Anarchism in Argentina
Encyclopedia
The Argentinian anarchist movement was the strongest such movement in South America
. It was strongest between 1890 and the start of a series of military governments in 1930. During this period, it was dominated by anarchist communists and anarcho-syndicalists. The movement's theories were a hybrid of European anarchist thought and local elements, just as it consisted demographically of both European immigrant workers and native Argentinians.
The first Argentinian anarchist groups appeared in the 1870s. A section of the First International was founded in the Argentinian capital of Buenos Aires
in either 1871 or 1872, but at first it was explicitly part of neither the International's anarchist nor its Marxist wing. By 1879, there were several sections in Argentina, with anarchists in control of all of them. In 1876, adherents of Bakunin's ideals founded the Center for Workers' Propaganda. The well-known Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta
was in Argentina from 1885 to 1889. With his help, the first anarchist trade union was started in 1887. In 1890, El perseguido became the first anarchist organ in the country.
During this time the Argentinian anarchist movement was split over the question of organization. There was a, mostly communist anarchist, wing advocating workers' organizations, deeming them the natural weapon for the anarchist struggle. The opponents of organizations, both communist and individualist anarchists, in turn claimed organizations forced those working within them to become reformists and give up their revolutionary stance. Until his departure in 1889, Malatesta helped bridge this gap and minimize the tensions and rivalries between the two wings, but after he left, they broke out once again. The pro-organizers were strengthened in 1891 by the arrivals of the Spanish anarchist Pellicer Paraire in 1891 and the Italian Pietro Gori
in 1898. In 1897, the proponents of trade unions also founded the weekly newspaper La Protesta Humana. In 1900, Paraire published a series of articles in La Protesta Humana under the title "Labor Organization" advocating a dual organization concept: a militant labor federation for economic, and a genuinely anarchist organization for political matters.
In 1901, Argentina's first national labor confederation, the Argentine Workers' Federation (FOA), was founded. Although its founding principles were influenced by Paraire and Gori, it was at first a joint project with the socialists. In 1902, the first general strike in Argentinian history took place. It led to the passing of the Residence Law, which gave the government the power to deport "subversive foreigners". This law was used to expel hundreds of anarchists, while a great number of them fled to Montevideo
in Uruguay
only to reenter the country afterwards. In 1903, La Protesta Humana was renamed as La Protesta, the name under it which exists to this day. In the same year, the moderate wing of the FOA left the federation to form the General Workers' Union
(UGT), thus leaving the hegemony in the FOA to the anarchists. They renamed the union as Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (FORA) as a sign of the organization's internationalism
in 1904.
On May 1st, 1904, 70,000 anarchist workers marched in the streets of La Boca
(Buenos Aires
' total population was of 900,000). Proscribed by Roca's government, the demonstration ended in the death of a not yet 18-year-old, Juan Ocampo.
In 1905, at the FORA's fifth congress, its adherence to anarchism was formalized. In a resolution, it declared that it should "inculcate in the workers the economic and philosophical principles of anarchocommunism". This resolution became the basic policy for the following years. The FORA disagreed with the revolutionary syndicalists over the question of the unions' role after a revolution. While the anarcho-communists viewed labor unions as a by-product of capitalist society, which would have to be dissolved with the establishment of an anarchist society, the syndicalists viewed their unions' democratic structure as a model for the society they envisioned and wanted the unions to be the basis of such a new society. A series of strikes, many of them instigated by the anarchists, followed 1905.
During this period the anarchist movement experienced rapid growth. 50 to 70% of the males in the working class were disenfranchised, because they were not native Argentinians. Hence the legal political framework was not an option for them and anarchism gained appeal.
demonstration in the Plaza Lorea
in Buenos Aires
organized by FORA. Several workers were killed. The anarchists responded by declaring a general strike leading the government to shut down the workers' centers and arrest 2,000 people. This strike lasted nine days. As the Chief of Police Ramón Falcón was widely blamed for the killing, the young Jewish anarchist Simón Radowitzky killed him and his secretary by throwing a bomb at the car they were in on November 13. An unprecedented repression against the anarchist movement ensued. Martial law was declared and remained in place until January 1910. The offices of La Protesta were raided and its machinery destroyed, as were the workers' centers. Within 48 hours thousands were arrested, many sent to Ushuaia
prison in Tierra del Fuego
. Non-Argentinian activists were generally deported.
Although martial law was lifted in January 1910, this year also saw the next major clash between the government and the anarchists. 1910 was the hundredth anniversary of the May Revolution
of 1810, which led to Argentinian independence. Anarchist agitation was on the rise, a new anarchist daily newspaper, La Batalla, was founded in March, and the FORA planned protests against the Residence Law, but was somewhat hesitant as it scented a lack of militancy among workers. The moderate syndicalist Argentine Regional Workers' Confederation (CORA), the successor of the General Workers' Union, however, pushed for confrontation and the anarchists were forced to follow suit. They threatened to call for a general strike on May 25, the day of the anniversary festivities. Therefore, the government once again declared martial law on May 13. Police arrested the editors of La Protesta and La Batalla and FORA leaders. Meanwhile, right-wing militant youths attacked union offices and workers' clubs while the police ignored or even encouraged them. Because of this, the general strike was moved to May 18, but it was suppressed by the police and the right-wing militants. 1910 also saw the sentencing of Simon Radowitzky. As a minor, he could not be sentenced to death, so he was condemned to life in Ushuaia. He would be pardoned and released from prison in 1930.
Argentine anarchist historian Angel Cappelletti
reports that in Argentina "Among the workers that came from Europe in the 2 first decades of the century, there was curiously some stirnerian individualists influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche, that saw syndicalism as a potential enemy of anarchist ideology. They established...affinity groups that in 1912 came to, according to Max Nettlau
, to the number of 20. In 1911 there appeared, in Colón
, the periodical El Único, that defined itself as ´Publicación individualista´".
Meanwhile, the moderate syndicalist CORA grew in size as a result of its pragmatic approach, which included participating in negotiations with employers in place of direct action
as advocated by the anarchists. Striving for labor unity, the CORA set up a fusion committee with some non-affiliated unions to push for a merger with the FORA. The majority of the FORA agreed, calling for the CORA to abolish itself and enter the FORA. At the April 1915 FORA congress, its ninth, a resolution which reversed its commitment to anarchist communism was passed, paving the way for the CORA unions to join. Only a minority in the FORA rejected this move. After the congress, this minority started a breakaway federation under the name FORA V, referring to the fifth congress, which the resolution for anarcho-communism was passed at. While the FORA IX had somewhere between 100,000 and 120,000 members, the anarchist FORA V had 10,000 at the most, though both figures are considered unreliable. The FORA V was strongest in the interior of the country, where most of the workers were native Argentinians.
With the start of World War I in 1914, the conditions for the anarchist movement became even more unfavorable. The falling of wages and a net migration back to Europe created poor premises for any kind of labor activism and the anarchist FORA V struggled to adapt to this. After a railworkers' strike broke out in October 1917, the anarchists called for a futile general strike and received little support from the FORA IX. A meat-packers' strike in Berisso
and Avellaneda
led by the anarchists was defeated in 1918.
Semana Trágica
In December 1918, a strike broke out at the Vasena metalworks in the Buenos Aires suburbs of Nueva Pompeya
. The union leading the strike was a splinter from FORA IX and called itself anarchist, though its links to FORA V were tenuous. On January 7, 1919, a shootout between strikers and police, troops, and firemen killed five. The police and troops then attacked the 200,000 workers at the funeral procession on killing at least thirty-nine and injuring many more. After the events of January 7, the FORA V immediately called for a general strike, but the work stoppage that followed was more of a result of the workers' outrage over the killings than of the anarchists' call. The general strike took place on January 11 to 12, but then subsided. Once again, the police, the military, and right-wing groups reacted with pogroms in working-class neighborhoods. Right-wing militants created the Argentine Patriotic League
. The Jewish inhabitants of the workers' quarters especially became the victims of the attacks. In all, somewhere between 100 and 700 people died and around 4,000 were injured. The Semana Trágica
further perpetuated the decline of Argentinian anarchism. From around 1920 on, the anarchists' influence in the trade unions was rather minor.
From 1920 to 1921, there was a peasant uprising
in Patagonia
led by anarchists. The army, led by Colonel Héctor Varela, reacted by executing some 1,500 people. Because of the remoteness of the region, the events did not become known in Buenos Aires at first. Once they did, the anarchist movement started a campaign against the "killer of Patagonia", as they called Varela. This led the Tolstoyan
anarchist Kurt Gustav Wilckens to assassinate the colonel on January 23, 1923.
The movement's decline continued nevertheless. It was intensified by both strife within the movement and government persecution.
came to power in Argentina via a coup d'état
starting a series of military governments known as the Infamous Decade
. The anarchist FORA, the sole FORA since the FORA IX was renamed as the Argentine Syndicates' Union (USA) in 1922, went underground immediately. A number of distributors of La Protesta were arrested or killed within a year Uriburu ascension to power. Deciding it had become impossible to distribute the paper, the publishers of La Protesta ceased making it and disseminated an underground newspaper named Rebelión instead. After martial law was lifted in 1932, La Protesta, the anarchist weekly La Antorcha, and FORA unions in Santa Fé
and Rosario
published a manifesto called "Eighteen Months of Military Terror" about the repression they had endured. In this year the second Regional Anarchist Conference was held in Rosario - the first having taken place in Buenos Aires in 1922. It had been planned by anarchists imprisoned under Uriburu. The congress set up a regional committee for anarchist co-ordination, which eventually led to the founding of the Argentine Anarcho-Communist Federation (FACA) in 1935.
The Spanish Civil War
, which broke out in 1937, was an important topic for the Argentinian anarchists. Various anarchists left to fight in the war and the FACA's official newspaper Acción Libertaria published special editions dedicated to it.
In 1943, the populist dictator Juan Perón
came to power. Once more, the whole anarchist movement was forced to go underground. All union offices and headquarters, both of the FORA and independent, were closed. Following the imprisonment and torture of several FORA members in 1952, the anarchists of all factions launched a campaign to inform the public of the situation. After Perón fell in 1955, the movement re-emerged. Anarchist periodicals appeared openly once again, among them La Protesta and Acción Libertaria.
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
. It was strongest between 1890 and the start of a series of military governments in 1930. During this period, it was dominated by anarchist communists and anarcho-syndicalists. The movement's theories were a hybrid of European anarchist thought and local elements, just as it consisted demographically of both European immigrant workers and native Argentinians.
Early years
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
in either 1871 or 1872, but at first it was explicitly part of neither the International's anarchist nor its Marxist wing. By 1879, there were several sections in Argentina, with anarchists in control of all of them. In 1876, adherents of Bakunin's ideals founded the Center for Workers' Propaganda. The well-known Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta
Errico Malatesta
Errico Malatesta was an Italian anarcho-communist. He was an insurrectionary anarchist early in his life. He spent much of his life exiled from his homeland of Italy and in total spent more than ten years in prison. He wrote and edited a number of radical newspapers and was also a friend of...
was in Argentina from 1885 to 1889. With his help, the first anarchist trade union was started in 1887. In 1890, El perseguido became the first anarchist organ in the country.
During this time the Argentinian anarchist movement was split over the question of organization. There was a, mostly communist anarchist, wing advocating workers' organizations, deeming them the natural weapon for the anarchist struggle. The opponents of organizations, both communist and individualist anarchists, in turn claimed organizations forced those working within them to become reformists and give up their revolutionary stance. Until his departure in 1889, Malatesta helped bridge this gap and minimize the tensions and rivalries between the two wings, but after he left, they broke out once again. The pro-organizers were strengthened in 1891 by the arrivals of the Spanish anarchist Pellicer Paraire in 1891 and the Italian Pietro Gori
Pietro Gori
Pietro Gori was an Italian lawyer, journalist, intellectual and anarchist poet. He is known for his political activities, and as author of some of the most famous anarchist songs of the late 19th century, including Addio a Lugano , Stornelli d'esilio , Ballata per Sante Caserio Pietro Gori (14...
in 1898. In 1897, the proponents of trade unions also founded the weekly newspaper La Protesta Humana. In 1900, Paraire published a series of articles in La Protesta Humana under the title "Labor Organization" advocating a dual organization concept: a militant labor federation for economic, and a genuinely anarchist organization for political matters.
FORA founding and radicalization
Montevideo
Montevideo is the largest city, the capital, and the chief port of Uruguay. The settlement was established in 1726 by Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, as a strategic move amidst a Spanish-Portuguese dispute over the platine region, and as a counter to the Portuguese colony at Colonia del Sacramento...
in Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
only to reenter the country afterwards. In 1903, La Protesta Humana was renamed as La Protesta, the name under it which exists to this day. In the same year, the moderate wing of the FOA left the federation to form the General Workers' Union
General Workers' Union (Argentina)
The General Workers' Union was an Argentine national labor confederation from 1903 to 1909.It was founded in 1903 as a rival to the country's first national labor confederation, the Argentine Workers' Federation , known as the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation from 1905...
(UGT), thus leaving the hegemony in the FOA to the anarchists. They renamed the union as Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (FORA) as a sign of the organization's internationalism
Proletarian internationalism
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is a Marxist social class concept based on the view that capitalism is now a global system, and therefore the working class must act as a global class if it is to defeat it...
in 1904.
On May 1st, 1904, 70,000 anarchist workers marched in the streets of La Boca
La Boca
La Boca is a neighborhood, or barrio of the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. It retains a strong European flavour, with many of its early settlers being from the Italian city of Genoa. In fact the name has a strong assonance with the Genoese neighborhood of Boccadasse , and some people believe that...
(Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
' total population was of 900,000). Proscribed by Roca's government, the demonstration ended in the death of a not yet 18-year-old, Juan Ocampo.
In 1905, at the FORA's fifth congress, its adherence to anarchism was formalized. In a resolution, it declared that it should "inculcate in the workers the economic and philosophical principles of anarchocommunism". This resolution became the basic policy for the following years. The FORA disagreed with the revolutionary syndicalists over the question of the unions' role after a revolution. While the anarcho-communists viewed labor unions as a by-product of capitalist society, which would have to be dissolved with the establishment of an anarchist society, the syndicalists viewed their unions' democratic structure as a model for the society they envisioned and wanted the unions to be the basis of such a new society. A series of strikes, many of them instigated by the anarchists, followed 1905.
During this period the anarchist movement experienced rapid growth. 50 to 70% of the males in the working class were disenfranchised, because they were not native Argentinians. Hence the legal political framework was not an option for them and anarchism gained appeal.
Major clashes with police
In 1909, police fired on a May DayMay Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....
demonstration in the Plaza Lorea
Congressional Plaza
Congressional Plaza is a public park facing the Argentine Congress in Buenos Aires. The plaza is part of a 3 hectare open space comprising three adjoining plazas to the east of the Congress building...
in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
organized by FORA. Several workers were killed. The anarchists responded by declaring a general strike leading the government to shut down the workers' centers and arrest 2,000 people. This strike lasted nine days. As the Chief of Police Ramón Falcón was widely blamed for the killing, the young Jewish anarchist Simón Radowitzky killed him and his secretary by throwing a bomb at the car they were in on November 13. An unprecedented repression against the anarchist movement ensued. Martial law was declared and remained in place until January 1910. The offices of La Protesta were raided and its machinery destroyed, as were the workers' centers. Within 48 hours thousands were arrested, many sent to Ushuaia
Ushuaia
Ushuaia may refer to the following:*Ushuaia, a city in Argentina.**Ushuaia Department, an administrative division**Ushuaia River**Ushuaia International Airport**Colegio Nacional de Ushuaia, National School of Ushuaia....
prison in Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of a main island Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego divided between Chile and Argentina with an area of , and a group of smaller islands including Cape...
. Non-Argentinian activists were generally deported.
Although martial law was lifted in January 1910, this year also saw the next major clash between the government and the anarchists. 1910 was the hundredth anniversary of the May Revolution
May Revolution
The May Revolution was a week-long series of events that took place from May 18 to 25, 1810, in Buenos Aires, capital of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, a Spanish colony that included roughly the territories of present-day Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay...
of 1810, which led to Argentinian independence. Anarchist agitation was on the rise, a new anarchist daily newspaper, La Batalla, was founded in March, and the FORA planned protests against the Residence Law, but was somewhat hesitant as it scented a lack of militancy among workers. The moderate syndicalist Argentine Regional Workers' Confederation (CORA), the successor of the General Workers' Union, however, pushed for confrontation and the anarchists were forced to follow suit. They threatened to call for a general strike on May 25, the day of the anniversary festivities. Therefore, the government once again declared martial law on May 13. Police arrested the editors of La Protesta and La Batalla and FORA leaders. Meanwhile, right-wing militant youths attacked union offices and workers' clubs while the police ignored or even encouraged them. Because of this, the general strike was moved to May 18, but it was suppressed by the police and the right-wing militants. 1910 also saw the sentencing of Simon Radowitzky. As a minor, he could not be sentenced to death, so he was condemned to life in Ushuaia. He would be pardoned and released from prison in 1930.
Argentine anarchist historian Angel Cappelletti
Angel Cappelletti
Ángel Cappelletti was a philosopher and university professor. He was born in Rosario. He studied philosophy at the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires where he also got his PhD degree in 1954. He moved to Venezuela in 1968 and began teaching at the Simon Bolivar University until his retirement in...
reports that in Argentina "Among the workers that came from Europe in the 2 first decades of the century, there was curiously some stirnerian individualists influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche, that saw syndicalism as a potential enemy of anarchist ideology. They established...affinity groups that in 1912 came to, according to Max Nettlau
Max Nettlau
Max Heinrich Hermann Reinhardt Nettlau was a German anarchist and historian. Although born in Neuwaldegg and raised in Vienna he retained his Prussian nationality throughout his life. A student of the Welsh language he spent time in London where he joined the Socialist League where he met...
, to the number of 20. In 1911 there appeared, in Colón
Colón, Buenos Aires
Colón is a town in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It is the head town of the Colón Partido.The town is located in an agricultural area, the main areas of employment are in agriculture, the production of agricultural machinery and textiles....
, the periodical El Único, that defined itself as ´Publicación individualista´".
FORA split
The events of 1909 and 1910 left the Argentinian anarchists fatigued. The movement's growth stalled as a result of state repression and the country's economic problems. The Law of Social Defense, passed as a reaction to the Falcón assassination, allowed the government to deny any foreigner who committed crimes punishable under Argentinian law entry into the country, prohibited the entry of anarchists, banned groups disseminating anarchist propaganda, and granted local authorities the power to prohibit any public meetings which subversive ideas could be expressed at.Meanwhile, the moderate syndicalist CORA grew in size as a result of its pragmatic approach, which included participating in negotiations with employers in place of direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
as advocated by the anarchists. Striving for labor unity, the CORA set up a fusion committee with some non-affiliated unions to push for a merger with the FORA. The majority of the FORA agreed, calling for the CORA to abolish itself and enter the FORA. At the April 1915 FORA congress, its ninth, a resolution which reversed its commitment to anarchist communism was passed, paving the way for the CORA unions to join. Only a minority in the FORA rejected this move. After the congress, this minority started a breakaway federation under the name FORA V, referring to the fifth congress, which the resolution for anarcho-communism was passed at. While the FORA IX had somewhere between 100,000 and 120,000 members, the anarchist FORA V had 10,000 at the most, though both figures are considered unreliable. The FORA V was strongest in the interior of the country, where most of the workers were native Argentinians.
With the start of World War I in 1914, the conditions for the anarchist movement became even more unfavorable. The falling of wages and a net migration back to Europe created poor premises for any kind of labor activism and the anarchist FORA V struggled to adapt to this. After a railworkers' strike broke out in October 1917, the anarchists called for a futile general strike and received little support from the FORA IX. A meat-packers' strike in Berisso
Berisso
Berisso is the "cabecera" of the Department of Berisso of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It forms part of the Greater La Plata urban area and has a population of approximately 14.021 Inhabitants.-People:...
and Avellaneda
Avellaneda
Avellaneda is a port city in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the seat of the Avellaneda Partido, whose population was 328,980 as per the ....
led by the anarchists was defeated in 1918.
Semana TrágicaTragic Week (Argentina)Tragic Week was a series of riots and massacres that took place in Buenos Aires, during the week of January 7, 1919. The riot was led by anarchists and communists, and was fought by both the police and the army...
and 1920s
In December 1918, a strike broke out at the Vasena metalworks in the Buenos Aires suburbs of Nueva PompeyaNueva Pompeya
Nueva Pompeya is a neighbourhood in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Located in the South side, it has long been one of the city's proletarian districts steeped in the tradition of tango and one where many of the first tangos were written and performed....
. The union leading the strike was a splinter from FORA IX and called itself anarchist, though its links to FORA V were tenuous. On January 7, 1919, a shootout between strikers and police, troops, and firemen killed five. The police and troops then attacked the 200,000 workers at the funeral procession on killing at least thirty-nine and injuring many more. After the events of January 7, the FORA V immediately called for a general strike, but the work stoppage that followed was more of a result of the workers' outrage over the killings than of the anarchists' call. The general strike took place on January 11 to 12, but then subsided. Once again, the police, the military, and right-wing groups reacted with pogroms in working-class neighborhoods. Right-wing militants created the Argentine Patriotic League
Argentine Patriotic League
The Argentine Patriotic League was a Nacionalista paramilitary group, officially created in Buenos Aires on January 16, 1919, during the Tragic week events. Presided over by Manuel Carlés, a professor at the Military College and the Escuela Superior de Guerra, it also counted among its members the...
. The Jewish inhabitants of the workers' quarters especially became the victims of the attacks. In all, somewhere between 100 and 700 people died and around 4,000 were injured. The Semana Trágica
Tragic Week (Argentina)
Tragic Week was a series of riots and massacres that took place in Buenos Aires, during the week of January 7, 1919. The riot was led by anarchists and communists, and was fought by both the police and the army...
further perpetuated the decline of Argentinian anarchism. From around 1920 on, the anarchists' influence in the trade unions was rather minor.
From 1920 to 1921, there was a peasant uprising
Patagonia rebelde
Patagonia rebelde was a violent suppression of a rural worker's strike in the Argentine province of Santa Cruz in Argentine Patagonia between 1921 and 1922. The uprising was put down by Colonel Héctor Benigno Varela's 10th Cavalry Regiment of the Argentine Army under the orders of Hipólito Yrigoyen...
in Patagonia
Patagonia
Patagonia is a region located in Argentina and Chile, integrating the southernmost section of the Andes mountains to the southwest towards the Pacific ocean and from the east of the cordillera to the valleys it follows south through Colorado River towards Carmen de Patagones in the Atlantic Ocean...
led by anarchists. The army, led by Colonel Héctor Varela, reacted by executing some 1,500 people. Because of the remoteness of the region, the events did not become known in Buenos Aires at first. Once they did, the anarchist movement started a campaign against the "killer of Patagonia", as they called Varela. This led the Tolstoyan
Tolstoyan
The Tolstoyan movement is a social movement based on the philosophical and religious views of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy . Tolstoy's views were formed by rigorous study of the ministry of Jesus, particularly the Sermon on the Mount....
anarchist Kurt Gustav Wilckens to assassinate the colonel on January 23, 1923.
The movement's decline continued nevertheless. It was intensified by both strife within the movement and government persecution.
Infamous Decade and first Péron rule
On September 6, 1931, José Félix UriburuJosé Félix Uriburu
General José Félix Benito Uriburu y Uriburu was the first de facto President of Argentina, achieved through a military coup, from September 6, 1930 to February 20, 1932.-Biography:...
came to power in Argentina via a coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
starting a series of military governments known as the Infamous Decade
Infamous Decade
The Infamous Decade in Argentina is the name given to the period of time that started in 1930 with the coup d'état against President Hipólito Yrigoyen by José Félix Uriburu...
. The anarchist FORA, the sole FORA since the FORA IX was renamed as the Argentine Syndicates' Union (USA) in 1922, went underground immediately. A number of distributors of La Protesta were arrested or killed within a year Uriburu ascension to power. Deciding it had become impossible to distribute the paper, the publishers of La Protesta ceased making it and disseminated an underground newspaper named Rebelión instead. After martial law was lifted in 1932, La Protesta, the anarchist weekly La Antorcha, and FORA unions in Santa Fé
Santa Fe
Santa Fe or Santa Fé may refer to:-Places:*Argentina**Santa Fe, Argentina, a city in Argentina**Santa Fe Province, a province of Argentina*Bolivia**Santa Fé , Bolivia...
and Rosario
Rosario
Rosario is the largest city in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. It is located northwest of Buenos Aires, on the western shore of the Paraná River and has 1,159,004 residents as of the ....
published a manifesto called "Eighteen Months of Military Terror" about the repression they had endured. In this year the second Regional Anarchist Conference was held in Rosario - the first having taken place in Buenos Aires in 1922. It had been planned by anarchists imprisoned under Uriburu. The congress set up a regional committee for anarchist co-ordination, which eventually led to the founding of the Argentine Anarcho-Communist Federation (FACA) in 1935.
The Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, which broke out in 1937, was an important topic for the Argentinian anarchists. Various anarchists left to fight in the war and the FACA's official newspaper Acción Libertaria published special editions dedicated to it.
In 1943, the populist dictator Juan Perón
Juan Perón
Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer, and politician. Perón was three times elected as President of Argentina though he only managed to serve one full term, after serving in several government positions, including the Secretary of Labor and the Vice Presidency...
came to power. Once more, the whole anarchist movement was forced to go underground. All union offices and headquarters, both of the FORA and independent, were closed. Following the imprisonment and torture of several FORA members in 1952, the anarchists of all factions launched a campaign to inform the public of the situation. After Perón fell in 1955, the movement re-emerged. Anarchist periodicals appeared openly once again, among them La Protesta and Acción Libertaria.
External links
- History of Anarchism in Argentina from R.A. Forum
- The Anarchist City of America Santiago Juan-Navarro's article on Pierre Quiroule's work