Christopher J Castañeda

Hispanic intervention in the colonial history of the Americas is well-known.1 Much less understood is the modern Hispanic migration to, and struggle for freedom in, the United States. To better understand the complexities of this intersectional migration, we focus on the lives of Hispanic anarchists, libertarians, and free thinkers who rejected the hallmarks of traditional society—church, state, and capitalism—because they deemed those institutions to be oppressive and tyrannical. In their endeavor to create a truly equitable society built upon the ideals of liberty and justice for all, these anarchists developed a vibrant network of transnational periodicals from the late 19th through 20th centuries...

This essay examines the conflict that arose among some Spanish-born (peninsular) cigar makers in New York and Cuban separatists. During the 1890s, a vibrant anarchist community developed in Brooklyn, New York, that published a periodical, El Despertar (1891-1902) and interacted with anarchists in Spain, Florida, and Cuba among other locations. As the conflict between Spanish colonial authority over Cuba became increasingly contentious and violent, tensions between some Cubans and Spaniards increased as well, particularly among Cubans who felt that many Spanish anarchists were indifferent to the separatist cause. Jose C. Campos, a Cuban émigré living in Brooklyn, addressed these issues in a number of essays printed in El Despertar and other workers’ newspapers and attempted to redirect anxiety and anger toward capitalism instead of destructive infighting among Spanish-speaking cigar workers.

After the Spanish-American War (1898), many anarchists began to focus their attention on the rising discontent among Mexico’s landless working class. The Flores Magón brothers sought to galvanize support for revolutionary change in Mexico, and they received welcome support from Spanish anarchists, including Jaime Vidal and Pedro Esteve. In particular, Jaime Vidal, who had also helped to organize Spanish firemen on the East Coast sought to promote and assist Magónismo. Through his essays, his several anarchist periodicals, and fund-raising activities in both New York and California, Jaime Vidal helped to incorporate and promote the Magón’s efforts in the transnational anarchist print network.

Spanish-speaking immigrant cigar makers created an influential anarchist colony in Brooklyn during the late nineteenth century. Although studies of diasporic Spanish radicalism in this era typically identify Ybor City (Tampa) and Key West as the activist cigar makers’ principal locations in the United States, New York’s Spanish-speaking anarchist cigar makers established Brooklyn as a primary center for the support and promotion of anarchism, Cuba Libre, and of opposition to the Spanish monarchy and church. This chapter will examine the origins, development, and significant participants in Brooklyn’s radical colonia within the transnational anarchist network of the late nineteenth and early twentieth

This article traces the historical development of the natural gas industry, with a focus on the United States. It examines the origins of natural gas through the early twenty-first century. The industry expanded rapidly in the twentieth century with the discovery of huge southwestern gas fields and the development of long-distance pipelines. As the industry developed, the federal government imposed regulatory controls. By the closing decades of the twentieth century, the government had deregulated the industry to make it more market responsive. Concerns about lack of supply have been allayed by recent use of horizontal drilling and fracking.Historical Overview of the Natural Gas Industry