Three documents from a militant Puerto Rican anarchist
[New York]: n.p., [1970]. A small group of militant underground documents by a Puerto Rican anarchist and Industrial Workers of the World member named Enrique Leon, aka “El Lobo” (“The Wolf”) who was involved in a short-lived attempt to transform the recently revived IWW General Defense Committee into an armed revolutionary organization. This is outlined in his mimeographed document, “On the Self Defense Committee”, in which he extols the anarchist militant Mikhail Aleksandrovich Baknunin (1814-1876), disparages Marx as a “right wing opportunist,” and argues that the General Defense Committee should operate as an armed defense organization responsible for military education and training, communications, intelligence, and security, while calling for autonomous armed workers' groups capable ultimately of transforming themselves into revolutionary forces.
He expands on this in “On Guerrilla Warfare,” which begins with a profile of the "Revolutionary Warrior," drawn from the lumpen proletariat and described as a "devoted man or woman, whose only existence is to bring about the Revolution, through armed action." Leon envisions the formation of clandestine urban guerrilla units and a mass “worker's army” operating from urban bases and liberated areas sabotaging communications, transportation, military installations, and industrial infrastructure; infiltrating police departments and the armed forces; and acquiring weapons for revolutionary struggle. Factories are to become “organized fighting unit[s]” and the IWW's famous conception of the One Big Union is recast in explicitly military terms: “The one big union should be one big worker's army.” Revolutionary self-defense groups would meanwhile be established in factories, workplaces, communities, and prisons.
According to a fellow IWW member who knew “El Lobo” (and who we acquired this material from”), he was Enrique Leon Calvente, a “Nechaevist Puerto Rican separatist anarchist.” According to our source, Calvente engaged in street fights and engaged in increasingly violent rhetoric before attempting to take over the General Defense Committee in New York City. His downfall apparently came at an IWW meeting where he denounced every member who opposed his committee as part of the “white bourgeosie.” Older IWW members, some of whom had spent years in Spanish or Russian jails, were incensed by El Lobo’s insolence and ran him and his committee out of the organization. Our research turned up no Enrique Leon Calvente, Enrique Leon nor El Lobo, and our source is now dead, but there is at least some possibility that El Lobo was a provacateur attempting to infiltrate the IWW
On the Self Defense Committee consists of two 11” x 8 ½” sheets mimeographed on rectos from typescript and signed in print, Enrique Leon. On Urban Guerrilla Warfare appears to have begun as five 11” x 8 ½” corner-stapled sheets mimeographed on versos from typescript. Originally signed in print, Enrique Leon, our source has redacted the name - furiously enough to tear the paper - and written El Lobo in pencil next to it. Why he felt the need to obscure his identity, especially since he admittedly helped to chase him out of the organization, is unknown. The document was then issued as an 8-page mimeographed pamphlet and signed “El Lobo” on both the cover and at the end of the text. A fascinating and obscure grouping. None of the documents appear in OCLC, nor anywhere else that we could find. Item #15382
Price: $475.00