ABSTRACT
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cuban and Spanish-born anarchists developed one of Latin America’s most vibrant anarchist movements in Cuba. As Cubans relaunched their interrupted war for independence from Spain in 1895, anarchists based in Cuba, New York, and Florida offered support through volunteers, funds, and columns in the press. Following Spain’s defeat, US foreign investment flooded into the island, and both the rural and urban economies sprang back to life. Anarchists joined the ranks of workers who found employment in the sugar, export, construction, and tobacco industries while mobilizing support for their cause. In the two and a half decades following independence, anarchists created nearly thirty newspapers, launched schools, supported alternative health institutes, and forged an anarchist culture complete with theater troupes, bands, choirs, poetry recitals, and works of fiction. While it is impossible to say how many anarchists and sympathizers existed on the island, anarchists published newspapers with 3,000-issue runs, and hundreds of men and women contributed money to anarchist causes. While anarchists formed groups in provinces throughout the island, their influence also reached beyond the island’s shores. The transnational links forged during the war in the 1890s grew and expanded to create anarchist networks radiating out from Havana to anarchist groups and individuals in various parts of North America, Spain, and the Caribbean.1
