Santiago: Photographic exhibition in the First Anarchist Bookfair in $hile

Images and references from La Revuelta Historical Archive

Below are wall-charts that were exhibited in the First Anarchist Bookfair in Santiago on the 12th and 13th of May 2012. These can now be shared through this medium. Soon there will be more and will be available to be exhibited through the initiatives of comrades that want to deal with the thematic. For whichever consultation of the Historical Archive ‘The Revolt’, email us at archivo.larevuelta@gmail.com. (Thanks to comrade Andrea from Concepción for the posters’ design!)

Click to enlarge/The poster reads from top to bottom and left to right:

Anarchist silhouettes in the Chilean region’ (Part 1)
Photographic selection of anarchists that participated in the region’s struggles.
Neither saints, nor heroes; just comrades.

Osvaldo Solis. Bricklayer from Osorno. Member of that city’s CGT. Assassinated in a demonstration in December 1932.

Augusto Pinto. Shoemaker. Active in the movement in the first three decades of the 20th century. Later became a member of the Socialist Party (PS), in 1933. Despite this, was considered a ‘libertarian’ until his death, in 1960.

Juan Onofre Chamorro. Butcher and port-worker from Valparaíso. Founder of the Regional Workers Federation of Chile (FORCh) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in Chile. Editor of Mar y Tierra (‘Sea and Earth’).

Manuel Rojas. Writer. Active in anarchism between 1912–17 in Santiago. Wrote in La Batalla (‘The Battle’) between 1912–16. Later abandoned the movement, but not the ideas. Won National Prize for Literature.

Segundo Vera. Docker. Died in 1938. Port-worker from San Antonio affiliated to the IWW.

Pedro Ortúzar. Active port agitator, linked to the IWW since the second decade of the 20th century until his death, on the 23rd of June 1944. During the Ibañez era he went to Buenos Aires and Montevideo.

Agustín Saavedra. Active anarchist of the first decade of the 20th century. Coordinated El Oprimido (‘The Oppressed’) of Santiago.

Jorge Tamayo Gavilán. Member of the IWW in the 20s. With the arrival of the dictatorship of Ibañez (1927–31) he went to Buenos Aires. In that city he connected with and later directed armed expropriation groups.

Antonio Ramón Ramón. Spanish worker. In 1914 he tried to assassinate the General responsible for his brother’s death in the Massacre of the Santa Maria School in Iquique in 1907. Despite not being an anarchist, his work was understood to be ‘propaganda by the deed’.

José Santos González Vera. Writer. Active in anarchism from approximately 1913 to 1935, before leaving the movement but not the ideas. Wrote in La Batalla, in Santiago, between 1912–16. In 1925 he was a member of the local section of the IWW in Concepción and in the 1930s of the CGT. He was also general secretary of the League of Tenants in Resistance of that city. National Prize of Literature.

Armando Triviño Velasco. Cobbler and active coordinator of the IWW since its foundation until the 1940s. Wrote various books and pamphlets, coordinated Acción Directa (‘Direct Action’) and the LUX editorial.

Juan Demarchi (Turin 1864 – Valparaíso 1943). Carpenter and later cobbler. Member of the IWW. Influenced Salvador Allende, when the latter was still young.

Luís Olea. House painter. Active agitator of the first decade of the 20th century. Member of the strike committee of 1907 in Iquique. He was saved from the massacre and escaped to Peru before going to Ecuador. In all parts, he collaborated with the ideas.

Julio Rebosio Barrera. Born in Tacna in 1884, grew up in Iquique, he committed suicide in Santiago on April 26th, 1920. He was in the Mexican revolution, returned in 1915 to Iquique, where he founded the Anarchist Centre La Brecha (‘The Breach’) in 1915, the journals Rebelión (‘Rebellion’) in 1916, El Surco (‘The Furrow’) in 1917, and in 1918 the Centre of Social Studies (CES) Eliseo Reclus and the periodical Verba Roja (‘Red Verb’) in Valparaíso. He was general secretary of the Day-Labourers’ Syndicate of Iquique. He was imprisoned from December 1918 to February 1920 for desertion, sedition and subversion.

Pedro Nolasco Arratia Urrutia. Graphic-worker (typesetter, etc.) in Santiago. Founder of the Printing Workers’ Federation of Chile (FOIC), in 1921, and active in anarchism until his death in 1961.

José Venegas Castro. Died in March 1957. Plasterer from Santiago, head of the Plasterers’ Resistance Union (URE).

Manuel Tristán López Da Silva. Portuguese watchmaker. In 1929 he came to Chile to kill the dictator Ibañez. They found him out and applied the Law of Residence. When they were driving him to the frontier with Argentina, the regime’s police assassinated him.

Juan Segundo Montoya Nova. Cobbler and later naturist. Died in the city of Talca in 1986. Member of the IWW, in Concepción, 1924–27. With the Ibañez dictatorship, he moved to Osorno; face of the CGT of this city, until he left for Talca in 1942. He was a provincial leader (1953–57) of the Workers’ United Centre (CUT) of Chile. Published various books on anarchism, naturism and poetry.

Antonio Acevedo Hernández. Theatrical author of countryside origin. Linked to the anarchists of Santiago between the 1910s and 1920s.

José Domingo Gómez Rojas. Student and poet. Wrote in the journal of Santiago La Batalla between 1912–16. Minute-taker for the IWW in 1920. Died while in prison during the plot against the IWW in September 29th, 1920.

Juan Gandulfo Guerra. Born in 1894. Doctor linked to the IWW and the FECH. Founded and coordinated a medical polyclinic of the IWW that existed from 1923 to the 1950s. Died in 1932.

Magno Espinoza. Machinist and active anarchist in the first decade of the 20th century; coordinated the Rebellion Group and the newspaper El Ácrata in 1900. He will be remembered for his role in the general strike of Valparaíso in 1903.

Manuel Antonio Silva. Shoemaker. Active anarchist of the second and third decade of the 20th century. Secretary and treasurer of different initiatives like newspapers and pro-prisoner committees.

María del Tránsito Caballero. Originating from San Felipe, from a peasant family. She was a hat-maker by profession. Active libertarian of the first decade of the 20th century. She died in 1905 at 25 years old.

Ernesto Miranda Rivas. Active in the ideas since the 1930s until his death, in 1978. Leader of the National Leather Federation of the CGT. Various times general secretary of the FONACC until the 1960s. Founder of the CUT in 1953 and various entities: MUNDT, Revolutionary Syndicalist Movement, CRS, 7 July Libertarian Movement. Candidate for the ‘Syndicalist Libertarian Movement’ to the direction of the CUT in October 1972.

Efraín Plaza Olmedo. Committed a double homicide in the centre of Santiago in July 1912. He did it [killed two upper-class persons] to raise public awareness of the deaths of dozens of miners in Rancagua (El Teniente) that had occurred months earlier without anyone giving it much attention. The pressure of his comrades helped his release in 1925. Weeks later, he ‘appeared’ dead on the side of a path.

Ignacio Mora. Boat carpenter. Active anarchist in the first decades of the 20th century in Valparaíso and the saltpetre extractions of Tarapacá.

Click to enlarge/The poster reads from left to right and top to bottom:

Anarchism in Chile: Action and multiplicity
The history of anarchism in this region is very diverse and complex, and for this reason we will only give you a brief summary of some of its offerings through a mosaic of situations, spaces, actors and deeds, that give us a small demonstration of the heterogeneous nature of this narrative.

The IWW was an anarchosyndicalist union that existed between 1919–51.

1939. Spanish anarchists who sought refuge in Chile following the Civil War, here photographed after arriving in the country on the SS Winnipeg [a steamer which arrived at Valparaíso that year with nearly 2,200 migrants aboard].

An assembly of the IWW in 1923.

Internationalism was a constant in the ideology of the time.

Anticlerical propaganda, Valparaíso, from the 1920s.

1913. The Peluquería del Pueblo (‘People’s Barbershop’), a meeting-point for the libertarian movement [later raided by the authorities].

Invitation to a solidarity fundraising picnic arranged by Spanish anarchists from the CNT-FAI and the national council of the Antifascist International Solidarity (SIA) “with the aim of sending help to our heroic brothers who fight in Spain for the cause of Freedom and Justice” written on it; the photograph is from the same picnic of Spanish anarchist refugees in Chile, in 1961.

Shoeworkers in the thirties or forties.

May 1st: picture often used by the libertarian press that summarizes part of the ideal and its view of the Church, the State, the Army and Capitalism.

Explosives found on libertarians in 1913.

The CGT was an anarchosyndicalist union that existed between 1931–53.

Picture of a football team formed out of anarchist workers in the 1930s.

From its origins, anarchism heralded naturism, vegetarianism and conscious procreation. This photo shows a child brought up under naturism (Osorno, 1930s).

They often criticized sports which they considered a numbing, brutalizing process (the image is from 1924).

The present school: the critics of the authoritarian system of education were constantly represented in the libertarian press (the cartoon is from 1924).

‘Mayday – Workers of the whole world – Arms for the Spanish proletariat’: from the different cities of the Chilean region, various campaigns were organized to send money to the anarchists fighting in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).

Anarchists were the first to commemorate the 1st of May in Chile, in 1899. This photo was taken in 1912 in Santiago.

Buenaventura Durruti and his comrades held up a bank in 1925 in Santiago. The money was for comrades imprisoned in Spain.

Commemoration of the 1st of May, 1912.

Identity card of a member of the anarchosyndicalist Federation of Print Workers.

Libertarian workers’ guilds, particularly those in construction, were the first to obtain an eight-hour day in 1918, and in 1931 they managed to shorten the day to six hours in Santiago.

Anarchism introduced the Societies of Resistance to the labour rights movement in Chile, a prelude to modern syndicalism (photo dating back to May 1st, 1912).

Logo of the Anarchist Pro-prisoner Committee of the 1930s. Similar logos were created in solidarity with the imprisoned comrades.

Solidarity voucher for a local libertarian member of the IWW.

Anarchists constantly organized anti-electoral campaigns, heralding direct action.