Esperanto & Anarchism - Xavi Alcalde Examination of the links between Esperanto and the Libertarian movement, and a brief biographical sketch of one of the leading Esperanto speaking Anarchists Eduardo Vivancos.
Esperanto & Anarchism
“Paroli Esperanton estis iam esenca parto de anarkiismo.”
(There was a time when speaking Esperanto was an essential part of being an anarchist.)
When 97-year-old, Barcelona-born Eduardo Vivancos walks down the streets of Toronto where he has lived as an exile since 1954, he never comes across another Esperanto speaker.
However, when he first learned the language in June 1937, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War and Revolution, he thought that it was a natural element of the libertarian world.
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The strike began in February 1919, during the epidemic’s third wave, and brought Barcelona to a grinding halt. In January, the Ebro Irrigation and Power Company, known as La Canadiense for its Toronto headquarters, lowered wages, and fired 8
oficinistas, white-collar workers, for protesting. When 140 blue-collar workers were barred reentry after walking out in solidarity, they appealed to the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), a union that had gained enormous traction in Barcelona over the previous year. The CNT called a general strike, spreading the word “as if it were an epidemic transmitted through air, spreading through contact,” as activist and h