An Anthology of Puerto Rican Anarchist Texts from the Start of the 20th Century

Cover imgage of: "Free Pages: A Brief Anthology of Anarchist Thought in Puerto Rico (1900-1919)"

From 80grados.net English translation by Anarchist News

August 5, 2022.

by Mario Cancel Sepúlveda

“Páginas libres: breve antología del pensamiento anarquista en Puerto Rico (1900-1919)” [Free Pages: A Brief Anthology of Anarchist Thought in Puerto Rico (1900-1919)], edited by Dr. Jorell Meléndez Badillo and published by Editora Educación Emergente [Emergent Education Editions] in 2021, compiles a sample of texts from anticlerical and secular Puerto Rican anarchism from the first two decades of the 20th Century, one of the least studied periods of that century. These anarchist writings reinvented the European anarchist tradition after 1848 – moment in which “The Fourth Estate” took prominence in social struggles – in a new colonial context. The rise of the modern Puerto Rican working class is manifested in those writings.

The discourse of this collection has connections, on the one hand, with French and Spanish anarcho-syndicalist heritage from the end of the 19th Century, whose intersection with independentist and annexationist separatism I’ve commented on in a previous occasion in light of the studies by Paul Estrade about the Antillean community in Paris and New York in the context of the “Necessary War”[1]. On the other hand, it shows affinity with anarcho-syndicalism from the United States before and after their invasion in 1898. The (un) encounters between both currents has long merited a deep discussion. The relationships between anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, independentist separatism, and the various nationalisms were plagued with difficulties. The fact that Puerto Rican anarchism grew during that period continues to be a fascinating topic full of chiaroscuros.

The merits of the book

The mere fact that it takes a look at the first two decades of the “American Century” is reason enough to read this compilation. The visible turn in the political habits of citizens at the height of 2022, ratifies the need to evaluate that moment. The decline of the dominant bipartisan order since 1968, the collapse of the trust in political parties in general, the disbelief that those structures, inherited from the liberal revolution of the 19th Century and strengthened by “New Deal-ist” policies, forward a participatory democracy, is notable.

The imaginary dialogue between those first two decades of the 20th Century and those of the 21st Century proposed by Meléndez Badillo, is very valuable. Both phases were characterized collective disillusionment and, in a way, confirm the “present of the past”. The will of the editor is to observe the anarchism of the beginning of the 20th Century in light of “The Summer of 2019”. Thus, reaffirming the current relevance of anarchist praxis by imagining it reformulated in “the spring of the Puerto Rican summer of 2019”, protests that provoked, for the first time, the resignation of an elected governor: Dr. Ricardo Rosselló Nevárez (PNP) [New Progressive Party]. The richness of the theoretical daring of the editor is notable.

The book invites us to visit the activisms that are closest to a concrete social base, whose language, expression or performativity differed and differs, without subtracting any merits, from nationalist, socialist or Marxist rhetorics. The historiography of resistance in Puerto Rico, from my point of view, has not sufficiently highlighted this diversity. The convergences between anarchist and modernist discourse are obvious. Anarchism was an alternative modernizing project, close to the social base and the popular classes, that pointed out the injustice of the bourgeois modernizing project of the upper classes and the élites.

A sample of the text

The text by Venancio Cruz (1905), “Hacia el porvenir: ideales humanitarios y libres” [Toward the Future: Humanitarian and Free Ideals] (29-78) is a very complete book on anarchist theory that contains, firstly, a conception of history that assumes its organic or natural continuity. What interests me about it is the author’s perspective about his present. A central element in Cruz is the representation of the 20th as a “sick person”. The realist-naturalist metaphor of Manuel Zeno Gandía’s “La charca” [The Pond] (1894), a literary theme that suggests the absence of progress is reformulated.

His argument is that, in the historical-social plane, “modern civilization” negates “civilization” in general. Advanced capitalism was seen as foreshadowing its “collapse” (33, 45, 46, 57). The Russian theorist Vladimir Ulianov alias Lenin in his 1917 work, “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”, coincided with that argument in light of different factors: the financial capitalism and monopolies typical of imperialism had caused the Great War, military event that would hasten the revolution and the ascension to power of the international proletariat. That theory was drawn from the classic Latin Historiography invented by Tacitus (98 AD) in his De Germania, when he presumed that the imperialist expansion of Rome mutilated the base of Latin civilization and hastened its decline and dissolution.[2]

In the cultural plane, Cruz saw the 20th Century like the showcase of “decaying arts / (and a) vicious and prostituted literature…” that confused the masses (33). That criticism was aimed at contemplative intellectuals and was similar to the one elaborated by Karl Marx in his comments on the thesis on Ludwig Feuerbach (1845)[3]. The writer claimed that “current philosophers, the modern know-it-alls”, lacked the originality of their predecessors (46), a good part of which he includes in his genealogy of anarchism. A more complete version of these predecessors can be found in the text by Juan José López, “Voces libertarias” [Libertarian Voices], written betweem 1911 y 1914 (175 ss). Cruz as well as López, used the language of Friedrich Nietzsche, the “monumentalism” of the past obsesses them.[4] In short, the 20th Century was “a medium of vice and scandal” (57) or a “Cambalache” [junkshop] (1934) as described in the tango by Enrique Santos Discépolo.

That negative conception of the 20th Century was not exclusive to anarchists. Numerous observers saw in 1900 the end of an era and the start of another one. Eugenio María de Hostos (c. 1900) in his essay “El siglo 20” [The 20th Century] also evaluated it with pessimism. The myth of christian millenarianism weighed heavily. Its representation as one full of totalitarianisms and setbacks has been a topic of discussion by historians like Eric Hobsbawm (1995) and Enzo Traverso (2016) after the end of the Cold War[5].The differences in outlook from one or the other is reduced to nuances, while the common nostalgia for a nonexistent Belle Époque imposed itself.

Apart from that, Cruz coincides with other cultural proposals from the start of the 20th Century. On one hand, with the skepticism with respect to liberalism expressed by some aesthetic vanguards before, during and after the Great War (1914-1918). Their proponents tended to affiliate to the fascist rights, Nazism or radical and Bolshevik lefts. On the other hand, it converges with the historiographic production typical of the “cultural industry” of the turn of the 19th Century to the 20th and the interwar period. I am alluding to the Decadent Momevent and other critics of occidental values like Arnold Toynbee, Oswald Spengler and Pitirim Sorokin, among others, visible on the stage of the Great War and the influenza epidemic (1917). In short, my reading sees Cruz as a “witness” of the end of the Belle Époque and the greatness of capitalist Europa but without the melancholy shown by Marcel Proust (1913) in his novel “In Search of Lost Time”.

Secondly, Cruz includes a genealogy of anarchism that revolves around various principles, namely:

 

  • The trust in the inevitability of the anarchist revolution and in the victory of the lower social classes due to the natural / organic progressivism that he attributes to history (30, 31, 32)
  • The power of secular values and radical antichristian anticlericalism as opposition to the alliance of the bourgeoisie (capital) and Church (ideology) in the plundering of the lower social classes in a tone analogous to Marx (1848) in “The Communist Manifesto”
  • The valuation of rationality, scientism, experience and empiricism as generators of a true and permanent knowledge geared towards praxis
  • The valuation of education as a liberating act with two opposite sides: the critique of bourgeois education being enslaving; and the affirmation of anarchist education being liberating. In this aspect it coincides with Krausopositivism and the pedagogies of the second part of the 19th Century, particularly with Johan H. Pestalozzi, Karl Krausse, Fernando Giner de los Ríos, among others.
  • The trust in the emancipatory / savior role of the working class and the conviction that the workers living in solidarity precedes a “new humanity” beyond social classes derived from private property. The argument serves to confirm the superiority of “class solidarity” above “national solidarity” (56, 57)
  • The subversion of order in everyday life. Cruz participated of a theory of marriage and family that involves its abolition due to its condition of being allied with private property (65), and favors free or natural love that involves women in the decision-making. It all suggests a rereading of Mikhail Bakunin (1845) who spoke of “active love”; and Friedrich Engels (1884) that linked family and private property.[6]In Cruz, a thinker not lacking in romanticism, anarchism supposes a return to a “natural state” located in illo tempore as an ahistorical beatus ille (70).

 

In general the architecture of the anarchist imaginary in Cruz feeds from bourgeois revolutionary culture: he critiques modern bourgeois values with interpretative instruments. He builds up anarchism as a secular “prophetic messianism” if I use Erich Fromm’s concept (1961) in Marx's Concept of Man,[7] articulated in a profane evangelical language: the libertarian, or anarchist is a Cathar or pure man (45).

In the text by Juan José López, “Voces libertarias” [Libertarian Voices] (no date) (175-208) the editor brings my attention to the Imprint La Bomba [The Bomb Press] from Ponce. In 1899 Evaristo Izcoa Díaz had an imprint with that name, which leads me to think that it might be that same one. A careful reading of the document suggests that it was written between 1910 and 1914. Three concrete allusions suggest it: one to the President of France Raymond Poincaré (1912-1913) (175), a second one to the Great War (1914-1918) (199), and a third one to the President of México Porfirio Díaz from 1911, who died in 1915 (204, 206).

The distinguishing stylistic trait of this text is its resort to poetry. “La mentira” [The Lie] (188) is organized in ottava rima with hendecasyllabic verses; and “Lucha roja” [Red Struggle] (175) in sestina with hendecasyllabic verses. Some of the exercises in prose have a distinctive quality. “Anarquía” [Anarchy] (183), for example, is a prosified poem in octosyllabic distics. It’s not an isolated case. Venancio Cruz (1905) in “Hacia el porvenir…” [Towards the Future] includes a poem/song at the end of his text that has similar traits (75-78): a hybrid poem that uses hendecasyllabic quintets mixed with hendecasyllabic quartets. To that he adds the format of the Italian madrigal: a hendecasyllabe followed by a heptasyllabe. These are all classical forms doted with the grandiloquent and pompous language of the revolution, distant from the popular forms. The rest of the texts by López are rhythmic prose in modernist tone, with romantic and parnasianas influences. The modernist “exoticism” is traduced into the imaginary of the “natural utopia”: a society beyond private property and inequality.

Revolutionary poetry has remote origins. Gracchus Babeuf (1797) wrote “Nueva canción al uso (o estilo) de los suburbios)” [New Song in the Style of the Suburbs] and “Otra canción de los iguales” [Another Song of the Equals] (1797) as part of the program of the “Conspiracy of the Equals” during the French First Republic (1792-1804).[8] This is an intriguing subject to study that poses many questions. Why prosify a poetic work on theory? Why use classical meter? Why not resort to more popular and accessible meters like quatrains, redondillas or quartettos? Why not resort to the ten-line stanza or décima espinela?

Ideologically, López does not differ from Cruz. The grand narratives of redemption, the evangelical language, the “secular messianism” are notable in their discourse (183, 184, 204, 207). The premise is that anarchism is superior to socialism (182) because it guarantees a freedom that they identify as the “Natural State”, a metaphor for an Edenic condition. The comparison with other grand narratives of redemption is tempting. On one hand, with the essentialist nationalism in the style of Johan Herder, Johan Ficthe or, the closest one, Pedro Albizu Campos and his goal of building a brotherhood of direct manufacturers, and small and medium property owners in solidarity connected by the natural and sacred volkgeist. On the other hand, with the image of communism articulated by Sergei Platonov (1928-1929) in the novel Chevengur who aspired to consolidate a brotherhood of landless farmers in solidarity based on a natural identity and in rural innocence.[9] It all suggests that the grand narratives of redemption have to do with the clerical past of anarchism and its relations with Fundamentalist evangelism before 1848 in the tradition of the English Diggers and Levellers of the 18th Century, a matter that is worth investigating on another occasion.[10]

The appendix by M. Sastre merits separate commentary, “A Luisa Capetillo y demás yerbas que les venga” [To Luisa Capetillo and whatever weeds come after her](245-247). The text comes from the Periódico sindicalista [Syndicalist Newspaper] published in Cuba in 1914 and it is reflective of the “lights and shadows” of anarchism. I’m referring to the internal debates due to ideological, syndical, and gender disagreements, that emerged at the heart of the movement. Sastre, probably the pseudonym of an unidentified leader, points out numerous ideological problems to Capetillo. Her Spiritism, her idea of free love, her international campaign, her selling of propaganda pamphlets, and anarchist entrepreneurship, a practice common to groups of rebels of all kinds at the end of the 19th Century, are treated with aggressive irony.

The satire against Capetillo is elaborated from a place of “anarchist patriarchal masculinity”, an attitude that is as problematic as bourgeois attitude. The author accuses her of “semi-charitable-spiritual-Christian-bourgeois-liberno sentimentalism”, a very castizo insult, certainly. “Liberno(a)” is a concept that is in disuse that suggests a petty, trivial thing, without importance and, in a figurative sense, a coin of little value like the 8 Maravedis coins and that “one is poor now”.[11] For Sastre, Capetillo negated the values of anarchism and was a demagogue: “it’s not the same to speak of free love scrambled with Spiritism, when nature rebels, than to speak of revolutionary acts…” (246). In his reflection, López affirmed that “...the divinely inspired Spiritism takes part in the march of trickery and cynicism” (180). That system was interpreted as just one more “religion”: “divinely inspired” means instilled by God. The critique of Lev Tolstoi (48-50) has similar traits. The author devalues her contemplative Spiritism that, elsewhere, was admired by Rosendo Matienzo Cintrón.[12] The anarcho-Christianity and the Christian-Spiritism were categorically rejected. Everything points to the fact that some anarchists did not favor the penetration of Spiritism or sexual freedom into their proposal. I invite a critical reading of these texts.

 

[1] Mario R. Cancel Sepúlveda (2018) “El separatismo independentista y las izquierdas…” (Varios) Hilo en Puerto Rico entre siglos URL: https://puertoricoentresiglos.wordpress.com/?s=Betances+anarquistas

[2] Cornelio Tácito (6 de octubre de 2009) “Documento y comentario: Cornelio Tácito, los germanos” (Notas de Mario R. Cancel Sepúlveda) en Historiografía: la invención de la memoria URL: https://mariocancel.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/cornelio-tacito-germanos/

[3] Ludwig Feuerbach (6 de enero de 2018) “Documento y comentario: Karl Marx (1845) Tesis sobre Feuerbach” en Historiografía: la invención de la memoria URL: https://mariocancel.wordpress.com/2018/01/06/documento-y-comentario-karl-marx-1845-tesis-sobre-feuerbach/

[4] Friedrich Nietzsche (11 de mayo de 2010) “Documento y comentario: Historia: tres concepciones) (Notas de Mario R. Cancel Sepúlveda) en Historiografía: la invención de la memoria URL: https://mariocancel.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/historia-tres-concepciones/

[5] Eric Hobsbawm (1998) Historia del siglo XX (Buenos Aires: Crítica / Grijalbo / Mondador); Enzo Traverso (2017) La historia como campo de batalla (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica).

[6] Laura Vicente (6 de marzo de 2014) “Mijaíl Bakunin: mujer, libertad y amor” en Diagonal URL: https://www.diagonalperiodico.net/saberes/22926-mijail-bakunin-mujer-libertad-y-amor.html ; Mijaíl Bakunin (1973) El sistema del anarquismo (Buenos Aires: Proyección): 127-129; y Friedrich Engels (2006) El origen de la familia, la propiedad privada y el estado (Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels)

[7] Erich Fromm (1970) Marx y su concepto del hombre (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica): 9, 10, 44, 46.

[8] Graco Babeuf et. al. (1975) “Chanson nouvelle á l’usage des faubougs” (1797) y “Autre chanson des égaux” (1797) en El socialismo anterior a Marx (México: Grijalbo): 27-31 y 33-37

[9] Las pistas de aquella utopía están dispersas en Andrei Platónov (2009) Chevengur (Madrid: Cátedra): 168, 187, 192, 257, 264, 304, 308, 399, 403, 438-439, 442, 452, entre otras, en particular la relación de Kopionkin con su caballo “Fuerza Proletaria”, el mito de Rosa Luxemburgo y el militante Dvánov.

[10] Mario R. Cancel Sepúlveda (31 de octubre de 2012)  “Anarquía y Anarquismo: antecedentes ingleses” en  Pensamiento social URL: https://historiasociologia.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/anarquia-y-anarquismo-antecedentes-ingleses/

[11] José de Lamano y Beneite (1915) El dialecto vulgar salmantino (Salamanca: Tipografía Popular): 513; y  (P. Juan Mir y Noguera (1907) Rebusco de voces castizas (Madrid: Sáenz de Jubera Hermanos-Editores):  466.

[12]Luis M. Díaz Soler, ed. (1960) “Tolstoi” en Rosendo Matienzo Cintrón: Recopilación de su obra escrita (San Juan: Instituto de Literatura Puertorriqueña/ Universidad de Puerto Rico): 428-432.

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