The Black Hand
La Mano Negra was an allegedly secret and violent anarchist organization that operated in the Spanish region of Andalusia in the early 1880s, during the reign of Alfonso XII, and to which were attributed murders and burning of crops and buildings. The events of the so-called Black Hand occurred in the 1882-1883 biennium, in the context of a climate of acute class struggle in the Andalusian countryside, of diffusion of an anarcho-communism different from Bakuninist anarcho-collectivism, and differences between legalists and clandestinists within the recently created Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region (FTRE).
Background
As Josep Termes has pointed out, "the years 1881 and 1882 were dry and very bad harvests in Andalusia, which caused hunger and social tension, with attacks on shops, robberies and arson". There were also invasions of farms and protest riots due to the lack of work and the rise in prices in which the rebels demanded that the municipalities give them employment in public works. One of the most serious urban riots occurred on November 3, 1882 in Jerez de la Frontera where the Civil Guard and the Army had to intervene, producing some sixty arrests. "Although there were very few cases of personal aggression and the rioters rarely Once they directly confronted the guards [of the farmhouses], much less the Civil Guard, who reinforced their presence in the fields, the owners were dominated by fear».
The critical situation that the Andalusian day laborers were suffering was even denounced by the Madrid liberal press, such as the newspaper El Imparcial, which in November 1882 published an editorial with the significant title of «Hunger » in which he spoke of the «terrifying problem of Andalusia», where «a hungry people» looted bakeries and butcher shops and for which there were only three options: «Either alms, or robbery, or death». El Día sent Leopoldo Alas "Clarín" to Andalusia who, at the end of December, began to publish a series of articles under the title "Hunger in Andalusia".
At the end of 1882 the idea was spreading among the Andalusian sections of agricultural day laborers of the recently created Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region of organizing a great strike to improve their wages in view of the prospect of a good harvest —the rains—.
The facts
The discovery of the “regulations” of the Black Hand and the wave of arrests
At the beginning of November 1882, the chief colonel of the Civil Guard in Western Andalusia sent the government a copy of the "regulations" of a secret organization called "the Black Hand" by which "the anarchists" of the region were governed and that according to the report that accompanied it, it constituted proof that this clandestine organization was behind the "fires, felling of mountains and trees, injuries or murders" that were taking place in those months. In reality, the "regulations" were two documents: the one entitled "La Mano Negra. Regulations of the Society of the Poor, against their thieves and executioners. Andalucía" and another that was simply titled "Statutes" and in which the expression Mano Negra did not appear but rather spoke of the norms by which the People's Court would have to be governed, which should be secretly constituted in each locality to punish the crimes of "the bourgeoisie" —while the first document spoke of "the rich"—.
Two weeks after receiving the documents, the government decided to send reinforcements to the province of Cádiz. On November 21, a group of 90 civil guards under the command of Captain José Oliver y Vidal arrived in Jerez who immediately, with the help of the head of the Jerez municipal guard, Tomás Pérez Monforte, proceeded to arrest many day laborers and members of the FRTE, alleged members of the mysterious Black Hand. As reported by a Jerez newspaper, "on December 2 he gave the first blow to the internationalists of the Black Hand, capturing a few hundred and seizing weapons, regulations, circulars, codes and other documents of the terrifying organization." Thus Oliver was praised by that same newspaper as "a bizarre military man" who was leading an "implacable war" against "collective anarchism disguised under the name of lawful associations".
In a few weeks there were more than 3,000 day laborers and anarchists in jail —Josep Termes gives a much higher figure: 2,000 in Cádiz and 3,000 in Jerez. As Avilés Farré has pointed out, «in most cases the reason for The one who was arrested was not belonging to the Black Hand, but to the Federation of Workers... as can be verified in the reports sent to the Minister of War and preserved in the Military Archive of Madrid". The organ of the FRTE Social Magazine protested the indiscriminate arrests of members of the organization.
The authenticity and probative value of the documents found
Several historians have dealt with the authenticity of the documents that the Civil Guard claimed to have found under a stone and their value as "proof" of the existence of the Black Hand. For Manuel Tuñón de Lara, "everything seems to exhale the stench of a fabricated document" and "does not seem to constitute serious evidence, neither legally nor historically", since the document "offers doubtful aspects" because affirmations are made that do not correspond to the according to Tuñón de Lara, the following paragraph would prove it, for example: «Having been outlawed by the bourgeois governments, the International Association of Workers, making it impossible for this reason to peacefully resolve the social question, and whose resolution cannot be dispensed with, has had to become a secret revolutionary organization to carry out the violent social revolution". For Josep Termes, the Black Hand was an invention of the police and the "hypothetical regulation" discovered by the Civil Guard, "apparently it was only the police manipulation of a regulation of the Popular Core, which the authorities had in their possession for a long time, and which perhaps was the work of an unbalanced person".
For Clara Lida, «these documents that were now unearthed for repressive purposes were already known from the previous era, and... their discursive characteristics —content, form, and language— resembled and were inserted into a corpus of similar documents emanating from of European internationalism during the clandestinity». In addition, "the name was not so strange to the clandestine tradition, since many anarchist and revolutionary groups in Russia, Ireland, France, Italy, adopted extreme nom de guerre...". Lida concludes that "thus refloating documents collected several years earlier, when the International and the groups, with their respective nicknames, were in hiding", taking advantage of the "tabulous sensationalism of the press to make them appear contemporary" constituted an "showy ruse". that it "had the purpose of frightening public opinion, in order to be able to act freely against organized day laborers".
Juan Avilés Farré, considers that «the most likely thing is that they were genuine documents from two different organizations, whose real entity we do not know». «Regarding the document entitled “La Mano Negra”, which does not include any reference to the International Workers Association, it can be assumed that it had fallen into the hands of the authorities, specifically the municipal guard of Jerez, several years before. before the Civil Guard sent it to the Minister of War... and it would have remained forgotten in a summary [of 1878] until someone thought it could provide a key to the crimes that were taking place in the fields of Jerez in 1882». Also "the second document is situated in the period of clandestinity of the Spanish Regional Federation of the International, which lasted from the end of 1873 to the beginning of 1881".
The “Crimes of the Black Hand”
The press, both in Cádiz and Madrid, dealt with the matter without questioning the existence of the Black Hand and creating an atmosphere of fear based on sensationalist articles about the "abominable association", "abortion of dementia and crime», such as one published in El Cronista de Jerez in which it was said that the members of the Black Hand were obliged to kill the person designated to them and that if they did not They were assassinated in turn. The "newscasting" of the press was also denounced by La Revista Social.
The press focused on the three crimes of which the Black Hand was accused, especially the first two. On December 4, two days after the first wave of arrests ordered by Captain Oliver, a couple of innkeepers were murdered on the Trebujena road, near Jerez de la Frontera. Two months later, on February 4, the corpse of a young farmer named Bartolomé Gago, buried in the open field, was found in the municipality of San José del Valle, near Jerez. known as "El Blanco de Benaocaz", who was later found to have been murdered the same day as the innkeepers. It was known as the Parrilla crime. Almost at the same time, it emerged that the death of a young ranch guard named Fernando Olivera, which occurred in August 1882, had not been an accident, but had been caused by the strong blows he had received in the stomach.
In February 1883, the government sent a special judge to Jerez to investigate the facts. At the end of the month, the newspaper El Día expressed its concern about the difficulties that the judge was encountering, “that he has taken refuge, with no other help than the Civil Guard, very good at carrying out heroic acts, to persecute to criminals; but that neither by his instinct, nor by his conditions can he carry out the acts of sagacity and caution that are essential to discover the lairs and purposes of criminals, and much more in a terrain like that of Jerez, which measures 72 square leagues. The matter also reached the Cortes where the February 28 was debated.
The government's attempts to identify the Black Hand with the FTRE
The government supported by the owners and by the press —although there were exceptions such as the newspaper El Liberal— identified the Black Hand with the FTRE —as well as the number of affiliates that the press attributed to the Mano Negra was those of the FTRE—with a double purpose, according to Clara Lida: «in the first place, to drastically curb the growing strength of the International in Spain. The second objective was more local: it was about making it impossible for farm workers to organize and preventing an agrarian strike from hindering the harvest."
The Federal Committee of the FTRE, which had already reiterated that propaganda could not be carried out «neither by robbery, nor by kidnapping, nor by murder», replied that it had no relationship with the Black Hand, « nor with any secret association whose purpose is to perpetrate common law crimes, refusing all solidarity with those who have committed or may commit criminal acts.” By once again condemning illegalism, "the differences between the Catalan anarcho-syndicalist core and the Andalusian illegalists deepened, as well as those that were beginning to emerge in Barcelona and its surroundings, especially in Gracia, also prone to direct action". However, the newspaper Le Révolté edited in Geneva by the anarcho-communist Piotr Kropotkin criticized the FTRE's condemnation of "the members of that secret league which has been given the name of the Black Hand". and expressed his "sympathy for these 'fighters for existence' in the literal sense of the term".
In March the Federal Committee of the Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region (FTRE) released a lengthy manifesto on the issue of the Black Hand denouncing the government's attempts to identify the FTRE with it:
It is intended to confuse the just, legal and revolutionary aspirations of the Spanish Federation of Workers with the crimes they say have committed the Black Hand and other secret associations. We would lack our duty if we did not protest against the wretched slanders of the Levite who, with their false delusions, claim that the courts or the government consider 70,000 workers of crimes who may have committed common criminals, crimes that we are the first to censor, because it is very likely that their victims will be worthy and honored proletarians. [...] The true Black Hand of reaction began its work... with the Holy purpose of dishonoring and disrupting the most important organization of workers that has existed in Spain. [...] Our Federation of Workers has never been in favour of theft or of the fire, of the kidnapping, or of the murder; they also know that we have neither maintained nor maintained relations with what they call the Black Hand nor with the White Hand, nor with any secret association that aims to perpetrate common crimes.
Trials and sentences
On June 18, 1883, the Jerez court sentenced seven people to death for the crime of La Parrilla and eight others, including the informer of their companions, to seventeen years and four months in prison. Two of the defendants were acquitted. But the prosecutor appealed the sentence to the Supreme Court, which in April 1884 sentenced all but one of them to death. Nine saw their death sentences commuted to imprisonment but seven were executed with a vile garrote —among them the schoolteacher Juan Ruiz. The executions took place in the Plaza del Mercado in Jerez de la Frontera on June 14, 1884., while only three days later the judges were decorated with the great cross of the Order of Isabel la Católica.
Regarding the crime of the innkeepers, one of the five people who assaulted the ventorrillo in the early morning of December 4 and stabbed the couple was found dead of a shot at the crime scene. The other four were sentenced to death, but were not executed. For the third crime, that of Fernando Oliveira, two people were tried, and one of them was sentenced to a long prison term.
After the sentences La Revista Social, an organ of the FRTE, spoke of "the unfortunate inmates of the so-called Black Hand" and denounced that no one cared about the misery of the proletariat, but did not show solidarity with the condemned La Revolución Social, the clandestine newspaper of the illegalist and anarcho-communist group Los Desheredados, which had split from the FTRE, criticized the attitude of this organization and regretted that no one protested the executions in Jerez.
The campaign in favor of the condemned of 1902-1903
In January 1902, almost twenty years after the executions and while eight of those convicted were still in jail, the Madrid anarchist newspaper Tierra y Libertad launched a campaign for their release —headed by Soledad Gustavo (pseudonym of Teresa Mañé), companion of Juan Montseny (Federico Urales) and mother of Federica Montseny—who was joined by other European and Spanish newspapers, not all of them anarchist, and during which They held several rallies in Paris —such as those that had been held during the campaign for the Montjuic trials. The convicts were presented as victims of "one of the most monstrous crimes" perpetrated by the enemies of the proletariat and as heroes of anarchism for having been "the first to raise the rebel flag against social iniquities." At the same time, those murdered, especially the Blanco de Benaocaz, were presented as traitors and informers.
Denunciations made by prisoners in letters to newspapers that their confessions had been obtained under torture fueled the international campaign —with references to the Spanish Inquisition included. The Spanish government tried to counteract the campaign but finally had to give in and between February and March 1903 commuted the prison sentence to exile.
Consequences
The Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region rejects all solidarity with those who have been organized or organized for the commission of common crimes, stating that the criminal may never have a place in its ranks. It strongly protests against a large part of the bourgeois press that... have tried to confuse our public, legal and revolutionary organization, with other organizations, or rather gangs, whose purpose is censorable. It also protects against the persecutions that, tied by the caciquism, have been carried against federated members of our federation for exercising the right to meet and associate. The congress meeting in Valencia is of the opinion that if the abuses, persecutions and threats against workers continue to exercise the natural right contained in the Constitution, we must dissolve by protesting that in Spain it is not possible to live within the legality, because of the brutalities that the bourgeois caciquism carries out everywhere. —The FTRE Valencia Congress on the Black Hand. |
The III Congress of the FTRE held in Valencia in October 1883, felt the impact of the «Black Hand» affair as fewer delegates and federations attended than the previous one held in Seville (152 delegates representing 88 local federations; no the data of the total number of affiliates was given). Regarding the "Black Hand", the Congress once again protested the confusion of "our public, legal and revolutionary organization, with other factions with reprehensible objectives" and again rejected all solidarity with those who organize "the perpetration of common crimes", also agreeing to "dissolve the Federation if it cannot act calmly legally". The Manifesto of the Congress concluded: "To redeem itself, the proletariat needs to be, in addition to being intelligent, honest, and honest to any test."
The member of the Federal Committee Josep Llunas in his newspaper La Tramontana accused the Government of using the “Black Hand” issue as a pretext to repress anarchists and their ideas: “with the excuse of a few bandits, but nothing more than bandits, they want to justify a persecution against certain ideas".
Thus, the social impact of the Black Hand affair and the fear that it would cause the FTRE to be made illegal, made the federal Committee, based in Barcelona, distance itself from the Andalusian movement, accepting the version given by the government and by the press. The angry response of the Andalusian federations was immediate, opening an increasingly large and insurmountable gap within the FTRE that led to the gradual decrease in the number of affiliates and its dissolution five years later.
Historiographical debate: Was there a "Black Hand"?
Regarding the existence or not of the Mano Negra, Tuñón de Lara affirms that «nothing allows, in short, to speak of the “Mano Negra” as an organization. This is not an obstacle to the existence of small "maffias" (groups influenced by anarcho-communism), on the borders of secular rebellion and common crime that, skillfully exploited by the organs of Power, served to justify repression and a campaign that, despite his protests, would somehow break the FTRE". For his part, Josep Termes affirms that it was "a police setup", although he acknowledges that "it is undeniable that violence was present in Andalusia agrarian".
According to Avilés Farré, «the question of whether the Black Hand existed or not is the least important that the issue raises. It is most probable that its regulations were not a forgery, but rather that someone wrote it as a charter for a clandestine group oriented towards class warfare, but this does not prove that the group was constituted or that it committed any crime. If he really existed, he left no trace of his activity and what can be said with certainty is that those who committed the most famous of the crimes attributed to him, that of La Parrilla, had never heard of the Black Hand. On the other hand, it can be affirmed that they were part of the local federation of the FTRE in what is today the municipality of San José del Valle, a federation that remained in hiding, as possibly happened with many other Andalusian local federations. […] The regulations of the Black Hand and the People's Court were understood by some Civil Guard commanders as proof of a vast clandestine conspiracy, which would be behind all the acts of violence that had been taking place in the fields of western Andalusia.. The ominous name of the Black Hand came to specify a widespread fear in something specific and had an unquestionable journalistic appeal, although ultimately in no process any activity attributable to that mysterious organization was proven.
That the Black Hand was an invention in the manner of the false flag operation or in the manner of an unjustified imputation of the Sagasta government to appease the revolts in the fields of southern Spain was already insinuated by the republican writer and politician Vicente Blasco Ibáñez in his sociological novel titled La bodega, published in 1905.
Historian and journalist Juan Madrid has stated on the subject:
That overwhelming interest in imputing anarchists any crime in order to deteriorate the image of the collective has been a constant in the history of this country and of any country.