Anarchism as a social movement in Cuba held great influence with the working classes during the 19th and early 20th century. The movement was particularly strong following the abolition of slavery in 1886, until it was repressed first in 1925 by President Gerardo Machado, and more thoroughly by Fidel Castro's Marxist–Leninist government following the Cuban Revolution in the late 1950s. Cuban anarchism mainly took the form of anarcho-collectivism based on the works of Mikhail Bakunin and, later, anarcho-syndicalism. The Latin American labor movement, and by extension the Cuban labor movement, was at first more influenced by anarchism than Marxism.
History
Colonial era In the mid-19th century, Cuban society was highly stratified, consisting of a Spanish creole ruling class of tobacco, sugar, and coffee plantation owners, a middle class of black and Spanish plantation workers, and an underclass of black slaves. The upper echelons of society were also deeply divided between the creoles and Spaniards (known as peninsulares), with the Spaniards benefiting greatly from the colonial regime. Cuba was a colony of Spain, although there were movements for independence, integration into the U.S., and integration with Spain. The roots of anarchism were first seen in 1857, when a Proudhonian mutualist society was founded. After being introduced to the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon by José de Jesus Márquez, Saturnino Martínez (an Asturian immigrant to Cuba) founded the periodical La Aurora in 1865. Directed at tobacco workers, it included the earliest advocation of cooperative societies in Cuba. By the Ten Years' War, the insurgents against Spain included expatriates from the Paris Commune, and others influenced by Proudhon, including Salvador Cisneros Betancourt and Vicente García.
Early development of the movement By the 1880s, the first explicitly anarchist influence had manifested when José C. Campos established links between Cuba and Spanish anarchists operating in Barcelona by importing anarchist pamphlets and newspapers. At the same time, many Spanish anarchists emigrated to Cuba, and it became very common for workers to read anarchist literature aloud in the tobacco factories, thereby greatly helping the dissemination of anarchist ideas amongst the workers. During the 1880s, and up through the early 1890s, Cuban anarchists favored an anarcho-collectivist method of organizing and action similar to that of Spain's Federación de Trabajadores de la Región Española (Workers' Federation of the Spanish Region, FTRE), following an "each to his contribution" line, as opposed to the "each to his need" line of the anarcho-communists.
Enrique Roig San Martín founded the Centro de Instrucción y Recreo de Santiago de Las Vegas in 1882, to advocate the organization of labor and distribute literature from anarcho-collectivists in Spain. The Centro had a strict policy accepting all Cubans, "regardless of their social position, political tendency, and differences of color." The same year, the Junta Central de Artesanos (Central Group of Artisans) was founded following Roig San Martín's statement that "no guild or working class organization should be tied to the feet of capital". Roig San Martín wrote for El Boletín del Gremio de Obreros, and for the first explicitly anarchist periodical in Cuba, El Obrero, which was founded in 1883 by republican-democrats but quickly turned into a mouthpiece for anarchists when Roig San Martín took over as editor. He then founded El Productor in 1887. In addition to San Martín, El Productor had writers in the Cuban cities of Santiago de Las Vegas and Guanabacoa, and the cities of Tampa and Key West in Florida, and published reprinted articles from the French-language Le Revolté and Barcelona's La Acracia.
Founded in 1885, the Círculo de Trabajadores organization concentrated on educational and cultural activities, hosting a secular school for 500 poor students and meetings for workers' groups. The next year, leaders of the Círculo (with Enrique Creci at the head) formed an aid committee to raise funds for the legal troubles of eight Chicago anarchists who had been charged with murder in connection with the Haymarket affair. Within a month and a half, the committee had raised approximately US$1,500 for the cause. In addition, a few days prior to the anarchists executions, the Círculo organized a demonstration of 2,000 people in Havana to protest the state's decision to execute the Americans. The Círculo and El Productor were both fined - the paper for an editorial written by Roig San Martín about the executions, and the Círculo for displaying a painting that commemorated the execution. The colonial government also prohibited the demonstrations that would be held every year on anniversary of the execution.
Strengthening organization and action
The first explicitly anarchist organization, the Alianza Obrera (Workers' Alliance), was founded in 1887. This organization participated along with the Federacíon de Trabajadores de la Habana (Havana Workers' Federation) and El Productor in the first Congreso Obrero de Cuba (Cuban Workers' Congress), which took place on October 1, 1887. The congress was mostly attended by tobacco workers, though not exclusively. It issued a "dictum" encompassing six points: opposition to all vestiges of authority, unity among workers' organizations through a federative pact, complete freedom of action among all groups, mutual cooperation, solidarity among all groups, and the prohibition within the federation of all political and religious doctrines. Satunino Martínez looked disapprovingly on the outcome of the congress, favoring more reformist ideas of organizing. This led to a rivalry between him and Roig San Martín and the splitting of the unions into two camps.
Soon after the congress, tobacco workers initiated a series of strikes at three factories, one of which lasted through to the end of November. Later, in the summer of 1888, strikes by tobacco workers led to a lockout by factory owners in more than 100 factories. The Círculo de Trabajadores organized a collection drive to support the locked out workers, going so far as to send representatives to Key West, Florida to solicit donations from American tobacco workers. By October, the lockout was ended by factory owners agreeing to meet with workers in negotiations. The outcome of this situation was so favorable to the Alianza Obrera that the union saw its membership jump from 3,000 to 5,000 in the subsequent six months, making it the most powerful union in Cuba. The following year, Roig San Martín died at age 46, just days after his release from jail by the Spanish colonial government; his funeral was reportedly attended by 10,000 mourners. Just a few months later, in response to a lockout/strike in the tobacco industry, the colonial head Manuel Salamanca y Negrete closed the manufacturer's union, the Alianza Obrera and the Círculo de Trabajadores, although the four schools maintained by the Círculo were allowed to remain open, and the Círculo as a whole was allowed to reopen the following year by the new administration.
Government response and the War of Independence
The first May Day demonstration in Cuba was held in 1890, and consisted of a march followed by a meeting addressed by 18 anarchist speakers. In the following days, strikes by workers in many industries caused the colonial government to close the Círculo de Trabajadores again, only to rescind the decision when faced with a manifesto issued in protest by 2,300 workers. Later that year, 11 anarchists were tried for the murder of Menéndez Areces, a director of the moderate Uníon Obrera (Workers' Union). Though all 11 were found innocent, Captain-General Camilo García de Polavieja used the situation as pretext for shutting down production of El Productor, and repression of anarchists in general. In 1892, another labor congress was held in which it reconfirmed its revolutionary syndicalist principles and expressing solidarity with the women in the working class (a new idea for a predominantly male working class that felt competed against by women in the workplace), declaring, "It is an urgent necessity not to forget women, who are beginning to fill the workshops of several industries. They are driven by necessity and by bourgeois greed to compete with us. We cannot oppose it; let us help them." However, the outcome of this was government suppression of the movement by means of deportation, imprisonment, the suspension of the right to free assembly, and closing of organizations' headquarters to quell organizing efforts.
During the war of independence from Spain, anarchists joined others in the labor movement in distributing propaganda to Spanish soldiers, urging them not to oppose the separatists, and to join the anarchist cause. A few years previously, anarchists had embraced the ideas espoused by Spanish anarchists of organizing not just in unions, but also forming specifically anarchist groups to educate people and commit violent anti-state acts known as "propaganda of the deed", which carried on into the war of independence. Anarchists placed bombs that blew up bridges and gas pipelines, and contributed to the failed separatist attempt to assassinate the colonial head Captain General Valeriano Weyler in 1896. This led to the government further repressing of anarchists, closing the Sociedad General de Trabajadores (which grew out of the Círculo), mass deportations of activists, and even the forbidding of the lectura in the workplace.
The early 20th century
Following the Spanish–American War, which gave Cuba its independence from Spain, many anarchists were dissatisfied with the conditions that persisted after independence. They cited conditions that were perpetuated by the new government, like suppression of labor movements, US occupations, and dissatisfaction with the school systems. By 1899, anarchist workers had reorganized themselves, under the Alianza de Trabajadores (Worker's Alliance). By September of this year, five of the groups organizers had been arrested, following a mason's strike which spread to all of the construction trade. Around this time, anarchist organizer Errico Malatesta visited Cuba, giving speeches, and interviews to several periodicals, but was soon barred from further speaking engagements by civil governor Emilio Nuñez. Around 1902–03, anarchists and other labor organizers began to attempt to organize the sugar industry, then the largest industry in Cuba. But owners responded quickly, and two workers were murdered, and the crimes never solved.
As well, anarchist activists focused much of their energy towards preparing society for social revolution through education. Anarchists ran schools for children to run counter to the Catholic schools and public schools, believing that religious schools were anathema to their ideas of freedom, and that public schools were too often used to instill ideas of "patriotic nationalism" and discourage free thought in children. In issues of ¡Tierra!, a weekly anarchist newspaper (published from 1899 through 1915, putting out more than 600 issues), writers denounced the public school requirement to pay allegiance to the Cuban flag, and encouraged teaching children that the flag was a symbol of "closed mindedness and divisiveness." Anarchists claimed that students enrolled in such schooling would become "cannon fodder" for a conflict of Liberal and Conservative Party leaders in 1906, which caused the US to intervene and occupy Cuba through 1909. Though anarchists had been running schools since that of the Círculo de Trabajadores, it wasn't until 1906 that the schools began to take on a less traditional flavor. In 1908, anarchists included a manifesto in issues of ¡Tierra! and La Voz del Dependiente, calling for the establishment of schools modeled after Francesc Ferrer's Escuela Moderna (Modern School).
Repression and syndicalist activity