Description
Book SynopsisPositions Puerto Rico within the context of a regional anarchist network that stretched from the island to Cuba (a U.S. protectorate), Tampa, and New York, and struggled against religion, governments, and industrial capitalism.
Trade Review“This is a splendid book, elegantly edited, which positions Kirwin Shaffer as an essential reference in the history of the Spanish-speaking anarchist movement of the Caribbean.”--
International Review of Social History"Shaffer's elegant narrative eloquently brings to life a rigorous archival research not only from Puerto Rico but also from international archives in the Netherlands, Cuba, and the United States."--
Caribbean Studies"An important contribution to the historiography of labor, radicalism, and political culture in Puerto Rico, with important implications for our understanding of the broader history of radicalism in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and within Cuban and Puerto Rican diasporas. . . . This was a clearly written and engaging book that could be assigned as course reading or suggested to advanced undergraduates and graduate students interested in radicalism in the early twentieth-century Caribbean and its diaspora."--
Journal of American Ethnic History"An outstanding product of years of research in archives from Amsterdam to San Juan, and from Havana to New York.
Black Flag offers a groundbreaking study of the brief but significant heyday of anarchism in Puerto Rico. . . . No other work in the English language to date brings back the legacy of the Puerto Rican anarchist experience as does
Black Flag Boricuas.--
Against the Current"
Black Flag Boricuas sheds a great deal of light on the anarchist movement in Puerto Rico, a little-studied topic with implications in important debates on religion, education, colonialism, nationalism, and labor. This overall picture of an intellectually dynamic movement will be of interest to scholars interested in anarchism and Latin America."--Mark Leier, author of
Bakunin: The Creative Passion: A BiographyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments xi
Abbreviations and Style Notes xiii
Prologue xv
Introduction: Cultural Politics and
Transnational Anarchism in Puerto Rico 1
1. The Roots of Anarchism and Radical Labor Politics
in Puerto Rico, 1870s-1899 23
2. Radicals and Reformers: Anarchists, Electoral Politics,
and the Unions, 1900–1910 46
3. Anarchist Alliances, Government Repression:
Education, Freethinkers, and CESs, 1909–1912 76
4. Anarchists, Freethinkers, and Spiritists: The Progressive
Alliance against the Catholic Church, 1909–1912 92
5. Radicalism Imagined: Leftist Culture, Gender,
and Revolutionary Violence, 1900–1920 106
6. Politics of the Bayamón Bloc and the Partido Socialista:
Anarchism and Socialism in the 1910s 123
7. El Comunista: Radical Journalism and Transnational
Anarchism, 1920–1921 141
Conclusion and Epilogue: Anarchist Antiauthoritarianism
in a U.S. Colony, 1898–2011 167
Notes 181
Bibliography 199
Index 213
