Anarchists From The United States

"Ambitious females usually learned their skills in a more circuitous manner, resorting to what a Bureau of Labor Statistics investigator called "piratical methods." To avoid confinement to dead-end, low-skill positions, they created do-it-yourself apprenticeship systems, jumping from one learner's job to the next and slowly acquiring all the different skills needed to complete a whole garment. "I learned the trade the hard way, changing jobs often, for in those days there were not training classes," recalled Rose Pesotta of her first years in the women's garment industry."

"In 1933 Rose Pesotta, a leading organizer for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and herself a Jewish immigrant from Russia, spent months organizing Mexican women garment workers in Los Angeles. Her preconceptions were stereotyped; she assumed that Mexican women would be passive, intimidated by the sexism of Mexican men, and therefore hard to organize. While she did face difficulties, they were not as great as expected, and her campaign had some significant successes. She came to rely on Mexican women as the backbone of her West Coast organizing and took the male leadership down to the local jails so they could hear the spirit with which the mexicanas sang from their cells. The following year she went to Puerto Rico to organize women garment workers there. The meetings were full, although women often fainted from hunger while she spoke. She began bringing baskets of food to meetings and would ask if anyone had not eaten before she spoke. She was deeply moved by the circumstances of Puerto Rican women workers and continued to speak about their living and working conditions for many years. In 1944 she wrote several articles about poverty and working conditions in Puerto Rico for New York newspapers."

"Rose Pesotta, who would later become an organizer in America's garment shops, recalled that the evening meetings of the revolutionary reading circles attended by seamstresses, tailors, shoemakers, and itinerant workers provided an "escape from the monotony of everyday existence.""

"Rose Pesotta said she emigrated in part because she wanted to live in a society where ordinary workers commanded respect. In America, Pesotta thought, "a decent middle-class girl can work without disgrace." Had she remained in Russia her only choice, given her upbringing, would be to marry and become a housewife, a future that had little appeal to her."

"Rose Pesotta, one of America's most effective and devoted women trade union organizers"

"While we are engaged in a global war nothing is too costly for the armed forces. Billions are poured into the making of implements of destruction."

"Although they have readily spent billions of the people's money for destruction necessary to win the war, they balk at spending for peace-time constructive work at home. By the same token, conservatives who have not been averse to sending the best of American youth to foreign lands to make the world safe for the debaters at home, refuse to grant those boys and girls the privilege of using their constitutional rights in electing their national representatives."

"The Smith-Connally bill's passage marked the beginning of an organized effort to wreck bona fide unions through legislation."

"Rightfully, there have been outspoken demands by labor for a place at the peace table, to insure future amity among the world's nations and security for the working masses."

"there is a call to all peace-loving people-to rebuild our shattered world, set up indestructible barriers against war, and create a society based on equality and mutual aid, moving toward a more humane and abundant life."

"The change in character of the workers in Southern California's garment industry struck me forcibly. Mexican women and girls were no longer in the majority, although some of the younger generation were still favored in certain factories. The working force in this region had been vastly augmented since 1936, because of the changing trends, and the manufacturers had taken on a great number of women from newly migrant families, largely American-born whites and Negroes, former tenant farmers who had gravitated to California from burned-out and wind-torn land East of the Rockies. Generally referred to as Dust-Bowlers, and made famous as Ma Joads through John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, they had no conception of the meaning of unionism. Some had long been on county relief and WPA, with meager rations and were glad to work for any wage and to put in any number of hours."

"While organizing new members we preach to them to be independent, to lose their fears and openly express themselves and demand their rights; so here I am practicing what I am preaching and am openly expressing my views to you, Mr. President."

"For centuries the human race searched for some formula, magic or scientific, to extend its life-span, to eliminate disease, to develop strong, enduring men and women. And after long striving yellow fever, tuberculosis, and other scourges were conquered and the average life was materially lengthened. But now all these gains have been set at naught. For scientists with drugged consciences have devised lethal weapons, designed not only to wipe out the manhood of this generation, but to destroy whole cities and whole nations. Robot bombing planes, the latest invention, coming seemingly from nowhere, wreak havoc among defenseless people. Hospitals no longer are spared. For a few years of promised full employment, human skill is lured into making such weapons to annihilate the flower of mankind."

"Unfortunately, only about one fifth of the nation's working population is organized into unions, but millions of non-union wage-earners have benefited from organized labor's insistence upon decent living standards for all. Those millions remain opposed or indifferent to unions through sheer ignorance of their merits."

"No pictures of pretty girls, baby kissing, trophy-giving for sports, banquets or the like can give our vast membership more aid and comfort (and goodness knows in these difficult times they need it badly) than the feeling that the elected leadership is honest, efficient and sincerely rendering a service for which they were placed in office."

"organized labor's strongest weapon-the right to strike"

"Jennie Matyas is recognized by the outside Labor and Education Movement, because she is a leader in her own rights, while countless others remain obscure through the good graces of the men whom they have helped into office."

"Fannia Cohn's service to our organization is only recognized by those on the outside who can dispassionately evaluate such unselfish efforts on the part of one person, for the cause of worker's education."

"To my mind, too, painfully little space was given in the daily press to recent coal mine disasters in which miners perished through underground fires or explosions."

"Other strikes developed over racial issues, for in the North as well as in the South there are still white Americans who refuse to accept their red co-workers as equals. Vehemently condemned by union officials, these strikes appear to have been skilfully directed by outside forces interested in dividing Americans on one issue or another."

"When servility, bootlicking, personal favoritism and above all sensationalism will be wiped off as obstacles to real progress,"

"Her ideal was to achieve a communist society where all human beings would be equal, with every worker equally valued and none being more privileged than others. She envisioned a community devoid of exploiters profiting from the labor of the workers, the major producers in society."

"Luisa Capetillo lived intensely and actively from the moment she became part of the labor struggle to the moment of her hospitalization and death. She fought for proletarian causes, education for the masses, and the emancipation of women. Her life was not easy or pleasant. She had no comforts or luxuries. She inspired hostility in many people who rejected her revolutionary ideas. However, it is also true that until her last moments, she was accompanied and comforted by the workers, her compañeras and compañeros, to whom she offered her life. In her confessional book, Influencias, she bemoans the envy and rancor that those who fight for truth and justice suffer. Yet this Puerto Rican anarchist clearly never regretted her life's direction, aptly describing herself as "a stoic of life...""

"The funeral orations were delivered by her companions Alfonso Torres, Florencio Cabello, Esteban Ortiz and José López."

"Although in Puerto Rico there was discussion of the liberal ideas of Alejandro Tapia y Rivera, and later, of Eugenio María de Hostos, it was Luisa Capetillo who established a new precedent by living according to her revolutionary ideals. By daring to live her own way, she was severely punished by the society she was forced to exist in. Among her peers, her lifestyle was resented by even the most progressive workers. Nevertheless, Capetillo was inspired by and steeped in her parents' readings and their adherence to the Romantic Movement. Embracing the anarchist principles that excited many Romantic European minds, she was able to live a different life with great bravery."

"About Capetillo, Jaime Vidal wrote, "For me, the author of this book is one of the most independent and free women of the Hispanic-American race, and when discussing free love she is imbued with the fiery and poetic expression of Latin writers and the ease of Anglo-Saxon thinkers. She enriches her theories and criticism with an abundance of arguments that convince even the most skeptical in the matter of free love.""

"La mujer," one of the articles that she published in 1912 in Cultura obrera, was later included in the anthology, Voces de liberación (Voices of Liberation), published in 1921 by Lux Editorial from Argentina. Printed for the purpose of gathering the libertarian voices of the most progressive women in the world, the book contains short essays by Rosa Luxembourg, Clara Zetkin, Emma Goldman, Louise Michel, and various Latin American women including Margarita Ortega, a Mexican revolutionary, María López from Buenos Aires, and Rosalina Gutiérrez from Montevideo. The editorial note introducing the authors states, "These voices of liberation are a call to women by their own compañeras to think more and act together with men in the struggle for human emancipation."

"Like the majority of the anarchists of her time, Capetillo was deeply impressed by the victory of the revolutionary forces in Russia in 1917."

"She participated in rallies in support of the candidacy of Santiago Iglesias Pantín, whom she admired and considered her comrade."

"Her ideas about love and sexuality have been proven over time to be profound and visionary."

"She was not interested in writing for the few, but rather for the greatest number of Puerto Rican workers. ..Her beliefs in universal fraternity and the eradication of national barriers and borders inspired her to visit other countries, allowing her to share her ideals far beyond the limits of Puerto Rico."

"Julio Aybar, editor of the newspaper Unión Obrera, said that her theories did not intimidate him. "We are not threatened by anything that Capetillo says in her book because they have always been our own opinions. Luisa breaks with today's hypocrisy and faces the issues with courage, fearless about what she writes, since it seems to us that she practices what she preaches.""

"In spite of the fact that Capetillo's work is eminently internationalist in content, it is bound to an essential Puerto Ricanness. Whether it be in personal allusions or references to particular social problems, her love for Puerto Rico's needy children and her devotion to its workers are ever present."

"Journalist Santiago Carreras described the historic moment and Capetillo's passion as he recalled, "Luisa Capetillo at the head of the march, along with other leaders, haranguing the workers...her great mission was to read aloud to them, which she did, atop benches of the plaza." Her role in the Arecibo strike determined the direction of her life. There Luisa Capetillo became a union leader, from that moment on dedicating herself, with equal success, to organizing workers and to spreading anarcho-syndical ideas through her writings in pamphlets and newspaper articles, in talks, rallies, lectures and private gatherings."

"In 1908 Capetillo participated in the Fifth Workers' Congress of the Federación Libre de Trabajadores, where she defended female suffrage with zeal, not only for women who knew how to read and write, but for all women, without exception. In this Congress, she showed herself to be a true suffragist, with more advanced ideas than those of the other women, who later, in their own professional and civic groups, would support the vote only for women who could read and write. Her fellow workers in the labor movement on the Island considered her the "First true suffragist in the country.""

"With the publication of Mi opinión, Luisa Capetillo became the first Puerto Rican woman to organize her feminist ideas and publish them as a theoretical document."

"Where Luisa Capetillo truly acquired her vast culture was through the independent reading that she did during her lifetime, beginning in childhood. She read the works of the French writers, Victor Hugo and Emile Zola, the Russian Romantics, Leo Tolstoy and Turgenev, and the French astronomer, spiritualist and freethinker Camille Flammarion, whose research on astronomy and psychical studies she avidly read. Her own work reflects the ease with which she handled the theories and texts of influential authors such as the French doctor Paul Vigne, of Hugo and Tolstoy, the writings of anarchist educator Madeleine Vernet, and the philosophical-political essays of Peter Kropotkin and John Stuart Mill."

"During her lifetime, Luisa Capetillo was often compared to George Sand."

"The play that Luisa Capetillo wrote in 1909, Influencias de las ideas modernas (The Influence of Modern Ideas), published in San Juan in 1916, was inspired by Tolstoy's philosophy and included a main character who resembled him."

"Along with theories about "spontaneous revolution" and the organization of campesinos and industrial workers into unions and libertarian federations, the anarchists also transmitted a set of ideas about everyday life that included free love and free education, which would result in men and women "free" from conventional ties. The books by Bakunin, Kropotkin and Malatesta (who lived in Latin America for many years), significantly shaped the education of Puerto Rican workers and deeply inspired them. The educational theories of the Catalonian Francisco Ferrer and the French writers Sebastian Fauré and Madeleine Vernet (whom Luisa Capetillo called Magdalena Vernet), became the ideal of Puerto Rican workers."

"When I initiated my research, motivated by the desire to learn more about the history of Puerto Rican women, I found that everyone who knew Luisa Capetillo when she was alive, or knew about her, remembered her as the first woman in Puerto Rico to wear pants in public. At first I thought these recollections were based on an implied societal intention not to recognize this revolutionary for her important role, but rather to brand her an eccentric, remembered only by what could be considered superficial actions. I was saddened by the fact that even respected intellectuals didn't value her feminist, labor and anarchist work in its true perspective. What I found out was that Luisa Capetillo did not wear pants in public as a whim or to attract attention. She did not preach free love because she was immoral or libertine. She did not become the first feminist in Puerto Rico, both in theory and in action, because she was disappointed in love. The theories developed by Capetillo and her actions in daily life came from the legitimate theoretical political formation that ruled her life, Luisa Capetillo must be situated in her historical moment. The fact that she was a vegetarian and a true believer in Swedish calisthenics and in yoga, as ways to keep the body in optimum health, has to be discussed. To fully understand this woman, it is not enough to know her intellectual and public accomplishments; how she lived also has to be known."

"The defense of a woman's right to education was the motivating and uniting issue which would eventually culminate in a more liberal complete and progressive education for Puerto Rican women. Tempered by their struggle, women emerged who would lead the feminist movement in the early twentieth century. These women were the liberals Ana Roqué, María Luisa de Angelis, Isabel Andreu de Aguilar, and the workers Luisa Capetillo, Franca de Armiño and Concha Torres. A better and more complete education for women of all social strata remained the unifying cause within the feminist movement throughout the years."

"José María Vargas Vila, Colombian journalist and novelist, whose radical political ideas resonated with the workers, was also a favorite of Capetillo and her audience."

"Capetillo could easily be a protagonist in the re-emergent feminist struggle of the 1970s, although she lived at least a hundred years earlier."

"Her progressive ideas and her lifestyle inspires amazement, then respect and admiration, because of the enormous personal sacrifices she made in order to live a different life and fight for her vision of a new world."

"She had taken an active role in many strikes over her life, including the highly successful sugarcane strike of 1916 which won 13% pay increases. In addition to her anarchist activism, she caused a scandal by being the first woman to wear trousers in the region: once sensationally being arrested in Cuba and tried for it. Although she successfully defended herself in court arguing there was no law which prohibited her wearing men's clothing."

"I believe that it is essential, especially for women active in the feminist movement in our country, as well as for those who are affirming their cultural identity, to know about the struggle of Puerto Rican female workers at the beginning of the twentieth century. Luisa Capetillo is a symbol and model to emulate because she was not satisfied with merely having principles and believing in them. She actually lived those principles with an indomitable rectitude, in spite of her contradictions."

"a true beauty, real and lasting, [is] achieved by a healthy diet, without eating meat or drinking alcoholic beverages, by practicing gymnastics and taking walks in the open air, not a fictitious beauty such as that of adornment, without which, she is no longer herself."

"As a general rule, women nowadays dedicate all their energy, all their attention to their appearance; they are not concerned with anything except wearing the latest fashion; they squander all their intelligence in trying to become more beautiful, and not even in any practical way, by some beneficial and hygienic method, like practicing gymnastics, exercising in the fresh air, or swimming every morning. But no, it must be done with ribbons and lace, by cutting their breath short from the excessive use of tight-fitting corsets. And this translates to a waste of time, health, and money."

"Could there exist true happiness in a marriage when the man is the only one who can regularly exercise his free will and satisfy his desires, without caring whether or not his wife agrees? Accustomed to the passive obedience of women, he does not bother to find out whether or not she is satisfied with his conduct. And if she is not, he does not attempt to please her, nor to adapt his conduct to a new way of life. How can the holy priestess of the hearth preserve the sacred fire of love in the home when she has to officiate alone? Where is the principal object of her devotion? Look for him outside the home at those times when he should be at the side of his companion. Will a solid foundation for domestic happiness be established by this behavior? No. Men have the right to do or undo, without his companion. He goes to a masked ball or not, to the casino, to gamble, or chases other women.... and meanwhile, poor woman! A sad scenario for domestic bliss! She is subjected to a sad solitude for days and nights on end, orphaned of love, of sweet attentions and joys while the above-mentioned companion gambles, dances... or falls in love."