37 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
37 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
Review of "The Anarchists of Casas Viejas" by Jerome Mintz
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See Vernon Richards' "Lessons of the Spanish Revolution" for a critique of
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Hugh Thomas' "The Spanish Civil War", and Jerome Mintz' "The Anarchists of
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Casas Viejas" for a withering criticism of both Eric Hobsbawm's "Primitive
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Rebels" and Hugh Thomas' work. Both Hobsbawm and Thomas, Marxist and
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conservative historians respectively, treat the Spanish anarchist movement
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as rural and backward.
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In fact, Jerome Mintz' work is a fascinating example of how a distorted view of
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an event becomes accepted as historical fact; in this case, an abortive uprising
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in 1933 by the members of the anarchosyndicalist trade union, the C.N.T., in
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the Andalusian village of Casas Viejas. This ended in tragedy with the shooting
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of some participants and bystanders in the house of a C.N.T. member called
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Seis Dedos ('Six Fingers'), and subsequent summary executions of more bystanders
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by the Assault Guards; the government of the day fell as a result of the
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recriminations.
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Mintz spent three years in the village cautiously approaching survivors of the
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incident (it was still in the time of Franco). He discovered that the commonly
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accepted view of the incident, that Seis Dedos himself lead the uprising, was
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quite simply false; Seis Dedos did not participate at all, but was killed along
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with the rest of his family after several of his family had taken refuge in
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his house (they did participate). As Seis Dedos was dead, the survivors who
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were arrested sensibly pinned the blame on him, and so he entered history. The
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combination of a six fingered Anarchist dying with his family in the blazing
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ruins of his house under artillery and air attack from the Assault Guards
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(another myth) was too tempting for both Hobsbawm, Thomas and almost every
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other historian, and the uprising was written off as another hopeless isolated
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attempt by millenarian Andalusian peasants at effecting the revolution, an
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interpretation which suited both the Marxists and the conservatives. Whereas,
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as Mintz points out, it was part of a national uprising somewhat rashly called
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by the C.N.T in Barcelona on the occasion of a national railway strike. Other
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C.N.T. local groups nearby called it off shortly beforehand, but the anarchists
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of Casas Viejas did not learn of this.
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