Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Canarian Imagination: the Missing Flag

Fig 1.

Commemorative bust in Parque Secundino Delgado, Author's photo. Delgado has been celebrated as the founding father of Canarian nationalism, which has been in office in the Islands for the last twenty-five years.

In Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination (2005),¹ Benedict Anderson explores the transatlantic networks of resistance that, at the turn of the twentieth century, brought together anarchists and anti-colonial fighters from the Spanish colonies. Although he discusses in great depth the independence movements of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, Anderson does not mention the Canary Islands and their role in these struggles, regarding them as a natural part of the Spanish mainland. This obscures the peculiar history of the Canary Islands and of Canarians and Americans of Canarian descent who were deeply involved in anti-colonial and anarchist movements at both flanks of the Atlantic Ocean. This omission becomes particularly problematic in Anderson's discussion of Cuban independence, whose iconic leader José Martí (1853–95) was of Canarian descent, as were numerous fighters in the various incarnations of Cuba's Mambí army, which fought the Spanish for most of the second half of the nineteenth century. Canarians were not only the product of a colonial history that resembled, in many ways, that of America, but were also subject to various regimes of slavery, bonded labour and legal discrimination (in Spain, the Canaries and America) throughout the history of the Spanish empire.

Challenging Anderson's historical myopia, the aim of this paper is to highlight the relevant role of Canarian subaltern consciousness in the anticolonial and anarchist struggles of the late nineteenth century. To understand how and why Martí and the Canarian Mambises, not unlike the isleño descendants Simόn Bolívar (1783–1830) and Francisco de Miranda (1750–1816) a century before, rose against the Spanish empire we need to reassess their position within Spanish racial and social hierarchies. And for that, understanding their Canarian-ness is crucial.

This paper will first assess the colonial history of the Canaries and its significance in the colonial histories of Latin America, and then it will focus on Secundino Delgado (1867–1912), a Canarian anarchist who also fought under three flags. Delgado's short but eventful life involved joining Cuban independence and labour movements in the US (1890s) and then articulating a Canarian anti-colonial project from Venezuela (1896–8) before returning to the Canaries and being imprisoned in Spain (1902). Delgado's little-known history is an instance of the transatlantic networks of anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian resistance that Anderson discusses, but casts the Canaries in a central role. As the first Canarian known to have articulated an openly anti-colonial discourse, Delgado is celebrated in the Canary Islands mainly as the pioneer and patriarch of Canarian national consciousness (Fig. 1).² This can be seen in the graffiti illustrating this paper, which portrays Delgado surrounded by pre-colonial and modern national symbols, quoting his motto 'Todo por y para la libertad de los hombres y los pueblos' (All for the freedom of men and peoples), and emphasizing the freedom of peoples, and the Canarian people in particular, over the freedom of individuals (Fig. 2). In Delgado's writings, however, national liberation goes hand in hand with social liberation and his critique of colonial power is largely articulated through libertarian themes. Thus, Delgado can be said to be the most articulate exponent of a certain Canarian subaltern consciousness that inhabits and haunts the transatlantic routes of anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian resistance.

Fig 2.

Secundino in the modern anti-colonial Canarian imagination, mural (now painted over) in Parque Secundino Delgado. Author's photo, 20016.

When introducing José Martí, Anderson refers to him as 'a first-generation creole' or 'criollo', which is not entirely accurate since his 'father came from Valencia and his mother from Tenerife'.³ In the racial hierarchies of the Spanish American Empire, Canarians were neither considered peninsulares (the ruling Spanish...