Anarchism in South America

Image::1 A correspondent writes to us from Buenos Ayres:

I send you a copy of a handbill circulated by Anarchists of Buenos Ayres after a meeting of sympathy and grief for the victims of Chicago. It will probably interest your readers to know that something is doing here, though it is not very much yet. I who write have been for some time a Socialist, though not an Anarchist, as I did not understand Anarchism. I think I am an Anarchist now, and the crime of Chicago has done more than anything else to make me study the subject."

After relating the circumstances of the tragedy, with which our readers are familiar, the handbill continues:

"The bourgeois in condemning and executing these brave champions of the workers' cause has made no mistake. These martyrs proposed to overthrow the vile domination of the bourgeoisie, they desired to expropriate some of the wealth that it withholds with injury to civilization, and to substitute for present institutions, which are the cause of misery, physical decay, moral degradation, prostitution, wars, and crimes of all -to substitute for them a new social organization, in which all that exists shall belong to all men, and all will give to society the aid of their work, and each one will possess abundance and liberty.

"The bourgeoisie has killed five Anarchists; but what they wished to obtain, hundreds of thousands desire also,--and they will obtain it.

"At the news of the execution of the Socialists in Chicago, the Socialists of Buenos Ayres called a meeting for the 27th of November in the theater-hall in 336 Commercio Street; but the police of this city, firm friends of all oppressors, as the workers are of all the oppressed, prevented the meeting from being held in that place. The Socialists then met in another place, and passed the following resolution :

"'The Anarchists met together in Buenos Ayres bow themselves in token of grief before the tombs of their brothers assassinated in Chicago by the North American bourgeoisie.

"They declare their approval of the acts which brought these noble victims to the gallows, and they promise to persevere energetically in the struggle to the death undertaken by the people against the bourgeoisie, -- strife whose object in the substitution of social justice for the crimes and iniquities of the present system.'

"The Anarchists of Montevideo sent a delegate to represent them at the meeting, and later on sent their adhesion by telegraph. Also the Anarchists of Rosario and the city of La Plata sent by means of letters their adhesion to the said meeting."

Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism
Vol. 2 -- No. 17,
FEBRUARY, 1888
Source: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/journals/freedom/freedom2_17.html