Today in Labor History May 18, 1781: Tupac Amaru II was drawn and quartered in Plaza Mayor del Cuzco, Peru. Tupac II had led a large indigenous uprising against the Spanish conquistadors. As a result of his heroic efforts, he became an inspiration to others in the fight for indigenous rights and against colonialism. The uprising began because of “reforms” by the colonial administration that increased taxes and labor demands on both indigenous and creole populations. However, there was also an ongoing desire to overthrow European rule and restore the pre-conquest Incan empire. And though this would merely replace one feudal power with another, there were also Jacobin and proto-communist elements to the rebellion. Most of the Tupamarista soldiers were poor peasants, artisans and women who saw the uprising as an opportunity to create an egalitarian society, without the cast and class divisions of either the Spanish or Incan feudal systems.
The uprising began with the execution of Spanish colonial Governor Antonio de Arriaga by his own slave, Antonio Oblitas. Tupac Amaru II then made a proclamation claiming to be fighting against the abuses of Spain and for the peace and well-being of Indians, mestizos, mambos, native-born whites and blacks. They then proceeded to march toward Cuzco, killing Spaniards and looting their properties. Everywhere they went, they overthrew the Spanish authority. Tupac’s wife, Michaela Bastidas commanded a battalion of insurgents. Many claimed she was more daring and a superior strategist than her husband.
However, despite their strength and courage, the rebels failed to take Cuzco. The Spaniards brought in reinforcements from Lima. Many creoles abandoned the Inca army and joined the Spanish, fearing for their own safety after seeing the wanton slaughter of Spanish civilians. In the end, Tupac was betrayed by two of his officers and handed over to the Spanish. However, before they killed him, the Spanish forced him to watch them execute his wife, eldest son, uncle, brother-in-law, and several of his captains. They cut out both his wife’s and son’s tongue before hanging them.
As a result of Tupac’s leadership and success against the Spanish, he became a mythical figure in the Peruvian struggle for independence and in the indigenous rights movement. The Tupamaros revolutionary movement in Uruguay (1960s-1970s) took their name from him. As did the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary guerrilla group, in Peru, and the Venezuelan Marxist political party Tupamaro. American rapper, Tupac Amaru Shakur, was also named after him. Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, wrote a poem called “Tupac Amaru (1781).” And Clive Cussler’s book, “Inca Gold,” has a villain who claims to be descended from the revolutionary leader.
Today in Writing History May 9, 1981: Nelson Algren, American novelist and short story writer died. His most famous book was “The Man With The Golden Arm,” which was made into a film in 1955. He was called the “bard of the down-and-outer” based on his numerous stories about the poor, beaten down and addicted. Algren was also called a “gut radical.” His heroes included Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs and Clarence Darrow. He claims he never joined the Communist Party, but he participated in the John Reed Club and was an honorary co-chair of the “Save Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Committee.” The FBI surveilled him and had a 500-page dossier on him.
If you're in Vegas for the Punk Rock and Bowling festival this Memorial Day weekend, be sure to stop by Avantpop Books, Sunday, May 26, noon. I'll be reading from my working-class historical novel, "Anywhere But Schuylkill." Billy Bragg will be headlining, with his book, "Roots, Rockers and Radicals."
Today in Labor History April 30 1945: Eva Braun and Adolph Hitler committed suicide, in Berlin, after being married for less than 40 hours. Many Nazis were tried, convicted and executed. And literally thousands were secreted into the U.S., given false identities, and put to work as spies, intelligence officers, informants, and rocket scientists in the Cold War. Some of them had even been high-ranking Nazi Party officials, secret police chiefs, and heads of concentration camps. In fact, during the first few years after WWII ended, it was easier to get into the U.S. as a Nazi than it was as a Jewish concentration camp survivor. There were policy makers in Washington who said the Jews shouldn’t be let in because they’re “lazy” and “self-entitled.” For more on this sordid history, read “The Nazis Next Door
How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men,” By Eric Lichtblau.
Today in labor history April 28, 1896: Na Hye-sok was born. She was a South Korean feminist, poet, writer, painter and journalist. She was the first female professional painter and the first feminist writer in Korea. In 1919, the authorities jailed her for participating in the March 1st Movement against Japanese rule in Korea. In 1934, she published an essay called “Divorce Testimony.” In that piece, she wrote about the repression of female sexuality. She also said that her ex-husband couldn’t satisfy her sexually and refused to talk about it with her. And she also promoted the idea of "test marriages," where a couple would live together before marrying to see if they really were compatible. These ideas were considered so scandalous and shocking that her career took a tailspin and never recovered.
Today in Labor History April 21, 1910: Mark Twain died. William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature." He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which provided the setting for “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn.” He apprenticed with a printer and worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to the newspaper of his older brother Orion Clemens. He later worked as a riverboat pilot before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. Twain was famous for his wit and brilliant writing. However, he also had extremely progressive politics for his era. Later in his life, he became an ardent anti-imperialist. “I have read carefully the treaty of Paris and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem… And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.” During the Boxer Rebellion, he said that "the Boxer is a patriot. He loves his country better than he does the countries of other people. I wish him success." From 1901, until his death in 1910, he was vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, which opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the U.S. He was also critical of European imperialists such as Cecil Rhodes and King Leopold II of Belgium, who attempted to establish colonies in African. He also supported the Russian revolutionaries fighting against the Tsar.
Many people have criticized him for his racism. Indeed, schools have banned “Huckleberry Finn.” However, Twain was an adamant supporter of abolition and said that the Emancipation Proclamation “not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also." He also fought for the rights of immigrants, particularly the Chinese. "I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible... but I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for wrongs thus done to him." And though his early writings were racist against indigenous peoples, he later wrote that “in colonized lands all over the world, "savages" have always been wronged by "whites" in the most merciless ways, such as "robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow murder, through poverty and the white man's whiskey."
Twain was also an early feminist, who campaigned for women's suffrage. He also wrote in support of unions and the labor movement, especially the Knights of Labor, one of the most important unions of the era. “Who are the oppressors? The few: the King, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.”
@MikeDunnAuthor@bookstadon
*** RIP Mr Clemens, d. 4-21-1910
I encourage everyone to explore the writings that were suppressed by Twain's editor and his daughter, starting with 'Letters From the Earth', and many items hammering on the obscenity, genocide, mind-shattering horror in what is called the 'Bible'.
"All human beings are cowards, and I am not only marching in that procession, I am carrying a banner" #quotes
My favorite:
“When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.”
#Bukowsky also had a deep love and respect for his cat. Something about independent spirits recognizing each other.
Avoid the horrifying trend to try to judge great artists from previous times by narrow and fluid box of today's college kid fads. Artists live in their present not yours.
Today in Labor History April 21, 1816: Charlotte Brontë, English novelist and poet, was born. After her mother died of cancer, in 1821, her father sent the five Brontë sisters to Clergy Daughters' School, where the two eldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, contracted tuberculosis. The disease killed them both in 1825. Charlotte always said that the terrible conditions in that school stunted her physical development and caused her lifelong health problems. Charlotte wrote her first poem in 1829, at the age of 13. She would go on to write 200 more poems. In 1836, she asked Poet Laureate Robert Southey for encouragement as a writer. He replied, “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and ought not to be.” Because of this advice, she chose to publish under the gender-neutral name of Currer Bell, to avoid prejudice. She published a book of poetry in 1846, and her most famous novel, “Jane Eyre,” in 1847. In Jane Eyre, she uses the Clergy Daughters' School as the model for the school attended by her eponymous protagonist, Jane Eyre. Bronte died in 1855, most likely from hyperemesis gravidarum, a complication of pregnancy.
As young adults, my brothers and I thoroughly looted our parent’s library. I still have many of those books, with their dog-eared pages and faint whiff of mildew. I think of them as comfort food for the mind. I picked up some great Melville that way, and Jack London, too. But my favorite score was a matching set of Jayne Eyre and Wuthering Heights that I recently found in their library, after my father died. My mom told me that they had belonged to her mother, who passed them down to her. And now she was passing them down to me. Great literature, of course, but they also contain beautiful artwork. And provenance, with my grandmother’s name printed on the inside cover.
@MikeDunnAuthor@bookstadon Thanks for sharing this fascinating back story. I always wondered if Lowood School in Jane Eyre was based on a school Bronte had attended herself.
Today in Labor History April 17, 2014: Journalist and author Gabriel Garcia Marquez died on this day. Affectionately known as Gabo, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. Two of his most famous books were, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). Garcia Marquez was a socialist and an anti-imperialist, and critical of U.S. policy in Latin America.
Today in Labor History April 16, 1884: Anatole France was born. He was a poet and novelist and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1921. Many of his works satirized religious and political ideas. The son of a bookseller, France spent much of his childhood in his family’s bookstore, reading voraciously, and meeting many of the writers who frequented the store. He was active in the movement to free Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer falsely accused of espionage. And he signed Emile Zola’s letter in support of Dreyfus, “J’accuse.” France wrote about wrote about the affair in his 1901 novel “Monsieur Bergeret.” France's novel, “Penguin Island depicts penguins transformed into humans after the birds have been mistakenly baptized by the almost-blind Abbot Mael. “The Gods Are Athirst” (1912), about a true-believing follower of Maximilien Robespierre and the Reign of Terror of 1793–94, is a wake-up call against political and ideological fanaticism. “The Revolt of the Angels” (1914) it tells the story of Arcade, a bored guardian angel who starts reading his mentee’s books on theology and becomes an atheist, moves to Paris, falls in love, and loses his virginity causing his wings to fall off. He then joins the revolutionary movement of fallen angels.
@MikeDunnAuthor@bookstadon “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
― Anatole France
(Also found on the back of my business card.)
Today in Labor History April 14, 1935: The Black Sunday dust storm swept across the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. This was one of the worst storms of the Dust Bowl. 4 years later, on this same date, John Steinbeck published his classic working-class novel, The Grapes of Wrath, about Dust Bowl refugees in California.
@chas@elysegrasso there's an active community here, with many writing servers depending on what you write. I'm on a smut-focused server with a lot of writers and artists (smutlandia.com) and I have another account on wandering.shop, which has a lot of SF&F authors.
Today In Labor History April 7, 1804: Haitian general, Toussaint Louverture died on this day. He was one of the most prominent members of the Haitian revolution for independence from France. The slave revolt against the French began in 1791 with the call by Dutty Boukman, a vodou priest. Encouraged by the French and American revolutions. Louverture led 100,000 enslaved Haitians in revolt, winning their freedom in 1793. In 1804, Haiti became first free black republic in the world. The U.S. refused to recognize Haiti for the next 70 and France extracted millions in restitution, destroying any hope of ever moving out of deep poverty. Louverture was betrayed in the end and died in prison. For a fantastic history of the Haitian Revolution, read “The Black Jacobins,” by C.L.R.James.