WORLD WORLDWIDE SPAIN News Journal Update - (en) Spaine, CNT, #435: The legacy of 'La Libertaria' - Raúl Canales (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 We spoke with Rosa Pérez, granddaughter of María Silva 'La Libertaria', to

recover the figure of this anarchist woman who lived through the Casas Viejas
massacre of 1933 and was later retaliated against. ---- «Child, do you know from
whom you are descended?» The question resounded in the classroom, and for a few
seconds all the students waited for the teacher to give the answer. But the
teacher, despite Rosa's eyes imploring an explanation, continued to teach as if
he hadn't said anything. When she got home, that teenager who had just gone under
the knife to remove a sixth toe didn't get much more help either. On the
contrary, her mother got very nervous and made her promise that she would not say
anything to her father on that subject.
Who was Francisco Cruz? Where is Casas Viejas? Rosa had more and more loose
pieces but she could not fit the puzzle. Franco had just died, but the silence
imposed by the dictatorship would last a few more years. Captain Rojas, Manuel
Azaña, María Silva... More names and more questions. "Your grandparents were very
good, that's why they killed them," was one of the few phrases that, almost in a
whisper, he managed to extract from his older neighbors. And little by little she
was connecting the dots, although it was not until the publication of the book
'From crime to hope' by Gutiérrez Molina that Rosa was finally able to learn the
whole truth about her family and the Casas Viejas massacre.

She is a direct descendant of Seisdedos, granddaughter of María Silva, La
Libertaria, heir to a sixth finger and a much more dominant gene: the
revolutionary. A prominent activist in memorialist associations, just like hers,
her ancestors burned in a straw hut for defending her dignity, Rosa cannot remain
impassive in the face of injustice. Her voice lights up when she talks about that
tragic night in 1933, but she gets even hotter when she sees that, almost a
century later, Andalusian youth have no future or that her son works fourteen
hours a day as she used to do. the Sixfingers. She does not pull a plow or carry
coal in large sacks, but she does not have a contract or insurance. Nothing and
no one can silence her, not even the pettiness of the socialist mayor of San José
del Valle who refuses to open the mass graves. "Each person has a purpose in
life," she repeats several times throughout the talk to justify the tenacity with
which she dedicates almost all of her time to recovering the memory of those who
have suffered reprisals. Theirs have the particularity that they were
assassinated by the Republic, persecuted by fascism and ignored by democracy.

Direct descendant of Seisdedos, granddaughter of María Silva, La Libertaria, heir
to a sixth finger and a much more dominant gene: the revolutionary. A prominent
activist in memorialist associations, just like hers, her ancestors burned in a
straw hut for defending her dignity, Rosa cannot remain impassive in the face of
injustice.

The first time she visited Casas Viejas, she understood to what extent the phrase
"Spain does not need men who think, but oxen who work" has permeated society. She
had to swallow saliva when in the town bar they told her, ignoring who she was,
that enough of stirring up the history of the dead. But she continues determined
to dig the ditches watered by the blood of those who carried to the last
consequences the ideal that the land is for those who work it. And no matter how
many times she has told them, she cannot help but shudder every time she
remembers the hardships suffered by her grandmother, one of the few survivors of
the Casas Viejas massacre when she escaped protected by a donkey that was shot
dead. by the guards.

But what really happened in that small village in Cádiz that precipitated the
fall of Azaña? It was not for less, since it was one of the cruelest and
bloodiest episodes of the last century.

Tired of working from sunrise to sunset and the fact that the promised agrarian
reform never came, a group of CNT day laborers decided to put into practice what
García Oliver defined as "revolutionary gymnastics" to prevent the consolidation
of the bourgeois republic. In the early morning of January 11, libertarian
communism was proclaimed in Casas Viejas, and a few hours later the Civil Guard
took the town with a clear order issued from Madrid: put an end to the
insurrection by opening fire without mercy. The bloodthirsty Captain Rojas was in
charge of executing her. El Seisdedos, an old charcoal burner who was accused of
being the leader of the revolt, resisted in a thatched hut together with part of
his family.

While she was handcuffed, she had time to smell the smell of burning meat that
permeated the town for several days and to see how the dogs devoured the remains
of her relatives, an image she would never forget.

They repelled the first attacks, until the assault guards burned down the
precarious house. But the repression did not end with that savage act.

For this reason, in the photos of the massacre, day laborers dressed and not
burned appear lying on the ground, contradicting the official version of the
Republic, which claimed that all the dead had fallen in the assault on the hut.
The next morning, the troops arrested and shot another twelve people "and if it
comes down to Rojas, burn the entire village. They had to convince him not to do
it, "says Rosa. The balance of the massacre, in addition to the dead, two widows
with eleven children in their care.

Little Sidonio is then renamed Juan and is forcibly baptized. Thus begins the
repression against the new generation. Although Francisca refuses to go into
exile, as some of her cousins do, she quickly understands that Paterna is not a
safe place. There is an event that makes it clear. When Juan is only five years
old, he is hit by a car driven by a Falangist who was trying to "put an end to
the lineage forever." The boy recovered from his injuries and grew up in the
farmhouses where his aunt served from sunrise to sunset. There Juan learned to
read and write; he too shut up. Among the many rights lost, especially painful
was the deprivation of memories. Like those of so many other children on the
defeated side, Juan's lips were sealed. Rosa never heard anything about her
family from her father, but this humble electrician did not need words to convey
the heritage of the nicknamed six fingers. He preferred the example. On every
birthday, his house was filled with anonymous gifts. They were tokens of
gratitude from his neighbors, whom she never wanted to charge for the many favors
and jobs he did for them. «He always said that they were poor, that he could not
ask them for anything. My mother would get angry and tell her that in the end we
were going to be the poor, but she was unable to charge them", recalls Rosa, who
has another paternal lesson stored in her head, that of planting fruit trees by
the ditches so that she can eat people who have no resources, and that when they
are satisfied, the birds are fed. «Being honest when you have your needs covered
is more or less simple. The complicated thing is to be when you lack everything,
and my family has always been that», this woman from Cádiz proudly assures that
before her father died, at least, she was able to restore part of her stolen
identity. In the DNI, they had put her date of birth on July 18, another subtle
humiliation. With almost no strength to stand, Juan was able to complete the
paperwork so that he could change to the authentic one and die peacefully. "A
Civil Guard confessed to us that they had always kept us under surveillance, even
well into democracy," says Rosa, who looks askance at the past but without losing
sight of the future. «I am not afraid of the right and its resurgence because we
already know what they propose; The masked left scares me more. My grandmother
gave her life to obtain labor rights that we are losing. Today the chieftaincy
and the fear of talking too much continue», she sentences.

«I am not afraid of the right and its resurgence because we already know what
they propose; The masked left scares me more. My grandmother gave her life to
obtain labor rights that we are losing. Today the caciquismo and the fear of
talking too much continue»

La Libertaria, who had hidden in a relative's house after spending two days in
the mountains, is also arrested and taken to the jail in the neighboring town of
Medina Sidonia. While she was handcuffed, she had time to smell the smell of
burning meat that permeated the town for several days and to see how the dogs
devoured the remains of her relatives, an image she would never forget. Behind
bars, La Libertaria meets Juan Miguel Pérez Cordón, who ended up being her
romantic partner and the first person to bring the events of Casas Viejas to
light in the CNT newspaper. After the release of La Libertaria, nicknamed that
way after slapping a guard who reproached her for wearing a red and black scarf,
the couple moved to Madrid. They were few months in the capital, but very
intense, in which they made contact with great figures of anarcho-syndicalism
such as Federica Montseny. However, the birth of their son made them return to
the south, to Paterna, where they were surprised by the start of the Civil War.
Juan Miguel decides to flee on a long journey on foot to Cartagena while María
stays with the little one at home because the persecution was only supposed to be
against boys. "Surely that decision weighed on my grandfather until the moment of
his death, shortly before the end of the war," says Rosa. And it is that just a
few days after the military uprising, La Libertaria is arrested, and along with
other compañeras such as Ana Castejón, purged, peeled and led to the door of the
church so that the priest would remove the communist demon from them.

On August 24, she is executed without her remains having yet been found. But
before she fell, killed by the fascist troops, she gave him time to hand over her
son to her sister-in-law, Francisca.

https://www.cnt.es/noticias/el-legado-de-la-libertaria/
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