The Anarchist Expropriators

Buenaventura Durruti and Argentina's Working-Class Robin Hoods

paperback, 90 pages

Published Jan. 11, 2016 by AK Press.

ISBN:
978-1-84935-223-9
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3 stars (1 review)

Osvaldo Bayer's study of working-class retribution, set between 1919 and 1936, chronicles hair-raising robberies, bombings, and tit-for-tat murders conducted by Argentina's working men. Intense repression of labor organizations, newspapers, and meeting places by authorities set off a wave of illegal acts meant to secure funds and settle scores. Escaping similar repression at home, future Spanish Civil War hero Buenaventura Durruti joins the cast on a spree of robberies, ending in a narrow escape back to Europe.

Osvaldo Bayer is an anarchist pacifist, author, and screenwriter living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is the author of Rebellion in Patagonia.

1 edition

Drags on, for as short as it is.

3 stars

I can't tell if it's because of the translation or if it's just... not great. Or maybe it's both? But either way, it really is quite tedious for something that you think would be engaging and interesting. It really was a struggle for it to hold my attention, which was... weird considering expropriation is a topic that I'm rather interested in.

There's also little real commentary about expropriation and the ways of doing it. It's more like a bit of a story of individual events that all were, to some extent connected. Which is fine, but that wasn't really what I was sold. And it comes off as being a bit... obnoxious because it refuses to really acknowledge that there is a place for expropriation, though we need to have less of a masculinist tendency behind it (which would've been an interesting point to engage with, since it was also …