The title and literary form of this book can be disconcerting. The
Weight of the Stars is a beautiful homage to Utopia, this ideal responseto what does not seem of this world, crosses it and watches over real
emancipatory destinies. ---- Do not expect a biography established by
Agustín Comotto, even less an autobiography, fruit of Alberola's rich
memories. This is more of a book with four hands and two brains: a
series of interviews and reflections at random, discontinuous thoughts,
apparently disordered, between two former children of exile, one
Spanish, the other Argentinian. The latter plays the role of solicitor
of memory, respecting the digressions and silences of the former. These
interviews, in which Agustín's listening skills echo Octavio's brilliant
memory, offer a journey of rare richness through the 20th century.
We meet a gallery of prominent figures from revolutionary history, such
as Che or Castro, Garcia Oliver, Federica Montseny, José Peirats... to
name only the most prominent. We share Alberola's certainties, doubts
and reflections on the inaction of the CNT exiles in Mexico, the fears
of those who remained in the country during Franco's dictatorship, of
all these human beings with shattered paths, confronted with clandestinity.
Alberola experienced war, dictatorship, the Retirada and then exile in
Mexico, the internal quarrels within post-war anarchism, the great
social struggles in the world and against the Vietnam War. Comotto and
Alberola weave a discursive web to approach the essence of the thoughts,
the contradictions of the values specific to anarchism, combined in the
latter in an attempt at coherence between praxis and theory, based on a
refusal of an anarchism of the salon or self-sufficiency. Both trace the
anarchist experience of the 20th century by focusing on the experiences
that Octavio lived. He was involved in the tensions within the CNT and
in several attempts to assassinate Franco.
Alberola questions and challenges his social experience, his fears of
repression, of confinement but also of violence and the doubts that
inhabit him. Refusing certainties helped him try to find meaning in his
life.
After a first trip to France, Spain and Italy, Octavio Alberola took the
pulse of the Spanish CNT and, aware of the limits imposed by the
historical figures, he decided with others to break the climate of
wait-and-see attitude that prevailed. In 1960, he left Mexico,
completely breaking with his family and professional life, to join the
internal leadership of the CNT where he would encounter opposition.
Alberola provides information on certain leaders of the CNT at the time
that constitute real bombshells and whose reading calls for reflection.
At the same time, Octavio Alberola's private life is made up of many
breakages: the death of his sister, the illness of an inconsolable
mother, the assassination by strangulation of his father in 1967.
A book that sheds light on turbulent social times between
disillusionment and hopes that it is good to go through to introduce a
certain humanity into the militant and human future.
Dominique Sureau (UCL Angers)
Agustín Comotto, The Weight of the Stars. Life of the Anarchist Octavio
Alberola, Syllepse, May 2024, 364 pages, 20 euros.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Augustin-Comotto-Le-poids-des-des-etoiles-Vie-de-l-anarchiste-Octavio
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