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Freedom Teaching: Anarchism and Education in Early Republican Cuba, 1898-1925*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Kirwin R. Shaffer
Kirwin R. Shaffer*
Affiliation:
Penn State University, Berks/Lehigh Valley
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Extract

Many individuals say to me: “those ideas that you profess are very good, but, who straightens men out? Who is capable of convincing an egoist that he ought to give up his egoism?” To this one can answer: in the same way that a religious person has convinced him to sacrifice himself for religious beliefs, and in the same way that the patriot has taught him to die defending his flag. For men to be able to live in a state of anarchy, they must be educated and this is precisely the work that has been done by those generous people who have been educators throughout the ages. To them is owed the existence of synthetization. Without these athletes of thought, progress would be in its infancy.

–Julián Sánchez “¿Qué es la libertad?”

Following independence from Spain in 1898, Cubans hoped to create a new independent, more egalitarian nation built on the dreams of numerous well-known revolutionaries like José Martí and Antonio Maceo as well as lesser known radicals like the anarchists Enrique Creci, Enrique Messonier, and Adrián del Valle. Like so many of their fellow residents on the island, though, the anarchists quickly grew disillusioned with independence. Their disillusionment rested on repeated U.S. military occupations, a business and commercial class that put individual profits over the well-being of all, a government that seemed to repress labor and the popular classes in order to curry favor with international and national investors, and educational systems that anarchists charged taught obedience and subservience instead of freedom.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , October 2003 , pp. 151 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2003

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for excellent suggestions that made this a better work. In addition, I offer special thanks to K. Lynn Stoner, Elizabeth Kuznesof and Anton Rosenthal for overseeing the research and early writing. In Cuba, I acknowledge the tremendous insight and help of Dr. Alejandro García Álvarez, and in Amsterdam the guidance and support of Mieke IJzermans at the International Institute for Social History. Penn State University graciously granted a course release to facilitate the completion of this article.

References

1 Nueva Luz, January 22, 1925, p. 7.

2 Fitchen, Edward. “Primary Education in Colonial Cuba: Spanish Tool for Retaining «La Isla Siempre Leal?»”, Caribbean Studies 14,1 (April 1974), pp. 115–118.Google Scholar

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5 Hanna, Matthew E., “Annual Report of the commissioner of Public Schools, June 1901,” ibid., vol. 7, 128.Google Scholar Louis Pérez argues, probably correctly, that such noble-sounding republican sentiments had their insidious undertones, however. While Cubans like Varona may have been involved in reorganizing the educational system, U.S. policy makers in Washington believed an educational system was being devised not merely to teach Cubans how to be good republicans. Instead, the system was being designed to acculturate Cubans to U.S. political and cultural values. In this regard the educational system was part of a larger restructuring of the political and economic orientation of the country that would lead, if not to outright annexation of the island by the United States, then to “‘annexation by acclamation’.” See Pérez, Louis A. Jr., “The Imperial Design: Politics and Pedagogy in Occupied Cuba, 1899–1902,” Cuban Studies 12,2 (July 1982), p. 6.Google Scholar

6 Pérez, Louis A. Jr., “The Imperial Design,” p. 9.Google Scholar A teacher shortage at independence prompted U.S. officials to recruit teachers from throughout the island. The recruiters focused especially on youth from elite families who were most sympathetic to the U.S. occupation. From 1900–1901, 1500 Cuban teachers went to summer school at Harvard University (where their “decidedly superior class” status was recognized by the U.S. press) to study English, U.S. and Spanish-American History, physical geography and special courses of which manual training was popular. Education officials turned to U.S. pub-lishers to supply readers, along with grammar, math, science, and history texts, that were then translated into Spanish. See Baxter, Sylvester, “The Cuban Teachers at Harvard University,” The Outlook, 65:14 (August 4, 1900), p. 780;Google Scholar and Hanna, , “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Public Schools, June 1901,” pp. 34–35.Google Scholar

7 Hanna, , “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Public Schools,” pp. 184–185.Google Scholar

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14 Rebelión!, December 14, 1908, p. 2. Boring routines may have been as much the fault of the economics of teaching as it was pedagogy. Teachers were so poorly paid that most needed second jobs to survive, leaving little time for creative, innovative instruction. See Nueva Luz, September 14, 1922, p. 1.

15 ¡Tierra!, June 30, 1906, p. 1.

16 Cariava, and Pando, Joanes, Raíces, pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

17 Cartaya, and Pando, Joanes, Raices, pp. 21, 30;Google Scholar and Johnston, Laurie, “Education in Cuba Libre, 1898–1959,” History Today 45,8 (August 1995), p. 28.Google Scholar

18 ¡Tierra!, April 3, 1909, p. 1. Italics in the original.

19 ¡Tierra!, September 24, 1910, p. 1.

20 For a fuller discussion of the conflict between the anarchists’ internationalist vision for Cuba and the nationalist backlash they regularly faced, see Shaffer, Kirwin, “‘Cuba para todos’: Anarchist Internationalism and the Cultural Politics, of Cuban Independence, 1898–1925,” Cuban Studies, 31 (2000), pp. 45–75.Google Scholar

21 Stoner, , From the House to the Streets, p. 35.Google Scholar

22 See Magoon, Charles E., Provisional Governor, “Report of Department of Public Instruction,” Report of Provisional Administration from October 13th, 1906 to December 1st, 1907 (Havana: Republic of Cuba, 1908), p. 328.Google Scholar

23 Rebelión!, July 3, 1909, p. 2.

24 El Audaz, April 15, 1913, p. 12. Responding to a Diario de la Marina column by Nicolás Rivero who called for a resurgence of Christian and spiritual education to accompany all learning, El Audaz columnist “Ana Clorhídrico” recalled a March 30, 1905 open letter to the President of Cuba. In the letter, the writer warned of Rivero as the man with “toda la refinada malicia de un jesuíta de sotana corta” who would, if he had his way, enslave the Cuban conscience “a favor del fraile y del cura españoles para hacer de ese modo irrisorio el triunfo de la Revolución,” and that Rivero was not even a good Cuban because he preferred to educate, not citizens, but servants “para mayor abominación, siervos de un extranjero.” See El Audaz, May 15, 1913, pp. 1–2.

25 Nueva Luz, June 7, 1923, p. 6.

26 Godwin, William, “Enquiry Concerning Political Justice,” Patterns of Anarchy, eds. Krimerman, Leonard I. and Perry, Lewis (Garden City, NY, 1966), pp. 434–435.Google Scholar For an excellent overview of Godwin and other intellectual precursors of Ferrer, see Avrich, Paul, The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 1–33.Google Scholar

27 Avrich, , The Modern School Movement, p. 6.Google Scholar

28 Avrich, , The Modern School Movement, pp. 4–6.Google Scholar See also Portet's, L. prologue to Francisco Ferrer Guardia, La Escuela Moderna (Barcelona: Tusquets Editor, 1976), pp. 24–28.Google Scholar

29 Guardia, Ferrer, La Escueta Moderna, pp. 189–199.Google Scholar See also Cappelletti, Angel, Francisco Ferrer y la pedagogía libertaria (Mexico City: Editores Mexicanos Unidos, 1980), pp. 35–41.Google Scholar

30 Guardia, Ferrer, La Escuela Moderna, p. 112.Google Scholar

31 Guardia, Ferrer, La Escuela Moderna, pp. 113–114.Google Scholar

32 Guardia, Ferrer, La Escuela Moderna, pp. 113–114,Google Scholar and Cappelletti, Angel, Francisco Ferrer y la pedagogía libertaria, pp. 67–68.Google Scholar

33 Guardia, Ferrer, La Escuela Moderna, pp. 186–187.Google Scholar

34 Avrich, , The Modern School Movement, pp. 23–24;Google Scholar Cappelletti, Angel, Francisco Ferrer, pp. 86–90.Google Scholar Authorities had accused Ferrer's friend Mateo Morral of the assassination attempt. On June 4, 1906 they used this friendship as a pretext to arrest Ferrer for inciting Morral. Eleven days later, with Ferrer in jail, the Escuela Moderna was closed. A year passed until Ferrer was acquitted and released on June 12, 1907, at which time he toured Europe before returning to Barcelona to reopen the publishing house, though authorities refused to allow the school to reopen.

35 Avrich, , The Modern School Movement, p. 32.Google Scholar

36 Casanovas, Joan, Bread, or Bullets! Urban Labor and Spanish Colonialism in Cuba, 1850–1898. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), pp. 72–73, 84–85 and 162–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 See El Nuevo Ideal, June 30, 1899, p. 2; and September 15, 1900, p. 2 respectively. The Guan-abacoa school and a 1905 effort between anarchists and café workers in Havana to form a CES apparently failed after only a few months.

38 Balsalobre, Eduardo Martínez, Conferencias sobre el socialismo revolucionario, (Havana: La Moderna Poesia, 1904), pp. 37–40.Google Scholar

39 Balsalobre, Martínez, Conferencias, p. 1.Google Scholar

40 ¡Tierra!, January 28, 1905, p. 2; and February 4, 1905, p. 3.

41 ¡Tierra!, February 7, 1906, p. 2.

42 Eduardo Gómez Luaces, Monografía histórica del movimiento obrero en Regla (1833–1958). This unpublished manuscript is housed in the Museo Municipal de Regla. Pages are not numbered.

43 ¡Tierra!, May 23, 1908, p. 3; May 30, 1908, p. 3; La Voz del Dependiente, June 16, 1908 (insert).

44 La Voz del Dependiente, October 8, 1908 (insert); ¡Tierra!, October 31, 1908, p. 3. In October 1908 “Educación del Porvenir” dissolved itself in order to form the Cuban section of the Liga. The Liga attempted to organize rationalist groups throughout the island, with each group sending a delegate to the section's office in Havana. The Liga secretary would collect monthly dues of twenty centavos from each member of Liga-associated groups to be used for starting more schools.

45 Gómez Luaces, Monografía histórica del movimiento obrero en Regla.

46 ¡Tierra!, November 21, 1908, p. 1; March 13, 1909, p. 4; La Voz del Dependiente, May 13, 1909, p. 4.

47 Rebelión!, April 8, 1909, p. 3.

48 La Voz del Dependiente, June 24, 1909, p. 3.

49 Rebelión!, July 16, 1909, pp. 2–3.

50 Rebelión!, October 5, 1909, p. 2.

51 La Voz del Dependiente, October 28, 1909, p. 3; and November 18, 1909, p. 3.

52 La Voz del Dependiente, November 18, 1909, p. 3; ¡Tierra!, January 15, 1910, p. 1.

53 ¡Tierra!, September 3, 1910. p. 3; October 29, 1910, p. 4.

54 ¡Tierra!, March 26, 1910, p. 4; La Voz del Dependiente, March 3, 1910, p. 2 and September 3, 1910, p. 3.

55 La Voz del Dependiente, January 20, 1911, p. 3; April 22, 1011, p. 4; June 6, 1911, p. 3.

56 ¡Tierra!, October 22, 1910, p. 2.

57 Bases y Reglamento. Centro de Estudios Sociales del Cerro. Havana: Imprenta de Castro, 1911.

58 ¡Tierra!, October 21, 1911, p. 2.

59 For brief references to these women, see ¡Tierra!, July 18, 1911, p. 3; October 14, 1911, p. 2; October 22, 1914, p. 2.

60 “Memo for the Chief of Staff from John W. Furlong, Captain, General Staff, Chief, Military Information Division, January 3, 1908,” Records of the Provisional Government, Record Group 199, National Archives, Washington, DC.

61 ¡Tierra!, June 8, 1912, p. 3; January 14, 1913, p. 2.

62 ¡Tierra!, June 22, 1912, p. 1.

63 To gather a picture of school finances, one need look no further than the back pages of most issues of ¡Tierra!, which regularly published weekly collections. For the 1911–1912 Cerro CES school, for example, see ¡Tierra!, November 18, 1911, p. 4; November 18, 1911, p. 4; December 2, 1911, p. 3; February 17, 1912, p. 4; March 7, 1912, p. 3; April 6, 1912, p. 4. The figures illustrate how after rent and teachers’ salaries, there was little left to buy supplies. The Cerro school did run surpluses in its first months, but by April 1912, slight deficits caught up with the school.

64 See Barrancos, Dora, Anarquismo, educación y costumbres en la Argentina de principios de siglo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Contrapunto, 1990).Google Scholar

65 I address the recovery of anarchism within the labor movement after World War I in my article “’Cuba para todos’:” pp. 45–75.

66 Penichet, Antonio, Tácticas en uso y tácticas a seguir (Havana: El Ideal, 1922), p. 45.Google Scholar

67 Penichet, , Tácticas en uso, 3.Google Scholar

68 As with relations between anarchists and communists throughout the world after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, not all anarchists were comfortable with this alliance. In particular, anarcho-syndicalists who published the newspaper El Progreso, the anarchist and anti-Marxist Acción Libertaria, as well as anarcho-naturists like the leading anarchist literary figure on the island, Adrián del Valle, questioned thislinkage and cooperated only loosely with non-anarchists.

69 Nueva Luz, August 17, 1922, p. 6. The association “Cultura” initiated efforts to resurrect rationalist education in Cuba by trying to construct a school in January 1921, though the efforts seem to have failed. See Educación Obrera, January 15, 1921, p. 2.

70 Nueva Luz, September 7, 1922, p. 8; Nueva Luz, November 2, 1922, p. 1.

71 Nueva Luz, October 12, 1922, p. 2.

72 Primelles, León, Crónica Cubana, 1919–1922, 2 vols. (Havana: Editorial Lex, 1957), p. 269.Google Scholar

73 Nueva Luz, September 14, 1922, p. 1.

74 la Fuente, Alejandro de, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), p. 144.Google Scholar

75 Johnston, Laurie, “Cuban Nationalism and Responses to Private Education in Cuba, 1902–1958,” Ideologues and Ideologies in Latin America, ed. Fowler, Will (Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishing, 1997), pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

76 Johnston, , “Cuban Nationalism,” p. 33;Google Scholar Yaremko, , U.S. Protestant Missions in Cuba, p. 72.Google Scholar

77 Johnston, , “Cuban Nationalism,” pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

78 Nueva Luz, October 19, 1922, p. 1.

79 Nueva Luz, October 19, 1922, p. 2.

80 Nueva Luz, January 25, 1923, p. 1.

81 For a particularly illuminating front-page visual, see Nueva Luz, February 15, 1923, p. 1.

82 Nueva Luz, September 16, 1923, p. 2.

83 Cabrera, Ôlga, Los que viven por sus manos (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1985), p. 248;Google Scholar Nueva Luz, November 16, 1922, p. 6; September 16, 1923, p. 6.

84 Nueva Luz, January 4, 1923, p. 8; and July 19, 1923, pp. 1 and 3.

85 Nueva Luz, September 30, 1924.

86 Nueva Luz, March 15, 1923 p. 6.

87 Nueva Luz, February 8, 1923, p. 6; and March 15, 1923, p. 7.

88 Nueva Luz, November 2, 1922, p. 7.

89 Antonio Penichet was a leading anarchist figure in Cuba in the late 1910s and 1920s. A typographer by trade, Penichet became a leading anarchist fiction writer in the 1910s. He helped found the anarchist newspaper Nueva Luz in 1922. Penichet also headed the Education Committee of the National Con-federation of Cuban Workers, building on his emphasis in education through his Nueva Luz columns. In 1938, Penichet contributed a chapter entitled “El proceso social” for a general history of Cuba, Curso de introducción a la historia de Cuba (Havana: Municipio de la Habana, 1938). The chapter was essentially a basic history of anarchism on the island. Later, Penichet served as director of the National Library. In that capacity, he helped initiate an island-wide educational reform movement in 1941 to protect the island's liberal and democratic aspects from fascist and Vatican encroachments. See Por la escuela cubana en Cuba Libre. Trabajos, acuerdos y adhesiones de una campaña cívica y cultural (Havana: Cárdenas y compañía, 1941), pp. 11–19.

90 Cartaya, and Pando, Joanes, Raíces, p. 53.Google Scholar

91 Nueva Luz, January 25, 1923, p. 6.

92 Nueva Luz, February 22, 1923, p. 2.

93 Nueva Luz, May 3, 1923, p. 3; and Cabrera, , Los que viven por sus manos, p. 247.Google Scholar

94 Nueva Luz, March 4, 1924.

95 Nueva Luz, December 28, 1922, p. 7.

96 Nueva Luz, December 21, 1922, p. 8.

97 Nueva Luz, February 1, 1923, p. 5; February 22, 1923, p. 8; and May 24, 1923, p. 1.

98 See Nueva Luz, December 21, 1922, p. 8; and February 25, 1924, p. 6 for examples.

99 These included unions representing trolley workers, cigarette makers, printers, construction workers, painters, confectioners, and others whose contributions were specifically dedicated to the school.

100 Nueva Luz, April 24, 1925, p. 7.

101 Nuera Luz, March 25, 1925, pp. 4–6.

102 During the period from October 1, 1923 to the end of December 1924, the Sindicato gave $1,133.95 to the FOH out of a total $6,280.93 of total contributions from all sources, i.e., nearly 20%. See Nueva Luz, April 24, 1925, p. 7.

103 Fernández, Frank, El anarquismo en Cuba (Madrid: Fundación de Estudios Libertarios Anselmo Lorenzo, 2000), pp. 64–65,Google Scholar

104 From “Manifiesto” published in Nueva Luz, September 5, 1925. See also “Nueva Protesta de la Federación Obrera de la Habana” from September 2, 1925, in Roseli, Mirta, ed., Luchas obreras contra Machado (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1973), pp. 83–84.Google Scholar