Juan Peiró

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Juan Peiró

Juan Peiró Belis (born February 18, 1887 in Barcelona , † July 24, 1942 in Paterna ) was a Spanish glazier , economist , anarchist and syndicalist . During the Spanish Civil War he was Minister of Industry of the Second Republic .

Life

Early years

At the age of eight, Peiró left school and started working in a glassworks in Barcelona. He only learned to read and write as a young adult. In 1907 he married Mercedes Olives Bonastre, a textile worker with whom he had seven children.

In 1925, Juan Peiró and other colleagues founded the Cristalerías de Mataró glazing cooperative , with which he remained connected for the rest of his life.

Establishment in the trade union movement

From 1906 Peiró was a union member. Between 1912 and 1920 he held the post of General Secretary of the National Federation of Glaziers, which was affiliated to the anarcho-syndicalist trade union federation Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). He also edited their newspaper El Vidrio and headed the newspaper of the unions of Badalona La Colmena Obrera .

From 1918 he took on responsible positions within the Catalan regional federation of the CNT. At the CNT Congress of 1919 he spoke out for the first time in favor of the establishment of nationwide industrial federations within the CNT. However, this proposal was rejected by Congress.

The twenties

In 1919, the conflicts between the employers' associations, the state and the libertarian-inspired labor movement escalated after a general strike in Catalonia ( huelga de La Canadiense ). In 1920 so-called “Pistoleros” carried out two attacks on Juan Peiró. He was arrested in the same year and remained in custody until 1922.

After his release from prison, the CNT elected him to be its general secretary. Peiró now lived in Mataró near Barcelona. At a conference he organized in Zaragoza in 1922, the CNT decided to leave the Bolshevik Third International and join the Syndicalist International Workers' Association (IAA). At this conference, Juan Peiró, together with Salvador Seguí and Ángel Pestaña , advocated a political strategy according to which the CNT should try to push through specific demands by means of targeted pressure on the governments. This proposal was sharply rejected by the “pure anarchists” within the trade union federation as “reformism”.

After General Miguel Primo de Rivera came to power on September 13, 1923, the CNT and all its publications were banned and their restaurants were closed. Many CNT activists were arrested, including Peiró again. First released in 1923, he was imprisoned again in 1925, 1927 and 1928. While in custody, he wrote the Trayectoria de la Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (The Path of the CNT), in which he opposed sectarian tendencies within the trade union federation. He briefly went into exile in France between prison terms.

In 1928 he was elected General Secretary of the CNT for the second time. He took a critical position vis-à-vis the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), which got involved in institutional cooperation with the military dictatorship. At the same time, there was increasing controversy between him and the activists of the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI).

Second republic and civil war

In 1930 Peiró became editor-in-chief of the CNT newspaper Solidaridad Obrera . At the extraordinary CNT congress in 1931, the trade union federation finally adopted its concept of industrial federations - against the opposition of the FAI faction. At that congress he also took the position that the proclamation of the Second Republic in the same year could prove to be a step forward for the working class. This position was also adopted by the CNT, also here against the opposition of the “pure” anarchists, who saw it as support for bourgeois politics.

In 1931 Juan Peiró published the Manifesto of Thirty , together with 29 other leading CNT activists , in which they analyzed the economic and social situation in Spain and criticized both the republican government and the insurrectionalist faction within the CNT. The following conflicts led to the withdrawal and exclusion of the so-called opposition syndicates from the CNT. They then founded the Federación Sindicalista Libertaria (FSL). Peiró also left the CNT in the course of this, but in the following years he tried to build bridges between the two camps in order to prevent a final break. In 1936 there was finally reunification.

After the military coup on July 17, 1936 and the social revolution that followed, Juan Peiró became vice-president of the anti-fascist committee of Mataró. He defended the CNT's entry into the Generalitat de Catalunya and the central government in autumn / winter 1936. Together with Juan García Oliver (Justice), Federica Montseny (Health) and Juan López Sánchez (Commerce), he was one of the four anarchist ministers in the cabinet by Largo Caballero . Juan Peiró was responsible for the industry department there. He had industrial infrastructure confiscated by decree and promoted the project of a credit bank for collectivized industry. However, many of these measures were not pursued by the subsequent Negrin government .

After the fall of the Largo Caballero government as a result of the May events , he went back to Mataró, where he again worked as a glazier in his cooperative. Peiró spoke at events about his time in government and published articles in which, among other things, he sharply criticized the Stalinist policy of the Partido Comunista de España (PCE).

Exile, capture and death

After his defeat in the civil war, Juan Peiró crossed the border into France on February 5, 1939. He was briefly interned in Perpignan before going to Narbonne (Narbona), where his family was staying. He later lived in Paris, where he represented the CNT in the Junta de Auxilio a los Republicanos Españoles (JARE). This Spanish exile institution organized the departure of the refugees released from the French internment camps to Mexico.

After the occupation of northern France by National Socialist Germany in June 1940, he tried to escape, but was arrested on the way to Narbonne and brought back to Paris. The French authorities planned to deport him to Mexico, but he was arrested again, this time by German troops and deported to Trier. In January 1941, the Franco dictatorship requested his extradition. The German authorities followed suit on February 19.

Peiró was taken to Madrid, where he was interrogated and tortured. In December 1941, the trial against him began in Valencia. He was given the prospect of a suspension of the proceedings in the event that he would volunteer as a functionary for the French state unions. Peiró declined this offer. The death sentence was passed on July 21, 1942. He was shot dead three days later along with six other CNT activists. Juan Peiró was 55 years old.

Think

Peiró's thinking was shaped by French syndicalism. In his texts he emphasized the need for adequate technical preparation and training as a prerequisite for taking over production and distribution during and after a libertarian revolution. This should enable the development of economic and political resources that stabilize the post-revolutionary society and establish the new grassroots model of society.

He repeatedly criticized the strong resistance from parts of the anarchist movement against what he believed to be an effective organization of national and international industrial federations, as well as the mystification of the spontaneity of the masses from this side. In contrast to the "pure" anarchists, he trusted the trade union mass organizations as the foundation of revolutionary development. Peiró spoke out against the dominance of a specifically anarchist organization within the trade union movement, which is characterized by charismatic personalities and relatively small action groups, as he had in mind in the form of the FAI.

Quotes

“When we talk about collectivism, some might see it as a departure from libertarian communism. But this is not the case. We speak of collectivism as a means, not as an economic goal of the future society. We mean collectivism as an organizational form, as an opportunity to take initiative and forces and develop them, and finally collectivism as a form of discipline of the individual vis-à-vis the general. "

- Syndicalism and Anarchism, 1931

"The most important thing in a revolution of the type that the CNT will realize is not the destruction of what already exists, but the creation of what is to replace what has been destroyed."

- Solidaridad Obrera from September 1st, 1931

"The republic must be reproached - and I am - for having created a political police force that allows the communists to rule them as they see fit."

- Problemas y cintarazos, 1938

See also

Works

Works in Spanish

  • Trayectoria de la Confederación Nacional del Trabajo . 1925
  • Ideas sobre Sindicalismo y Anarquismo . 1930
  • Problems of Sindicalismo y del Anarquismo . (PDF) 1930
  • Peligro en la retaguardia . 1936
  • De la fábrica de vidrio de Mataró al Ministerio de Industria (conferencia). 1937
  • Problems y cintarazos . 1938

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peiró, Santillán: Economy and Revolution . Vienna 1986, p. 10
  2. quoted from: Bernecker: Anarchism and Civil War . Heidelberg 2006, p. 39
  3. ^ Saña: The Libertarian Revolution. The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War , Hamburg 2001, p. 213