(en) Anarchist history: Traces of an anarchist - Moses S. Bertoni By Andr?s Colm?n Guti?rrez (ca, pt)

L?o Ferr?:They have a black flag at half mast on the hopes and melancholy to drag through 
life, knives to cut the bread of friendship and rusty weapons. Not to forget--- Exemplary 
anarchist newspaper Le Revolte, founded by Reclus and Kropotkin, that Moses S. Bertoni 
treasured home of Alto Parana http://tierranarquista.blogspot.mx/ ---- Moses S. Bertoni is 
little known as a political figure. He is shown as a scientist ascetic, when in fact came 
to America Reclus and Kropotkin motivated, ideologues of anarchism, the utopia of building 
a socialist colony in the middle of the jungle. ---- A copy of yellow pages socialist 
anarchist newspaper Le Revolte (The Rebel), dated February 18, 1882, in Genoa, stands out 
among the belongings of Moises Santiago Bertoni Swiss scientist, in its picturesque wooden 
house, built in the middle of the forest of Alto Paran?, and is now rescues in Puerto 
Bertoni Museum, 36 kilometers south of Ciudad del Este .

Beside the newspaper there is a propaganda poster, printed by "JJ. LL. of Catalonia ", 
which shows the portrait of a bearded man with a phrase:" Anarchy is the highest 
expression of order. Eliseo Reclus. "
Both materials have a history hitherto little studied and disseminated, and referred to 
the ideology and political activism professed by the great botanist, naturalist and writer.

most of his biographers have insisted on showing Bertoni as a scientist ascetic who came 
to retreat into the jungle to study the Indians, animals and plants, little interested in 
political reality, when it is the opposite: it was precisely his political ideals, fed in 
long discussions with two of the greatest thinkers of socialism anarchist Reclus and Peter 
Kropotkin ?lis?e, which pushed him to America, the utopia of perfect society built here a 
socialist colony based on agriculture.

MEETING IN SWITZERLAND. Bertoni met and was a great friend of ?lis?e Recl?s, the French 
cartographer and anarchism great leader, who collaborated with Bakunin in the early 1861 
to 1870.

Affiliated to the First International, Recl?s participated in the uprising of the Commune 
Paris in 1870, where he was jailed. It was saved from deportation prison sentence by 
Charles Darwin and other European intellectuals, and in 1872 ended up in Switzerland, 
where he was reunited with another great anarchist leader, the Russian Prince Pyotr 
Alexeyevich Kropotkin, also a geographer and naturalist, and one of the leading theorists 
anarchism.

In 1880, Reclus and Kropotkin established in Clarens, Vaud, Switzerland, where he knows a 
23 year-old named Mose Giacomo Bertoni, who felt passionately attracted by the ideas of 
anarchism, as well as exploration geographical and scientific discoveries.
On long indoctrination sessions and discussion, the two thinkers were germinated in the 
young Swiss dream of founding a utopian socialist agricultural community, it was like 
building an earthly paradise, in response to the declining European capitalist society. 
But that feat could only be met in another place but Europe ... in America.
's February 14, 1882, Moises Bertoni sends a letter to his wife Eugenia Rossetti, who was 
in Zurich, communicating his desire to carry her and her first children to a great 
adventure into the Argentina:
"The die is cast and we depart ... Yes, dear Eugenia, we depart for a supposed homeland 
syphilitic society desde?aremos pumps only know cure, a society that from the bed on which 
lies puta?eramente mocks our 'superstition' humanitarian, and offers his filthy bread 
brutalization price. No, by God, nature has not given us a higher consciousness for 
embrutecerla in that ocean of garbage brazenly called modern society, "says Moses.
The March 3, 1884, on board the steamer "Nord America "Bertoni embarks with his wife, his 
mother Giuseppina, and his first children born in Switzerland: Challenge Dividone, gives 
Arnold Winkelried, Vera Zasuli?, and Sofia Perovskaja.

Joining him are 40 other Swiss farmers, who had anarchist leader enthusiast convinced that 
the other side of the sea they expect paradise on earth.

arrive in Buenos Aires and Bertoni does meet with Argentine President Julio Roca, who was 
thrilled with his colonization project. The ruling will provide the means to establish 
their "utopian colony" in the province of Misiones, in a place called Santa Ana, so far as 
immigrants to lift their first homes. But the harshness of nature in the form of a 
prolonged drought, the intrigues of local warlords and the scourge of brigands become 
multiple difficulties caused sharp divisions within the human group.

's other Swiss families begin to abandon the dream of Bertoni , to leave him alone with 
his wife, his children and his mother. Disillusioned, Yabebyry flees to another town of 
Misiones, until finally crossing to Paraguay, where he finally finds his place in the 
world: a ravine on the banks of the Parana River, amidst the untamed jungle, where he 
moved his dream of creating the society perfect, a site that initially called "Colonia 
Guillermo Tell", but eventually end up known as Puerto Bertoni.

UTOPIA THAT WAS NOT. "Utopia could be here," says Francisco Ali Brouchoud, visual artist, 
writer and art critic posade?o, in an article about the political ideology of Swiss 
scientist, published in the newspaper El Territorio of Posadas , Misiones, Argentina. It 
is one of the few authors who claim to Bertoni anarchist and socialist.

"The image that has been built over Moises Bertoni-that of a man preoccupied exclusively 
with botanical and meteorological issues-is completely biased, and has hidden the full 
extent of his thoughts and intentions "he says.

Bertoni first came to Misiones (Argentina) and then the High Paran? (Paraguay) "with the 
first idea of founding a colony here socialist, and his ideological genealogy connects 
with the biggest names in European Communist and anarchist movement , several of whose 
representatives met and befriended in Switzerland, and those were the ones that prompted 
him to undertake the adventure that brought you to this land, "says Brouchoud.

In the same letter he wrote to his wife Eugenia, inviting her to accompany him to America 
Bertoni also reveals the ideas that drive their utopian adventure: "What else is 
patriotism but selfishness, however great it may be, always in favor of a small part of 
humanity? For a socialist, what other true country can exist beyond Earth, where else 
outside that patriotism that embraces all humanity? ".

Around the same time the wise building his family paradise in Alto Parana, another 
European anarchist Paraguayan society scandalized their ideology: the Spanish Rafael 
Barrett. But while Barret was questioned and persecuted as a social agitator, Bertoni was 
revered as a scientist. Did they know Bertoni and Barrett? Did you have an opportunity to 
discuss and confront their political views?

On the Museum of Puerto Bertoni also saved a model currently showing a rural village with 
houses and farms located in circles on community land and shared spaces. It is the dream 
plot of egalitarian society had drawn Bertoni. The dream that pushed him to come to 
America, they wanted to build in Misiones and reality do not give up sometime in the Alto 
Parana, if death had not come looking for on September 19, 1929, after a long illness of 
malaria .

Bertoni house in the district of Presidente Franco, Paraguay.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg69IDDv2AEeu_eKXtY8_tpPNuDzc1pJ6uABslyFDWZ5H88iv-xwfc_I8oXn15IALNutWr3Mm7oWwHZuldE1eUlNL08QjI7vqlbM6qENcP8sYBWCeeAvW1dORYd0Q3dhyphenhyphenrXGFN9PLuG_sqb/s320/DSC02292.JPG
http://andrescolman.blogspot.mx/2011/02/las-huellas-de-un-anarquista-en-el-alto.html