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Title: Anarchist Manifesto Author: Comrades of the Chaco Date: 1892 Language: en Topics: Latin America, Paraguay Source: From Robert Graham (Ed.), Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas; Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939).
Editor’s Note: Anarchist ideas were introduced into Latin America by
European immigrants during the 1860’s. The anti-authoritarian
International generated significant support in several Latin American
countries, and anarchists helped organize some of the first trade
unions. The two largest Latin American anarchist movements were in
Argentina and Brazil, but anarchists were active throughout Latin
America. The following manifesto was published in 1892 by a Paraguayan
anarchist communist group calling itself ‘The Comrades of the Chaco”
(reprinted in EI Anarquismo en America Latina, Caracas: Biblioteca
Ayacucho, 1990, ed. A. J. Cappel/etti and C. M. Rama). Paraguay was a
particularly impoverished country plagued by seemingly interminable
political conflict among its ruling classes and with neighbouring
states. The translation is by Paul Sharkey.
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WE ARE ANARCHIST-COMMUNISTS and, being such, mean to spread complete
emancipation of the proletariat while fighting to abolish the iniquitous
exploitation of man by his neighbour, and we pledge all our moral and
material resources to the eradication of all tyranny and the
establishment of genuine liberty, equality and fraternity in the family
of man.
The essential reason for publication ofthis manifesto is to express our
malaise. For which the current (so mistakenly described as civilized)
social system is to blame; as well as to say what we are and what we
want, with revolutionary selflessness and the conviction that our cries
of indignation will rouse capital’s new slaves from the languor oftheir
slumbers. We are in an age of enlightenment when we can see very clearly
that everything in nature, such as land, water, air, sunshine, moonlight
and the other elements that go to make up the Universe, belong to every
being on this planet of ours, since those elements created us and
sustain our existence.
It is high time that it was acknowledged that everything artificial in
our earthly home, like cities, vast tracts of uncultivated land, canals,
ports, sea lanes and land routes, instruments of labour and all the
advances of science, are the handiwork of many generations and
ofthousands upon thousands of workers and thus are equally the property
of all and not the sole preserve of a privileged class, phoney
politicians, swindlers, clericals, murderers of humanity who protect the
big thieves and the murderers and butchers of innocents and exploiters
of the working man; in short, every thing around us that exists belongs
to all workers since we helped create it with our sweat and our blood;
we did, and not the band of leeches who, with their constitutions,
codes, imaginary gods and holy madonnas have made themselves gods and
governors so that they might live off the backs ofthe producer and steal
the gold that we ourselves have extracted from the bowels of the earth
...
It is we workers, bricklayers, who erect magnificent, grand, airy
palaces and it is a crime if we allow others who command and kill us in
the name of fatherland and law to live there while we live in a filthy
hovel and, in most instances, do not even have a roof over our heads.
It is we who produce the food and it is a crime for us to allow our
children to perish of hunger just so that those who do not lift a
finger, other than to turn our wives and children into prostitutes, can
stuff themselves until they die.
It is we that weave the rich tapestries and cashmere, make elegant
garments and go about in rags as a result ofletting ourselves be robbed
without putting up any resistance, whereupon these thieves treat us as
filthy scoundrels on account of our cravenness and we find ourselves in
the ranks of the degraded.
We are the ones who make picture books for our education and then
vegetate in the crassest ignorance because we let them be read by those
who think themselves su peri or to us, and who reward our slavishness by
calling us ignoramuses and brutes; rightly so, because any man who does
not bridle at a tyranny that diminishes his human dignity, is a lesser
animal than the rest, since they, who have no capacity for reason, rebel
against those who would enslave them.
In short, we workers are the producers of all the wealth of society and
in repayment for so very many sacrifices, we find ourselves enslaved,
humiliated, oppressed and exploited; in short, we are the victims of
this struggle and warfare in the workers’ ranks, a struggle and a war
stoked by politicians who are driven to provoke butchery in the family
of man because of their ambition to rule and rob.