António Gonçalves Correia

Portuguese anarchist, humanist, vegetarian, poet and essayist, born. Founder of the Comuna da Luz, the first anarchist community in Portugal. A travelling salesman, he spent most of his life in the Beja region of Portugal. In 1916, he founded the anarchist weekly 'A Questão Social' in the city of Cuba, in which he defended the freedom and emancipation of women, naturism, respect for animals, ecology, free love without marriage, non-violence, anti-militarism, condemnation of hunting and alcohol consumption, etc. In 1917 he published the pamphlet 'Estreia de um crente' (Premiere of a believer), a small manual of libertarian thought full of lyricism. That same year he purchased a large area of land on Monte da Comuna in the Vale de Santiago and founded the Commune da Luz (Commune of Light). Inspired by Tolstoyan ideals, such as pacifism, naturism, vegetarianism, etc. – as opposed to the then dominant anarcho-syndicalist and anarcho-communist strands within the movement – it began with fifteen members and was the first anarchist commune to be established in Portugal. Dedicated to agriculture and the manufacture of footwear, practicing vegetarianism and nudism, the commune had a teacher who followed the pedagogical methods of Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia. Inevitably, it was the target of bourgeois prejudice and police repression and when members of the commune became involved in organising a strike by farmers in the Vale de Santiago during the unrest amongst rural workers that swept the Alentejo during the crisis of 1918. That crisis had had swept the country during the summer and autumn that year, as strikes swept the country and attempts were made to overthrow the regime of Sidónio Pais, president of the Republic. The situation was so bad that Pais declare a state of siege on October 13th that year, and the violent repression that followed led to his assassination on December 14th by José Júlio da Costa a farmer and Republican from Garvão who had previously acted as a mediator between the authorities and the rebels of the Vale de Santiago. The Commune was immediately implicated and Gonçalves was arrested and the anarchist commune forced to shut down.

He continued to be on the authorities' radar after his release from prison and was referred to in their files as: "a dangerous communist, being considered throughout the Alentejo, as organiser and guide of all social movements". In 1923 Gonçalves published the pamphlet 'A Felicidade de todos os Seres na Sociedade Futura', in which he defended the collectivisation of property, the modernisation of agriculture and radical social progress. His continued anarchist activism, which included the publication and distribution of anarchist pamphlets and other propaganda, and his collaboration on anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist publications such as 'A Batalha', 'A Aurora' and 'O Rebelde', led to his repeated arrest by the Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado secret police of the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar and imprisonment. In 1926, after one of these trips to jail, he established the Comuna Clarão (Blaze Commune) in Albarraque. The heir to the Commune da Luz, its stated aim was the continued practice of an alternative libertarian lifestyle, devoting itself to floriculture and horticulture, and after 1926 also becoming an important focus for resistance against the dictatorship, serving as a hiding place and place of refuge for those fleeing political persecution. However, in the early thirties the commune was dissolved as a consequence of internal divisions among its members.

António Gonçalves Correia, the man who bought birds at fairs solely to free them from their cages and who pledged never to cut his beard unless the authoritarian regime of Estado Novo was overthrown, died on December 20, 1967 in Lisbon.

In 2000, Alberto Franco published the biography 'A revolução é a minha namorada - Memórias de António Gonçalves Correia, anarquista alentejano' (The revolution is my inamorata - Memoirs of António Gonçalves Correia, Alentejo anarchist.)

[por.anarchopedia.org/António_Gonçalves_Correia

www.estelnegre.org/anarcoefemerides/0308.html

pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/António_Gonçalves_Correia

pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comuna_da_Luz

antoniogoncalvescorreia.blogspot.co.uk/]