Francisco López García
Biography
Francisco López García was born 1885 in A Coruña, Spain. Worked as a sailor, carpenter. Immigrated to the United States in 1904.
Became one of the most prominent Spanish-speaking anarchists in the United States, contributing to Spanish-language radical newspapers internationally. He collaborated on Cultura Obrera (1911–1925) and helped launch its successor Cultura Proletaria (1927–1953). A photograph seized during his 1918 arrest suggested that he also participated in the Mexican Revolution with the anarchist Partido Liberal Mexicano. In Boston he belonged to the Grupo Rebelión and helped found the Grupo Fraternidad, which corresponded with anarchist groups across Europe and the Americas. In 1912 he married Italian widow Rosa [Rose] De Matteis. Though close to Luigi Galleani’s circle, he rejected advocacy of violence. Arrested February 1918 in a federal raid, agents described him as “practically the only real Spanish anarchist leader in the eastern part of the United States.” Ordered deported in November 1918, he was released on bond while appealing on the grounds that he was a nonviolent “philosophical anarchist.” Joined Boston’s new International Revolutionary Group, which published the Spanish-language single-issue anarchist magazines El Azote (1921) and America (1922). Became secretary of the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee in 1920 and coordinated extensive international propaganda. Separated from his wife around this time. After the Supreme Court ruled against him in 1924, he was deported to Spain on May 25, 1925.
According to different accounts, he either jumped ship and swam ashore with help from anarchist sailors, or returned to North America later in 1925 after arriving in Spain. He lived for several years in Canada with his companion Mary Berkowitz, later returning to New York under the name Alberto Martín. In 1953 he married anarchist organizer Rose Pesotta (as “Albert Martin”); they divorced after two years. He coauthored the book Breve historia del movimiento anarquista en Estados Unidos de América del Norte and died in 1967, leaving $500 in his will to the Mexican anarchist newspaper Tierra y Libertad.
Adapted from Kenyon Zimmer, Red Scare Deportees (kenyonzimmer.com), compiled from INS deportation case files.
