When we enrolled in the P.O.U.M. militia in September, 1936, the Supply Committee fed us. We lived gratis at the P.O.U.M.-confiscated Hotel Falcón … Every day trucks brought huge rounds of bread to the manager’s office, to be stacked next to 100-kilo bags of potatoes and big wicker-covered bottles of Catalan red wine. The P.O.U.M. gave free meals to the wives and children of its militiamen at the front, to militia on leave in Barcelona, and those who worked in the rear as we did. The food was plain but good, soup, a stew or meat dish, salad, bread, and wine.
Etiqueta: Lois Cusick
-
La CNT incauta el vapor soviético Ziryanin y se sorprende al no encontrar armas; estética anarquista
Suddenly the excitement and enthusiasm of July 19 raced through the tertulias with the news, ‘We are not alone! Help has come!’
Collectivized factory whistles all over the town shrilled a half-holiday. Thousands of anarchists flooded the Ramblas and the port in disorderly masses, carrying their factories’ somber black or rojinegra banners. The F.A.I.’s Free Women (Mujeres Libres) went down the Ramblas eight abreast, breaking all anarchist tradition by singing and shouting in their excitement. Usually anarchist parades achieved their effect by massing silent thousands of black-clad workers in an austere, serious or threatening manner. They dislike the gay color and sound demonstrations of the ‘carnival revolutionists’ (as they called the communists).
The Stalinist Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya (P.S.U.C.) sent just such a colorful delegation to greet the Ziryanin. The revolutionary Patrols of Control cordoned off the pier and did not let the P.S.U.C on the ship. Instead, the F.A.I. cadres searched it for arms. They found a cargo of beans and chocolate. The disgusted anarchists hauled down the hammer and sickle and ran up the libertarian rojinegra. Food was not what the antifascists needed in October, 1936.
-
Escaramuzas rompen la tensión
On [Monday] May 3, with fighting at the Telefónica, the open conflict began. [Cusick] points out the somewhat enthusiastic reponses of Barcelona’s anarchist masses to the provocation of Erno Gerö: «At last there was something to DO, something to release the unbearable tension … Again time slowed down and sped up simultaneously.»
-
Subida en la reputación del POUM
[Cita de Lois Cusick (1979). The anarchist millenium, memories of the Spanish revolution, 1936-37. Unpublished.]
[On Tuesday], the city was in the grip of a complete work stoppage.
The Patrols of Control took Montjuic fortress and trained its cannon on the Palau de la Generalitat … The block-long Popular Army poster on the communist Karl Marx House came down to reveal machine guns controlling the Passeig de Gracia, which the defense committees took over … Tuesday morning, the C.N.T. printers allowed only two papers to appear, Solidarida Obrera and the P.O.U.M.’s La Batalla … The Friends of Durruti and the genuine Trotskyites (Munis and Moulin) separately printed handbills calling for a revolutionary Junta to take over the government buildings. Josep Rebull’s P.O.U.M. left wing tried to win over the syndicalists at the barricades in another part of town for a march on the government buildings. Nothing came of these isolated initiatives … But the reputation of the P.O.U.M. shot up in the anarchist ranks. C.N.T.-F.A.I.-P.O.U.M. was the password at the barricades.
-
La CNT pierde el control sobre sus miembros, que se pelean con la UGT
[Cita de Lois Cusick (1979). The anarchist millenium, memories of the Spanish revolution, 1936-37. Unpublished.]
Wednesday morning the general strike continued. The workers stayed at the barricades and ignored Casa C.N.T.’s orders [to abandon the strike and leave the barricades]. The city’s life was suspended in a will conflict between the anarchist masses and their leadership … The communists tried to take advantage of their truce with Casa C.N.T. to put the city’s bus system back to work. They used U.G.T. members the anarchists had always said were scabs from a big strike years ago. The sight of their red and black pointed trams run by communist scabs started the fighting all over. Barricades went up across the tracks, and the trams stopped running.