RÍO GALLEGOS WORKERS’ SOCIETY
1909—OCTOBER 13—1920
TO THE PEOPLE
It has been eleven years since this day moved the entire world.
It has been eleven years since the lowest and most cowardly attack on Free Thought was carried out in the thousand-times-accursed Montjuich Castle (Barcelona).
Francisco Ferrer, the founder of the Modern School, who taught children the path of light, was cravenly executed by those Tartuffes who commit all class of infamies in the name of Christ. But Francisco Ferrer will live forever in our hearts and we shall always be ready to spit this crime in the face of its perpetrators.
Glory to the martyrs of Human Liberty!
Glory to Francisco Ferrer!
Farmworkers: You have the duty to come to town on October 1st and pay homage to the Martyr of Freedom.
FRANCISCO FERRER
Cravenly executed on October 13th, 1909
On September 28th, Diego Ritchie refuses to issue a permit for the event. The workers aren’t intimidated and, without stopping to blink, declare a forty-eight-hour general strike.1 And this isn’t a bluff. Here’s what Amador V. González has to say about the strike:
September 30th dawned to a city in a state of siege. Though there was no reason to adopt such measures and martial law had not been declared, pedestrians were banned from gathering on the streets or in doorways, the armed forces poured out of the barracks to show off their Mausers and prison guards patrolled the city by automobile, frightening residents from north to south, as if the city was a warzone. On the 1st, armed men surrounded the offices of the Workers’ Society and passersby were stopped and sent in another direction. The offices of the Workers’ Society were closed down and the homes of its secretary and treasurer ransacked, but under what law? As a preliminary measure, the Workers’ Society ordered the suspension of all previously scheduled demonstrations and declared the general strike to be indefinite until the authorities recognized their error in allowing the police chief to use such extreme measures against a peaceful and orderly commemoration.2
The confrontation is ruthless. The government and police use force and the workers use the strike, that powerful measure of civil disobedience.
Faced with Correa Falcón’s offensive, the workers turn to their friends Borrero and Viñas. They gather in the offices that the lawyer shares with Dr. Juan Carlos Beherán and prepare to appeal Commissioner Ritchie’s decision.
In their statement to the judge, they make use of an impressively original argument. They write:
We protest against the prohibition of a demonstration scheduled for today—October 1, 1920—to commemorate the anniversary of the execution of Francisco Ferrer, whom the believers in the religion of labor hold as a martyr of freedom and a symbol of their ideas, just as believers in the Catholic religion pay homage to St. Francis of Assisi or the Maid of Orleans, recently beatified as St. Joan of Arc, or as believers in the Mohammedan religion pay homage to Mohammed, or as believers in the religion of patriotism pay tribute to the heroes of the Reconquista, the War of Independence, or the Emancipation.
Judge Viñas receives the appeal at three in the afternoon and immediately orders Commissioner Ritchie to explain his motives. And he also informs him that the court will remain open past its normal hours as a way of letting him know that his response must be immediate.
The barracks arguments used by Commissioner Ritchie show a devastating inconsistency:
By banning the meeting to be held today, the police department has understood that it was to commemorate the memory of a person held to be a martyr for his anarchist ideas, as Francisco Ferrer is universally considered to be a fanatic of that cause which is currently threatening to dissolve our contemporary social order. This gives the planned homage the hallmarks of inviability inherent in that class of protests that have been prohibited to protect the social order. Moreover, Your Honor, this is fundamentally a protest against an execution carried out by a foreign nation. Whether legal or illegal is not for us to judge for reasons of international courtesy; a judgement cannot be made by our constituted authorities, cannot take part, not even to grant a permit for protests against the decisions made by the Spanish court system, as it is not subject to our appeals. Nor was this event organized with a respectable aim, such as that of the improvement of living conditions for the working class. The character of the demonstration is purely political and falls outside our remit.
Viñas doesn’t waver. Not only does he reverse the commissioner’s decision, he also criticizes his ideas, demonstrating a rational spirit and a respect for the ideas of others:
The Public Safety Law has long been the subject of judicial decisions and has just as long been the cause of errors, with a lack of knowledge of our social history leading to many blatantly unfounded assertions. The flyer distributed by the workers only states that the event will commemorate the execution of the person mentioned, describing him solely as the founder of the Modern School, nothing more. There is no mention of any political tendency on the flyer that could be considered anarchist or libertarian, which are admittedly new developments in the history of ideas and whose consequences in the history of events are even more recent. The scientific conception of anarchism, its theories and the nature of its attacks are not only extremely vague and confusing to the masses, but also to sociologists and law professors. When these fundamental doubts present themselves before the court, the duty of the law must be to prevent any restriction of the freedom of assembly guaranteed in the Constitution.
Reading this decision, we have to give Viñas his due. It’s clear that he had a special sensibility. It was truly exceptional and daring to sign the defense of a labor demonstration in this way, and even more exceptional still for a homage to Ferrer in regions where the government was controlled by the mighty—and just one year after the Tragic Week, when it was the duty of all well-born Argentines to hunt down revolutionary workers.
He orders the ban to be lifted and for the governor to be informed of his decision.
The governor is notified on October 2nd. Correa Falcón, neither stupid nor lazy, drafts his own resolution: “Acknowledge receipt of the judicial decision and, as the date on which the permit for a demonstration had been requested has since passed, place the permit on file.”
Even though the opportunity to pay homage to Ferrer has passed, the workers cannot contain their enthusiasm for the judge’s decision. They feel defended; their ideas have triumphed over the government officials whom they accuse of being mere lackeys of commercial and landowning interests. The Workers’ Society lifts the strike. Now the offensive will be taken by the merchants and the property owners of the Commerce and Industry League. They find a leader in Ibón Noya, a rancher and the owner of the Buick Garage, an auto parts store. And their counteroffensive will also begin with boycotts. The first thing they do is organize an advertisers’ boycott of a newspaper called La Gaceta del Sur, which published an article praising the strike.
The Workers’ Society responds to this blow with an even heavier one: a boycott of three local businesses. They distribute flyers among the population encouraging them not to purchase from three local grocery stores. With this measure, they aim to divide the alliance of the bosses, since other grocers will double their earnings as long as nobody patronizes the three boycotted businesses.
Correa Falcón summons Soto to the police station to end the conflict with the Commerce and Industry League. But the anarchist tells Commissioner Ritchie that a police station is hardly an ideal location to resolve labor issues.
