The brush and the tea. History of the F.O.R.A. in Villa Constitución

Abstract

There are several of motives behind our decision to include this work by Guildo Corres in the Texts section – the primary one being our intent to focus on one of the most mentioned phenomena when attempting to reconstruct the memories of local workers’ history, which as a matter of fact has seen little proper investigation. We are talking about the persistent presence of anarchist syndicalism (specifically as it relates to the FORA) in the South of Santa Fe province – and particularly in the city of Villa Constitución. Local anarchism came to be as a response to social conflict at the turn of the 1900’s. Its’ period of growth, peak and permanence would last for half a century, even when anarchist organizations had been determined to be a distant memory in the history of Argentinian syndicalism (during the 30’s and 40’s) in our own town it still showed enough energy to (barely) survive to the conflictive decade of the 1970’s. Another motive is the author himself – we wish to pay tribute to the figure of the local, militant historian through Guildo Corres. It is true that his work does not follow the guidelines of modern-day professionalized scientific historiography strictly; however, we wish to assert the value of two gestures of his in the production of local historical knowledge: he does not fear to tackle the controversial topic of (social) conflictivity that is oft-evaded by purely banner-carrying local historiography; as well as his sincere, plural, consistent sensitivity and concern for social and political actors of the working class which, without the efforts of Guildo Corres, would have been forgotten and impossible to analyze in our time.
As regards the text itself, the original version is presented as-is for the most part (mistakes in names have not been modified, and archaic vocabulary has been preserved). Only typographical errors have been corrected.
This text was originally published in 1992, illustrated by Malena Bertolotto. It included a section of poems by the author himself titled Literary Poems.