Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent


Eduardo Galeano - 1971
    debut almost fifty years ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx.Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe.Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the passions of a plundered and suffering people. An immense gathering of materials is framed with a vigorous style that never falters in its command of themes. All readers interested in great historical, economic, political, and social writing will find a singular analytical achievement, and an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak, unforgettably.This classic is now further honored by Isabel Allende’s inspiring introduction. Universally recognized as one of the most important writers of our time, Allende once again contributes her talents to literature, to political principles, and to enlightenment.

Facundo: or Civilization and Barbarism


Domingo Faustino Sarmiento - 1845
    Ostensibly a biography of the gaucho barbarian Juan Facundo Quiroga, Facundo is also a complex, passionate work of history, sociology, and political commentary, and Latin America's most important essay of the nineteenth century.

Durruti in the Spanish Revolution


Abel Paz - 1976
    Abel Paz's magnificent biography resurrects the very soul of Spanish anarchism.”—Mike Davis, author of Planet of SlumsAK Press has commissioned an elegant, new and unabridged translation of the definitive biography of Spanish revolutionary and military strategist, Buenaventura Durruti. But Abel Paz, who fought alongside Durruti in the Spanish Civil War, has given us much more than an account of a single man’s life. Durruti in the Spanish Revolution is as much a biography of a nation and of a tumultuous historical era. Paz seamlessly weaves intimate biographical details of Durruti’s life—his progression from factory worker and father to bank robber, political exile and, eventually, revolutionary leader—with extensive historical background, behind-the-scenes governmental intrigue, and blow-by-blow accounts of major battles and urban guerrilla warfare. An amazing and exhaustive study of an incredible man and his life-long fight against fascism in both its capitalist and Stalinist forms.Includes Jose Luis Gutierres Molina’s introduction about Abel Paz’s life and the historiography of the Spanish Civil War.Abel Paz was born in 1921. At 15, he joined the Durruti Column and fought in the Spanish Revolution. After the revolution's defeat, he was active as a guerilla fighter against the Franco regime and spent eleven years in prison. He lives in Barcelona, Spain.Chuck Morse founded the Institute for Anarchist Studies, co-edited Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, and founded and edited The New Formulation: An Anti-Authoritarian Review of Books. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life


Jon Lee Anderson - 1997
    Jon Lee Anderson's biography traces Che's extraordinary life, from his comfortable Argentine upbringing to the battlefields of the Cuban revolution, from the halls of power in Castro's government to his failed campaign in the Congo and assassination in the Bolivian Jungle.Anderson has had unprecedented access to the personal archives maintained by Guevara's window and carefully guarded Cuban government documents. He has conducted extensive interviews with Che's comarades-some of whom speak here for the first time-and with CIA men and Bolivian officers who hunted him down. Anderson broke the story of where Guevara's body was buried, which led to the exhumation and stat burial of the bones. Many of the details of Che's life have long been cloaked in secrecy and intrigue. Meticulously researched and full of exclusive information, Che Guevara illuminates as never before this mythic figure who embodied the high-water mark of revolutionary communism as a force in history."

Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littín


Gabriel García Márquez - 1986
    The new dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, instituted a reign of terror and turned Chile into a laboratory to test the poisonous prescriptions of the American economist Milton Friedman. In 1985, Littín returned to Chile disguised as a Uruguayan businessman. He was desperate to see the homeland he’d been exiled from for so many years; he also meant to pull off a very tricky stunt: with the help of three film crews from three different countries, each supposedly busy making a movie to promote tourism, he would secretly put together a film that would tell the truth about Pinochet’s benighted Chile—a film that would capture the world’s attention while landing the general and his secret police with a very visible black eye. Afterwards, the great novelist Gabriel García Márquez sat down with Littín to hear the story of his escapade, with all its scary, comic, and not-a-little surreal ups and downs. Then, applying the same unequaled gifts that had already gained him a Nobel Prize, García Márquez wrote it down. Clandestine in Chile is a true-life adventure story and a classic of modern reportage.

The Conquest of Bread


Pyotr Kropotkin - 1892
    A combination of detailed historical analysis and far-reaching Utopian vision, this is a step-by-step guide to social revolution: the concrete means of achieving it, and the world that humanity’s “constructive genius” is capable of creating. Includes a new introduction that historically situates and discusses the contemporary relevance of Kropotkin’s ideas.

Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology


David Graeber - 2004
    Anarchists repeatedly appeal to anthropologists for ideas about how society might be reorganized on a more egalitarian, less alienating basis. Anthropologists, terrified of being accused of romanticism, respond with silence . . . . But what if they didn't?This pamphlet ponders what that response would be, and explores the implications of linking anthropology to anarchism. Here, David Graeber invites readers to imagine this discipline that currently only exists in the realm of possibility: anarchist anthropology.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State


Friedrich Engels - 1884
    This suggestion, coming from the pulpit, platform and press, has hypnotized the minds of men and proves to be one of the strongest pillars of exploitation. The history of the family dates from 1861, the year of the publication of Bachofen's Mutterrecht (maternal law) Engles makes the following propositions: 1. That in the beginning people lived in unrestricted sexual intercourse, which he dubs, not very felicitously, hetaerism. 2. That such an intercourse excludes any absolutely certain means of determining parentage; that consequently descent could only be traced by the female line in compliance with maternal law; and that this was universally practiced by all the nations of antiquity. 3. That consequently women as mothers, being the only well known parents of younger generations, received a high tribute of respect and deference, amounting to a complete women's rule (gynaicocracy), according to Bachofen's idea. 4. That the transition to monogamy, reserving a certain woman exclusively to one man, implied the violation of the primeval religious law (i.e., practically a violation of the customary right of all other men to the same woman), which violation had to be atoned for its permission purchased by the surrender of the women to the public for a limited time.

The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism


Fredy Perlman - 1984
    This is an essential essay for a critical understanding of nationalism.The idea that an understanding of the genocide, that a memory of the holocausts, can only lead people to want to dismantle the system, is erroneous. The continuing appeal of nationalism suggests that the opposite is true-er, namely that an understanding of genocide has led people to mobilize genocidal armies, that the memory of holocausts has led people to perpetrate holocausts. --from the pamphlet

The Condor Years: How Pinochet And His Allies Brought Terrorism To Three Continents


John Dinges - 2004
    It was an early “war on terror” initially encouraged by the CIA which later backfired on the United States.Hailed by Foreign Affairs as “remarkable” and “a major contribution to the historical record,” The Condor Years uncovers the unsettling facts about the secret U.S. relationship with the dictators who created this terrorist organization. Written by award-winning journalist John Dinges and newly updated to include recent developments in the prosecution of Pinochet, the book is a chilling but dispassionately told history of one of Latin America’s darkest eras. Dinges, himself interrogated in a Chilean torture camp, interviewed participants on both sides and examined thousands of previously secret documents to take the reader inside this underground world of military operatives and diplomats, right-wing spies and left-wing revolutionaries.

The Revolutionary Catechism


Sergey Nechayev - 1869
    The work called for total devotion to a revolutionary lifestyle. Its publication in the Government Herald in July 1871 as the manifesto of the Narodnaya Rasprava secret society was one of the most dramatic events of Nechayev's revolutionary life, through its words and the actions it inspired establishing Nechayev's importance for the Nihilist movement. The Catechism is divided into two sections; General Rules of the Organisation and Rules of Conduct of Revolutionaries, 22 and 26 paragraphs long respectively; abridged versions were published as excerpts in the anarchist periodicals Freiheit and The Alarm.The most radical document of its age, the Catechism outlined the authors' revolutionary Jacobin program of organisation and discipline, a program that became the backbone of the radical movement in Russia. The revolutionary is portrayed in the Catechism as an amoral avenging angel, an expendable resource in the service of the revolution, committed to any crime or treachery necessary to effect the downfall of the prevailing order.

Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerrilla


Ann Hansen - 2001
    Hansen and her Anarchist group Direct Action were responsible for numerous dramatic political acts, including the bombing of the Litton Systems plant in Toronto. After legal protest actions failed to stop Litton from making guidance systems for Cruise missiles, Direct Action defended the Earth, explosively. Additionally, Hansen with other radical feminists showed the Red Hot Video chain just how hot their illegal films depicting rape could become after being firebombed.Ann Hansen served seven years in prison and is now quite at home in Vancouver with her three horses, three dogs, one cat and a bird.

Guerrilla Warfare


Ernesto Che Guevara - 1961
    Che's call to action, his proclamation of _invincibility_-the ultimate victory of revolutionary forces-continues to influence the course of Latin American history and international relations. His amazing life story has lifted him to almost legendary status. This edition of Che's classic work Guerrilla Warfare contains the text of his book, as well as two later essays titled _Guerrilla Warfare: A Method_ and _Message to the Tricontinental._ A detailed introduction by Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies, Jr., examines Guevara's text, his life and political impact, the situation in Latin America, and the United States' response to Che and to events in Latin America. Loveman and Davies also provide in-depth case studies that apply Che's theories on revolution to political situations in seven Latin American countries from the 1960s to the present. Also included are political chronologies of each country discussed in the case studies and a postscript tying the analyses together. This book will help students gain a better understanding of Che's theoretical contribution to revolutionary literature and the inspiration that his life and Guerrilla Warfare have provided to revolutionaries since the 1960s. This volume is an invaluable addition to courses in Latin American studies and political science.

Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile


Ramor Ryan - 2006
    I've never seen anything close to his work…”—Eddie Yuen, co-editor of Confronting Capitalism“From Belfast to the Bronx and Chiapas to Kurdistan, Ramor Ryan has shown a lifelong commitment to social justice, a questioning mind and an ability to incorporate historical currents into his work.”—Mick McCaughan, Latin American Correspondent to the Irish TimesAn epic debut, Ramor Ryan’s nonfiction tales read like Che Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries crossed with Hunter S. Thompson’s wit and flair for the impossible. A shrewd political thinker and philosopher with a knack for ingratiating himself into the thick of any social situation, Ryan has been there and lived to tell about it.As much an adventure story as an unofficial chronicle of modern global resistance movements, Clandestines spirits the reader across the globe, carefully weaving the narrative through illicit encounters and public bacchanals. From the teeming squats of mid-90’s East Berlin, to intrigue in the Zapatista Autonomous Zone, a Croatian Rainbow Gathering on the heels of the G8 protests in Genoa, mutiny on the high seas, the quixotic ambitions of a Kurdish guerilla camp, the contradictions of Cuba, and the neo-liberal nightmare of post-war(s) Central America we see everywhere a world in flux, struggling to be reborn.Ramor Ryan is a rebellious rover and Irish exile who makes his home between New York City and Chiapas.

Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala


Stephen C. Schlesinger - 1982
    First published in 1982, this book has become a classic, a textbook case of the relationship between the United States and the Third World. The authors make extensive use of U.S. government documents and interviews with former CIA and other officials. It is a warning of what happens when the United States abuses its power.