Part of a series on
Anarchism
History Outline
Schools of thought Feminist Green Primitivist Social ecology Total liberation Individualist Egoist Free-market Naturist Philosophical Mutualism Postcolonial African Black Queer Religious Christian Jewish Social Collectivist Parecon Communist Magonism Without adjectives Methodology Agorism Illegalism Insurrectionary Communization Expropriative Pacifist Platformism Especifismo Relationship Syndicalist Synthesis
Theory Practice Anarchy Anarchist Black Cross Anarchist criminology Anationalism Anti-authoritarianism Anti-capitalism Anti-militarism Affinity group Autonomous social center Black bloc Classless society Class struggle Consensus decision-making Conscientious objector Critique of work Decentralization Deep ecology Direct action Free association Free love Freethought Horizontalidad Individualism Isocracy Law Mutual aid Participatory politics Permanent autonomous zone Prefigurative politics Proletarian internationalism Propaganda of the deed Refusal of work Revolution Revolutionary spontaneity Rewilding Security culture Self-ownership Social ecology Sociocracy Somatherapy Spontaneous order Squatting Temporary autonomous zone Union of egoists Voluntary association Workers' council
People Armand Ba Bakunin Berkman Bonanno Bookchin Chomsky Cleyre Day Durruti Ellul Ervin Faure Ferrer Feyerabend Godwin Goldman González Prada Graeber Guillaume He-Yin Kanno Kōtoku Kropotkin Landauer Liu Magón Makhno Malatesta Michel Most Parsons Pi Pouget Proudhon Rocker Santillán Spooner Stirner Thoreau Tolstoy Tucker Volin Ward Warren Zerzan
Issues Animal rights Capitalism Education Love and sex Nationalism Religion Violence
History Paris Commune Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA Cantonal rebellion Hague Congress International Conference of Rome Trial of the Thirty Haymarket affair May Day Congress of Amsterdam Tragic Week High Treason Incident Manifesto of the Sixteen Individualist anarchism in the United States 1919 United States bombings Biennio Rosso German Revolution of 1918–1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic Kronstadt rebellion Makhnovshchina Amakasu Incident Escuela Moderna Individualist anarchism in Europe Spanish Revolution of 1936 Barcelona May Days Red inverted triangle Labadie Collection May 1968 Provo LIP Kate Sharpley Library Australian Anarchist Centenary Carnival Against Capital 1999 Seattle WTO protests Really Really Free Market Occupy movement
Culture A las Barricadas Anarchist bookfair Anarcho-punk Arts Culture jamming DIY ethic Films Freeganism Glossary Infoshop Independent Media Center The Internationale Jewish anarchism Lifestylism "No gods, no masters" Popular education "Property is theft!" Radical cheerleading Radical environmentalism Squatting Symbolism
Economics Communization Cooperative Cost the limit of price General strike Gift economy Give-away shop Free association Labour voucher Market abolitionism Mutual aid Mutual credit Participatory economics Social ownership Wage slavery Workers' self-management
By region Africa Albania Algeria Andorra Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bangladesh Belarus Belgium Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Brazil Bulgaria Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Czech Republic Denmark Dominican Republic East Timor Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Finland France French Guiana Georgia Germany Greece Guatemala Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Latvia Malaysia Mexico Monaco Mongolia Morocco Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Nigeria Norway Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Romania Russia Serbia Singapore South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tunisia Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom United States Uruguay Venezuela Vietnam
Lists Anarcho-punk bands Books Communities Fictional characters Films Jewish anarchists Musicians Periodicals
Related topics Anti-corporatism Anti-consumerism Anti-fascism Anti-globalization Anti-statism Anti-war movement Autarchism Autonomism Communism Counter-economics Definition of anarchism and libertarianism Labour movement Left communism Left-libertarianism Libertarianism Libertarian Marxism Libertarian socialism Marxism Situationist International Socialism Spontaneous order Voluntaryism
Anarchism portal Politics portal
v t e

Anarchism in Peru emerged from the Peruvian trade union movement during the late 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century.

History

The beginnings of anarchism in Peru can be traced back to 1870. In the craftsmen's guilds at the end of the 19th century, a certain anarchist orientation began to gain influence.^[1] In 1904 the first anarchist organizations began to appear, with forming the "Star of Perú" Federation of Bakers (FOPEP), founded by the libertarian militants Fidel García Gacitúa, Urmachea and Manuel Caracciolo Lévano; that year they carried out their first strike. On May 1, 1905, a commemorative event for the Haymarket Martyrs was held for the first time. In 1907, Anarchists participated in strikes at the port of Callao, the repression that followed took the life of Florencio Aliaga.^[1] In 1906 the newspaper Humanity appeared in Lima, and in 1910 it published Free Pages by the Francisco Ferrer Rationalist Center. In 1907, the brothers Lévano, Romilio Quesada, Luis Felipe Grillo and the publishing group of "Humanity" founded the "Primero de Mayo" Center for Social Studies. The anarchist Julio Reynaga (1841–1923), one of the organizers of the Trujillo sugar workers.^[2] In this city, an anarchist group was formed by some Italian immigrants like Inocencio Lombardozzi. Reynaga was editor of "El Jornalero", whose offices were located in the premises of the "Unión y Energía" Center for Social Studies. During these years, the main libertarian newspapers, in addition to those mentioned, were El Ariete (Arequipa), La Abeja (Chiclayo), La Antorcha and El Rebelde (Trujillo), El Hambriento and Simiente Roja, and Los Parias (Lima), directed by González Prada between 1904 and 1906.

In 1911, the first general strike in the textile industry was launched by anarchists. Then, in 1912, the Peruvian Regional Workers' Federation (FORP) arose from the anarcho-syndicalist movement.^[3] In 1913 the anarchists participated in the general strike called by the Union of Day Laborers, with the aim of achieving the 8-hour workday. Among the participating groups were the Peruvian Regional Workers Federation and its affiliated guilds and resistance societies, "Luchadores por la Verdad" (led by the bricklayer Abraham Guerrero), "Luz y Amor" (Callao) and the publishing group of the newspaper "La Protesta", the main anarchist newspaper in Peru (founded by A. Guerrero in 1911, edited until 1926).^[3] The 8-hour day was granted by the José Pardo y Barreda government in January 1919. Months later, the "Pro-cheapening of Subsistence Committee" was created, led by the joiner Nicolás Gutarra, the purpose of which was to lower the prices of food, clothing, transportation, rent, and taxes. After the Leguía coup and the liberation of labor leaders from prison, in July 1919 the Peruvian Regional Workers' Federation was re-constituted with a declaration of anarcho-syndicalist principles.^[4] This stage of Peruvian anarchism was strongly influenced by the experiences of the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (FORA), and of Italian and Spanish libertarian immigrants.

In those years, some libertarian workers met regularly at the Lévano house (located in La Victoria District, Lima) where they "spoke like doctors. Backing up their opinions, they displayed their knowledge as they quoted Peter Kropotkin, Mikhail Bakunin, Anselmo Lorenzo and Errico Malatesta".^[5] There were also some students who were sympathetic to libertarian ideas, such as Juan Manuel Carreño and Erasmo Roca.

Among the prominent militants of the time were Manuel C. Lévano, Delfín Lévano, Carlos Barba, Nicolás Gutarra, Pedro Cisneros, Adalberto Fonkén, Eulogio Otazú, Christian Dam, and Manuel González Prada. González Prada was the author of important and influential texts: Free Pages (1894) and Hours of Struggle (1908).

González Prada was concerned with the ethnic-class relationship, exposing the exploitation of indigenous people and the different manifestations of "racial" discrimination. This remarkable writer, admired by Mariátegui, who took his indigenista flags and combined his peasant activity with various tasks in the labor movement.

— Luis Vitale^[6]

In the 1910s and 1920s, in the town of Vitarte (east of Lima), there was a solid anarchist nucleus, linked to the workers at the local textile factory. One of the first propagandists of anarchist ideas and a member of the La Protesta group was the spinner called Juan Híjar Salazar. Other anarchists from Vitarte included Celso Soto, Gumercindo Calderón, Antonio Patrón, Noé Salcedo, Fernando Borjas, Esther del Solar, Miguel Pasquel, Augustina Araníbar and A. Fonkén. Julio Portocarrero, a prominent socialist trade unionist, was prone to libertarian ideas in his early youth, as he distributed the newspaper "La Protesta" for several years at the Vitarte factory.^[7] An important cultural tradition, promoted by libertarians in Vitarte, was the so-called Plant Festival, which emerged in the early 1920s, with the aim of becoming a proletarian alternative to the Christian holiday of Christmas. The first Feast of the Plant was held on December 25, 1921. The Libertarian Women's Center was one of the organizations that participated, along with several delegations.

During the 1920s, the Union of Civil Construction Workers emerged, publishing El Nivel and El Obrero Constructor. During these years, government repression was felt strongly, closing printing presses and stores, in addition to murdering many anarchists. In Trujillo, anarcho-syndicalists participated in a workers' uprising, which would be capitalized on by the American Revolutionary Popular Alliance (APRA). The decline of anarchism due to repression caused anarchists to lose positions in the labor movement. Some activists were deported, in the case of Gutarra, who was deported to Colombia in the early 1920s, and then on to Panama in 1924.

In the Anarchist Federation of Peru was formed by some of the militants who continued the libertarian tradition gathered. They republished "La Protesta" for 2 years and edited documents until the 1960s, when it disappeared entirely. Teobaldo Cayetano was a baker worker who belonged to the "Arm and brain", a libertarian cell of the "Star of Peru" . He wrote in La Protesta, during the 1940s. In 1957, he was appointed defense secretary of the "La Estrella" Huancayo Society of Bakers. In the early 1960s, he was elected regional secretary of Lima by this union.

The Institute of Studies and Research of Cooperatives and Communities (Indeicoc) was a center of libertarian inspiration, which came into operation in the first half of the 70s. It claimed self-management and libertarian socialism as pillars of a free society: “Self-management or democratic management of the means of production, where the worker acquires a double condition: producer and manager of the company. He ceases to be a salaried worker and becomes a free and associated producer."^[8] Members of Indeicoc included Jaime Llosa Larrabure, Víctor Gutiérrez Saco and Gerardo Cárdenas.

Libertarian activity reappeared with some notoriety towards the end of the 1980s linked to the underground music movement of Lima, which acquired a gradual politicization and radicalization of its positions. The repressive climate generated by antiterrorist laws limited the growth and evolution of these anarchist groups, which were striving to differentiate themselves from the guerrilla left. In the early 1990s, anarchist groups less linked to the underground music scene began to appear. In Lima the anarcho-syndicalist groups "Proletarian Autonomy" and "Collectivization" emerged.

In 2001, after many years, an anarchist newspaper "Disobedience" began to be printed in Lima, which continues to appear to this day, maintaining a perspective of critical anarchism. The Libertarian Workshop was formed, which brought together activists from different generations, including Víctor Gutiérrez, Ch. Zénder and L. Villavicencio. In 2008, the bimonthly newspaper Humanity was founded by five libertarian activists. It took a combative and analytical style, within the guidelines of classical anarchism. Members of Humanity later founded the newspaper Direct Action, with an anarcho-communist tendency.

Within the especifist and platformist current is the Libertarian Socialist Union, a continuation of the Qhispikay Llaqta and Estrella Negra groups. Within the autonomist current is the "Anarchist Group La Protesta", the "Arteria Libertaria Collective", the "Yacta Runa Autonomous Collective" and the "Active Minority Collective" from Arequipa. Within the anarchopunk and counterculture spectrum there is the Anarkopunk Social Center, Anarchopunk Resistance, Anarchopunk Youth Collective of Tacna in Struggle, the band Asteroids 500. mg, Axión Anarkopunk and the bands Generación Perdida, Autonomía, Feria Libertaria Kallejera and Men and Women in Our Anarchist Struggle.^[9]