Uprooted cosmopolitans? The post-war exile of Spanish anarchists in Venezuela, 1945-1965

ABSTRACT

This article considers the activity of anarchist refugees in exile after the Spanish civil war in the light of their professed cosmopolitan and internationalist outlook. It first examines the trajectory of anarchist internationalism in Spain and its perceived shortcomings in the period up to and including the civil war. It then provides a brief survey of the post-war re-organisation of Spanish anarchists in exile, before proceeding to the case study of Venezuela. Anarchist activity in this country is analysed through the lenses of internationalism and cosmopolitanism in the ambivalent context of exile.

KEYWORSDS:

• Anarchism
• CNT
• JJLL
• FIJL
• Venezuela
• Republican exile
• cosmopolitanism
• internationalism

Acknowledgments

Nereida Xena and Mar y Sol Gracia provided me with material related to the lives and organisational activities of José Xena and Germinal Gracia in Venezuela. This article is dedicated to them, with gratitude.

I would also like to thank the peer reviewers and Liz Stainforth for their critical reading and comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Archives

B.A.S.E. (Biblioteca y archivo de sociología y economía), Montady.

Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo, Madrid.

Correspondence

Germinal Gracia to José Peirats. Caracas 1959 and 1960.

Germinal Gracia to Carlos Meneses. Caracas 1980.

Press

Acción Libertaria. Órgano de la Federación Libertaria Argentina. Buenos Aires.

Aguilucho. Boletín de la FIJL subdelegación de Venezuela. Caracas.

AIT. Órgano de la Federación Obrera Regional Venezolana (FORVE). Portavoz de la AIT en el continente americano. Caracas.

Centro Cultural y de Estudios Sociales Boletín. Caracas.

CNT: Portavoz de la CNT de España en el exilio. Toulouse.

Le Combat Syndicaliste. Organe officiel de la Confédération Nationale du Travail. Paris.

Crisol Juvenil. Portavoz de las Juventudes Libertarias de España: Agrupación de Venezuela. Caracas.

Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias en el exilio. Boletín de información (Inglaterra). London.

Ruta. Órgano de las Juventudes Libertarias de Cataluña. Barcelona.

Ruta. Publicación Anarquista. Órgano de la FIJL Caracas. Caracas.

Simiente Libertaria. Órgano del grupo libertario “Errico Malatesta”. Caracas.

Solidaridad Obrera. Órgano semanal del Movimiento Libertario Español. Paris.

Volveremos. CNT-Boletín de Información-CNT en Venezuela-AIT. Caracas.

Notes

1. By making this distinction I do not mean to claim that “cosmopolitanism” is free from internal contradictions. On this point, see for example Chernilo (2015) and Harvey (2000). My use of it is indebted to Paul Gilroy, who conceives of a “new cosmopolitanism”, cognizant of the ways in which the term has been deployed to justify colonial and neo-colonial policies, and which urges a “critical and an oppositional mood” in support of “anti-racist solidarity” and the “cultivation of cosmopolitan disloyalty” and “systematic estrangement from the over-integrated culture of belligerent national states”: Gilroy (2005).

2. See, respectively “Informe que presenta el delegado de la IV zona de JJLL, acerca de la detención de los compañeros Manuel Barcelon Vernet y Salvador Saladie Ros de la localidad de Vandellos”, and the communiqué sent by the Secretary of the CNT in Reus to the organisation’s Defence Section in Barcelona, dated 26 November 1938, in Archivos de la Confederación Regional del Trabajo de Cataluña, Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo, 39D.

3. Lorenzo, the son of the former National Secretary of the CNT Horacio M. Prieto, who refused an invitation to join the Consejo, affirms that “it was created without consulting the ‘base’ of the Confederation in any way; it took on all decision- making powers and functioned exclusively on a top-down, authoritarian basis, ignoring all the rules of federalism” (Lorenzo, 268–69).

4. During the civil war, the JJLL in Cataluña and Aragón had a fractious relationship with the national youth organisation of the libertarian movement, the Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL). In exile, however, the surviving militants of the former organisation acted as part of the latter.

5. We can only estimate the number of Spanish anarchists exiled in Venezuela after the war. The reports at the time of the reunification of the CNT in 1960–61 suggested optimistically that the total potential membership of the organisation was around eight hundred, or just under a fifth of the total Spanish exile community. This would make the proportion broadly commensurate with that of the initial exodus that crossed into France after the fall of Barcelona.

6. See Le Combat Syndicaliste. Organe officiel de la Confédération Nationale du Travail, 20 July 1964; Acción Libertaria. Órgano de la Federación Libertaria Argentina, September 1964, which edition also contains calls for solidarity with libertarians exiled from or jailed in Cuba; Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias en el exilio. Boletín de información (Inglaterra), August 1964, which also contains information about the arrest of Stuart Christie and Fernando Carballo Blanco for DI activity.

7. The “Malatesta” group had already been notable in the solidarity shown to persecuted Cuban anarchists, see Fernández (2001, 99–100).

8. For a bibliographic survey of “Victor García”, see Díaz, 137–45.

9. This has been translated into English: García (2000). Yamaga, a nomadic polyglot, prodigious correspondent and evangelical Esperantist who produced the publication Mondcivitano (World Citizen), was an inspiration to Gracia.