Part 2, Chapter 12 : Guinea — Fernando Poo – The Canaries

CHAPTER XII. Guinea — Fernando Poo – The Canaries

The government gathered the Andalusian detainees in Cádiz and loaded them onto the Buenos Aires as soon as it anchored outside the port. The ship then set off into the Atlantic toward the Canaries, leaving behind a Spain in chaos. The militants from Valencia went on the Sánchez Barcáiztegui destroyer and met the others in Las Palmas.

As previously noted, anarchists in Tarrasa took over Town Hall and proclaimed libertarian communism on February 14 as a protest against the deportations. There were more clashes with the Civil Guard and more deaths. There were general or partial strikes in large cities. Bombs tore down telephone poles and demolished electrical installations.

The government did everything it could to make matters worse by provoking the Rightwing with demagogery. Although the government really had no intention of attacking, the Right took the bravado as a real threat and conspired against the Republic.

The working class didn’t understand the parliamentarian’s rhetoric and, having received nothing but bullets from the government, also declared war on the regime.

The government didn’t really govern but wanted to stay in power. What could it do? Put a wall of lead between the ruled and the rulers. That is exactly what Azaña’s team did, while also turning the Spanish government into a gigantic discussion circle.

In one of the tranquil sessions of the Parliament, the Interior Minister told its honorable members that the government knew quite well where to send the “dreamers of libertarian communism.” “We choose Guinea,” he said, “because its climate is more healthy and attractive than Fuerteventura. In fact, I’m even thinking of making a trip there myself to spend a few days in the company of the deportees.” No one protested, but did anyone know what Guinea was really like? If they did, so much the worse, given what the reader will appreciate after digesting the following:

Spain’s possessions in the Gulf of Guinea have been justly regarded as unhealthy for some time now. The funeral legend of the deported politician still floats over its hot beaches. Any exile lucky enough to return often came back consumed by cachexia and bearing germs of death in his blood.

And this is quite natural. In an absolutely sweltering region, covered by leafy vegetation and bathed by the misty and humid atmosphere, the environment is a dense microbial nursery. It is a promised land for every pathogen, particularly the group of protozoa that provoke sleep sickness, nagana in cattle, amoebic dysentery, and the most severe and rebellious varieties of malaria.

Guinea’s gentle beauty is obscured by the threatening presence of these germs of death and bearers of disease, which are true obstacles to the development of European culture.

This tropical environment overwhelms, exhausts, and destroys organic and spiritual life.[348]

That was the “gentle paradise” that the government had reserved for those sailing the through the Atlantic. While the Buenos Aires traveled to an “unknown” destination, there was widespread turmoil on the peninsula. In addition to the tumultuous wake left by that phantom boat, the rebellion in Alto Llobregat had made libertarian communism an increasingly pressing concern for bourgeois intellectuals. Salvador de Madariaga tried to elevate the debate: “In January 1932, the Fígols miners rose up against the state and proclaimed libertarian communism, which they celebrated with a general strike in the industrious Llobregat valley. How, the reader will ask, does one eat in the world of libertarian communism? Exactly: how does one eat? Here those most distinguished by their ignorance of the Spanish working class normally insert a stilted disclaimer about Spanish illiteracy and working class ignorance. Those libertarians, those Quixotes of social emancipation, who, like the Man from La Mancha, tried to impose the dream that inspires them onto a hard reality, are not illiterate at all and are just as capable of reading as those who accuse them of such things. It is just that they have a much more developed creative faculty than the journalists who criticize them. Instead of reading books, they prefer to create their own categories and hopes, and live their lives with a serenity and an attachment to a mode of thought that many in the erudite world would envy from the comfortable shelter of their libraries. More education is needed, they tell us. Indeed, it will take a tremendous amount of education to extinguish the faith of these visionaries.” [349] That quote was really worthwhile. The Buenos Aires stopped in the Canary Islands only long enough to pick up more coal and the detainees from Valencia. It then continued toward the Gulf of Guinea. It stocked up on bananas in Dakar, the sole source of nourishment for the deportees piled up in the ship’s hold. The inadequate food, unhygienic conditions, and poor ventilation caused several cases of blood poisoning. The sickest had to be taken to the hospital when the ship anchored in Santa Isabel in Fernando Poo. The captain of the Buenos Aires, a cousin of General Franco, then telegraphed Madrid and asked where they should go. Navy Minister José Giral directed him to Bata. The sick were immediately reloaded onto the ship and the Buenos Aires took off for Bata. Its perpetual escort, the Cánovas gunboat, followed.

The orders, counter-orders, bad food, and everything that “pleasure trip” entailed put the deportees on edge. They ended up declaring a mutiny and took over the bridge. The captain was as disoriented as the mutineers and quickly realized that it would be best to make some concessions and negotiate an end to the rebellion. Thanks to their action, bunks were distributed, the food improved, and deck access permitted for fresh air. All this could have been practiced from the outset, but they had to revolt, to show their teeth, to secure it. Direct action is not an empty term.

Since they decided that they should not to leave the sick in Bata, the ship retraced its path toward the Canaries, where they were interned in the hospital in Fuerteventura. Then they set off for Río de Oro. The military commander there was the son of José Regueral and he refused to accept the detainees because Durruti was among them, whom he held responsible for his father’s murder. What to do? There was another consultation with Giral and another trip to Fuerteventura to drop off Durruti and six additional men there. The ship then sailed toward Africa once again. After coming and going across the Atlantic for months, the Buenos Aires finally reached Villa Cisneros, which seemed to be its final destination. The government had thought of everything when it planned the “Atlantic excursion” and even sent along a journalist to chronicle the odyssey for the Spanish public. Of course his articles were picturesque tales of a carefree jaunt and it was surely their influence that led Tuñón de Lara to describe the expedition as a “round trip voyage, without a stop in Guinea.” [350] And his articles must have entertained very few, given the commotion sweeping Spain at the time. There were things of much greater interest, such as the general strike in Orense, where armed workers rose against the governor in late March and told his compatriot Casares Quiroga to go to hell with his Civil Guard. They promised to “tear him to shreds” [351] if he set foot in Galicia. While Spain drifted inexorably toward civil war, Durruti and his friends counted the days in Fuerteventura, just as the deportees in Villa Cisneros counted them with clocks of sand. The tireless conspirator Ramón Franco visited the deportees in Villa Cisneros and urged them to try to escape on a sailboat that he had prepared for the purpose. Francisco Ascaso told him that it would be better if he focused on counteracting the stories of the “government chronicler” with a real account of their lives there. [352]

For his part, Durruti left a vivid statement about the experience in a letter that he sent to his family as soon as their comings and goings had stopped: Cabras Port, April 18, 1932.

My pilgrimage on these seas has finally come to an end and now, as a resident of this lost island, I’m able to send you a note.

Yesterday was the first time that I received any mail since leaving Barcelona. It’s letters from Mimi, Perico, and other friends. I was cut off from the world until then, not knowing anything about you all. The Republican government isn’t content with this criminal deportation and has to vent itself on us by subjecting us to the most extreme isolation. Those gentlemen are so small-minded that they think we lack the feeling of love simply because we are revolutionaries and that those dear to us are insensitive beings who are unconcerned about our welfare.

I’m sure you’ve read about our trek in the press. I would need a lot of paper and even more calm to fully explain the tragedy of our deportation. We’ve suffered greatly and experienced several tragic moments. We were nearly executed by some poor sailors, who almost gunned us down after a drunk officers’ corps incited them.

I later spoke with one of those sailors, who was extremely ashamed of his conduct. The young fellow told me that “we pointed our rifles at you because the officers said that you wanted to kill us. I was on the war ship and they told me that you wanted to murder my comrades, the sailors. It would have been an act of cowardice on our part to let them be assassinated. It was under that intoxication of words and alcohol that we left the Cánovas and boarded the Buenos Aires... You know the rest.”

I’ll be certain to explain that “rest” to the Spanish workers when I set foot on the Peninsula again.

My health is good. My separation from the other deportees is a government matter. It turns out that the military man in charge of Río de Oro is Regueral’s son and, once he found out that I was onboard the Buenos Aires, he threatened to resign if I disembarked there. That’s why I am in Fuerteventura. There are six other comrades with me, who were sick when we got off the ship but are now better or getting better.

This island is a miserable place and quite neglected by all the governments that have non-governed Spain. We live in a barracks and they give us 1.75 pesetas to cover our daily costs. The government men think that we have thousands with which to buy our food. Surely they are confusing us with Unamuno and Rodrigo Soriano. We’ve complained to Madrid and are waiting for a reply. We can’t live in the barracks and much less on 1.75 pesetas a day.

The island’s residents were afraid of us at first. They had been led to believe that we eat children raw, but calmed down after interacting with us.

They even let their kids play with us now...

Yesterday, Sunday, a man who was previously very aloof came by with his wife. She wanted to meet me, since she’s from León as well (the province, not the capital). They’re good people. They brought me books and, perhaps as a mere courtesy, also offered me their home.

I don’t know how long this exile will last and they haven’t told me its reason. They arrested me under the pretext of fining me for making some scandalous comments at the International Rally. They put me in a cell at Police Headquarters and then on the Buenos Aires. I hope the Interior Minister will explain the matter of the fine to me and also how long he intends to keep me on this island.

I’m thinking of going to León as soon as I leave here and asking Deputy Nistal why he supported my deportation. I’m also thinking of asking him if the Republic is at war with geography and has burned all the maps. It turns out that they sent us to Bata, without knowing where Bata was. From Bata to Fernando Poo, also unaware of where it was. From Fernando Poo to Villa Cisneros to load coal, when there’s nothing but sand there....

When I get back to the Peninsula, those Socialist gentlemen who have forgotten socialism will have to tell the working class why they approved our banishment. And, to me, they’ll have to clarify their collaboration with the monarchists and where those millions are that they say I’ve received.... The Republicans and Socialists are mistaken if they think they’ll save the Republic like this. One day, we, the agitators who have to get up every morning and enter the factory like slaves will embrace the working class’s true identity: the sole producer of social wealth. [353] We also possess a statement from a witness about Durruti’s time in Fuerteventura. He writes:

It’s true that we knew each other and that I loaned him books, which he was very fond of, although I never heard from him again after he left. Durruti had the deep makings of an anarchist and I was his antagonist in all our discussions about our respective ideologies. But, when my brother arrived in Barcelona on the Villa de Madrid on July 20, 1936 and one of the ship stewards accused him of being a fascist, he remembered that he had seen us speak and went to Durruti, telling him that he was my brother. That was enough for Durruti to put him in a secure place and thus prevent his execution....

I remember that this daring anarchist of action was also very sentimental. Once he read me a paragraph from a letter sent by his compañera, in which she told him that their little daughter was very sick. He was overwhelmed with emotion and could barely finish reading it.

Durruti lived an orderly and contemplative life here. He asked me for books and spent hours on the breakwater of the pier. He was quite fond of the women, with whom he had certain successes... He was always squabbling with his exiled comrades. He told them that they were a bunch of idiots, didn’t understand things, and hardly knew how to read. “How do you expect to succeed in life?” he’d say.[354]

The situation on the Peninsula was deteriorating daily. During the early days of the Republic, politicians had been able to accuse prominent FAI men like Ascaso, Durruti, and García Oliver of being “provocateurs.” But who was provoking the disturbances now, a year later, when two of them were banished and another imprisoned? It was the Republican government itself that was causing the disruptions, as it carried on without knowing what to do in a Spain in revolt. If the workers weren’t rising up in arms in Barcelona, the peasants were invading the estates and seizing food warehouses in Andalusia, or the masses in Orense, Zaragoza, or Logroño were rebelling against their unbearable conditions. The government’s remedy for those ills was always the Civil Guard, which savagely machine-gunned the people, including women and children. But for the rulers, the “FAIistas” were the instigators of the conflicts. They made these claims, in part, because they still hoped to incorporate the CNT into the state. Indeed a handful of CNT men continued to be sympathetic to that goal. Progreso Fernández denounced this in a May 12, 1932 article in El Desierto del Sahara:

I must protest—now as a deportee, just like when I was free—against these activities and repudiate any politician who tries to speak in my name. I also reject the support of “the Thirty,” the “moderates,” and the “responsibles” of the Confederation, which would injure my dignity. In the last analysis, it is they who bear the greatest responsibility for the incarcerations, deportations, and persecution.

Today, more than ever, we have to stop the spread of confusion among the workers. Instead of being more tolerant, which the rascals always exploit, we must discredit the politicians and everything that they represent. We can’t stand aloof from political parties: we have to fight them all. Today, more than ever, we have to be openly and constantly at war with them.

The Confederation, anarchism, and the revolution are much more than the deportees and the prisoners. The principles that shape our struggles are bigger than all of us and all the victims of the battle against the authoritarian system. If that weren’t the case, we wouldn’t find our ideas affirmed in social life and the comprehensive revolution that we anarchists advocate would be impossible.

Our liberation—the liberation of all the deportees and prisoners—has to be accomplished without whimpers or capitulations, with dignity, and without help from political factions that are hostile to our ideas. Only the forceful action of the CNT, Iberian Anarchist Federation, and revolutionary workers can achieve our freedom: and it must be achieved because it is a duty. Any departure from that principle would not only be inconsistent with the tactics of direct action and our anarchist doctrines, but also an unpardonable error that would undermine the possibilities for social transformation offered by the present historical moment.[355]

This article, and García Oliver’s report to his union, point to the confusion in libertarian circles. The FAI tried to radicalize the CNT but the “moderate” faction was still ensconced in its committees and not only opposed the FAI’s efforts but also continued to advance an ambiguous, collaborationist position. This prevented the movement from offering a coherent, revolutionary strategy that would enable the workers to reach their objectives. And the government exasperated internal conflicts by protecting certain CNT leaders from persecution while acting harshly against the FAI and, indirectly, all workers’ protests. Clearly the CNT would be unable to play its true historical role as long as it was trapped in that paralyzing confusion, even if the number of its members happened to increase. Durruti, Ascaso, and García Oliver all understood that, despite the geographic distances that separated them.

The repression had to stop for the movement to address its difficulties, yet it was growing increasingly more severe. It is enough to take a look at the anarchist press to be convinced of this. After each article there is a name and then: Prison of Sevilla, Modelo Prison of Barcelona, Puerto of Santa María, Zaragoza Prison, Sahara Desert, etc. Almost all the well-known “FAIistas” were incarcerated. So, who was placing the bombs? Who “ordered” the workers to rebel? Who led the strikes, like the Public Services strike that had turned Barcelona into an immense garbage dump? It was nothing more and nothing less than the working class, which was becoming conscious of its historical mission.

The rank and file pressured the CNT National Committee to offer a radical reply to the hellish conditions. Ultimately it had to consent and called a general strike for May 29. The May 27 editorial in Tierra y Libertad explained the FAI’s view of the strike:

We have reached an extreme in which there are two possibilities: either the repression stops or the CNT collapses. Since it is impossible to exterminate the CNT, which lives in all proletarian hearts, the repression must end, even if that means that the very regime that supports and encourages it has to crumble.

For the last time, the CNT will give the government a chance to respond to popular sentiment and rectify itself. It will put its forces in motion, not in a revolutionary sense, but as a last-ditch protest against the authorities’ terrorist methods. The government’s behavior on May 29 will determine whether or not more serious and transcendent events will follow. The workers, if necessary, will answer violence with violence.

And if the government does not grant what the people demand after this date, on which the whole Spanish proletariat must demonstrate, the people will know how to take it themselves through revolutionary action. [The demands included freedom for the prisoners, opening the closed unions, and the free circulation of the CNT’s publications, etc.]

Now the workers know it: if the government does not yield after May 29, we will forcibly seize what it denies us against all reason. There must be an immediate attack on all the government’s coercive practices. The people must destroy the prisons and free the inmates. They must re-open the unions. The slogan is: either Fascism or the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo! Either Republican oppression or libertarian communism!

As expected, the government did not cede. On the contrary, it mobilized the Assault Guard and Civil Guard and deliberately provoked the workers, sending new detainees to prison and new corpses to the cemeteries. The balance of the day of protest was tragic. Did the government think this would pacify, discourage, or intimidate the workers? If so, it was completely mistaken. That very night the anarchist groups of Barcelona pledged their defiance. In a manifesto titled “We demand the right to defend ourselves against government violence,” they wrote:

How can we describe our rulers, who prop themselves up with cannons and militias loaded with arms? Why don’t they tell it to the people? Why don’t they tell the people that they can’t sustain themselves without dynamite and are thus the worst dynamiters of all? Why can’t they live without being armed to the teeth? Why don’t they tell all this to the people? Well, we are saying it now, we who are by nature always ready to speak the truth. And we say more. We say that such tyranny and abuse should frighten no one. We say that the people not only have the right but also the duty to arm themselves and defend themselves like lions. We say that instead of dying of hunger, we should follow history’s lessons. Since everyone else is armed, in order to make the people’s lives impossible, we declare that the people shouldn’t hesitate to use force to achieve their goals. We will preach by example.[356]

In Emilienne Morin’s February letter to the French anarchists, she complained that the Republican government let monarchists conspire openly while it persecuted the workers. At the time, her comment could have been seen as a mere expression of bitterness, but events that occurred on August 10, 1932 confirmed it as prescient. In fact, the Right had been conspiring against the Republic since its proclamation. Without exception, the conspirators held high military and civil posts in the Republican state. The plotters selected a man-guide to lead them: General Sanjurjo, the General Director of the Carabineros [border police]. And they gave the conspiracy an identity, reflecting the forces constituting it: military-aristocratic-landowner.

The basic contours of this conspiracy will reappear later, when General Franco revolts in 1936. Manuel Azaña, the Prime Minister and Minister of War, was aware of everything and let it explode in Madrid on August 10. The attempt to take over the Palace of Communications and the Ministry of War failed because of cowardice among the rebels. The uprising ended in Spain’s capital after a small clash in which two people lost their lives. But the situation was different in Sevilla, where Sanjurjo was serious about the revolt. The conspirators would have been victorious if not for CNT and Communist workers, who defeated them by declaring a general strike and calling the working population to arms. Why did the CNT risk its militants’ lives to save a regime that had imprisoned hundreds of CNT members and closed its unions? The only coherent response points to lessons extracted from Primo de Rivera’s coup; that the Republic, despite its antagonism to the workers, was a weak state and thus easier to fight. Whatever the case, it was the CNT that saved the Republic in Sevilla. Did the Republican-Socialist leaders understand this? The events that followed demonstrate that they clearly did not.

The rebels were judged quickly by a military tribunal on August 24. The ringleader, General Sanjurjo, received a death sentence, although that was simply a matter of decorum: he was immediately pardoned and incarcerated only briefly. The other generals and leaders received light sentences and one hundred were sent to Villa Cisneros, which they escaped from shortly after arriving. All the August conspirators were freely walking the streets of Spain before the year was over.

When the Republican government decided to send the plotters to Villa Cisneros, it first had to remove the anarchists. It sent them to Fuerteventura Island.

In September, the government finally decided that the deported anarchists could return to the Peninsula. The first to make the trip were the “terrible” miners of Llobregat. From Las Palmas to Barcelona, large workers’ rallies greeted their liberation everywhere that the steamship carrying them had to stop. Durruti, Ascaso, Cano Ruiz, Progreso Fernández, Canela, and others made up the last group to leave the Canaries. After seeing the workers’ demonstrations organized in support of the deportees, the government ordered the steamship that picked them up (the Villa de Madrid) to go directly to Barcelona without pausing at any port en route. While authorities managed to prevent mobilizations in Càdiz and Valencia in this way, they could not prevent the immense ceremony held to receive them in Barcelona. In his farewell statement, Ascaso had said that what the government wanted to deport were the ideas, but that they would remain. That was undoubtedly true: in slightly more than a year, the CNT had grown from 800,000 to 1,200,000 members.