Anarchist Immigrants In Spain And Argentina

From 1868 through 1939, anarchists' migrations from Spain to Argentina and back again created a transnational ideology and influenced the movement's growth in each country. James A. Baer follows the lives, careers, and travels of Diego Abad de Santillán, Manuel Villar, and other migrating anarchists to highlight the ideological and interpersonal relationships that defined a vital era in anarchist history. Drawing on extensive interviews with Abad de Santillán, José Grunfeld, and Jacobo Maguid, along withunusual access to anarchist records and networks, Baer uncovers the ways anarchist migrants in pursuit of jobs and political goals formed a critical nucleus of militants, binding the two countries in an ideological relationship that profoundly affected the history of both. He also considers the impact of reverse migration and discusses political decisions that had a hitherto unknown influence on the course of the Spanish Civil War. Personal in perspective and transnational in scope, Anarchist Immigrants in Spain and Argentina offers an enlightening history of a movement and an era.

This book analyzes the formation of a mass anarchist movement in Spain over the turn of the twentieth century. In this period, the movement was transformed from a dislocated collection of groups and individuals into the largest organized body of anarchists in world history: the anarcho-syndicalist National Confederation of Labour (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo: CNT). At the same time, anarchist cultural practices became ingrained in localities across the whole of Spain, laying foundations which maintained the movement’s popular support until the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939. The book shows that grassroots print culture was central to these developments: driving the development of ideology and strategy – broadly defined as terrorism, education and workplace organization – and providing an informal structure to a movement which shunned recognized leadership and bureaucracy. This study offers a rich analysis of the cultural foundations of Spanish anarchism. This emphasis also challenges claims that the movement was "exceptional" or "peculiar" in its formation, by situating it alongside other decentralized, bottom-up mobilizations across historical and contemporary contexts, from the radical pamphleteering culture of the English Civil War to the use of social media in the Arab Spring.

This work is concerned with human migration at the turn of the twentieth century, specifically with iron workers moving from Spain to south Wales. The research includes an oral history project involving the descendants of some of the original migrants. The book explores the events and challenges that the migrants and their families faced in their new Welsh homes. Those experiences include periods of conflict, such as the Spanish Civil War (in which family members were involved), poverty, disease, heartache and the challenge to their religious and political beliefs. The work also highlights how it was that many of the Spanish overcame hurdles to fully integrate into their new location by learning a new language, a new sport (rugby), choir membership and a new church. It also describes the environment, in which they lived, as a cosmopolitan location where they were exposed, at intervals, to industrial conflict and racism, but where they all eventually became Welsh.

The research collected in this volume consists of 18 chapters which explore a number of key areas of investigation in contemporary Iberian studies. As the title suggests, there is a strong emphasis on trans-national and trans-regional approaches to the subject area, reflecting current discourse and scholarship, but the contributions are not limited by these approaches and include an eclectic range of recent work by scholars of history, politics, literature, the visual arts and cultural and social studies, often working in transdisciplinary ways. The geographical scope of the transnational processes considered range from intra-Iberian interconnections to those with the UK, Italy and Morocco, as well as transatlantic influences between the Peninsula and Argentina, Cuba and Brazil. The book opens up some pioneering new directions in research in Iberian studies, as well as variety of fresh approaches to hitherto neglected aspects of more familiar issues.

In 1901, the year the six Australian colonies federated to become one country, revolution was being plotted across the world. Publicised in the newspapers and carried by migrants along global trade routes, the anarchist movement appeared prepared for a long period of power as one of the world’s dominant historical forces. In few places was this more evident than in Spain, where poverty and population pressure prompted increasing emigration. In anglophone Australia, governments had long been alert to the threat of radicalised migrants, and this book traces the forgotten lives of one particular group of such migrants, the Spanish anarchists of northern Australia, revealing the personal connections between the English-speaking British Empire and the world of Spanish-speaking radicals. The present study demonstrates the vitality of this hidden world, and its importance for the development of Australia.

Between 1936 and 1939, the Spanish Civil War showcased anarchism to the world. News of the revolution in Spain energised a moribund international anarchist movement, and activists from across the globe flocked to Spain to fight against fascism and build the revolution behind the front lines. Those that stayed at home set up groups and newspapers to send money, weapons and solidarity to their Spanish comrades. This book charts this little-known phenomenon through a transnational case study of anarchists from Britain, Ireland and the United States, using a thematic approach to place their efforts in the wider context of the civil war, the anarchist movement and the international left.

Anarchist Socialism in Early 20th Century Spain is the first English translation of and critical introduction to Ideario, a collection of newspaper and journal articles written by Spanish anarchist Ricardo Mella. Given that Mella is virtually unknown to the English-speaking world, this book provides readers access to his extensive body of work about Spain, human nature, and a world increasingly dominated by capitalism. Suitable for both the general public interested in learning more about anarchist ideas and for scholars studying twentieth-century Spain, the three introductory essays help to introduce Mella, ground his work in the context of Spanish anarchism, and draw connections between Mella and the urban in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spain. Stephen Luis Vilaseca’s translation is accessible and engaging.

A Cold War-era study of Latin American anarchism in action. Araiza Kokinis's study of the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation (FAU) broadens our understanding of the Cold War-era political landscape beyond the capitalism-communism and Old Left-New Left binaries that dominate the historiography of the epoch. Arguably the most impactful anarchist organization globally in the Cold War era, the FAU viewed everyday people as revolutionary protagonists and sought to develop a popular counter-subjectivity through accumulating experiences directly challenging the market and the state. The FAU argued that everyday people transformed into revolutionary subjects through the regular practice of collective direct action in labor unions, student organizations, and neighborhood councils. Their slogan was "create popular power," and their praxis differed from nationalist strains of Marxism at the time. The strategies and tactics promoted by FAU, ones in which everyday people took on roles as historical protagonists, offered the largest threat to maintaining social order in Uruguay and thus spawned a military takeover of the state to dismantle and deflate their vibrant popular revolt. With less than 80 militants, FAU played a key role both sparking and networking popular protagonism in workplaces, neighborhoods, and on campuses. The FAU worked in coalition with the Communist Party (PCU), MLN-Tupamaros (MLN-T), and other Left organizations to support a unified Left project while simultaneously challenging hegemonic strategies, tactics, and discourses. Unlike other anarchist groups worldwide, which took to individualism and counterculture in response to Marxism’s popularity throughout the sixties, the FAU embraced Third Worldism and a class struggle strategy that made them a relevant force amongst popular social movements. Throughout the constitutional dictatorship (1967–73), the Tendencia Combativa, a coalition of dissident labor unions spearheaded by FAU, controlled one-third of the nation’s unions in some of the most lucrative industries, especially in the private sector. By the time of June 27, 1973, military coup, a majority of Uruguayan industrialists recognized organized labor as the most serious threat to national security. Moreover, communications between US Ambassador to Uruguay Ernest V. Siracusa and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, showed the dictatorship’s primary concern was to repress the surging labor movement rather than confronting a waning Tupamaro guerrilla movement. The FAU’s anarchist activism within this broader climate of worker revolt threw a wrench in the 1970s neoliberal experiments in Latin America that later migrated north to impoverish American workers from the 1980s until today.