The Village Against the World (9 page)

This, they argued, could be achieved through a change in the crop management of the 23,000 hectares of land between Herrera and Écija, which were planted with labour-light dry crops like corn and sunflowers. The Marinaleda proposal was to sow crops that created substantially more work, like tobacco, cotton or sugar beet, and to create secondary industries for processing them. This, they argued, would instantly lead to a 30 per cent reduction in unemployment in central Andalusia. They also proposed the reforestation of some of the village’s environs with almond and pine trees, and the construction of a dam on the Genil River to irrigate the 50,000 hectares of arid land around it.

Their demands, and their actions, were discussed and ratified by daily general assemblies, with even the children voting – because some of them, too, had volunteered to take part in the hunger strike. As media interest grew and journalists began to flock towards Marinaleda, other solidarity actions broke out elsewhere, many of them organised by the SOC, including a church occupation in nearby Morón de la Frontera, while 200 fellow
jornaleros
established four roadblocks on the Malaga-Seville trunk road.

‘We will continue until they know there is hunger in Andalusia’, read the
El País
headline on 17 August 1980, a
quote from Sánchez Gordillo. It was a revealing line. The concrete demand for funds was only part of the battle: what was vital was that the rest of Spain, even the rest of the world, should be made aware of the region’s plight.

A hunger strike was both a brave and canny choice. The normal repression meted out by the Guardia Civil and the government would not work this time. You can’t arrest or beat someone for refusing food. Nothing could silence, in Sánchez Gordillo’s words, ‘the voice of hundreds of empty stomachs willing to continue, if necessary, until death’. The drama of the rhetoric reflected the desperation of the situation: Sánchez Gordillo spoke to the media in ominous tones, warning of outsiders who wished to make an example of Marinaleda, bourgeois
caciques
scared of these
comunistas
, people who dreamed of ‘turning Marinaleda into Casas Viejas’. The invocation of that tragedy was knowingly provocative, but it was justified, too.

The hunger strike was launched in August, even though (or because) the heat would be at its most punishing, peaking above thirty-eight degrees every day. August, of course, is dead time for news, and the perfect opportunity to gain national media attention for systemic, ongoing stories like poverty via high-profile acts of vanguardist protest like this one. It allowed Sánchez Gordillo to proclaim to the world that they had received ‘neither a telegram, nor a call, nor a promise’ from the out-of-touch politicians busy sunning themselves on the beach; he added that ‘the left too, are on vacation. They only come here for votes.’ The heat made it
more dangerous – doctors were on hand at all times, just in case – but also all the more remarkable, that men, women and children were going without food. Every day they would meet at the assembly to decide whether to continue, and to discuss the various messages of support they had received, as well as the attempts to reach those in power.

‘We went out from the assembly very slowly,’ wrote Sánchez Gordillo in a diary he kept of the hunger strike. ‘Sweat has ravaged us. Some wring out their shirts – this is the sauna of the poor.’

The participation of the children of the village seems especially striking – they could see how desperate their parents’ struggles for survival had become, and the total absence of work, and feel its effects on their households (and dinner plates). Going to bed hungry was a common occurrence. As one newspaper cartoon put it at the time: ‘700 on hunger strike in Marinaleda; the rest, just hungry.’

On day six of the strike, some of the children sat down and together wrote a letter to Prince Felipe, son of King Juan Carlos, heir to the throne, and, at the time, twelve years old. It was published in several Spanish newspapers. As far as the official record is concerned there was little adult involvement in the letter, and either way, it is a remarkable piece of propaganda:

The children of Marinaleda have the pleasure to tell you about the situation in Andalusia and specifically, Marinaleda. A few days ago, our parents, in an open
assembly, agreed to go on hunger strike. We are in solidarity with them. We have been on hunger strike for several days.

Why are we on hunger strike? We are on hunger strike because our parents have already spent six months living on the alms of community employment. In our village people earn not even two hundred pesetas a day, because sometimes they only work two days a month. We live in such poverty that some families have to borrow money from their neighbours, because the shops no longer give them credit. Put yourself in our place and think: is it fair that while some children are on holiday with their parents and families, others don’t know if they will eat that night? Is it fair that while some children have private tutors, others can’t even attend state schools? Is it fair that while some waste large amounts of money on toys and luxuries, others have no shoes to wear and must go barefoot?

We don’t think it is, and that is why we are on hunger strike. That is why we have gone several days without food, and we won’t stop until a solution arrives, because this situation is unbearable. It is even more unbearable in a land as rich as Andalusia.

Friend: the problem in our land is serious, and so we are going to continue fighting alongside our parents. We will continue fighting because the problem is also ours; so please consider and answer these questions. What will become of us? Where is our future? Your
future, we imagine, is already resolved, but what of ours? Who will resolve ours?

This is not a fairy tale, but a real situation which you will never know … We ask you with all our hearts to stop and think, and perhaps you’ll feel anger or pity and you or your parents will give us some solution.

Sorry if these words are strong, but our hunger is stronger. Greetings from your friends. Marinaleda.

At the heart of this effort of undeniable collective energy, Mayor Sánchez Gordillo, still only thirty-one years old, was transforming into the person he would remain for decades. Notwithstanding his disapproval of leaders, he was more than a simple conduit for people power. Through his ineffable charisma he was leading the
pueblo
, as much as it was leading him. The people gathered for the general assembly were ‘almost religious in their silence’ when listening to Sánchez Gordillo, observed one visiting journalist – the only interruptions were outbursts of spontaneous applause. The assemblies closed with rousing shouts of ‘
¡Viva Andalucía!
’ before Sánchez Gordillo implored everyone to go home and rest.

As the strike progressed, there were sympathy hunger strikes in neighbouring
pueblos
such as Osuna, Martín de la Jara, Aguadulce, Gilena and Los Corrales, as well as a general strike in Cabezas de San Juan. In Herrera, seven miles down the road, 200 workers locked themselves in the Chamber of Agriculture. As the days wore on, even more
pueblos
across Andalusia held assemblies to consider actions, occupations and demonstrations. The more desperate the situation got, the more its effects spiralled outwards – a truly successful expression of the anarchist tenet of ‘propaganda of the deed’. Spain’s minister of the interior returned from holiday; meetings were held, flimsy promises made, and still Marinaleda voted to continue the hunger strike.

The political tension rose with the medical danger to its participants. By the final full day of the strike, 22 August, people were regularly fainting, and suffering hypoglycemia and crises of hypotension, while one man in his thirties was transferred to hospital in Seville.

At last, Labour Minister Salvador Sánchez Terán and Seville’s civil governor, Isidro Pérez-Beneyto, effectively the leader of the region, returned from their holidays to address the crisis and, after numerous meetings, authorised a payment totalling 253 million pesetas for the Andalusian unemployed ‘to last until the December olive harvest’, as Marinaleda had demanded. While meeting the village’s request, the politicians complained to the press that the whole thing had been exaggerated and cynically orchestrated for the benefit of the SOC union. They also claimed, somewhat implausibly, that the strike had had no effect on their decision to issue the emergency payment.

While the people of Marinaleda recovered, the unrest sparked by the hunger strike continued, with more hunger strikes elsewhere,
pueblo
-specific general strikes and
occupations of government buildings – and solidarity demonstrations as far away as the Basque Country. Without the 253-million-peseta subsidy, it seems the hunger strike of 700 people in one small village could have spiralled into a full-blown regional uprising.

It was a Monday night in Palo Palo, back in December 2012, with León’s country rock CDs playing softly in the background, harmonicas and long verses of longing delivered in Spanish. Monday nights are always very quiet in Andalusia – everyone has spent most of Sunday eating, drinking and socialising, and many restaurants and bars don’t even open. There was a grand total of four of us in the bar: a businessman from Seville, delaying his journey home after visiting a friend, the landlord León, one other middle-aged local guy who often loiters around Palo, who called himself Michael, and me.

There was a Seville—Valladolid football game on TV, but it was going nowhere in particular, and the music was drowning out the commentary, so I got out my
Marinaleda – Huelga de Hambre Contra el Hambre
pamphlet, the more obscure of the two books written in 1980 that dealt with the hunger strike. After a while, Michael, equally bored by the game, noticed I was reading something in Spanish and asked if he could see it. With his leather jacket, slightly sad, gormless expression, and punky rat-tail haircut, he looked like the kind of guy who had arrived at middle age suddenly, due to a clerical error, and the surprise had devastated him.
‘I’ve not seen this one before,’ he muttered, turning it over in his hands. ‘Man, that was a crazy year … We always have struggles here in Andalusia, but not usually like that. You know we were famous across the world? What a crazy summer.’

He flipped the pages slowly, spotting some familiar faces in the few photos at the back. He kept flicking through, and then his small sharp eyes zeroed in on one particular passage. He smiled, the only time I’ve ever seen him do so. ‘I knew it!’ He beckoned me to lean in. ‘That’s me! That interview is with me, Cornelio! That’s my real name. I was only eleven.’ He called León over from the bar. ‘León, look – it’s me!’

We read it together: he had been a strident young lad, resolute about joining the hunger strike and determined that the young people would remain as steadfast as their parents. ‘Isn’t this a lot to endure for an eleven-year-old?’ the interviewer had asked him. ‘We will endure it,’ he replied. ‘You haven’t eaten anything?’ ‘Just water. We’re going to carry on until they give us work. Or we’ll have to emigrate.’ Even at eleven he was ready to work, he told the incredulous interviewer – picking cotton, in a factory, anything.

Michael sighed. ‘The situation is much better in Marinaleda now, of course,’ he said. ‘But we are still always fighting. Struggles, protests, demonstrations – here, in Seville, wherever.’ I asked if Prince Felipe had ever answered their letter. He rolled his eyes slightly. ‘What do
you think?’ he said, handed the book back to me, and turned back to the football.

In the mid-1990s, the Seville University anthropologist Félix Talego Vázquez lived in Marinaleda for a year, researching his doctoral thesis. This thesis was published as a controversial book – controversial in Marinaleda, anyway – whose title translates as
Worker Culture, People Power and Messianic Leadership
. Talego saw the relentless struggle of the early years as a vital part of the solidification of Sánchez Gordillo’s leadership, not least during the hunger strike. Characterising your political project, as Sánchez Gordillo did, as
la voz de los sin voz
– the voice of those without a voice – and embarking on something as psychologically and emotionally significant as a group hunger strike, strengthens the distinction between an authentic, popular ‘us’ and a distant, oppressive, hegemonic ‘them’. In view of Andalusia’s history, I’m not sure this is an idea which requires much strengthening.

The hunger strike certainly went a long way in granting the man with the megaphone – both literally and figuratively, there is always one man holding Marinaleda’s megaphone; he seems to carry the thing everywhere he goes – the right to speak for the
pueblo
. His older supporters in the village have told me that at a time when they had no voice, and had
never
had a voice throughout their history, they were happy that someone had a
megáfono
, and knew how to use it.

After centuries of being ignored, marginalised and near-starved, Marinaleda’s skill at attracting the mass media was finally helping them address these problems. During the hunger strike, the village was inundated by the national press and TV along with the BBC, German TV, French, English, German and Catalan newspapers, and
even famosos
, celebrities like the Andalusian folk singer Carlos Cano. There was also an influx of leftist intellectuals, writers and politicians, clamouring to express their solidarity.

The strike was regarded as a success, wrote Talego, not because they acquired the funds to keep them going until the black olive harvest later that year, but because of the Shockwaves they sent through the rest of Andalusia and Spain via the media: ‘The press were to the Marinaleda hunger strike what the bride is to the wedding.’ Sánchez Gordillo was certainly happy to see them, especially the foreign reporters from England and Germany: ‘They gather a lot of material’, he wrote in his hunger strike diary, ‘to throw in the faces of those trying to lie. Thank goodness, because otherwise, the bourgeoisie had mounted a slander with enough clout to destroy and discredit the heroic struggle of the Andalusian
jornaleros
.’