarcosindicalista andaluz. Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 1979. Rotondaro, Ruben. Realidad y cambio en el sindicalismo. Buenos Aires: Leamar, 1971. Rouco Buela, Juana. Historia de un ideal vivido por una mujer. Buenos Aires: Editorial Reconstruir, 1964. Salas Viu, Vicente. Las primeras jornadas, y otras narraciones de la guerra española. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Zig-Zag, 1940. Sánchez-Albornoz, Nicolás. “La emigración española a la América en medio milenio: Pautas sociales.” Historia Social 42 (2002): 41–58. Sánchez-Alonso, Blanca. “Those Who Left and Those Who Stayed Behind: Explaining Emigration from the Regions of Spain, 1880–1914.” Journal of Economic History 60.3 (September 2000): 730–55. Scobie, James. Argentina: A City and a Nation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Seidman, Michael. “Individualisms in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War.” Journal of Modern History 68.1 (March 1996): 63–83. ———. Republic of Egos: A Social History of the Spanish Civil War. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. Shaffer, Kirwin R. Anarchism and Countercultural Politics in Early Twentieth-Century Cuba. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005. Smith, Angel. Anarchism, Revolution, and Reaction: Catalan Labor and the Crisis of the Spanish State, 1898–1923. New York: Berghahn, 2007.

229 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Solomonoff, Jorge N. Ideologías del movimiento obrero y conflicto social. Buenos Aires: Editorial Proyección, 1971. Spalding, Hobart A., Jr. Organized Labor in Latin America: Historical Case Studies of Urban Workers in Dependent Societies. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977. Suriano, Juan. Anarquistas: Cultura y política libertaria en Buenos Aires, 1890–1910. Buenos Aires: Cuadernos Argentinas Manantial, 2001. ———. La huelga de inquilinos de 1907. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1983. Tarrow, Sidney. The New Transnational Activism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Thistlethwaite, Frank. “Migration from Europe Overseas in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” In Population Movements in Modern European History, ed. Herbert Miller. New York: Macmillan, 1964. Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War. London: Penguin, 1961. Tilly, Charles. “Trust Networks in Transnational Migration.” Sociological Forum 22.1 (March 2007): 3–24. Turcato, Davide. “Italian Anarchism as a Transnational Movement, 1885–1915.” International Review of Social History 52.3 (2007): 407–44. Vincent, Mary. Spain, 1833–2002: People and State. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Wyman, Mark. Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880–1930. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. Yerrill, P., and L. Rosser. Revolutionary Unionism in Latin America: The FORA in Argentina. London: ASP, 1987. Zaragoza, Gonzalo. Anarquismo argentino (1876–1902). Madrid: Ediciones de la Torre, 1996. ———. “Anarquistas españoles en Argentina a fines del siglo XIX.” Saitabi: Revista de la Facultad de Geografía e Historia, Universitat de València 26 (1976): 111–22. ———. “Antonio Pellicer i Paraire i l’anarquisme argentí.” Recerques 7 (1977–78): 99–115.

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Index

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Italic page numbers refer to illustrations. Abad, Gabriel, 45 Abad de Santillán, Diego, 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 46, 52, 74, 84, 140, 167; AIT Amsterdam Conference and, 102–4; attempts to solve conflicts between anarchists, 104–7; conflict between CNT and FORA and, 97–99; correspondence with other exiles, 185–86, 187; death of, 188; on divisions between the labor movement and anarchists, 48; FAI and, 134–38; on failures of anarchist movement, 92; FORA and, 87–91, 95–96; in Germany, 92, 93, 94–95; on government repression, 58–59; military coup in Argentina and, 120–21; El organismo económico de la revolución, 137, 147, 150; on political participation, 64; return to Argentina, 105–6, 184–88; return to Spain in 1932, 136–37; after the Spanish Civil War, 179; Spanish Civil War and, 145, 147, 150–51, 169, 171–74, 176, 190–91; transnationalism of, 189–90 Acción Libertaria, 183 Acha, José María, 65, 104, 106, 107

Acracia, 31, 44 affinity coalitions and groups, anarchist, 114, 137–38 Aguzzi, Aldo, 164 Alcalá Zamora, Niceto, 130, 139, 143 Alem, Leandro, 43 Alfonsín, Ricardo, 52 Alfonso XII, King, 18, 24, 87 Alfonso XIII, King, 33, 87, 130, 181 Alianza Libertaria Argentina, 91–92 Alliance for Social Democracy, 114 Almada, Esteban, 65 Amadeo of Savoy, King, 22 Americalee, 185 Anarchist Organization of the Spanish Region, 33–34 anarchists, 1–2; arrests of, 73; conferences, 47, 64–65, 81, 87–88, 102–4, 116; in Germany, 92, 95; of industrial cities versus countryside, 29; leadership, 48, 64, 74, 77–78, 82–84, 115–17; militant, 34–35, 47–49, 64–65, 70, 72, 81, 92, 132–34; police repression of, 10, 35, 66–67; rural, 79–80, 90–91; social networks, 6; syndicalism and, 9, 10, 55–60, 71–72, 74, 79, 96,

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Index

189; transnationalism and, 5–11, 73, 74–75, 188–90; women, 2–3, 6, 66, 107–12; World War I and, 78–79 anarcho-communists, 96 anarcho-syndicalism, 71–72, 143 Angiolillo, Michele, 10, 35 Ansens, José, 151 Antifascist Militias Committee, 153–55 Antilli, Teodoro, 82–83 Antoñeda, Ramón, 4, 58 Antorcha, La, 120, 122 Antorcha group, 91–92, 104, 106 Ares, José Santos, 124, 125 Argentina: anarchism after 1910, 82–84; communications with Spain about anarchists, 68–69; divisions among anarchists in, 32–33; economic reasons for migration to, 38–40, 61–62; growth of anarchist movement in, 42–50; internecine strife among anarchists in, 104–7; military coup in, 118–21, 190; in the 1920s, 99–102; Partido Autonomista Nacional (PAN) in, 42–43; under Juan Perón, 179, 180, 184–85, 186, 187; police repression in, 10, 89, 122, 124; population growth through immigration, 27–28, 39, 61–62, 100; requirements for immigration to, 39; Spanish Civil War and, 163–68. See also government of Argentina Argentine Association of Authors, 63 Argentine Confederation of Workers, 119 Argentine Group in Support of Social Prisoners, 113 Argentine Workers’ Federation, 33 Argonauta publishing house, 94 Ascaso, Domingo, 171 Ascaso, Francisco, 100–101, 142 Ascaso, Joaquín, 132 Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores (AIT), 96, 97–99, 102, 173, 174–75, 190; Amsterdam Conference, 102–4 Assault Guards, Spain, 133–34, 139, 170 Ateneo de la Clase Obrera, 23 Athenaeum of the Working Class, 23 Austria, 138 Avellaneda, Nicolás, 26 Azaña, Manuel, 130–31, 133–34, 143–44, 170, 174

Bakunin, Mikhail, 2, 15, 16–17, 18, 91, 114, 173; interpretation of anarchism, 46; Kropotkin and, 29–30; rift with Marx, 21 Bakuninist International Workers’ Association, 28 Balbuena, Enrique, 163 Balius, Jamie, 171 Barbarie gobernamental en España, La, 37 Barbieri, Francesco, 170 Barcelona: bloody days of May, 1937, 168– 74; military uprising of 1936 in, 151–55; worker control in, 155–60 Barrancos, Dora, 108 Barrera, Apolinario, 82–83, 104–7 Barrett, Rafael, 57–58 Basterra, Felix, 52 Batalla, La, 82 Beasley, Francisco, 68–69 Berenguer, José, 136 Berkman, Alexander, 82 Berneri, Camilo, 97, 168, 170 Berri, Francisco, 48 Bertani, Orsini, 52 Black Hand, the, 34 Blanch, José M., 184 Bolsheviks, 81–82, 89, 95, 97 Calvo González, Juan B., 52 Calvo Sotelo, José, 144 Camba, Julio, 2, 3, 4, 33–35, 46, 52–54, 80 Campana, La, 87 Campora, Héctor, 187 Canadiense, La, 81 Canalejas, José, 77 Cané, Miguel, 49 Cánovas del Castillo, Antonio, 10, 24, 33 cantonalist uprisings, 22–23 Caporaletti, Teresa, 66 Carbó, Eusebio C., 102, 103, 115, 142 Carlists, 18–19, 22 Carpio, Campio, 162–63 Carreño, Francisco, 171 Carretero, Juan, 68 Casademont, Juan, 52 Casanova, Antonio, 162, 164, 182 Casanova, Julián, 9 Casas, Juan Gómez, 9 Castelar, Emilio, 23

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Index

Castillo, Ramón, 184 Castro, J. Alberto, 64 Catholic Church, 131 Celman, Juárez, 43 Center for Workers’ Propaganda, 28 Centro Republicano Español, 185 Chaco (ship), 127–29 civil war. See Spanish Civil War of 1936 Claramunt, Teresa, 35, 80 Cohen, Nat, 127–29 collectivist anarchism, 2, 30, 32–33 Collectivization Decree of 1936, 159–60, 169, 170, 172 Comeron, Gonzalo, 127 Comisión de Ayuda a Exiliados Antifascistas, 177, 178 Comité Nacional de la CNT en el Exilio, 185 Comité Regional de Relaciones Anarquistas (CRRA), 163–64, 167 Committee of Industrial Coordination, 159 communists, 81–82, 87, 93, 146–47, 159; Spanish Civil War and, 169–70 Compañía General de Tranvías, 156 Companys, Lluís, 151–55 Concordancia, 140, 163, 182 Conesa, Orencio, 177–78 Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (CEDA), 138–40 Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT), Argentina, 119, 121, 163, 179, 184 Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT), Mexico, 106 Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), 10, 76–82, 161, 190; after the civil war, 180; conflict with FORA, 97–99, 103; FAI and, 114–16; military uprising in Barcelona and, 151–52; political involvement, 95, 101–2; Popular Front and, 140–44; Second Republic in Spain and, 131–34; socialists and, 139; Spanish Civil War and, 164–66, 169, 171, 173–75 Confederación Obrera Regional Argentina (CORA), 57, 77, 87–88 Congreso Obrero de Barcelona, 45 Constituent Cortes, 19 Cortada, Roldán, 170 Cortes, Mariano, 50 Count of Romanones, 81

Creaghe, John, 10, 45, 46, 64 Crónica de los Trabajadores, La, 31 Cuadrado, Indalecio, 3, 35, 43, 44 Cuba, 40, 83, 101, 124 Cúlmine, 113 Cúneo, Dardo, 47 Cupit, Arón, 163 D’Angió, Roberto, 58, 82 Darío, Rubén, 63 Dato, Eduardo, 79 de Alvear, Marcelo T., 99 de Arellano y Arrospide, Julio, 69 de Borbón, Juan Carlos, 181 del Campo, Marcelino, 100 del Castillo, Cánovas, 35 Deleuze, Gilles, 11 deportations from Argentina, 4–5, 8–10, 52–55, 68; on the Chaco, 127–29; FORA and, 129–30; impact on Spain, 60–62; during 1919, 89–90; of prisoners, 126–30; Spanish anarchism after 1910 and, 77–82; Spanish Civil War and, 161–64; under Uriburu, 121–22, 123 Descamisado, El, 29 de Sousa, Germinal, 116, 137, 181 Diario Español, El, 57 Di Césare, Pedro, 164 Di Giovanni, Severino, 113 Dollfuss, Engelbert, 138 Durruti, Buenaventura, 100–101, 102, 114, 132, 138; death of, 176; Popular Front and, 142; revolution of 1936 and, 151; Second Republic in Spain and, 133–34 Eikhenbaum, Vsevolod Mikhailovich, 95 emigration cycle, 3 English Committee to Aid Refugees, 183 Esteve, Pedro, 3, 35 Estrada, Salvador, 52 Fabbri, Luigi, 97, 112 Falcón, Ramón, 66–67, 73, 135 Falconnet, Joaquín A., 108 Fanelli, Giuseppe, 15, 17 Farga Pellicer, Rafael, 17–18, 21; cantonalist uprisings and, 23 fascism, 96–97

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Index

Federación Anarco-Communista Argentina (FACA), 130, 164–65, 179–80, 184–85, 191 Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI), 10–11, 93, 114–17, 131–34, 161; Spanish Civil War and, 171, 173–74 Federación de Sociedades Obreras de la Región Española, 47, 69 Federación Libertaria Argentina, 191 Federación Nacional de Agricultores Españoles, 79, 81; Spanish Civil War and, 163–64 Federación Obrera, La, 45 Federación Obrera Argentina (FOA), 3, 46–48, 56, 63–65 Federación Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA), 10, 30, 33, 37, 56, 64, 67, 77; conflict with CNT, 97–99, 103; deportees and, 129–30; after 1910, 87–91; Spanish Civil War and, 163–66 Federación Regional Española, 8, 20–24, 24–25 Federal Commission of the Workers’ Federation, 31 federalism, 18–19 Federation of Anarchist Groups of Catalonia, 116 feminism, 108–10 Fernández, Angela, 85 Fernández, Antonio, 68 Fernández, Aurelio, 151 Fernández, Elena, 125 Fernández, José M., 106, 163 Fernández, Orobón, 137 Ferrer, Francisco, 37, 67–68, 71 Figuras, Estanislao, 22 First International, 15, 28. See also International Workingmen’s Association Flores Magón, Ricardo, 110, 186 Fo, Francisco, 44 Fonteche, José, 68 Forcat, Mariano, 58, 82 Forestal, La, 90–91 Fragua Social, 162 France, 178, 179; revolution, 15–16; Spanish refugees in, 180, 181–84 Franco, Francisco, 2, 144, 152; death of, 187, 188; regime, 180–81, 191; Spanish Civil War and, 161, 172, 174–77, 179

Friend of the People, The, 170 Friends of Durruti, 170–71 Galán, Francisco, 162 Galán Lafuente, Ramón, 125 Galea, Evaristo, 68 García, Alfonso, 69 García, Arturo Tomás, 164 García, Benjamín, 4, 52 García de la Mata, Alfonso, 5, 58 García López, José Ramón, 40 García Oliver, Juan, 133, 142, 146, 151–54, 166, 174; Spanish Civil War and, 171 García Paniagua, Donato, 84 García Viñas, José, 18 Garin, Salvador, 68 Garrido, Leonardo Jesús, 68 General Motors, 124 Geracci, Ángel, 163 Germany, 92, 93, 94–95, 105, 138, 174 Ghiraldo, Alberto, 50, 63 Gil, Pablo, 68 Gilimón, E. G., 46, 68 Gil Robles, José María, 138–40; Popular Front and, 141–42, 144 Goded, Manuel, 144, 152 Godwin, William, 15–16 Goldman, Emma, 82, 110, 168, 173 golondrinas, 7 González, Calvo, 52 González, Idelfonso, 8, 137, 140 González, Isaac B., 68 González, Joaquín V., 56 González Meneses, Antonio, 18 González Morago, Tomás, 23 González Pacheco, Rodolfo, 91, 106, 120; conflicts with other anarchists, 104; military coup in Argentina and, 120–21; Spanish Civil War and, 164 Gori, Pietro, 33, 42, 46, 47, 189 government of Argentina, 42–43, 136; decision to deport immigrant agitators, 48; Law of Social Defense, 68, 73; regulation of immigration by, 2, 33, 39; repression of anarchists by, 10, 35, 58–59, 66–67, 72–73; Residency Law, 2, 33, 49–50, 51–52, 60–62 government of Spain, 72–73, 77, 118; bloody days of May, 1937, 168–74; Civil Guard,

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Index

132–33, 139, 152; military uprising in Barcelona in 1936 and, 151–55; in the 1920s, 99–102; Radical Party and, 19, 43, 64–65, 89, 99, 119. See also Spanish Civil War of 1936 Goyoso, Florindo, 124, 125 Graphic Arts Union, 137 Grau, H., 5, 78 Grunfeld, José, 125–26, 130, 186; after the Spanish Civil War, 182, 183–84; Spanish Civil War and, 163–67 Guattari, Félix, 11 Guerra Social, 78 Guerrero, León, 92, 106 Gustavo, Soledad, 35 Gutiérrez, Federico, 64

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Hacha, J. M., 99 Haymarket affair, 1886, 29 Herrera, Pedro, 137, 142, 171–72, 181, 183 Herreros, Tomás, 71, 142 Hitler, Adolf, 138, 174 housing, 58–59, 66 Hucha, Joaquín, 5, 65, 68, 78 Ideas y Figuras, 63 Illia, Arturo, 186 immigration from Spain to Argentina, 1–11, 24, 24–25, 26–29, 100, 118–19, 188–89; deportations to Spain, 52–55, 60–62, 74–76, 121–22, 123, 125–30; economic reasons for, 38–40, 61–62; regulation of, 2, 33, 39; Residency Law and, 2, 33, 49–50, 60–62, 64, 89–90 individualist anarchism, 2, 30, 43–44 industrialization, 69–70 Inglán y Lafarga, Gregorio, 3, 35, 37, 43, 50, 52, 189; labor movement strikes and, 46–47; Residency Law and, 52 Institute of Agrarian Reform, 132 International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, 17, 21; cantonalists and, 23 International Brotherhood, 16–17, 18 International Workingmen’s Association, 5–6, 8, 17, 93, 96. See also First International Isabella II, Queen, 18–19, 24, 87 Italy, 96–97, 119, 129, 174

Jockey Club, 43 Jover, Gregorio, 101, 171 Justicia, 184 Justicia Humana, La, 31 Kater, Elisa, 95, 104, 105, 108–9, 188 Kater, Fritz, 95 Kléber, Emilio, 167 Kropotkin, Peter, 2, 29–30, 82, 86, 93; interpretation of anarchism, 46; World War I and, 79 labor movement in Argentina, and anarchists, 62–69; articles about, 44, 48; conflict with anarchism, 23–24, 43, 45–46; control in Barcelona, 1936, 155–60; FAI and, 137–38; housing costs and, 58–59, 66; May Day rallies, 66, 68, 90, 132; militancy, 47–49, 64–65; Residency Law and, 49–50; revolution of 1936 and, 145–46; rural workers and, 79–80; during the Second Republic in Spain, 130–34; single union concept, 81; in Spain and anarchists, 69–73, 78–82; Spanish Civil War and, 163–64; strikes, 67–68, 70, 79, 81, 89–91; syndicalism and, 56–57 Lafargue, Paul, 21 Lago, Manuel, 4, 52 Laina, Adolfo, 164 Largo Caballero, Francisco, 130–31, 144, 172 Law of Social Defense, 68, 73 Lawton, Peter, 81 Lazarte, Juan, 135 leadership, anarchist, 48, 64, 82, 115–17; after 1910, 77–78, 82–84 League against Rents and Taxes, 58 legal requirements for migration to Argentina, 2, 33, 39 Leotar, Elisa, 66 Lerroux, Alejandro, 70, 130–31, 138 Leval, Gastón, 165–66 Ley de Defensa Social, 68 libertarians, 96, 110, 164 Libertarian Youth, 173 Llano de la Encomienda, Francisco, 152 Llumanera, La, 21 López, Alfredo C., 50 López, Antonio, 91

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Index

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López, Francisco, 68 López, José, 68 López, Juan, 166, 187 López Arango, Emilio, 8, 74, 82, 83–84, 91–92, 94; AIT and, 97, 102–3; conflict between FORA and CNT and, 97–99; conflict with Apolinario Barrera, 104–7; death of, 113–14 López Margarida, José, 52 Lorda, Bartolomé, 130, 163 Loredo, Antonio, 1, 5, 9, 64, 65, 68; return to Spain, 77–78; World War I and, 79 Lorenzo, Anselmo, 3, 17, 35, 36, 37, 46, 71, 72; death of, 78–79 Lourido, Manuel, 5, 58 Lupano, Teodoro, 52 Maguid, Jacobo, 8, 136; Franco regime and, 181, 182–83; Spanish Civil War and, 163– 65, 167–68, 172, 173 Mainini, Santiago, 184 Malatesta, Errico, 29, 33, 42, 97, 173, 189 Manifesto of the Thirty, 131, 140 Mano Negra, La, 34 Manresa Herrero, A., 68 María Christina, regent, 15 marriage, 108–9, 112 Martín, Antonio, 170 Martínez, Enrique, 119 Martínez, Félix, 171 Martínez Campos, Arsenio, 23–24, 34 Marx, Karl, 15, 17, 18; rift with Bakunin, 21 Mateo Sagasta, Práxedes, 22 Matheu, Pedro, 113 Mattei, Ettore, 10, 42, 45, 47 Maturana, José de, 65 Maurín, Joaquín, 82 May Day rallies, 66, 68, 90, 132, 170–71 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 63 Mella, Ricardo, 3, 18, 37, 46, 72, 94; World War I and, 78–79; writing of, 48 Mexico, 180, 181, 185–86, 188 Miguens, Manuel, 69 militant anarchists, 34–35, 47–49, 64–65, 70, 72, 81, 92, 132–34 Miró, Fidel, 8, 137 Mitre, Bartolomé, 26, 42–43 Modern School, 71, 80

Molina, Juan Manuel, 142 Monachessi, Guido, 5, 58 monarchy, Spanish, 18–19, 24, 33, 87 Montagnoli, Santos, 65 Montero, José María, 3, 8, 83, 124–25, 162; in France, 182 Montesano, Arturo, 52 Montjuich Affair, 35 Montseny, Federica, 3, 110, 132, 142, 174; Spanish Civil War and, 171 Morales, Francisco, 28, 45 Morán, Juan Antonio, 120 Morocco, 151–52 Morral, Matteo, 71 Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 191 Movimiento Popular de Resistencia, 185 Mussolini, Benito, 96–97, 119, 129, 174 Nación, La, 63 Nahuel, Nita, 164 Narvaez, Manuel, 69 National Federation of Anarchist Groups, 114–15 Nationalist Bloc, 144 National Republic Guard, 170 Navarro, Antonio, 4, 52 Negrín, Juan, 166–67, 174 Neruda, Pablo, 184 Nervio group, 121–22, 137, 142, 143, 174 Nettlau, Max, 28, 104–5, 106, 108 Nicolau, Luis, 113 Nido, Enrique, 8, 103, 106 Nin, Andrés, 82 Noche, La, 171 nomadology, 11 Nosotros, 133, 138 Nuestra Tribuna, 110–11, 112 Obrero Panadero, El, 45, 63, 83 Oliva Moncusí, Juan, 24 Oprimido, El, 45, 64 Organización Anarquista de la Región Española, 33–34 Ovidi, Rómulo, 52 Pacto de Unión y Solidaridad de la Región Española, 33–34 Pact of Saragossa, 79

236 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Index

Palau, Ramón, 52, 54 Pallas, Paulino, 34 Pampa Libre, 113, 164 Pañeda, José, 4–5, 58 Partido Autonomista Nacional (PAN), 42–43 Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, 169–70 Partido Socialista Unificado de Cataluña, 170 Pastor, Carmen, 187 Patcher, Henry, 158 Patriotic League, 89 Patroni, Adrián, 47 Pavía, Manuel, 23 Peiró, Juan, 115–17, 131, 174 Pellicer, José Luis, 17 Pellicer, Rafael Farga, 17 Pellicer Paraire, Antonio, 6, 17, 21, 33, 41, 189; in Cuba, 83; departure for Argentina, 32, 35–36; disconnection from the anarchist movement, 51–52; on the labor movement, 44; on Alejandro Lerroux, 70; opposition to individualists, 44; Spanish anarchist movement and, 28, 30–31; Spanish Regional Federation and, 21–22; syndicalism and, 55–56; Typographers’ Section and, 29; writing of, 30–31, 36–37, 42, 43 Penina, Joaquín, 122, 124 Pérez, José, 5, 58 Pérez Pérez, Campio, 162–63 Perón, Juan D., 179, 180, 184–85, 186, 187 Perón, María Estela (Isabel), 187–88 Perseguido, El, 43, 45 Pestaña, Ángel, 8, 82, 101, 103; CNT and, 79, 115–17; opposition to, 93; Syndicalist Party and, 141; Treintistas and, 131 Piacenza, Anita, 164 Pico, Octavio, 126 Piette, Emilio, 10, 45 Pi y Margall, Francisco, 18, 19, 22, 23 Po, Fernando, 3 police repression, 10, 35, 58–59, 66–67, 70, 124; arrests of editors and, 137; Second Republic in Spain and, 132–33; Tragic Week and, 67, 72, 73, 77, 89, 100 Popular Front, 140–44, 165, 174

Prat, José, 3, 5, 35, 37, 41, 43–44, 46, 72, 189; death of, 133; opposition to syndicalism, 55, 57; on Propaganda of the Deed, 69; World War I and, 78–79 Prieto, Horacio, 173–74 Prieto, Indalecio, 130, 144 Prim, Juan, 19 Primo de Rivera, José Antonio, 144, 187 Primo de Rivera, Miguel, 10, 80, 93, 101–2, 118, 130, 135 Prince, Jacob, 113, 164–65, 168 prisoners, in Argentina, 83, 84, 88, 122, 165, 198–200; deportation of, 126–30; World War II and, 184 prisoners, Spanish, 180 Productor, El, 31, 43, 44 Propaganda of the Deed, 33–35, 45, 69 Protesta, La, 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 33, 45, 52, 53, 58, 63, 99, 102, 122, 133, 167, 189, 190; on Argentina’s immigrants, 28; on deportations, 61; on Severino Di Giovanni, 113; FORA V and, 90–91; importance to anarchist movement, 46, 64; internecine strife among anarchists and, 104–7, 117; on the labor movement, 44, 48; leadership, 82, 91–92; listing of prisoners, 198–200; literary supplement, 107; Antonio Loredo and, 77; on marriage, 112; publication cessation, 50; Radical Party and, 65; reopened in 1911, 82–83; reopened in 1932, 136; Spanish Civil War and, 164 Protesta Humana, La (1916), 52 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 16, 18 publications, anarchist, 28–29, 31, 33, 37, 42, 46, 68, 82–84, 121–22, 167–68; after 1910, 86–87; in the 1930s, 136; Residency Law effect on, 50, 64; in Spain, 1, 55, 61, 62, 71–72, 77–78; Spanish Civil War and, 164–65, 172–73; women’s, 107–8. See also La Protesta Humana Puente, Isaac, 147, 150, 151 Questione Sociale, La, 42 Quintana, Manuel, 65 Quiroule, Pierre, 108 Rabassa, Zacarias, 28, 45 Radical Party, 43, 64–65, 89, 99, 119

237 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Index

Radical Republican Party, 70, 130–31, 138 Radowitzky, Simón, 68, 83–84, 88 railroads, 26–27, 79, 155, 156–57 Rebelde, El, 52, 54, 80 Reconstruir, 185 Red International, 98 refugees: end of the Spanish Civil War and, 177–78, 179, 181–84; aboard the Winnipeg, 193–97 regional economic councils, 150–51 Reguera, José, 52 Reguera, Manuel, 52 regulation of immigration to Argentina, 2, 33, 39 Renard, Abel, 126–27 Republican Army, Spain, 174–77 Residency Law, 2, 33, 64; impact on anarchism, 49–50, 51–52; impact on Spain, 60–62; after World War I, 89–90 Revista International Anarquista, 115 Revista Social, 31 Revolución Social, La, 46 Revolutionaire, Le, 29 Revolutionary Central Committee, 156 Revolutionary Committee, 138 revolution of 1868, 19 revolution of 1936. See Spanish Civil War of 1936 Rey, Feliciano, 28, 45 Rey, Lou, 106 Rey, Luis Jorge, 98 Reyes, E., 9 Reyes, María, 66 Riegos y Fuerza del Ebro, 81 Riera Díaz, Laureano, 163, 164, 177 Ríos, Miguel, 4, 52 Ripoll, Baldomero, 69 Ristori, Orestes, 52 Robespierre, Maximilien, 16 Roca, Julio, 49 Roca, Rafael, 3, 32, 43 Rocker, Rudolf, 95, 104, 110 Rodríguez, David, 162 Rodríguez, Manuel, 69 Rodríguez Salas, Eusebio, 170 Rodríguez Sánchez, Jéronimo, 162 Romanones, Count of, 81 Romero Maura, J., 35, 55, 70

Ros, Francisco, 35, 43, 47, 52 Rosado, Antonio, 3, 7, 80 Roscigna, Miguel Ángel, 113 Rouco Buela, Juana, 2–3, 6, 66, 109–11 Ruiz, Pablo, 171 Ruiz Zorrilla, Manuel, 22 rural anarchists, 79–80, 90–91 Russell, Penny, 2 Russian Revolution of 1917, 81–82, 87 Saavedra, Abelard, 80 Sacco, Nicola, 165 Sáenz Escerton, Eduard, 39 Sáenz Peña, Roque, 78 Sak, Benito, 125 Salmerón, Nicolás, 23 Saltarelli, Natalio, 163 salt-water curtain, 4 Salvador, Santiago, 35 Sánchez, Bernardo, 43 Sánchez, Florencio, 50 San José, Victoriano, 10, 43, 45 Sanjurjo, José, 132 Santolaria, Emilio V., 6, 75 Saragoicochea, Domingo, 69, 97 Schapiro, A., 174 Second Republic in Spain, 130–34 Seguí, Salvador, 79, 93, 100–101, 103, 114 Semper, Ricardo, 138 Sentiñon, Gaspar, 18 Serantoni, Fortunato, 42 Serrano, Francisco, 19, 22 Six Fingers, 133 Socialista, Il, 29 Socialist Party/socialists, 48, 89, 99, 101, 159; coalitions with other groups, 141; Popular Front and, 141–44; Second Republic in Spain and, 130–31; Spanish Civil War and, 170; Two Black Years and, 138–39 social networks of anarchists, 6 Sociedad de Albañiles, 78 Society of Jesus, 131 Sol, El, 50, 63 Soldevilla y Romero, Juan, 101 Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista (SIA), 177–78, 183 Solidaridad Obrera, 1, 55, 122, 131, 162, 168; anarcho-syndicalism and, 71–72; arrests

238 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Index

over publishing of, 137; on the CORA, 77; reporting on Argentina, 61, 62; after World War II, 182 Solidaridad Proletaria, 103, 115 Solidarios, Los, 100–101 Soriano, Trinidad, 18 Soviet Union, 93, 95, 98, 170, 176 Spain: anarchism under the Second Republic in, 130–34; anarchist movement, 1870s and 1880s, 29–31; anarchist movement after 1910, 10, 76–82; anarchist publications in, 1, 55, 61, 62, 71–72, 77–78; creation of FAI in, 114–17; diplomatic relations treaty with Argentina in 1864, 27; economic stagnation in, 38–40; federalism in, 18–19; government repression in, 72–73, 77; growth of anarchism in, 15–18; impact of deportations on, 60–62; Internationalists, 19–20; in the late nineteenth century, 18–20; migrants to Argentina from, 1–11, 24–29, 35–41; monarchy, 18–19, 24, 33, 87; in the 1920s, 99–102; persecutions of Catalan adherents in, 43–44; police repression in, 70; regional anarchist organizations, 33–34; rural anarchists in, 79–80; World War I and, 78–79; during World War II, 180–84. See also government of Spain; Spanish Civil War of 1936 Spanish-American War, 39 Spanish Civil War of 1936, 144–47, 161, 190– 91; anarchist factions and, 147–51; bloody days of May, 1937, 168–74; devastation of, 179; FACA and Argentine support for anarchists during, 163–68; international support for anarchists and, 174–77; military uprising in Barcelona in 1936, 151–55; participation by Spaniards returning from Argentina, 161–64; refugees and the end of, 177–78, 179; Spain after the, 179–80; worker control in Barcelona and, 155–60. See also government of Spain; Spain Spanish Falange, 144 Spanish Regional Federation, 8, 20–24, 24–25 Stalinists, 169–70 Stern, Lazar, 167 Suberviela, Gregorio, 100

syndicalism, 9, 10, 55–60, 71–72, 74, 96, 189; housing and, 58–59; in Spain after 1910, 79; Unión Sindical Argentina (USA) and, 91–92, 96, 97, 103–4 Syndicalist Party, 141 Tarrida del Mármol, Fernando, 10 terrorism, 16, 34, 71 textile mills, 69–70, 132 Tierra del Fuego prison, 83, 84, 88, 125 Tierra y Libertad, 10, 31–32, 35, 43, 52, 61, 136; Abad de Santillán and, 137; Antonio Loredo and, 77–78; Spanish anarchist movement and, 67, 71, 77; Spanish Civil War and, 167, 168, 172; on the Treintistas, 131 Timón: Síntesis de Orientación Político-Social, 172, 173, 182 Tolstoy, Leo, 58 Toranzo, Severo, 119 Torcelli, Alfredo J., 48 Torrente, Mariano, 104 Torres Escartín, Rafael, 100 Tragic Week, Argentina, 89, 100 Tragic Week, Barcelona, 67, 72, 73, 77 transnationalism, 5–11, 73, 74–75; national identity and, 188–90; nomadology and, 11 treaties, 27 Treintistas, 131, 147 Troitiño, Adrián, 4, 47, 52 Troncoso, José, 68 trust networks, 6 Turner, Ethel Duffy, 186 Two Black Years, 1933–35, 138–40 Typographers’ Section, 29 União Geral do Trabalho, 173–74 Unión Cívica Radical. See Radical Party Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), 48, 56–57, 79, 141, 142, 191; worker control in Barcelona and, 156 Unión Gremial, La, 45 Unión Obrera, La, 45 unions. See labor movement Unión Sindical Argentina (USA), 91–92, 96, 97, 103–4, 119 Urales, Federico, 35, 142 Uriburu, José Félix, 118–20, 136, 162, 173, 190;

239 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Index

arrests of anarchists, 122, 124; deportations under, 121–22, 123; military coup and, 118–21

War of Attrition, 176–77 Wilckens, Kurt, 92, 111 Winnipeg, 193–97 Witkop-Rocker, Milly, 109 women anarchists, 2–3, 6, 66, 107–12 worker control in Barcelona, 156, 158–59 Workers’ Federation of the Argentine Region, 45 Workers’ Federation of the Spanish Region, 28, 30, 31, 45, 66 World War I, 78–79 World War II, 179, 180, 181–84 Yrigoyen, Hipólito, 65, 89, 91, 99, 118, 119 Zamboni, Antonio, 10 Zamorano, Alberto, 68 Zola, Emilio, 87

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Valenzuela, Alcides, 50 Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 165 Varela, Héctor, 91, 111, 112 Varela, Sergio, 106 Vásquez, Mariano, 174 Vega Fernández, Jesús, 78 Vera de Bidasoa incident, 102, 115 Verde, Adolfo, 167 Villa Devoto jail, 126–27, 129–30, 165 Villamor, Juan José, 178 Villar, Manuel, 1, 5, 9, 118, 122, 135–36, 140; arrests of, 137; Franco regime and, 180; insurrection in Asturias and, 139; Popular Front victory and, 140–43; Spanish Civil War and, 162, 166; Treintistas and, 131 violence by anarchists, 34–35, 47–49, 70, 72, 81, 92; Radical Party and, 64–65; during the Second Republic, 132–34

Voz de la Mujer, La, 107–8 Voz del Obrero, La, 28 Vuotto, Pascual, 184

240 Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

is a professor of history at Northern Virginia Community College and Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, D.C.

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Ja m e s A . B a e r

Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

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Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Copyright © 2015. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved. Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.

Copyright © 2015. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved. Baer, James A.. Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina, University of Illinois Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=3414440. Created from utsa on 2019-09-19 04:50:27.