“He renounced his princely prerogatives, the flatteries of Nicholas II’s court, and all the advantages that his personal and intellectual conditions could have won him in European societies.  Likewise, the Bolsheviks didn’t want him, because his libertarian dream went beyond the dictatorship of the proletariat.  Like the man whose dignified words, perhaps from the Sermon on the Mount: ‘while the wretched exist, luxury is a crime,’ he has achieved immortality.”

The merciless hatred that “Art and Work” propagated against the powerful elite was an undeniable hallmark of this magazine which was unprecedented in the history of Bolivian journalism.

The philosophy of Cesáreo Capriles – notoriously influenced by thinkers such as Bakunin and Proudhon – aimed to strengthen civil society’s democratic expression and to counter the organized authoritarianism of the state, the church and the political parties. His animosity for lordly priests and demagogues of all types was obvious and in response to them he proposed communitarian and people’s strategies.

Anarchism, in the ethical vision of Cesáreo Capriles, turned out to be a doctrine subjected to the human interests of full development and communal happiness and well-being.

Because of this he took rational positions and elaborated on themes of municipal interest (understanding municipalism as the essential communitarian scenario inside of everyday life), as well as regional development and productivity (understanding the economy as a natural instrument for people to achieve and share material well-being), implying a libertarian action that defined the content and format of “Art and Work.”

Along those lines Capriles promoted, for example, the construction of the city’s first sewage system, affirming that “to make the city sanitary is such a primordial necessity that is should be, by today, the only concern of authorities and citizens.” In a critical tone he also said that, “health and ornamentation, essential attributes of the civic body, have been totally neglected by the cliques which, imposed by governments, carry on without any innovation than the party nomination.”

Source: Los Tiempos - Anarquismo cochabambino

Original article published on 1 February, 2009

See Part II

See Part III

See Part IV

About the author

Scott Campbell is a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity, and editor of the blog http://angrywhitekid.blogs.com/. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, translator and reviser are cited.

URL of this article on Tlaxcala: http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=7175&lg=en