Rancho 697b-c

[William Dupere]

Thepresent translation originally appeared as a Preface by Cappelletti to a volume of previously published anarchist writings by Latin American authors. The volume was conceived and begun by Carlos Manuel Rama. At the time of his death in 1982, Rama had completed an initial selection of the material. Cappelletti would conclude the project several years later.[1] The volume was scheduled to appear in 1990 through the Venezuelan publisher Biblioteca Ayacucho. But due to several complications it did not appear in print until 1993. Rama was a Uruguayan historian and sociologist. Among his publications are: Historia del movimiento obrero y social latinoamericano contemporneo (1967), Sociologa de Amrica Latina (1970), Las ideas socialistas en el siglo XIX (1976), Sociologa de Amrica Latina (1977), and La ideologa fascista (1979), among others.

Anarchism emerged in Europe as an ideology and social philosophy during the first half of the nineteenth century. One of several kinds of pre-Marxist socialist thought, it was essentially a French product and owed its name and first systematic formulation to Proudhon, although it had two powerful predecessors in England and Germany, Godwin and Stirner, respectively. Prior to 1850 in France, as a social movement of the productive classes (workers, artisans, peasants), it assumed a mutualist form. Under Bakunin after the 1860s it appeared in a collectivist form and joined its activities to the First International, gradually becoming the dominant position within the movement. During these decades the majority of organized workers in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, and elsewhere either were anarchist or professed a closely related revolutionary socialism. Even trade unionism in Great Britain, though of moderate tendencies, was closer to Proudhon than to Marx.

This work does not pretend to be a comprehensive history of Latin American anarchism but simply a sketch of it. But the range of the material and the dearth of impartial studies available do prompt a sustained treatment of that history. Hence this work examines the social achievements, the popular writings, and the anarchist literature of each Latin American country from Argentina to Mexico.

As with other ideas of European origin, anarchist ideology was a product imported to Latin America. But ideas are not simply products. They are also living organisms and, as such, ought to adapt themselves to new environments; in so doing, they evolve in lesser or greater ways. To say that European immigrants brought anarchism to these shores states only the obvious. And to take that as a kind of weakness is plain stupidity. Like the very ideas of nation and of a nationalistic ideology, anarchism comes to us from Europe.

Anarchism is not merely the ideology of the working and peasant masses who, arriving in the new continent, are robbed of their hopes for a better life and witness the exchange of oppression by the ancient monarchies for the no less brutal oppression of the new republican oligarchies. Soon some of the native and also indigenous masses adopt the anarchist view of the world and society, from Mexico to Argentina, and from Francisco Zalacosta in the Chalco to Facn Grande in Patagonia. It is seldom noted that the anarchist doctrine of self-managed collectivism has a close resemblance to the ancient ways of life and organizations of the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Peru, ways of life that were practiced prior to the imperialism of not only the Spanish, but also the Aztecs and Inca before them. To the extent that anarchists reached the indigenous, they did not have to inculcate exotic ideologies but only to make conscious the ancient peasant ideologies of the Matagalpan calpulli and the Andean ayllu.[2]

It is important to note that from a theoretical perspective, even if the Latin American movement did not make fundamental contributions to anarchist thought, it did produce forms of organization and praxis that were unknown in Europe. For example, the Federacin Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA), a labor union that was majoritarian (becoming almost the only union), never conceded to syndical bureaucracy, and developed an organizational form as different from the Confederacin National del Trabajo (CNT) and other European anarcho-syndicalist unions as it was from the North American Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). A second example, typically Latin American, is the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM). Primarily through the efforts of Ricardo Flores Magn, within a few years of its founding it adopted an ideology that was unquestionably anarchist, nonetheless keeping its name while continuing as a political party, and thereby earning sharp criticism from some European orthodox thinkers like Jean Grave.

The unique situation of dependence in which Latin American countries found themselves with regard to European and, above all, North American imperialism caused the class struggle to be substituted by struggles for national liberation. Consequently, workers conceived of their exploitation as arising from foreign powers. The bourgeoisie, both domestic and foreign, together with various sectors of the military and the Catholic church, convinced them that the enemy was not Capital and State as such, but foreign Capital and State. Skillfully manipulated, this very conviction was the principal cause of the decline of anarchism. All else is secondary, even the intrinsic difficulties faced by anarchist organizations in the actual world, such as the need to make unions function without bureaucracy or the impossibility, real or apparent, of concrete proposals.

National histories and languages influence how we think about political legacies and with whom we communicate. Residents of the US are bound to the Americas in terms of geography and migration, and due to the legacy of imperialism that rests heavily on its economic and military expansion over the region. US leftists tend to be influenced by European traditions thanks to the availability of English-language books and online resources, and the influence of a Western-centric education. However, with an ever-growing Latinx population, already a majority ethnic population in many US states, there is a growing group of bilingual speakers who also have regular communication with organizations south of the Ro Grande. This heightens the need for US revolutionaries to become fluent in Spanish, and for the production and publication of more pamphlets and books either in Spanish or in bilingual form.

Thus, while US-based anarchists have more familiarity with the European historical tradition, Latin America is where we can learn more about cross-race solidarity and organizing in both its positive implementation and its disastrous effects due to racism and patriarchy. This includes indigenous autogestin, quilombo politics, and a regional common identity threatening the strength of national boundaries. Cappelletti does at times underscore the importance of certain figures such as Malatesta in Argentina or Fourier, Proudhon, and Mikhail Bakunin in Mexico, but their influence and ideas, while important guiding voices, were part of something larger than themselves during this time period. Also, rather than continually exoticizing Latin American figures, ranging from Clotario Blest to Flores Magn, without knowing their political opinions, we need to see these individuals too as participants in broader political movements.

The other region with an important organized libertarian network is Chile. The presence of anarchism within the labor movement from the 1950s to the 1990s is owed to syndicalists such as Clotario Blest, Celso Poblete, Ernesto Miranda, Jos Ego-Aguirre, and Hugo Crter. Ego-Aguirre and Crter, older anarcho-syndicalists, influenced a group of young people in the 1980s that led to the foundation of the Hombre y Sociedad (Man and Society) newspaper that ran from 1985 until 1988, with financial support from anarchists exiled in Europe, including Nestor Vega and Urbano Burgos.[47] From then on, other small publications emerged across the country, including El crata and Accin Directa. The multi-generational formation associated with Hombre y Sociedad became an important confluence of experience and new ideas.

We would like to thank by name several comrades across the Americas who contributed to this introduction: Jos Antonio Gutirrez D. and Pablo Abufom S. for their useful input about the history of contemporary organizations in the Southern Cone; Lorena Mans and Bree Busk whose anarchist-feminist contributions make us all better militants and more accurate writers; Joshua Savala, whose historical analysis is informed by his everyday praxis, and who can be counted on for his historical knowledge and attention to detail; also Scott Nappalos, who will ensure that our platformism does not overshadow the contribution of anarcho-syndicalists; and finally, all those in Latin America who, past and present, make anarchism a viable option and this revolutionary dream not only possible, but necessary.

In all of Latin America, utopian socialism had no greater influence on the leading Romantic writers than in Argentina. But while it is important to note this, for obvious reasons we must put aside the examination of that ideological movement here.[60]

There are presently three sections of the International in Buenos Aires, based on the various languages: the French section, the Italian and Spanish sections that formed later; each section has its own central committee and matters of general interest are addressed by a federal committee of six members, two from each section.

The incipient anarchist movement in Argentina began to lose its vitality and by the 1880s seemed nearly extinguished. It did not take long, however, for it to regain full strength as a consequence of the enormous European immigration to Argentina and many regions of its interior.[74] Oved writes:

From 1880 to 1914 massive waves of immigrants flowed into Argentina totaling 3,034,000 people, an important factor in the impressive growth of the population, from 2,492,00 inhabitants in 1880 to 7,855,000 in 1904. A direct result of this massive immigration was that in 1914 one third of the total population consisted of foreigners and the percentage of immigrants in the total population was the highest in the world.[75]

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