Anarchists of the Caribbean

Abstract

By the early 1900s, anarchists penetrated the far corners of the Western Hemisphere. In Cuba, Florida, Puerto Rico, and Panama, activistslike their comrades everywherestruggled to create their own anarchist visions of a free, egalitarian society for all, regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, or gender. 1 To accomplish this, they challenged the power structures of society in international and domestic capitalism, religion (especially Catholicism), and the state. These men and women always thought of themselves as internationalists. They rejected nationalist and patriotic rhetoric they believed falsely divided humanity for the material and political interests of a few elites. They saw their local and national struggles as part of a regional Caribbean antiauthoritarian network linked to a larger global movement (Figure I.1). Now, some may see the anarchists as unimportant and marginal in the region before the 1930s. After all, they did not achieve (nor even seek) state power. They did not believe in governments, though some modified this view when the Bolshevik Revolution emerged. Thus, some readers together in the Communist Group in the early 1920sa group that idolized the Industrial Workers of the World, that is, anarchosyndicalism. Thus, anarchists were the first to attack the spread of global capitalism and the growing imperial presence of the United States in the Caribbean. Second, in an era of new "independent" entities like Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Panama, anarchists were the rare activists in the region to oppose nationalism and nationalist movements as they advocated non-nationalist, non-Marxist alternative futures for the Caribbean. A third compelling reason for the importance of anarchists in the Caribbean is what anarchists created: a substantial, regionwide transnational network to coordinate communications and organizations, bring down US-backed capitalist politics, and illustrate their internationalist as opposed to nationalist agendas. They were enough of a threat that intelligence agencies launched their own coordinated transnational surveillance system and repression measures, seeing anarchists and their feared networks as legitimate targets of a regional anti-Red campaign that began decades before what we know as the post-1917 Red Scare in the United States. Puerto Rico. The United Fruit Company so dominated tropical-fruitfor-export production that one automatically associates this massive transnational corporation with the image of a banana republic in the Caribbean. Milton Hershey had his own sugar plantation and town in Cuba to fuel a growing cheap chocolate craze in the United States. The spread of transnational agribusiness coincided with the spread of other US economic enterprises in the region. US-based tram, railroad, and electric companies poured in to develop modern infrastructure. At the same time, the United States built (with public funds, privately produced materials like steel and concrete, and a multinational workforce) the Panama Canal for transoceanic military and economic tr...

Sindicalistas marítimos españoles en la América atlántica (1875-1930). Un estudio comparativo

“…En cierto sentido, parafraseando a Shaffer, el puerto de Nueva York y el periódico Cultura Obrera jugaron un papel semejante al que cumplieron La Habana y ¡Tierra! en el área del Caribe, es decir, no solo servían como vínculos de relación para todos los anarquistas de esa parte de Estados Unidos, sino que también actuaba como un corazón agitador que gestionaba tanto la comunicación como los recursos financieros de toda la red de puertos atlánticos 20 .…”

“…Esa perspectiva movilizadora, pero también de construcción de redes estables, ya fue apuntada por Shaffer cuando detectó que los anarquistas de lengua española que trabajaban en el sector marítimo (muchos de ellos, gallegos) contribuyeron a la puesta en marcha de una red que integraba a los cubanos de Tampa y a los puertorriqueños, y que vinculaba el Caribe (de manera especial, a Cuba) con una red más amplia que se extendía por Estados Unidos, fundamentalmente por los puertos atlánticos: Nueva York, Norfolk, Philadelphia, Boston y Nueva Orleans 25 . Sin embargo, esos libertarios (y también sindicalistas sin adscripción ideológica) no solo permanecieron limitados a esa red "caribeña".…”

Specific challenges faced by the eight key occupational groups

“…27 According to a 2020 estimate for the United States, a 1 per cent increase in nurse turnover costs an average hospital in the country approximately US$328,400. 28 Thus, the well-being of nurses and other key health workers not only benefits the individual workers, but the healthcare system overall.…”

“…First, given the highly gendered nature of long-term care and nursing, the working conditions of key workers in these professions to a large extent reflect the situation faced by women workers generally around the world, which is characterized by gender segregation and segmentation, low remuneration and gender pay gaps. 29 Second, these issues have broader implications for society and economic efficiency, since the services of LTCWs are decisive in allowing the family members -particularly women -of older persons or persons with disabilities to participate in the labour market. 30 In many developing countries, the working conditions of key health workers are especially poor, with low pay, job insecurity and high workplace safety and health risks.…”