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Title: Getting to know Durruti Author: Sofia Comuniello Date: August 1992 Language: en Topics: Buenaventura Durruti, biography Source: Retrieved on 2012-03-121 from https://web.archive.org/web/20120312153435/http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spain/durruti_correoa.html Notes: (CORREO@ #20, pp.16–17; August 1992)
To condense in a few lines the life story of he who was the true
expression of rebelliousness and anarchist utopia is a complicated but
necessary task, because the testimony of liberty in struggle that was
the life of Buenaventura Durruti must be broadcast yesterday, today and
always.
He was born the second of eight brothers on July 14 1896 in Leon, city
of the Spanish province by the same name. As an adolescent he is
initiated on the same path as his father, a workingman affiliated with
the socialist union UGT. As a member of his railroad section, he takes
active part in the revolutionary general strike of August 1917, promoted
in conjunction with the anarchosyndicalist Confederacio’n Nacional del
Trabajo (CNT); which caused his being expelled from the UGT for being
too radical, his persecution by the police and his escape to France,
where he comes in contact with exiled anarchists, joining CNT of
Asturias upon his return in January 1919.
He joins the open fight against the aggressive employers in the Asturian
mines and is arrested for the first time in March 1919; he escapes and
by December he is in San Sebastian, an industrial city in the Basque
country, with a job as a metal worker. The bourgeoisie was then
promoting a wave of assassination’s of syndicalists and Durruti joins a
self-defence group — Los Justicieros, they plan a sensational hit in
reprisal: an attempt on the life of King Alfonso XIII who would be
visiting the City in August 1920, but their plan is discovered and they
must escape. Durruti continues doing dangerous clandestine work
throughout the nation, meeting Francisco Ascaso who would be his
fraternal friend and comrade. They travel to Barcelona in August 1922
and form the group Crisol, that would later adopt a name that would be
famous in libertarian history: Los Solidarios. This group brought
together the most valuable elements of the Catalan proletariat, hitting
hard against reaction where it hurt the most, until the Spanish
political crisis brought the dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera,
installed September 1923 with the King’s wholehearted support. Proper
praise for what Los Solidarios did in courageous defence of the CNT
during that hopeless hour has never been given. Hundreds of militants
fell and CNT could barely survive and recover thanks to its deep roots
among the working class, but the price was high: most of the Solidarios
were killed or served long sentences, while Ascaso and Durruti had to
seek refuge in Paris.
The failure of the insurrection plans cooked up during exile forces them
to travel to Latin America in December 1924, accompanied by Gregorio
Jover, in search for funds for the outlawed and persecuted Iberian
anarchosyndicalism. Following 15 months of unbelievable adventures
including urban guerrilla actions to obtain supplies, unknown in those
parts until then, chases and chilling escapes through several countries.
The solidarity assistance from an endless number of comrades that
supported them wherever they went was their infallible resource in
outsmarting police persecution.
During quiet times they earn their frugal living as labourers, without
ceasing to take part in union work from the grassroots, as the legend
grows about these men. In April 1926 they return to Europe and are
seduced by an spectacular idea: to kidnap the Spanish King and the
dictator when they visit Paris on July 14, but are captured by the
police and, after a stormy trial, are expelled from France in July 1927.
They keep on living as semiclandestine militants abroad until the fall
of Alfonso XIII in April 1931.
Back in Barcelona Durruti is in the midst of a great deal of activity,
accompanied by his French companion Emilienne, pregnant with their
daughter Colette, who would be born on December 1931. He joins the
Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), a specifically anarchist
organization secretly created in July 1927 — and together with other
militants they form the affinity group Nosotros, spokesmen within the
CNT of a radical tendency that harboured no illusions with respect to
the recently proclaimed Republic, maintaining that the moment was ripe
for continued progress. This inner confrontation within the CNT became
more bitter until a split occurred, while repression became harsher as
well as the government’s provocation’s against these humble workers —
whenever they weren’t prisoners Durruti and Ascaso worked as mechanics
in a mid-sized company in Barcelona — who were seen by the do-gooders as
the terrifying fist of the Social Revolution. The repressive hysteria
fell upon Durruti and other anarchists in January 1932, being deported
to the Canary Islands and the “Spanish” Sahara. Popular pressure
resulted in their release in September, but Durruti was immediately
arrested for two more months.
Even with the imprisonment of the so-called “leaders”, harder positions
grew within the CNT and the proletariat, which brought the failed
anarchist insurrection of January 1933, after which Durruti must go in
hiding until arrested at the end of March. He is out by July, with the
CNT and the FAI facing changes in the political scene, as the right wing
prepares to assume power after the fiasco of the republicans and
socialists, which happens after the November elections. In December
there is another failed attempt at a general strike; Durruti and
hundreds of anarchists go to prison, but an amnesty lets them out in May
1934, in time for Durruti to play a decisive role in the transport of
13,000 children of Aragon strikers to Barcelona, to be care for by the
solidarity of Barcelona’s working class families.
In October 1934 the Asturias uprising takes place, 14 days of heroic and
unequal combat between the united workers and the army, while the
repression and the indecisive behaviour of the UGT and other sectors
left the anarchists isolated in their effort to spread the revolutionary
flame. Once again Durruti suffers months in prison alternating with
weeks of feverish public militancy, until the electoral victory by the
Popular Front in February 1936, with the crucial vote of CNT members,
signalled another turn in the situation. In the midst of an explosive
political-social climate, the IV CNT Congress meets in Zaragoza from May
1 to 5, 1936 where an integral part of the debates and the anarchist
fervour that permeated the proceedings was due to the Nosotros group, in
those days dedicated to workers’ readiness for the enormous challenge
that was coming. Left and Right were in a collision course, initiated
rather soon by the military uprising of July 19 1936.
The CNT and the FAI confronted with courage, organization and mass
mobilisations the fascist superiority in weapons and resources; their
contribution was decisive in resisting the blow throughout the nation
and in Catalunya defeated the rebels single-handedly, Durruti being one
of the boldest fighters in this popular victory and suffering the loss
of Francisco Ascaso. On July 24, from Barcelona where libertarian
communism was starting to be a reality, Durruti left with an armed
column towards Zaragoza, occupied by the rebels. After hard combats that
equalitarian militia, without officers or other military trappings
advanced and estabilized the Aragon front against regular troops better
equipped, even though they could not retake the city.
Parallel to this the anarchist forces supported a social transformation
which meant the establishment of agricultural collectives in Aragon,
upsetting communists, socialists and other acolytes of the creed
according to which the war could not be won with the revolution going
on. Durruti embodied the feeling sand goals of the workers in arms,
being a peculiar “chief” whose main privilege was to fight in the first
line, his only rank the esteem his equals had for him.
That courageous and shining life — “The short summer of Anarchy”
according to his chronist Enzensberger — would come to an end in
November of that same year. On the 15 Durruti arrived with a force of
1800 men to reinforce the defence of Madrid, where they went immediately
to the toughest section and on the 19 he was struck by a bullet as he
walked by a supposedly secure area. He died at dawn on the 20, being
buried two days later at Montjuich’s cemetery in Barcelona, accompanied
by the largest funeral cortege seen in the city.
As with Zamora in Venezuela, el Che in Bolivia or Zapata in Mexico, his
death has a stigma of treason and the main suspect, the Stalinist PCE
(Communist Party of Spain), would unleash a few months later a brutal
persecution of anarchists and other radicals that not only ended the
threatening revolution, but was also the beginning of the end of the
Republic they claimed to safeguard.
40 years of intense life had this man that fought for his ideals without
quarter nor fanaticism’s; who never ceased to live of his labour, who
acted as much as he read or thought, who loved, dreamed and had close
and dear friends. Durruti was who he was, and also the best of what
remains in us when we share his luminous trajectory.