María Silva Cruz - "La Libertaria"

Many years ago I read a book called "The Anarchists of Casas Viejas" by an American anthropologist called Jerome Mintz.  Casas Viejas was the old name for Benalup-Casas Viejas, about 15 km from Alcalá. Back in 1933 it was the scene of an event which shook the nation to the core and helped bring down the socialist government of the Second Republic. One of the key figures in that event was a young woman who went by the name "Libertaria", which piqued my romantic imagination. I vowed to find out more about her and one day write her story.  It's taken a while, but the book is now out and is available  on Amazon worldwide, in paperback or Kindle format, at giveaway prices.

The introduction to the book is reproduced below. Subsequent chapters cover the evolution of anarcho-syndicalism (also known as libertarian communism) in the area and why it was so attractive to men who could barely get enough work to feed their families; a detailed look at the events of January 1933 and María's subsequent arrest; the way the events were handled by the government and the effect that had on public opinion; María's relationship with the notorious anarchist leader Miguel Peréz Cordon; her assassination by fascists following the coup d'état of July 1836 (her body has never been found), and the different ways writers used her story to manipulate public opinion after her death.

María Silva Cruz and Miguel Peréz Cordón

Introduction

Early in 1933 the landless agricultural workers of Andalucía waited impatiently for a revolution which would  allow them to govern themselves in autonomous communes and profit from their own labour. The leftist government of the Second Republic, elected in 1931, had failed to implement many of its promised reforms and the anarchist workers’ union, the Confederación Nacional de Trabajadores (CNT), decided that direct action was the only way to bring about change.

The date set for the revolution was 8 January 1933. Uprisings took place that day in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia but were quickly put down. Meanwhile in the village of Casas Viejas (now Benalup) in the province of Cádiz the local CNT awaited instructions from its head office in Jerez de la Frontera on how to proceed.  

After three days, having heard nothing, they decided the revolution must have started without them and took matters into their own hands, cutting telegraph lines and digging trenches across roads to hinder the arrival of the armed forces. They headed for the barracks of the civil guard and ordered the occupants to surrender and hand over their arms. In the ensuing shoot-out two of the guards were mortally wounded, resulting in savage reprisals which shocked the nation and helped bring down the government - apart from the handful of men involved in the killing of the guards, more than twenty innocent men, women and children were murdered by the authorities; some of them were burnt alive taking refuge in a thatched hut, and another dozen were shot in cold blood the following morning.

One young girl caught up in the Casas Viejas massacre briefly became a household name across Spain – María Silva Cruz, “la Libertaria”.  Her story has been largely forgotten outside of this area, but it deserves to be told. 

What do we know about her?  She came from a working-class family but they weren’t the poorest – it was a close-knit extended household and they looked after each other. Unlike many of the campesino children, especially girls, she learned to read and write, first from her grandmother and then at the school in Casas Viejas.  She was clearly intelligent and curious about the world around her and she attracted educated men who were older than her – Antonio Cabañas, her first boyfriend, was 27 and she was ten years younger when they started going out together, and her common-law husband Miguel Pérez Cordón was six years her senior.  She was physically attractive, as can be seen in the few photographs we have of her, somewhat audacious if the story of her refusing to take off her anarchist neckerchief when ordered to do so by a civil guard is true, and as an active member of the women’s group Amor y Armonía she demonstrated her total commitment to libertarian communism. 

Journalists who wrote about her after the Casas Viejas massacre said that she was soft-spoken, uncomplaining, hard-working and modest, but it is doubtful whether they met her as she was already in prison when they arrived. Various literary interpretations of her (see Chapter 8) were written for specific propaganda purposes and are pure fiction.

Bodies of the Casas Viejas victims awaiting post mortems