The strike of the millers in Veracruz in 1919: first in the city for gender demands and the support of the group “Antorcha Libertaria” (Notes to remember your forgetfulness)

Abstract

In 1919, twenty workers at a nixtamal mill in Veracruz, Mexico, demanded, through a strike call, the recognition of their union, the signing of a collectivebargaining agreement, a wage increase and the fulfillment of their labor rights that were actually gender. Their actions were supported and advised by Herón Proal, Úrsulo Galván and Carlos Aubry, members of the anarchist group “Antorcha Libertaria”. Of the facts, immersed in a set of economicand political circumstances incident in them, of the genetic process of the anarchist group and its members, of their feminism expressed in the pages of their media, account for the coming lines that they intend to snatch from oblivion these women and their collective action. Based on the story, the main interpretationsventure that the millers’ movement was the first feminist action from below (generated by working women and with demands inherent to their conditions ofexistence as such) in the city; and that the feminist position of “Libertarian Torch” was due to its egalitarian acracia, corroborated in later speeches and actions.