Isaac Puente Arnestoy (3 June 1896 – 1 September 1936) was an anarcho-communist and anarcho-naturist doctor who focused on birth control, abortion, hygiene, public health and the environment.
Life
Early Life
Isaac war born in Las Carreras, near Vizcaya in the Basque country of the Spain. He went to a Jesuist school in Orduna and then took up medical studies at Santiago and Valladolid Universities between 1914 and 1918. He started practicing as a doctor in Ciruena in Logrono province and then from 1919 in Maestu in Alava province.[1]
Radicalisation
He began to write many articles and small pamphlets under the pseudonym of “A Country Doctor”. From 1923 he began to write for the anarchist press, writing on subjects like birth control and sexuality, first for the Alcoy magazine Generacion Consciente, and then for its successor Estudios, as well as for the Barcelona magazine Etica Iniciales.[1]
Political Activities
He was one of the leading anarchist theoreticians during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1933 the Peninsula Plenary of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) nominated him to write on the concept of libertarian communism. His pamphlets on this theme, above all El Comunismo Libertario, were massively distributed, reaching around 100,000 people.[2]
He propagandised around birth control, hygiene and sexuality and was much admired for his humanity towards his patients. He linked the problems of health to the need for revolution. An active militant , he served on the Peninsular Committee of the FAI, on the National Revolutionary Committee of 1933, and was one of the coordinators of the uprising in December in Aragon and La Rioja alongside Buenaventura Durruti, Cipriano Mera, and the Alcrudo brothers. As Miguel Foz, an anarchist who took part in the uprising, noted: “We lived for five days under ibertarian communism”.
The uprising was savagely repressed. Puente was one of those arrested and tortured by the police. After 5 months he and other organisers were released due to massive public pressure. This was due to the collapse of the case against them after a raid on the prosecution offices from within the prison! Puente’s pamphlet was the basis of the positions on libertarian communism formulated by the CNT at the May 1936 Congress in Zaragoza.[1]
Death
With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Isaac was taken by surprised and arrested by Francoist forces from his medical practice in Maestu and taken to Vitoria. He was executed by firing squad with two other young anarchists in Pancorbo, near Burgos. He was later sentenced to death by a military tribunal, despite already being dead.[1] The CNTs Isaac Puente Battalion was named in his honour.[2]
Ideas
- Should Spain ever succeed in a libertarian communist revolution, it will be likely invaded and blockaded by naval powers. To counter this, the revolutionaries will form militias, participate in smuggling and push for self-sufficiency.
- Spain could self-sufficiently produce enough coal, wheat, olive oil, oranges, rice, vegetables, potatoes, almonds, wines, fruits, cotton and metals. It would need to either import oil, discover new oil deposits in Spain or develop synthetic oil from alcohol as well as creating synthetic rubber. Spain could produce more than enough electricity from hydroelectricity in rivers.
- Spain should begin an intense campaign of reforestation (this was in the 1930s).
Quotes
"The workers' movement has come through barbaric repressions. For a long time it allowed itself to be seduced by the false-voices of reformism and by the siren songs of politics."
"The workers have been the target of too much preaching. Some have told them they need calm, others that they need culture, others training. According to the notions of those who would be their shepherds, the workers have never been mature enough to liberate themselves. If the situation is to continue, preparations will go on for all eternity: the only way the workers can shrug off the ignorance and cultural deprivation that the capitalist regime and the state assign them to is by means of revolution."
"The very bringing together of the two terms (communism and libertarian) is indicative in itself of the fusion of two ideas: one of them is collectivist, tending to bring about harmony in the whole through the contributions and cooperation of individuals, without undermining their independence in any way; while the other is individualist, seeking to reassure the individual that his independence will be respected."
"Since by himself he can achieve nothing, the factory worker, railway worker or labourer needs to join forces with his colleagues, both to carry out his work and to protect his interests as an individual."
"Poverty is the symptom and slavery the disease."
"Every ill that we deplore in society today is rooted in the institution of power."
"Poverty degrades, but wealth perverts. Obedience consigns man to a state of prostration, while the authority deforms his sensibilities. Nothing has ever been the cause of greater tears or bloodshed than capital, with its fathomless appetite for profit. The whole of history is crammed with the crimes and tortures carried out by authority."
"To destroy poverty, and likewise to end slavery, the accumulation of property and of power must be resisted, so that no one takes more than s/he needs and no one is allowed to boss all the others."
"The unemployed are the troops of revolution. Hunger makes a coward of the isolated individual but when that hunger is generally felt it becomes a source of rage and audacity."
"Collectively, the workers know more about sociology than the intellectuals; they are much more farsighted when it comes to solutions"
"What we call common sense, a quick grasp of things, intuitive ability, initiative and originality are not things that can be bought or sold in the universities. They may be found in illiterates and in intellectuals in equal measure. For all its ferocious ignorance. an uncultivated mentality is preferable to minds that have been poisoned by privilege and eroded by the routine grind of learning. Cultured they may be, but our intellectuals are nonetheless uncultivated in their sense of dignity, a sense that sometimes shines far brighter in folk who are supposed to be uncultured."
"What holds human societies together is not compulsion by the powers that be, nor the intelligent foresight of those in government, who always falsely imagine themselves to be possessed of this quality. What holds societies together is the instinct of sociability and the need for mutual aid."