Anarchism is pre-revolution Cuba

[which doctor]

Anarchism was the driving force behind Cuba's revolutionary and labor movements from their dawn until well into the 20th century. Anarchists bore primary responsibility for organizing workers in Cuba's most important industries, tobacco and sugar. At the height of their influence in the 1920s, Cuba's anarchists controlled the Cuban union movement, provided free nonreligious schools for poor children, provided meeting places for Cuba's working class, organized campesinos into unions and agricultural collectives, and published newspapers and magazines across the island. Later, they would take an active part in the resistance to the Machado, Batista, and Castro dictatorships. This book presents their inspiring story.

Supposedly Mutualism and other currents of anarchism began to take hold among the Cuban proletariat in the mid 1800's.

Does anyone know more about the history of anarchism in both pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary Cuba?

[Red Rebel]

Can't help you with pre-revolution, but there wasn't many anarchist after the revolution.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30, 2006 11:01 pm
Does anyone know more about the history of anarchism in both pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary Cuba?

Don't know anything about them, but you should probably try Frank Fernandez’ Cuban Anarchism and Non-Western Anarchisms (http://www.geocities.com/ringfingers/nonwesternweb.html) by Jason Adams. Not read either of them, but I imagine they'd have some useful information.

[Severian]

Well, there's this book (http://www.ainfos.ca/04/feb/ainfos00387.html) Despite its rabid biases, some interesting information can be seen, like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.

For example:
A few months after Fidel Castro declared himself a marxist-leninist, an
event without parallel in the history of Cuban anarchism occurred. Manuel
Gaona Sousa, an old railroad worker from the times of Enrique Varona and
the CNOC, a libertarian militant his entire life and a founder of the
ALC, and in the first years of Castroism the ALC’s Secretary of Relations-and
hence the person dealing with overseas anarchist media and organizations-betrayed
both his ideals and his comrades. In a document titled A Clarification
and a Declaration of the Cuban Libertarians, dated and signed in Marianao
on November 24, 1961, Gaona denounced the Cuban anarchists who didn’t
share his enthusiasm for the Castro revolution.


After the first confrontations with the most stalinist sectors of the
PCC, it was understood in the ALC that the regime, on its way to totalitarianism,
would not permit the existence of an anarchist organization, or even the
propagation of anarchist ideas. The PCC wanted to settle accounts with
the anarchists. For his part, Gaona preferred to save his own skin by
settling in the enemy camp, leaving his former comrades to fend for themselves.

In all lands and all latitudes there have always been those who have embraced
and then rejected libertarian ideas. In this, Gaona was not unusual. The
renunciation of anarchism by prominent anarchists was nothing new; persons
with equal or more responsibility than Gaona in Cuban anarchist organizations
had done it, exchanging their social opinions for Cuban electoral politics.
For example, Enrique Messonier crossed over to the Partido Liberal in
1901; Antonio Penichet to the Partido Auténtico at the beginning of the
1930s; and Helio Nardo to the Partido Ortodoxo at the end of the 1940s.
These acts were never considered traitorous by the majority of libertarian
militants. They simply believed that these ex-compañeros had the right
to choose their own political destiny, and those who switched allegiances
were never anathematized. Besides, they hadn’t drastically changed their
basic positions, and they hadn’t associated themselves with parties of
the extreme right or with other totalitarian or religious parties. This
wasn’t the case with Gaona. He not only allied himself with the reactionary
forces governing Cuba, but he also threatened to denounce as “agents of
imperialism” former comrades who didn’t share his pseudo-revolutionary
posture to the recently formed Committees for the Defense of the Revolution-which,
of course, would have meant prison or the firing squad for anyone he denounced.

Gaona went further and coerced several elderly anarchists, such as Rafael
Serra and Francisco Bretau, into being accomplices in his betrayal through
a document in which he attempted to “clarify” for overseas anarchists
“an insidious campaign being waged in the libertarian press of your country
. . . against the Cuban Revolution” with the purpose of “collecting money
for the Cuban libertarian prisoners . . . to deliver them and their families
out of the country.” The document railed against what Gaona labeled “a
hoax, irresponsibility, and bad faith” on the part of his ex-comrades
now in exile or taking refuge in some embassy. He then guaranteed in the
first paragraph that there did not exist on the entire island “a single
libertarian comrade who has been detained or persecuted for his ideas.”
And this when Gaona had expelled all the anarchists from the ALC and dissolved
the organization!


The second paragraph of Gaona’s document declared that there didn’t exist
any type of political or religious persecution in Cuba, and then attempted
to identify the Bay of Pigs prisoners with all of the opposition forces
in Cuba, including, of course, the anarchists. To combat this threat,
there existed an “extreme vigilance in the people through the Committees
for the Defense of the Revolution-one on every block-against the terrorists.”
Gaona thus justified the terrorism of the state against the people through
committees of informers that answered to the feared state security agency.
He also implied that any citizen that didn’t back this “revolutionary”
process, these intrusive committees, was a traitor who deserved to be
denounced.

Gaona then lied outright when he declared that “almost the totality of
libertarian militants in Cuba find themselves integrated into the distinct
‘Organisms of the Cuban Revolution’,” all of which he labeled “mass organizations.”
He then boasted that the “integration” of these militants was the “consequence
of the molding [into reality] . . . of all of the immediate objectives
of our program . . . and the reason for being of the international anarchist
movement and the international workers’ movement.” Here one can grasp
fully the intention and direction of this document. According to Gaona,
the anarchists “integrated” themselves spontaneously into Castro’s despotism
because it embodied the objective of all of their social struggles over
more than a century. He even goes beyond this and says that Castro’s despotism
embodies the true agenda and purpose of all of the world’s anarchists.

Gaona ends with an exhortation to non-Cuban anarchists “to not be surprised
by the bad intentions and false information that you’ll receive from those
. . . at the service, conscious or unconscious, of the Cuban counter-revolution,
who undertake to remain deaf and blind before the realities . . . of the
most progressive, democratic, and humanist Revolution of our continent.”
Finally, he states that it’s necessary to support Castroism and “to take
up arms” in its defense, declaring “traitors and cowards” those who “under
the pretext of differences or sectarian rancor” oppose this beautiful
dream.

This document is treated here at length because it will help the reader
better understand its sinister consequences in coming years. Gaona, at
the end of his life, had betrayed his comrades, but even worse, he coerced
five elderly members of the Cuban anarchist movement-some already infirm
octogenerians-into endorsing this monstrous declaration that precisely
negated all libertarian principles, both inside and outside Cuba. Vicente
Alea, Rafael Serra, Francisco Bretau, Andrés Pardo, and Francisco Calle
(“Mata”) signed this document along with 16 others who had little or nothing
to do with Cuban anarchism.

The assertion that the "elderly anarchists" were "coerced" seems especially tendentious.

Unfortunately, the viewpoint of Gaona and other pro-revolution Cuban anarchists does not seem to be represented on the web. His assertion that his opponents were counter-revolutionaries is, ironically, shown true by this same book. In another chapter, it praises some of the anarchists who were part of various CIA-supported contra groups in the Escambray Mountains. It names the groups, some of them led by notorious criminal rightists.

This is a phenomenon seen in every revolution: some anarchists join it; some anarchists turn against it. None can stick with their doctrines; they have to choose sides between the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary state powers.

[rebelworker]

Though I would agree with your critisism of many anarchists the fact is that the majoity of anarchist continue to fight for revoutionary communism durring revolutions. The idea that the state of some party has a monopoly on the revolutionary process is just downright foolish and goes against the mass character of revolutionary transformation.

The anarchists of spain continued to fight in workers militias, the anarchists of russia continued to work in the factory comitties, the anarchists of the Ukrain continued to fight in their militias and build councils, the revolutionaries in mexico continued to fight as autonomous but coordinated militias outside of state controll.

I could go on....

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 02, 2006 06:28 pm
Though I would agree with your critisism of many anarchists the fact is that the majoity of anarchist continue to fight for revoutionary communism durring revolutions.
Well, that might even have been true in Cuba - if most anarchists supported Gaona's viewpoint. I don't have any way of knowing if that's true, I only know what its opponent - Fernandez - has to say about that tendency.

In any case, it doesn't contradict my point in any way.


The anarchists of spain continued to fight in workers militias, the anarchists of russia continued to work in the factory comitties, the anarchists of the Ukrain continued to fight in their militias and build councils, the revolutionaries in mexico continued to fight as autonomous but coordinated militias outside of state controll.

You could say much the same of rank-and-file members of many social-democratic and Stalinist parties in revolutionary situations. So what?

In Spain, for example, the leaders of the CNT-FAI supported the bourgeois government; some even joined it. Many rank-and-file anarchists tried to resist this - unsuccessfully. This is a lot like the situation of revolutionary-minded workers in the Spanish Socialist Party.

If you want to make a revolution - if you're not shooting for a tragic, heroic defeat and plenty o' martyrs - the question is:

How can workers avoid having to fight our own "leaders", as well as the enemy, when the moment of crisis comes?

Anarchists certainly did not come up with an effective answer in any of your examples - or any other time.