The CNT and the War Years

Abstract

This chapter details the relationship between the anarchist movements in Argentina and Spain from 1910 to 1918, when World War I and the Russian Revolution brought serious challenges to the anarchist movement. Violence and labor unrest leading up to the 1910 centennial of Argentine independence caused the government to pass a new social defense law that further restricted radical immigrants and increased deportations. At the same time, Spanish anarchists created the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Labor, CNT), which became the country's most powerful and important labor federation through the 1930s. The Argentine anarchist movement experienced a serious rupture at a 1915 meeting of unions, and the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA), which had guided the movement since the beginning of the century, became weakened. World War I had virtually ended immigration from Spain to Argentina, and the new group of anarchists included some Argentine natives. In this period of personal and ideological rivalries, a branch of the old federation became the FORA V. It emerged as champion of what it called a “purer” anarchism and challenged the ideology of the Spanish movement's leaders.