Speaker 1: Cauzone Media. Hey, and welcome to you. It happen here.
Speaker 1: Today we'll continue our journey through Latin American anarchism where
Speaker 1: we last left off with a look at the anarchist
Speaker 1: history of Uruguay. We talked about Uruguay's general history. It's
Speaker 1: radical influences anarchism, this period of popularity in the early
Speaker 1: twentieth century, it's radical experiments and it's cultural influence. So today,
Speaker 1: James and I, because James is here, Hello, James.
Speaker 2: Hi Andrew.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to look at what Uruguaian anarchists have
Speaker 1: been up to from the fifties onward, paying special attentions
Speaker 1: the activity of the Ferracion Anarchista Uruguaya and the idea
Speaker 1: of especifismo. By the way, as James is indicated, I
Speaker 1: am Andrew Andrew Saige. You can find me on YouTube
Speaker 1: as Andrewism. But all that aside, let's get into it.
Speaker 1: The Feracion Anarchista i Uruguaya or FAU, was founded in Montevideo, Uruguay,
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty six. According to Paul Sharki in Di
Speaker 1: Ferraci and Araquista Irauguaya, the FAU had very strong work
Speaker 1: in class roots, as many of the militants came from
Speaker 1: labor heavy districts like Zero, which definitely shaped their outlook.
Speaker 1: The FAU was also very much emphasized in direct action
Speaker 1: over electoral strategies. It favored armed struggle as a necessity
Speaker 1: in reaction to safer pression and economic exploitation, and the
Speaker 1: FAU had a very strong stance against Marxist Leninism. Although
Speaker 1: some members sympathized with aspects of Marxism, many of them
Speaker 1: resisted bureaucratic and authoritarian tendencies that influenced that milia. Unlike
Speaker 1: in many other Latin American countries, as you may have
Speaker 1: recalled us covering in the past, anarchism persisted in mainstream
Speaker 1: relevance even after the rise of the Bolsheviks and the
Speaker 1: Wents globally, and of course the coincide and fall of
Speaker 1: the anarchists in Spain. According to all of us Zenkos
Speaker 1: sixty five years of Revolution, the FAU came about in
Speaker 1: a time when uriquires prosperity coming out of World War
Speaker 1: Two had come to an end, as its agricultural exports
Speaker 1: were no longer needed to feed the Allies massive standing armies.
Speaker 1: This economic downturn triggered major social unrest which the anarchist
Speaker 1: presence was able to spring upon. One such instance of
Speaker 1: unrest involved one hundred and fifty thousand workers going on
Speaker 1: strike in solidarity with their fellow workers in a tire factory.
Speaker 1: During the strike and after, the FAU involved students, unionists, intellectuals,
Speaker 1: community organizers, and even a few exiles from the Spanish
Speaker 1: Civil War to build up a more united labor movement.
Speaker 1: So rather than having unions split along political ideological affiliations
Speaker 1: like moderates, socialists, anarchists, right populists and so on, there'll
Speaker 1: be one big tent just focused on labor. Now, I
Speaker 1: personally think a big tent has its benefits and its drawbacks,
Speaker 1: as with any other strategy. I think the benefit is
Speaker 1: obviously that it has the ability to mobilize a large
Speaker 1: number of people. But I think the difficulty in the
Speaker 1: drawback is it having so many affiliations under that big
Speaker 1: tent can mean it there's not really much of a
Speaker 1: shared goal left behind, Like, yeah, the anarchists want anarchy,
Speaker 1: the right populists might just want to secure some benefits
Speaker 1: and protections, and the socialists will be interested in launching
Speaker 1: a party. Sure they all proclaim to have some interest
Speaker 1: on the side of the workers or how that manifests
Speaker 1: looks different from group to group. But we'll see how
Speaker 1: that big tent approach turned out for the FAU. So
Speaker 1: they formed the National Confederation of Workers or CNT as
Speaker 1: that big tent in nineteen sixty four. But even before
Speaker 1: that there was a split, not too much of us
Speaker 1: as after the Cuban Revolution. The FAU is actually divided
Speaker 1: between those who were opposed to Castro and those who
Speaker 1: critically supported the revolution. Those who were opposed to Castro
Speaker 1: eventually broke away from the FAU in nineteen sixty three
Speaker 1: as Castro entrenched himself in the Soviet Bloc, while those
Speaker 1: who remained in the FAU were critical of Castro and
Speaker 1: his government but still supported the fall of Batista. Of course,
Speaker 1: with the Cuban Revolution came that very noticeable shift in
Speaker 1: American and foreign policy. They saw that with all that
Speaker 1: happening right in their backyard, they need to take a
Speaker 1: very different approach if they wanted to win the Cold War.
Speaker 1: Such a zign coo actually describes how in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: one JFK changed the approach of the now infamous school
Speaker 1: of the Americas from preparing for Soviet invasion to preparing
Speaker 1: for anti communist counterinsurgency against homegrown revolutions. So as a result,
Speaker 1: militaries across Latin America became more right wing and seized
Speaker 1: power for themselves to protect civilians from the danger of
Speaker 1: their rights. In nineteen sixty four, it was Brazil. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, it was Peru, in nineteen seventy three
Speaker 1: was Chile, and Uruguay fell, and in nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: Argentina fell. So Zenko noted in jest. Over a decade,
Speaker 1: Uruguay and anarchists will becomes surrounded by right wing dictatorships
Speaker 1: which collaborated to round up and extillminate left wing dissidents
Speaker 1: of all flavors. Not to mention, the economic situation wasn't
Speaker 1: exactly getting better. According to Paul Sharky, between nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: five and nineteen fifty nine, the cost of living doubled
Speaker 1: and wages did not keep peace. By nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: inflation was running at one hundred percent, by nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven at one hundred and forty percent. Madness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, just wait and see Andrew.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, we are living in some interesting times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you never know.
Speaker 1: So the president that preceded the military dictator imposed a
Speaker 1: wage freeze and devalue the currency. That was his bright idea,
Speaker 1: his solution to the crisis. So people's lives were obviously
Speaker 1: getting worse and the time had come for some decisive action.
Speaker 1: So the CNT aided in strikes across sectors, had even
Speaker 1: tried to call for a general strike as ale rights.
Speaker 1: The FAU decided that they were going to take on
Speaker 1: a strategy of urban guerrilla warfare, so they tapped into
Speaker 1: a coalition of leftist groups to robin hood food from
Speaker 1: the corporations to be able to the poor.
Speaker 2: Awesome, have just hit it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But sadly the coalition couldn't last very long. Differences
Speaker 1: in strategy would lead to the FAU doing its thing
Speaker 1: by in defense councils similar to those organized in the
Speaker 1: Spanish Civil War. Yeah interesting, while the other groups copied
Speaker 1: a Sheikwavara style gorilla army approach, forming the National Liberation
Speaker 1: Movement to Permeros or the mL and T.
Speaker 2: The existential debate among anarchists in arms is this that
Speaker 2: you've just like highlighted, right, it's need we form authoritarian
Speaker 2: structures similar to those using, for example, the Cuban Revolution,
Speaker 2: the Russian Revolution, these kind of statist revolutions which characterize
Speaker 2: the left in the twentieth century in some ways. Or
Speaker 2: is it possible for us to go from our community
Speaker 2: defense and the defense committees like the six person groups
Speaker 2: that the CNT organized in Spain to a more egalitarian
Speaker 2: large formation, like a like a truly revolutionary army, And
Speaker 2: like the split that you're talking about is the split
Speaker 2: that almost every movement has.
Speaker 1: Yeah, although the MLANTE was necessarily anarchists.
Speaker 2: Right, they were like following the Castro model, is that right,
Speaker 2: Like the Shaghavara kind of guerrilla warfare.
Speaker 1: Doctrine, pretty much the Gravara sort of model.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Although I'm glad that you bring up this point because
Speaker 1: there's actually something that I was writing about earlier today
Speaker 1: and preparation for a video. I think there's a conflation
Speaker 1: that anarchists need to be careful with between leadership in
Speaker 1: the sense of authority, as in the right to command
Speaker 1: and control and that kind of thing, versus leadership in
Speaker 1: the sense of guidance, advice, coordination, expertise. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that just as that you might have. Even you might
Speaker 1: have an anarchist construction collective, right, and they're building a house,
Speaker 1: you might have something like a foreman who is coordinating
Speaker 1: all the actions and all the different builders and all
Speaker 1: the different treatment of engaging in to ensure that the
Speaker 1: different parts of the house come together cohesively and seamlessly,
Speaker 1: that nobody's like stepping on anybody's tools, that everything is
Speaker 1: being done in a proper time. And that is an
Speaker 1: instance where there will be coordination without necessarily having authority.
Speaker 1: It's just really a division of labor to ensure that
Speaker 1: the task that everybody is there to accomplish can be accomplished.
Speaker 1: And the person who is given that particular task within
Speaker 1: that division of labor is doing so by taking all
Speaker 1: that responsibility. But just as they have the responsibility, others
Speaker 1: will also have the responsibilities and that does not elevate
Speaker 1: them above the other people in that association, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so kind of in the same way that you
Speaker 1: have that in a construction site, I think that that
Speaker 1: is the kind of approach we need to take in
Speaker 1: a military formation where the person who is you know,
Speaker 1: respected for their knowledge of military strategy or has the
Speaker 1: information or the expertise to be able to handle the
Speaker 1: planning of that approach, because we're all here to win, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: We're all here to defend our freedom and to defend
Speaker 1: the freedom of the people we love. So there's no
Speaker 1: sense in splitting off into a bunch of different groups
Speaker 1: and failing out our task when we can come together
Speaker 1: where necessary to engage in the coordination of our strategy
Speaker 1: to improve the chances of our success. You know. And
Speaker 1: of course there is a vulnerability in times of warfare
Speaker 1: that we do have the knowledge because warfare historically is
Speaker 1: one of the times that is the most ripe for
Speaker 1: authoritaria and seizure and control. But because that vulnerability exists
Speaker 1: in those times is when I think we have to
Speaker 1: be extra vigilant of how that could potentially manifest. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't sacrifice our course and defense of the cause,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, because it's easy to do that. It's easy
Speaker 2: to be persuaded that this situation is unique and different,
Speaker 2: and therefore we need to accept some kind of compromise
Speaker 2: of the very essence of what we're doing. The method
Speaker 2: that like the people I have spoken to, both those
Speaker 2: within formations today in Rajava and most in Rejava, but
Speaker 2: also in the Emma and those for instance in the
Speaker 2: Eyeing Column, which was a FI column in the Spanishivil War.
Speaker 2: They're probably the most famous for leaving the frontline to
Speaker 2: attack the cops because they felt like they didn't have
Speaker 2: enough weapons and that the cops had too many. And
Speaker 2: what they did was that they created a concept of
Speaker 2: the minimum necessary discipline, discipline being something that one has
Speaker 2: for oneself, not the hunting that comes from above. And
Speaker 2: they had leaders who would lead in times of combat
Speaker 2: right when we needed to make swift and decisive action.
Speaker 2: There wasn't time to obtain consensus. They used consensus to
Speaker 2: arrive at those leaders. Those leaders were able in times
Speaker 2: of urgency to make urgent decisions, but that didn't confer
Speaker 2: to power or status outside of that moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, It's just like in an emergency scenario, you know,
Speaker 1: somebody is, you know, leading a surgery for example, or
Speaker 1: leading a rescue operation. That doesn't mean that they're elevated
Speaker 1: above everybody else. It just means that they have the
Speaker 1: knowledge and the skills to accomplish that particular task and
Speaker 1: the others of their own free will. Respect that knowledge
Speaker 1: enough to go out with what the person is recommending exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that, yeah, that doesn't mean that that person
Speaker 2: is inherently capable of bossing you around, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I like the mention of discipline in particular because
Speaker 1: that really is the distinction, because he will talk about, oh,
Speaker 1: you need to have military discipline, how you supposed to
Speaker 1: have military discipline without blind obedience to authority, And sure,
Speaker 1: we're not going to have we're ever going to have
Speaker 1: discipline to the extent that soldiers are dehumanized and treated
Speaker 1: like cannon fodder as you would find in a traditional
Speaker 1: authoritarian military. But the discipline is derived from solidarity, is
Speaker 1: derived from the responsibility people have for each other, the
Speaker 1: capable have for each other within their formation, and the
Speaker 1: responsible do they have for their own actions as being
Speaker 1: part of that formation, and for how their actions will
Speaker 1: affect those around them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And I think that's something like you see
Speaker 2: it again and again when you read the column, the
Speaker 2: Deruty column newspaper, right, they talk about discipline and how
Speaker 2: we have to have a discipline comes from our commitment
Speaker 2: to our cause into each other, not from any fear
Speaker 2: of repercussions or like quote unquote disciplinary action, but from
Speaker 2: like the fact that we we don't want to let
Speaker 2: our comrades down, or do we want to let our
Speaker 2: course down, and like when people do do that. Right,
Speaker 2: there are It doesn't mean there aren't disciplinary reactions, but
Speaker 2: it means that those are like like you said before,
Speaker 2: you don't break away from the core of what you're doing.
Speaker 2: So they agree by consensus to include with the person
Speaker 2: who has done the thing that is considered to be wrong,
Speaker 2: what a suitable punishment would be or a suitable set
Speaker 2: of repercussions would be. So then it reinforces the idea
Speaker 2: of like consensus and like discipline coming from oneself rather
Speaker 2: than from fear of punishment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there is, of course the potential for
Speaker 1: processes to potentially become how do I want to put this?
Speaker 1: But what I will say is I think it's necessary.
Speaker 1: But even in engaging with those who have you know,
Speaker 1: broken trust, or who have seemingly split from the association
Speaker 1: or have jeopardized the safety and security of the association,
Speaker 1: that you find we used to deal with those situations
Speaker 1: on a case by keys basis. You know that you're
Speaker 1: responsive to the particular circumstances that cause that action that
Speaker 1: particular outcome, rather than as you would find in modern militaries,
Speaker 1: where you have like a very clear this action has
Speaker 1: this consequence, this action has this concert this action like
Speaker 1: a lot more flexibility is required because we understand that,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't have this matrix of crime that
Speaker 1: authorities do. You know, we're dealing with calm. They deal
Speaker 1: with crime, right, and so in dealing with harm, we
Speaker 1: have to approach each of these situations in the context
Speaker 1: of their situations rather than in some sort of cold,
Speaker 1: like distant calculation, you know. And I think in approaching
Speaker 1: it in that way, people are more willing I think,
Speaker 1: to fess up or to take accountability for their harm
Speaker 1: because they know that there's that relationship there that you're
Speaker 1: going to try to work through it that well, there
Speaker 1: may be many potential consequences to their actions. There's an
Speaker 1: openness to dialogue there rather than a rigidity of this
Speaker 1: is what you did, so this is the outcome automatically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that is the latter is like a
Speaker 2: system that looks not at people but quote unquote crimes, right,
Speaker 2: and like this this is the opposite of a restored
Speaker 2: raative justice system which looks at people in the situation
Speaker 2: they are in and not just the worst thing that
Speaker 2: they happened to have done.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 2: We should return to South America and really once again diverted.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, although I feel like these digressions always get
Speaker 1: to something essential and brings out something extra to what
Speaker 1: I would have, you know, prepared in advance. So we
Speaker 1: had this split, right, we had the FAU and then
Speaker 1: you had the m L and T. And they did
Speaker 1: collaborate where there was common cause, but it wasn't a
Speaker 1: permanent collaboration, you know. And while this was taking place
Speaker 1: in the urban guerrilla warfare sphere, you had different things
Speaker 1: taking place in the labor movement. The FAU was dealing
Speaker 1: with the consequences of big tent organizing as they found
Speaker 1: that the Uruguayan Communist Party or PCU had pretty success,
Speaker 1: they claimed significant influence in the cnt SO. In response,
Speaker 1: according to Suzenko, the FAU created a rank and file
Speaker 1: alliance called the Combative Tendency, which pushed for more militancy
Speaker 1: and less bureaucracy in the union movement. Through that alliance,
Speaker 1: the FAU was able to accomplish a lot more outreach
Speaker 1: and action, but in return, the President of Uruguay introduced
Speaker 1: emergency laws executed by the military to counter the unrest.
Speaker 1: The revolutionary left continued to fight against military's involvement in
Speaker 1: civilian life and also formed a daily people called Ipoka.
Speaker 1: Then the government was like, stop, don't do that, that's illegal.
Speaker 1: And when the governments has stopped on that, that's a
Speaker 1: legal that means they put boots on the ground and
Speaker 1: you know, raided their offices. And so the people fell
Speaker 1: apart and the group's involved went underground, and like I said,
Speaker 1: the military raided their bases. But then when the FAU
Speaker 1: was like, let's get the band back together. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: other groups were too scared to resurface, understandably, and so
Speaker 1: because of that fear, the PCU kind of had a
Speaker 1: fall from Greece. You know, for a while they were
Speaker 1: big boys on campus in the CNT. But after the
Speaker 1: FAU kind of came to the forefront again and it
Speaker 1: was all its bravery and stuff, they kind of end
Speaker 1: up falling back. And you see, the PCU had chosen
Speaker 1: to appease the military because they believed that a leftist
Speaker 1: faction within the rounds the army might support their bid
Speaker 1: for power, kind of like what happened in the Russian Revolution,
Speaker 1: and so you know, they really thought they were cooking something,
Speaker 1: but as it saying goes, the store was not even on.
Speaker 2: Heard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the military saw them as pretty much in signific
Speaker 1: so much so that while other leftist groups were facing
Speaker 1: severe oppression, the PCU was actually pretty much left alone.
Speaker 1: And so when the union rank and files saw that
Speaker 1: and tilling their backs on the PCU, they ended up
Speaker 1: turning their focus toward the combative tendency because at least
Speaker 1: they were doing radical and serious stuff. And so the
Speaker 1: unions were under attack from all sides, the police, the military,
Speaker 1: and even neo fascist gangs, and the FAU led combatitive
Speaker 1: tendency was focused on defending these workers' movements from those threats.
Speaker 1: According to Suzenko, the FAU held a secret congress and
Speaker 1: formed their own armed wing, the OPR thirty three, which,
Speaker 1: unlike other gorilla groups in the region, wasn't a top
Speaker 1: down organization. Instead, individual cells had the freedom to decide
Speaker 1: how they carried out missions and which actions it took
Speaker 1: part in. The FAU still set the overall strategy, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't about becoming some kind of Vanguard. Some of
Speaker 1: the actions bad the way, according to Sharki, included bank
Speaker 1: robberies and factory owner kidnappings.
Speaker 2: It's like old school Spanish anarchism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well there were some old school Spanish anarchists within
Speaker 1: their ranks. Yeah, so it really can't be surprised.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Drew, there's this wonderful line in Abel Pass's
Speaker 2: book about Ruti that de Ruti was very fond of children,
Speaker 2: so he risked his life robbing banks to fund their education.
Speaker 1: Oh that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: It's such a wonderful Like, yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know, I just enjoy it very much the whole
Speaker 2: Like you never know what direction that sentence is going
Speaker 2: to go in.
Speaker 1: That is a quintessential example of that. Yeah, I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, you do what you have to do
Speaker 1: pretty much.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And like I think it's really like he
Speaker 2: wasn't maximalist for the sake of maximalism. He was maximalist
Speaker 2: for the sake of like educating children. Yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 2: wasn't it. He didn't see the violence as and ended.
Speaker 1: Itself exactly exactly. It had a reasoning behind it, and
Speaker 1: the FAU was the same way or Their reasoning was
Speaker 1: just that if the capitalist class was going to use
Speaker 1: force to protect their interests, then the workers should be
Speaker 1: able to use force to defend theirs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, fannel and stuff.
Speaker 1: And so they did what they had to do. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the PCU was stuck to their policy of appeasement, which
Speaker 1: actually had a detrimental effect in the broader movement. As
Speaker 1: a military kept growing in strength, and so the very
Speaker 1: anti communist military's involvement in breaking up all the work
Speaker 1: activities embolden their role in politics. And then, once they
Speaker 1: defeated the m l n T, with the FAU struggling
Speaker 1: to resist isolated by the PCU's in action, the military
Speaker 1: to on the opportunity to coop the government, leading to
Speaker 1: the rise of Juan Maria Porterberi, the first president of
Speaker 1: the civic military dictatorship in nineteen seventy three. In the aftermath,
Speaker 1: the FAU made the tough call to move the operations
Speaker 1: to Argentina, which hadn't yet fallen to military distatorship. From there,
Speaker 1: they worked within the CNT to organize a massive fifteen
Speaker 1: day general strike. It shut the country down for a time,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't enough, and the efforts to keep up
Speaker 1: the fight were constantly undermined by the PCU, which still
Speaker 1: insisted on negotiating instead of taking real action. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: people were suffering. According to Sharky, between nineteen seventy one
Speaker 1: and nineteen seventy six, there was a thirty five percent
Speaker 1: fall in real wages, and by nineteen seventy nine inflation
Speaker 1: was running at eighty percent, with wages limping behind at
Speaker 1: forty five percent. So until nineteen seventy six, the FAU
Speaker 1: continued to work between Argentina and Uruguay, but after Argentina's
Speaker 1: coup that was it. The coach is Zenko directly. During
Speaker 1: the US's Operation Condo, dictatorships across Latin America continued coordinated
Speaker 1: to kidnap, torture, and murder leftists across the continent. Between
Speaker 1: sixty eight thousand and eighty thousand leftists were killed and
Speaker 1: more than four hundred thousand were placed in political prisons.
Speaker 1: End Court, Jesus and I think we need to sit
Speaker 1: with those numbers, because it's very easy to hear numbers
Speaker 1: like that and just think, you know, that's just a statistic.
Speaker 1: Pretty much, we hear big numbers on mine kind of
Speaker 1: goes statistic. Yeah, but to like think about the impact
Speaker 1: that would have for tens of thousands or hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of people to be just taken out, whether killed
Speaker 1: or imprisoned, leaven like a keeping hole of knowledge, of experience,
Speaker 1: of education, of radicalism. Yeah, a country may take decades
Speaker 1: to recover from something like that. It's a cultural death
Speaker 1: in a sense. You know, this is the political movement,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of similar to how during cluingism, elders
Speaker 1: would be white out and with them all of their knowledge,
Speaker 1: all of their oral histories, all their languages, just wiped
Speaker 1: out in an instant.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is different, of course as a political ideology as
Speaker 1: opposed to an entire culture and ethnicity, but it's still
Speaker 1: just a massive loss of all that history, all that experience,
Speaker 1: all that radicalism and information and just gone right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard for a movement to recover from that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not like a genocide or like the colonial kind
Speaker 2: of you could call it a well, it's like a
Speaker 2: decapitation of the movement, I suppose.
Speaker 1: Well, I would say it's more than a decapitation because
Speaker 1: it's not just like notable figures that were taken out
Speaker 1: or particularly influential thought leaders or anything. It's almost everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: anybody who had that fight in them, or had that
Speaker 1: radical knowledge or consciousness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyone with any lived experience, all the things they'd learned,
Speaker 2: all the mistakes they'd made, learned from like a gone
Speaker 2: that the movement has to begin almost from like a
Speaker 2: blank slate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the history is basically raised in a sense, So
Speaker 1: all this left is really what they might have written down, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is obviously only a small portion of what they
Speaker 1: might have had to share with the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially in a movement that's been criminalized and pursued
Speaker 2: by the state, Right, Like what they write down is
Speaker 2: what they risk the state discovering, so that they're only
Speaker 2: going to risk writing any things down.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And then you know, when you look at this,
Speaker 1: this this didn't just happen, you require, that's happened all
Speaker 1: over the world. In some cases, this massive wipeout of
Speaker 1: the anarchist movement took place even earlier, you know, in
Speaker 1: the nineteen hundreds, nineteen tens, nineteen twenties. But in all
Speaker 1: these cases, that loss is something that we are still
Speaker 1: in a sense recovering from. We kind of had to
Speaker 1: Sowy build back, but we still haven't ever reached in
Speaker 1: many places the height that aarchism's at at certain points
Speaker 1: in its history. It's certain parts of the wolf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean look at even like Spain still has
Speaker 2: a very strong anarchosyndicalist movement, right, but like the best
Speaker 2: of the anarchists died in Aragon, in Madrid and in
Speaker 2: concentration camps afterwards, or fighting in the Second World War,
Speaker 2: and like it took decades for that movement to recover,
Speaker 2: and it's still not as strong as it was. That
Speaker 2: this was one of the high.
Speaker 1: Points, especially when the legacy is so much erased. You know,
Speaker 1: when you look at how histories are taught everywhere in
Speaker 1: the world, you're barely going to get a mention of
Speaker 1: anarchism despite the massive role it pleaded in sheep in
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this has been one of my constant things as
Speaker 2: a historian, is that like when people write histories today,
Speaker 2: they write them from the perspective of the inevitability of
Speaker 2: the state, and like, I'm not alone and make this analysis.
Speaker 2: David Graeber does it, Jim Scott did it, too. The
Speaker 2: idea is that people who exist outside of the state
Speaker 2: are behind and that they they have failed or chosen
Speaker 2: not to advance to the more advanced human existence that
Speaker 2: is a state. And Jim Scott does this in the
Speaker 2: art of not being governed, right Like, if we look
Speaker 2: instead as people who have chosen to refuse the state,
Speaker 2: then we understand anarchism as a choice that people would
Speaker 2: make knowing the options available to them, rather than a
Speaker 2: step backwards or failure to advance to the state. And
Speaker 2: we can look at a whole of history from that
Speaker 2: perspective and see it very differently, but most historians don't exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've in commented this where people just kind
Speaker 1: of assume, oh, well, the anarchists lost, so that means
Speaker 1: the destined to lose. Yeah, they lost that particular fight.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean the war necessarily lost. And additionally, states
Speaker 1: have lost too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the states continue to lose.
Speaker 1: States, state projects have lost, continued to lose, you know,
Speaker 1: the capitalist project, capitalist businesses, they lose, they fail. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that the project is destined to lose, destined
Speaker 1: to feel just means that particular iteration or that particular
Speaker 1: attempt was not able to succeed in all its ambitions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like, as historians, we shouldn't be making that judgment, right,
Speaker 2: We should be attempting to learn from and document the
Speaker 2: past rather than to sort of categorize it into like
Speaker 2: failed and successful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that too, because the standards, the standards of failure
Speaker 1: and success are often dictated by the standpoint of the
Speaker 1: status school.
Speaker 2: Yes, very much so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's kind of like how the Heitian Revolution is
Speaker 1: spoken of as the only successful slave revolt or one
Speaker 1: of the only successful slave revolts, and the standard for
Speaker 1: success in that case is that they were able to
Speaker 1: establish an independent state, whereas other slave revolts in other
Speaker 1: parts of the world, including within the Caribbean, would have
Speaker 1: taken different paths. The Maroons, for example, their phone revolts
Speaker 1: was a withdrawal from the system that surrounded them, creating
Speaker 1: a pocket of resistance, isolating themselves. Same thing in Brazil
Speaker 1: we had Kilombo's, these settle ones that extracted themselves from
Speaker 1: the surround and oppressive structure and try to survive to
Speaker 1: the extent that they could.
Speaker 3: Not.
Speaker 1: All of them lasted, but nothing lasts forever, you know,
Speaker 1: Countries rise and fall, and so I think if we
Speaker 1: limit ourselves to just the example of Haiti, particularly in
Speaker 1: the context of success in a slave revolution, I think
Speaker 1: we miss out on a lot of those other examples
Speaker 1: and opportunities for inspiration and guidance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right. I think like it supplies
Speaker 2: to those of places. I think about it, Like, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm fortunate to have this like background in history, but
Speaker 2: also to be with people in their moments of revolution
Speaker 2: and to spend time with revolutionaries in the MR. And like,
Speaker 2: one of the analyzes that you'll always see is that,
Speaker 2: like this creation of liberated spaces is a not enough
Speaker 2: or be like there are also places within the non
Speaker 2: government though, and where there is still very strong control
Speaker 2: from a pseudo state. Right, But I think that overlooks
Speaker 2: the fact that, yeah, there are not like libertarian states,
Speaker 2: but people are living their lives without gods and masters,
Speaker 2: that they are like experiencing freedom in every moment, and
Speaker 2: they are liberated in their own lives as they continue
Speaker 2: to struggle to liberate territory in other people. That might
Speaker 2: be what success looks like, like that they are able
Speaker 2: to be self realized.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just the psychological experience in itself, It kind of
Speaker 1: be under other stated or underrated, even if it's on
Speaker 1: that small scale of the individual, that's still valuable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like if we if we acknowledge that, it's
Speaker 2: much harder to go back, Like those people can't go
Speaker 2: back because they've existed in liberation, right, Like that that
Speaker 2: they've lived in a free way. Yeah, and like they
Speaker 2: will always know that freedom is possible, that they can
Speaker 2: live without authority, live with without state power, that that
Speaker 2: like liberation is a thing that can exist not just
Speaker 2: in our minds but in physical space.
Speaker 1: And like exactly they.
Speaker 2: Will always know that, Like that's that's available. And if
Speaker 2: we can tell those stories, so will other people.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly, because that list something as we speak about
Speaker 1: so often. It's the need in the process of social
Speaker 1: revolution to help people's powers, drives, and consciousness. You do
Speaker 1: that by giving people both of course theoretical education and
Speaker 1: you know, share knowledge in that sense, but also through experience.
Speaker 1: Because I've used this phrase before, you can't put the
Speaker 1: gene back in the bottle. You can't go from experience
Speaker 1: in freedom to a situation of unfreedom and then shruggishulers
Speaker 1: and think, oh that's all they could have a be
Speaker 1: after you've experienced or to the status quo, you're not
Speaker 1: going to go back to thinking the status quo is
Speaker 1: all there is and all that could ever exist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. We have to remember that when we're
Speaker 2: looking at these things, Like it's easy to look from
Speaker 2: where something ended and project that back, but we have
Speaker 2: to understand how it felt when people were doing it too.
Speaker 1: Exactly, So what kind of we kind of left on
Speaker 1: an on a somber chapter in the Uruguay's anarchist history,
Speaker 1: because unfortunately it was only after the fall of Uraguay's
Speaker 1: stutatorship in nineteen eighty five the anarchist militants were able
Speaker 1: to return to Uruguay and re establish the FAU in
Speaker 1: a fractured political and social landscape with greatly reduced numbers.
Speaker 1: Some of the former anarchists involved in the FAU created
Speaker 1: the People's Victory Party or PvP in exile, which had
Speaker 1: attempted to reorganize resistance efforts but also fell into some
Speaker 1: Leninist tendencies. But the main line, after you continue to
Speaker 1: focus on crassroots organizing, workers struggles and political education, it
Speaker 1: continues to be engaged in Latin Ercan anarchist networks, particularly
Speaker 1: with Brazilian and Argentine groups like the Ferrasau Anarchista Culture,
Speaker 1: the Ferrau Araquista KABOCLA, the Ferrachau Anarchista do Rio de Geraneiro,
Speaker 1: and the Argentine organization ALCA. Despite its past radicalism, the
Speaker 1: FU has shifted towards a broader approach integrating mass movements
Speaker 1: while retaining its equipment to anti authoritarian socialism. Since then
Speaker 1: and up to today, the approach has aligned with the
Speaker 1: practice of especifismo, which it developed to rebuild their strength
Speaker 1: in Iraguai and put movements. That approach has since been
Speaker 1: influential across Latin America and beyond, including North America, Europe, Asia, Africa,
Speaker 1: and Oceania. I've actually spoken about a specifismo on this
Speaker 1: podcast before and on my channel, but to give a
Speaker 1: quick summary, a specifismo is an organizational approach guided by
Speaker 1: three key concepts. The first is the need for specifically
Speaker 1: anarchist organization built around a unity of ideas and praxie.
Speaker 1: The second is the use of the specifically anarchist organization
Speaker 1: to theorize and develop strategic political and organize and work.
Speaker 1: And the food is active involvement in and shaping of
Speaker 1: autonomous and popular social movement, which is described as the
Speaker 1: process of social in social as, Pacifists reject the left
Speaker 1: unity idea of a synthesis organization of revolutionaries or even
Speaker 1: multiple currents of anarchists loosely united, because they feel it
Speaker 1: boils down to the lowest common denominator politics. They feel
Speaker 1: that when this unity is preferred at any cost, it
Speaker 1: leaves little room for united action or develops political discussion
Speaker 1: if being described in a sense as an affinity group
Speaker 1: with the shared interest in the advancement of a very
Speaker 1: specific politic But they aren't just internally focused, you know.
Speaker 1: Specifismo is focused and build in popular power as a
Speaker 1: means of revolutionary transformation, rejecting both electoral and vang Goddess
Speaker 1: Marxist approaches. So the especifies more distinguishes between specifically anarchist
Speaker 1: political organizations or affinity groups and broader mass movements, and
Speaker 1: they advocate for anarchists creating the former and inserting themselves
Speaker 1: in the latter, building up anarchist presence and the presence
Speaker 1: of anarchist ideas in unions, in student groups, and in
Speaker 1: community struggles. So if you want a more in depth
Speaker 1: exploration of especifismo, I suggests reading the discussion between Philippe
Speaker 1: Corea and Juan Carlos Micoso called the Strategy of Specifismo
Speaker 1: on the Anarchist Library, and they talk about how the
Speaker 1: fragmentation of the working class undernoliberalism has created some very
Speaker 1: distinct challenges that require fresh organizational strategies and less dog
Speaker 1: batter critgity to simplistic class analysis. But they also speak
Speaker 1: for the need to coordinate and discipline and strategically engage
Speaker 1: anarchist groups within social movements, retaining the independence but engaging
Speaker 1: in their struggle. And they also end up in that
Speaker 1: interview discussed in the fause long term strategy as a
Speaker 1: process of resistance, rupture, and reconstruction. Resistance meaning that the
Speaker 1: strengthening crassroots organizations, direct action and ideological development. Rupture meaning
Speaker 1: that they're breaking away from canast institutions through revolutionary action,
Speaker 1: and reconstruction meanings they establishing new social relations based on
Speaker 1: self management and mutual aid. It's kind of similar to
Speaker 1: the way that I break down social revolution conceptually as
Speaker 1: an approach that incorporates both opposition and the proposal of alternatives.
Speaker 1: So I have been thinking about specifies more lately. I
Speaker 1: made that video many years ago, and my anarchist understanding
Speaker 1: has shifted a lot, especially recently. In going back and
Speaker 1: look at how I would have analyzed things previously, I
Speaker 1: think there's some different directions that I might take it
Speaker 1: and things in I think, for example, the idea of
Speaker 1: affidency groups engaging in social intution is extremely valuable in
Speaker 1: shifting the conversation within you know, these mass movements. But
Speaker 1: I also think that there's a risk in the ways
Speaker 1: in which a SPECIFIESMO, if not properly understood or conceptualized,
Speaker 1: could end up opening ground for cooptation towards some rather
Speaker 1: unanarchist outcomes. You know what I mean by that is,
Speaker 1: I think it's important one discussing a SPECIFIESMO to be
Speaker 1: very careful against the interpretation of it as some kind
Speaker 1: of vanguard as strategy, or way to dictate a vision
Speaker 1: of anarchy. I think that even if somebody is taken
Speaker 1: the pacifist approach in creating an effinency group organized around
Speaker 1: a very specific form of anarchism, that group should still
Speaker 1: be in conversation with different tendencies and engaging in an
Speaker 1: ongoing process of critique and convergence of ideas. I believe
Speaker 1: this is the sort of motivation between Malichesta's idea of
Speaker 1: synthesis and the Synthesis Federation in anarchist history. I'm still
Speaker 1: it in a bit about that, but anyway, I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear about you know what they are for you
Speaker 1: and an anarchists you require up to here. Now you
Speaker 1: know they can feel free to reach out to me.
Speaker 1: I have website now adressage dot org, and I wish
Speaker 1: them or power to all the people. That's it for
Speaker 1: me today. You can find me on YouTube and Patreon
Speaker 1: and this has been It could Happen here, Peace.
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