An Attempt to Say Goodbye: On the Life and Work of Edgar Rodrigues
The death of Edgar Rodrigues in May was a major blow to the anarchist movement in Brazil and also around the world. Though it would be unrealistic to try to capture the richness and complexity of his life in a single essay, an attempt must be made nonetheless.
The following article by Marcolino Jeremias makes such an attempt. It was translated by Chuck Morse. The piece is available in Spanish here and in Portuguese here.
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An Attempt to Say Goodbye: On the Life and Work of Edgar Rodrigues
Antônio Francisco Correia, who used the pseudonym Edgar Rodrigues, was born to Manuel Francisco Correia and Albina da Silva Santos on March 12, 1921 in Angeias, which is north of the city of Matosinhos in the Portugual’s Portu district. His father was a militant anarcho-syndicalist and participated in the “Union of the Four Arts,” an affiliate of the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) and the International Association of Workers (AIT), which represented various workmen’s trades in Matosinhos. Two cousins, Armindo da Silva Sarilho and Manuel Sarilho, were also members of the Union.
Toward the end of 1933, a crackdown by Antônio Oliveira Salazar’s military dictatorship forced the closure of this union. Part of its cultural archive was hidden in the Correia family home and clandestine administrative meetings were also held there in the evening hours. The young Antônio Francisco Correia listened with great curiosity to the discussions held during the gatherings.
State police raided the home one early morning in 1936 and arrested Manuel Francisco Correia. Antônio Francisco Correia—or “Correia,” as he was known among intimates—often visited his father in the political police lockup during the ten weeks that he was imprisoned there without trial. Once freed, his father was punished anew by being deprived of his job, which caused the family to endure serious economic difficulties.
Two years later, Correia wrote his first article for Portu’s Primero de Enero newspaper, although it was not published due to censorship. At this time, he also began to compose the drafts that would make up his first book.
On May Day, 1939, Correia and some friends skipped work as a form of protest—it was illegal to commemorate May Day—and met to affirm the anarchist origins of the date. In March of the following year, he joined the Flower of Youth Drama Group (Theater Lover) of Santa Cruz Bispo in the Matosinhos municipality, where he met Ondina dos Anjos da Costa Santos, who became his life-long partner. He also worked with the Joys of Perafita Drama Group, where he met the militant anarchist historian, José Marques da Costa.
In September 1946, the anarchist Luis Joaquim Portela[1] and five political prisoners escaped from the Peniche Fortress. Two years later, Correia met Portela while he was underground and helped him acquire forged documents, although it so happens that he was imprisoned again due to a betrayal.[2]
On July 19, 1951, he was introduced to the infamous anti-clerical writer Tomás da Fonseca and, the following day, set off for Brazil in flight from political persecution unleashed by the Portuguese dictatorship.
Upon arriving in Rio de Janeiro, he met the following comrades: Roberto das Neves, Manuel Perez, Giacomo Bottino, Ida Bottino, Germinal Bottino, Pascoal Gravina, José Romero, Ondina Romero, Angelina Soares, Diamantino Augusto, José Oiticica, João Peres Bouças, Carolina Peres, Ideal Peres, and Afonso Vieira among others…
At the prompting of Perse and Vieira, he submitted an article that he had authored on the Portuguese dictatorship that was published in the anarchist periodical Acción Directa[3] and later became active in the publishing group by the same name. Immediately thereafter, with the help of comrades such as Enio Cardoso, Domingos Rojas, and Benjamim Cano Ruiz, he began publishing essays in the international libertarian press and also, as this time, adopted the pseudonym Edgar Rodrigues.[4]
He participated in the gathering of the Brazilian anarchist movement that occurred on February 9-11, 1953 in the home of José Oiticica. At this meeting, he met other anarchist militants who were active in São Paulo: Edgard Leuenroth, Adelino Tavares de Pinho, Lucca Gabriel, Osvaldo Salgueiro, to name a few. During this period, he also met the Spanish writer and journalist Victor Garcia (Tomás-Germinal Gracia Ibars), Romanian poet Eugen Relgis, and Paraguayan comrade Ceríaco Duarte.
He published his first book, In Salazar’s Inquisition (Na Inquisição do Salazar), in May 1957 with Roberto das Neves’s press, Editora Germinal. He also became a member of the Friends of our Ranch Naturalist Society (Sociedade Naturista Amigos de Nossa Chácara, SNANC).[5]
On March 7, 1958, at the initiative of the Fabio Luz Libertarian Group,[6] the Profesor José Oiticica Study Center (Centro de Estudos Professor José Oiticica, CEPJO) was founded in homage to its recently deceased namesake (July 22, 1882 – June 30, 1957), with the goal of disseminating his valuable work. The following individuals made up CEPJO’s founding group: Edgar Rodrigues, Afonso Alves Vieira, Ideal Peres, Esther de Oliveira Redes, Seraphim Porto, Manuel dos Santos Ramos, Francisco de Magalhães Viotti, Germinal Bottino, Fernando Gonçalves da Silva, Pedro Gonçalves dos Santos, Roberto Barreto Pedroso das Neves, Enio Cardoso, and Raul Vital (Atayde da Silva Dias).
Among its many activities, the CEPJO sponsored lectures, courses, and workshops on art, politics, history, vegetarianism, psychology, theater, cinema, literature, geography, sociology, and anarchism. Announcements for these events appeared in the daily papers. The CEPJO also promoted, along with other groups, elections in the student movement and pressed for the liberation of Spanish anarchist José Comin Pardillos and campaigned for him to be granted political asylum in Brazil.
Another CEPJO initiative was the creation of the Free World Press (Editora Mundo Livre), which published the following books: Edgar Rodrigues’s A Portrait of the Portuguese Dictatorship (1962), The Anarchist Doctrine Anarquista in Reach of All by José Oiticica (second edition, 1963), Anarchism: Pathway to Liberation Social by Edgard Leuenroth (1963), Peter Kropotkin’s Libertarian Humanism and Modern Science (1964) and Marxism’s Errors and Contradictions by Varlan Tcherkesoff (1964).
The Profesor José Oiticica Study Center was an active anarchist project for twelve years (including five under the Brazilian military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985). It efforts came to a halt when it was stormed and shut down by the armed forces.[7] The imprisonments began on October 8 and lasted until October 9, 10, 15, and 21, 1969.
Among those imprisoned and charged, there were: Edgar Rodrigues, Pietro Michele Stefano Ferrua, Ideal Peres, Antonio Costa, Fernando Gonçalves da Silva, Manoel dos Santos Ramos, Paulo Fernandes da Silva, Roberto Barreto Pedroso das Neves, Eli Briareu de Oliveira, Mário Rogério Nogueira Pinto, Antonio Rui Nogueira Pinto, Maria Arminda Sol e Silva, Antonio da Silva Costa, Elisa da Silva Costa, Roberto da Silva Costa, and Carlos Alberto da Silva. Michelangelo Privitera and Esther de Oliveira Redes were released for the lack of evidence.[8]
In a great demonstration of libertarian solidarity, anonymous militant anarchists—anonymous due to the times—from São Paulo and other parts of Brazil helped pay the legal costs associated with the defense. The trial lasted until November 30, 1971.
During the period in which he was subjected to this military trial, Edgar Rodrigues, in a pioneering attitude, began publishing books recovering the history of the Brazilian anarchist movement[9] and, later, the history of the movement in Portugal.[10] He wrote sixty-two books between 1957 and 2007, which were published above all in Brazil and Portugal, but also in Italy, Venezuela, and England (some are in their third third editions).
Around 1976, he and comrade Elvira Boni participated in the Cláudio Khans’s documentary The Dream Isn’t Over (O Sonho não acabou) about anarchist theater in Brazil. The film is still broadcast on TV occasionally and shown at libertarian events.
He also contributed to the anarchist periodical The Enemy of the King (O Inimigo do Rei) during its existence between 1977 and 1988 and wrote more than 1,760 articles for newspapers in fifteen countries, among them, Voluntad (Uruguay), Solidariedad Obrera (France), La Batalla (Portugal), El Libertario (Cuba), Tierra y Libertad (Mexico/Spain), El Sol (Costa Rica), C.N.T. (France), La Protesta (Argentina), Solidaridad Gastronómica (Cuba), L’Adunata Dei Refrattari (United States), Ruta (Venezuela), Reconstruir (Argentina), Voz Anarquista (Portugal), El Libertario (Venezuela), and many others.
In April-May 1986, he participated in the congress for the reorganization of the Brazilian Workers‘ Confederation (Confederação Operária Brasileira, COB) held in the headquarters of the São Paulo Social Culture Center (Centro de Cultura Social de São Paulo) at 85 Rubino de Oliveira Street in the Brás neighborhood.
On August 21, 1986, he was among the co-founders of Alpha Circle Archive for Historical Studies (arquivo Círculo Alfa de Estudos Históricos, CAEH), along with: Nito Lemos Reis, Antonio Martinez, José Carlos Orsi Morel, Jaime Cubero, Francisco Cuberos, Felix Gil Herrera, Liberto Lemos Reis, Fernando Gonçalves da Silva, and Ideal Peres.[11]
He donated a large portion of the materials that he had collected during a lifetime dedicated to rescuing the memory of anarchists in Brazil and worldwide (books, magazines, photographs, letters, minutes, memoirs, and other documents, in many cases the only existing copies). He acquired all of this while visiting old anarchist comrades, convincing them to write their memoirs, interviewing them, corresponding with them, buying and acquiring donations of those materials with other militant historians from the movement—again, another a pioneering initiative—such as Joaquim Fernandes, Manuel Lopes, Luís Saturnino, Manuel Perez, Ideal Peres, José Marques da Costa, José Francisco dos Passos, João Perdigão Gutierrez, Manuel Marques Bastos, Pedro Catallo, João Navarro, Adriano Botelho, Elias Iltchenco, among others…[12]
Despite the hardships that Edgar Rodrigues endured to obtain these materials, and all of the risks that he faced when preserving under the military dictatorship, the members of the Alpha Circle Archive, represented by José Carlos Orsi Morel, changed the locks to the Archive building, located at 220 Gonçalves Dias Street in São Paulo’s Brás district, thus preventing Edgar Rodrigues from accessing to the archive and, in an shady maneuver, expelled him from the project during a meeting at which he was not present, thus denying him the right to defend himself. This demonstrated an attitude that was completely antagonistic to anarchist principles and the basic concepts of justice.
In April 2002, Rute Coelho Zendron completed A Study of Edgar Rodrigues (Um Estudo Sobre Edgar Rodrigues) for Brazil’s Pontifícia Universidade Católica, which produced an interesting documentary film about his life and work.[13]
Edgar Rodrigues died on the night of Thursday, May 14, 2009 in his home in the neighborhood of Meier (Rio de Janeiro) as result of respiratory failure. He leaves his partner, children, grandchildren, a vast quantity of anarchist work to be studied, and a great example to be followed.
NOTES:
[1] They exchanged letters between 1932-1937, when was Luis Joaquim Portela was imprisoned.
[2] On September 10, 1952.
[3] The first article published by Antônio Francisco Correia was “Fala Um Operário Português,” which appeared in periodical Acción Directa (Rio de Janeiro), number 80, in May/June 1952.
[4] Antônio Francisco Correia also wrote under the pseudonyms Varlin and Zola, among others.
[5] The Friends of our Ranch Naturalist Society was registered on November 9, 1939 and the group that initiated its construction was made up of: Germinal Leuenroth, Nicola D’Albenzio, Virgilio Dall’Oca, Justino Salgueiro, Salvador Arrebola, Antônio Castro, João Rojo, Benedito Romano, José Oliva Castillo, Roque Branco, Antônio Valverde, Cecílio Dias Lopes, and Lucca Gabriel. The Our Ranch/Our Site was an important step toward the reorganization of the anarchist movement in Brazil after the end of the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas (1930-1945) and was the setting for important libertarian congresses and meetings from 1948 until the end of the 1970s.
[6] The Libertarian Group (later, the Libertarian Action Group) was formed by militants including: Edgar Rodrigues, Seraphim Porto, Enio Cardoso, Roberto das Neves, and Afonso Vieira. It existed between the death of José Oiticica and the foundation of the Profesor José Oiticica Study Center. The group Libertarian Action Group was absorbed into the CEPJO after the latter’s founding.
[7] The soldiers also stormed homes, professional offices, and the press Editora Germinal, stealing hundreds of items in the process.
[8] Edgar Rodrigues helped hide Esther de Oliveira Redes in Jacarepaguá (Rio de Janeiro) and bartered services to “buy” the dismissal of her case and the return of many documents that could have compromised other comrades.
[9] Among the classic books by Edgar Rodrigues on the anarchist movement in Brazil, there are: Socialism and Syndicalism in Brazil: 1675-1913 (1969); Nationalism and Social Culture: 1913-1922 (1972); Work and Conflict: 1900-1935 (1977); and New Paths—Social Research: 1922-1946 (1978).
[10] Edgar Rodrigues’s principal books on anarchists’ trajectory in Portugal: The Workers’ Awakening in Portugal: 1834-1911 (1980), The Anarchists and The Unions in Portugal: 1911-1922 (1981); The Anarcho-Syndicalist Resistence to the Dictatoship: 1922-1939 (1981); The Libertarian Oposition in Portugal: 1939-1974 (1982).
[11] Esther de Oliveira Redes did not sign the founding documents of the CAEH, but participated in the meetings and contributed to its maintenance until she disassociated herself from the project.
[12] For example, he and Sônia Oiticica acquired letters from when Sônia’s father, José Oiticica, was incarcerated in the Ilha Rasa prison (Rio de Janeiro) from 1924 to 1925.
[13] Among the other academic studies on Edgar Rodrigues, there are: the thesis Edgar Rodrigues: I Tempi e Le Opere by Marco Mazzeo, University of Napoles/Italy (2005) and post-doctoral work (a monograph), La Siembra De Ideas – Edgar Rodrigues, Una Vida Aplicada A La Memoria Anarquista, by Anna Gicelle Garcia Alaniz, for the Unicamp university of education (2008).
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| During an anarchist congress at Our Ranch. Edgar Rodrigues is on the right, |