A life of brochures: Shortness, Exposure and Autobiography in Alfonso Martínez Rizo's texts

Abstract

Anarchism, like other political and social movements, often relied on conciseness and brevity in its writings:
pamphlets, informative collections, newspapers, and other periodical publications were used to serve the Ideal. As a concept, “the Ideal” refers to the accomplishment of a desired society led by libertarian principles. To reach that goal, the most immediate and important aim is to educate the working class. It is worth noting the temporal limits of anarchist publishing production, commonly starts around 1880 (Litvak, 1981) and extends until the end of the Spanish Civil War. Although the limits in Hispanic America may be extended by a few years, on both sides of the Atlantic, we encounter a tumultuous and intense socio-historical context that determines the conditions under which the movement’s publishing production takes place. Thus, the educational objective and the urgency of the circumstances will leave a very extensive literary and textual production determined by the need for brief information and dissemination in a format that allows for quick and easy production and distribution. The anarchist distribution network, broad and effective, transports and delivers texts published by organizations, societies, and even specific individuals. Individual initiatives of great scope and ambition, such as the one we will encounter in this article: the Divulgación Sociológica collection [1931], directed and nearly entirely written by the Spanish engineer Alfonso Martínez Rizo (1877-1951), who draws on his experience and knowledge to undertake, in less than a year, the publication of twenty-five informative pamphlets on historical, current, and sociological topics of the time. Both the figure of Alfonso Martínez Rizo and his prolific writing have seldom been addressed by critics. Therefore, this study also serves the purpose of vindicating his person, both in the historical realm and in the literary-cultural world of the Hispanic anarchist movement in the early 20th Century.