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Title: Review: Cuban Anarchism Author: Danielarturo Date: 2001 Language: en Topics: book review, Cuba, Northeastern Anarchist Source: Retrieved on March 23, 2016 from https://web.archive.org/web/20160323044723/http://nefac.net/node/177 Notes: Reviewed by Danielarturo. Published in The Northeastern Anarchist #2, Summer 2001.
Cuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement is the long awaited
elaboration of his 1987 essay, “Cuba: the Anarchists and Liberty.” The
book recounts the history of the Cuban labor movement through its
inception in the 1850’s, to the overthrowing of the Batista regime by
Fidel Castro and the 26^(th) of July Movement, and the subsequent
neutralization of the Cuban anarchist movement on the island. The book
deals with many issues still much debated within anarchist circles,
notably the issues of national liberation struggles, the role of
anarchists in authoritarian revolutionary movements, and the Cuban
Revolution itself. I found Fernandez to put his energy into three
interrelated “projects” in putting together this book: (1) to recover
the eclipsed history of the Cuban anarchist movement, so centrally tied
to the history of the Cuban labor movement; (2) to recount the central
problems of the Cuban Revolution, particularly in its institutionalized
form after 1959; (3) to relate the often contradictory reaction of the
international anarchist movement to allegations made by Cuban anarchists
about Fidel Castro’s government and the situation in Cuba.
Fernandez does an excellent job piecing together the first decades of
Cuba’s anarchist movement. The great migration of Spanish workers to the
island during the last half of the 19^(th) century brought an influx of
radical ideas that were then finding fertile soil among the Spanish
working class. The first Proudhonian mutualist societies were founded by
the end of the 1850’s, and by the 1880’s there were several explicitly
anarchist labor newspapers and workers associations. By the end of the
80’s anarchist-organized strikes shook the tobacco industry, both in
Cuba, and in Key West and Tampa, where many Cuban laborers migrated to
find work.
The 1890’s were a complicated period for Cuba’s anarchists, who
struggled over support for the independence movement and Jose Marti’s
Cuban Revolutionary Party. In 1892, Cuban Anarchists held a conference
in which they voted support for the independence movement, but seeing it
as only a step in the direction of social revolution. This position
continued to be controversial among the anarchists, some of whom
bitterly opposed the separatist struggle as a total waste of time for
working people who would go on to trade a foreign master for a local
master. This debate was echoed on the international level where the
Reclus brothers and Malatesta, among others, supported Cuban
independence, while Emma Goldman and Peter Kropotkin remained neutral.
Although the anarchists continued to be a central influence within the
broader labor movement on the island, their influence waned considerably
after the 1930’s, when Batista put the trade-union confederation in the
hands of the PCC (the Cuban Communist Party) making it dependant to his
government. Attempts to make an independent trade union central, along
libertarian lines, failed.
Anarchists participated in the armed struggle against the Batista
dictatorship, both from within and outside of the 26^(th) of July
Movement (M26J), of which the young bourgeois politician Fidel Castro
was comandante en jefe. However, soon after the rebels’ victory, on the
1^(st) of January, 1959, things began to look ominous for Cuba’s
libertarians. The new government expelled leading anarcho-syndicalists
from several unions where they had much influence, notably the food
workers, construction, and transport unions of the Confederation of
Cuban Workers. By the end of 1960, the Confederation was made an organ
of the Cuban government, ending the last vestiges of independent union
organizing. Much like the early years of the Soviet Union, as the new
government consolidated itself, it began to eliminate opposition, which
of course increasingly included the anarchists. Newspapers and journals
were suppressed, militants were jailed as “counter-revolutionaries,” and
options grew scarce for Cuban anarchists. Some went into exile, joining
the expropriated bourgeoisie in Miami; others took up armed struggle
against the new government. Many were subsequently jailed or forced into
hiding.
Fernandez spends considerable time recounting the experience of the
exiled Cuban anarchists, particularly in relation to the larger
international anarchist community, which in large part continued to
uncritically support the openly (after early 1961) Marxist-Leninist
government. Cuba’s exiled libertarians were constantly on the defensive
throughout the 60’s and 70’s, forced to defend their accounts of their
own experiences with the increasingly repressive government that forced
them into exile. The international revolutionary community, including,
sadly, a great many anarchists, did not want to believe that the
righteous Cuban Revolution, which against all odds defeated an
U.S.-backed dictator, then continued to struggle against the United
States itself, could be guilty of being as repressive and authoritarian
as the Cuban anarchists insisted. It certainly did not help that the
loudest voices decrying Castro’s authoritarianism were precisely those
hypocritical authoritarian right-wing capitalists who were the reason
for the revolution in the first place.
Fernandez has definitely done his research. He has seemingly tracked
down and read every libertarian labor newspaper, pamphlet, meeting
minutes, and flyer ever published on the island. Although this vast
access to historical data enriches particularly the early chapters, it
also proves problematic as Fernandez bogs us down in the minutiae of
details of little interest to most readers. At the same time Fernandez
misses many of those questions which are of interest to many readers,
questions of broader trends in the history of Cuban anarchism. He barely
addresses issues of strategy, theory, or the relationship of urban
workers to rural workers (he barely mentions the countryside at all,
which is strange as Cuba is overwhelmingly rural)
My main problems with ‘Cuban Anarchism: the History of a Movement’ stem
from what I believe to be Fernandez’s tendency to lose all ability to
formulate an effective argument when the issue of the Cuban Revolution
comes up. In contrast to other anarchist critiques of “communist”
regimes, notably Berkman’s The Russian Tragedy, Fernandez seems to go
well out of his way to paint the most damning picture of life after the
Revolution as possible, often making questionable statements or relying
on unproveable allegations.
The facts, when clearly laid out, are damning enough, but Fernandez
cannot seem to resist making his case weaker by pushing it so hard.
Unfortunately, this may make people discount what he has to say on the
subject. Lines like “The desire to escape from this great dungeon that
Cuba had become was an obsession for almost all Cubans.” (p 95), go
towards discrediting Fernandez’ account of the situation at the time,
and show a lack of understanding of why people may have wanted to stay
in Cuba, and why so many people did support Castro’s government,
particularly in the early years. In fact, Fernandez goes on to
contradict himself when he later admits that the government had “great
popular backing” (p122). When strikes organized by the anarchists fail,
multiple reasons are given, but when organized by M26J, the failure is
“proof” that the movement had no base among the working class (p.76).
Uncritical allegations of “Marxist indoctrination centers” and
international Marxist conspiracies further erode his argument (p. 76,
97).
All writing is partisan. There is no such thing as neutrality,
especially in writing history, but not all historical writing is equally
obscured by one’s partisan perspective. Writers willing to be more
critical of
themselves and of the movements to which they belong, as well as of
their enemies, create more valuable work in that they allow readers a
more nuanced understanding of the historical issues at play. The Cuban
government has an incredible propaganda apparatus at its disposal. In
order to effectively combat this, one needs to be as precise as
possible. Unfortunately Fernandez is at his weakest when critiquing the
present government.
This book comes at an important time, for Fidel Castro, nearing 80, will
not be comandante en jefe too much longer. The Cuban people must soon
decide how they will organize their lives, work, and communities in a
post-Castro era. By bringing this rich, but suppressed history out of
the closet, and by reviving historical memory, Fernandez takes the first
step in renewing anarchism as a historical possibility for the Cuban
people.