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Over the past several years a debate has erupted inside international libertarian intellectual circles concerning the origins of anarchism. Many recent thinkers, such as George Woodcock and Peter Marshall, would agree with their predecessor Max Nettlau that the "history of the anarchist idea is inseparable from progressive developments and the aspiration towards liberty" (Nettlau 1977: 13). This view traces Anarchism's origin to thinkers such as Lao-Tse [607 b.c.], Zenon [342270 b.c.] and Carpocrates [II century], (Marshall 2008: 53; Cuevas Noa 2003: 43). On the other hand we find the position of Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt, whose book Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism proposes Anarchism's origins in the context of the modern working class and the radical socialist movement of the First International in the 1 860s (Schmidt & van der Walt 2009: 34).Although we won't assume any position in this matter, we think it is important to mention it since we depart from the premise that is not immutable, allowing it to expand throughout the globe in a cosmopolitan manner, notwithstanding its common ideological framework. It is through this migratory process that anarchism will contain particularities according to the geographical space in which it develops. If we accept the thesis of the unequal development of nations, we must then affirm that anarchism cannot be analyzed as a mere concrete material product that travels from one place to the other but as an ideology subordinated to the space in which it is engendered. As an example we could point out the case of the Caribbean. A brief and superficial analysis of the history of the region could lead us to think that Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic would share the same anarchist thought, but this would be a mistake. In fact, it is through the individual, or native, development of each region and nation that local radicals created particular discourses of anarchism in order to comprehend their immediate historical situation. It is through this optic that we intend to analyze Puerto Rican anarchism.The situation of the Puerto Rican working class throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century could be considered one of vast complexity. Even though there was a display of class-consciousness, materialized through various organizations based on solidarity and mutual aid during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, it was not until 1899 that the first labor syndicate was organized in Puerto Rico. The material conditions were changing rapidly with the proletarization of the majority of the Puerto Rican workers because of a change in the modes of production, caused by the entrance of U.S. capitalism in the local economy since 1898. It is because of this situation that the most progressive sectors inside the working class elaborated discourses based on their analysis of various foreign ideologies. They wanted to comprehend their historical reality and guide it through responses or alternatives to the official discourse of the State and the organizations that were supposed to look out for their interests. It is in this context that anarchist ideas start to propagate throughout the island.Since we cannot talk about labor organizations managed by individuals adhering to the anarchist ideology, as in the cases, for example, of Spain's C.N.T. or Argentina's F.O.R.A, we argue that anarchism was not a homogeneous ideal inside the Puerto Rican working class as would be the cases in different historical contexts - not only in the places mentioned, but on a global level. On the other hand, the leadership of the Free Workers' Federation (F.L.T. for its acronym in Spanish), which was the only syndicate during the period studied, gravitated towards the reformist ideas of trade unionism put forward by the American Federation of Labor. Nevertheless, we need to point out the fact that there were workers inside the ranks of the F. …

Voces libertarias: The Economic, Political and Social Discourse of Puerto Rican Anarchism, 1900 – 1917