Violeta Miqueli's Direct Action against State Violence

Abstract

Violeta Miqueli Mayoz de González (Key West 1891- New Jersey 1972) was an educator and an executive member of ethnic and anarchist groups. She actively participated in their direct action and wrote for their periodicals in Key West, Tampa, New York, Mexico D.F., Buenos Aires, and Barcelona. Miqueli identified the systemic violence that the state exercised against workers like her: difficult access to education and healthcare, prosecution of dissenters, and disadvantaged defense of the poor. Miqueli, like other anarcha-feminists of her time, developed strategies of care and political participation with direct action to protect the people when the state did not. Through the alternative press, Miqueli provided alternative sources of information that denounced the systematic state oppression. Her organization participation provided workers with education and distributed solidarity among state prisoners, while mutual aid dignified their health care. This essay and accompanying digital exhibit explore Miqueli's direct action to show how anarcha-feminists disseminated alternative visions of society while utilizing the freedom of association and the press to organize under the state's structural top-down violence.