Anarchist Anti-statism and the Colonial Question in Cuba, 1898-1902

Abstract

This article examines a specific case study —the issues arising from Spanish colonialism and later U.S. imperialism— on Cuba at the turn of the nineteenth century through the lens of the working-class movement of anarchism. Anarchists in Cuba, many of whom were Spanish émigrés, argued that true emancipation came not from patriotism, nationalism and the political form of the state, but through self-organization and the transformation of “the social”. Tensions arose, however, within anarchist newspapers, upon which this article draws extensively, as to whether the pursuance of nationhood was an interim stage in this development or a trap offered by the bourgeois classes to domesticate workers’ demands. The state, nevertheless, was consistently rejected as a desirable medium or end destination.

Keywords

• Anarchism
• state
• workers' movement
• Cuba
• imperialism