Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Anarchism in Latin America

2019; Duke University Press; Volume: 99; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-7370423

1527-1900

E Daniel,

Anarchism and Radical Politics

Long in the shadow of Marxism, anarchism has emerged as a respectable field of study over the past two to three decades alongside social movements against structural adjustment and austerity programs in the 1990s and Occupy's stance against neoliberalism and inequality in the 2010s. In that vein, Gabriel Palmer-Fernández's excellent translation of Ángel Cappelletti's Anarchism in Latin America and, in particular, Romina Akemi and Javier Sethness-Castro's introduction encourage North American activists to learn from examples south of the border. The main audience of the text is not academic, but English-language readers with an interest in Latin American radicalism would benefit by reading it.Cappelletti provides a broad historical examination of anarchism throughout Latin America. An abundant variety of primary sources, including anarchist newspapers, novels, manifestos, and other publications, enriches the text. Cappelletti aims to move beyond the often-fragmentary and country-specific focus of previous works on anarchism. The text is arranged regionally, with larger chapters on Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico containing subdivisions on anarchist organizations and connections to the countries' labor movements, anarchist publications, and arts and culture. The primary argument woven throughout the text is that anarchism, rather than developing through indigenous practices, is a European ideology transmitted to Latin America through various networks established by Spaniards, Italians, and others. This ideology was modified and adapted in Latin American states as they attained independence from Spanish colonial rule. Chapters vary in starting points, from the theoretical influences of Charles Fourier and the utopian socialists in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil in the 1840s to Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, and others in Chile, Peru, and Paraguay at the turn of the twentieth century.The author is at his best when displaying an encyclopedic knowledge of anarchism's development in Latin America and offering rich case studies with interesting opportunities for comparative analyses. While this approach should be commended for its breadth of exposition, it is still the case that larger countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico receive the greatest emphasis and smaller countries—for example, Panama, El Salvador, and Nicaragua—receive significantly less attention. Key historical events, such as the Ten Years' War in Cuba and other wars of independence, and their impact on political thought are not covered. Perhaps most important for a text forwarding a regional framing through national-centered narratives, theories regarding what binds the history of Latin America together as a region are left largely unexplored. Is it a common language, a shared history of Spanish-Luso colonialism, or consistent military and economic intervention by the United States after independence?While this book is not a labor history, readers would have benefited from explanation of the links between occupation and political orientation. Anarchism started as a movement of intellectuals and skilled artisans, eventually including semiskilled factory hands and those involved in extractive industries like mining and lumber. What binds these workers together in terms of their attraction to anarchism? How and why did anarchists predominate in certain industries while others were dominated by democratic socialists? Was it the type of work, a connection to Europeans bringing the ideology across the Atlantic, family connections, or other factors?The Americas and the Caribbean share a history of bonded labor and slavery. What was the position of Latin American anarchists toward slavery and abolition? Were people of African ancestry in Brazil, Cuba, Panama, and elsewhere active in the anarchist movement? If these groups were largely absent, it is appropriate to state that this was the case and possibly provide some insight regarding why they distanced themselves from the movement. If it was not the case, why exclude them from the account, particularly when slave societies arguably had the strongest social class distinctions?Further, the impact of European rule and the relationship between ancestry, location of birth (colony or metropole), and politics is rarely, if ever, analyzed by Cappelletti. In the case of Cuba, the opposition of Spaniards born in the Caribbean (creoles) to their mistreatment and lack of opportunity, enforced and supported by Spanish-born colonial officials and representatives (peninsulars), led to anticolonial sentiment. Over time these grievances found expression through the movement for independence and were instrumental in creating a Cuban national identity. This process was not unique to Cuba; Benedict Anderson and others have covered it in great detail.A final comment concerning the introduction. Attention to the history of the region prior to independence has the potential to provide a broader conception of how and why the political, economic, and social histories of Latin American countries are similar. A century of US economic and military intervention in the region, while significant, has a different weight on the national, social, and cultural development of Latin America than multiple centuries of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism. Two pertinent political examples: the development of caudillo politics goes beyond or at least predates US involvement in the region, and, as maintained throughout the text, radical ideologies (in this case anarchism) were largely European in origin rather than North American transplants.