La donna e la famiglia: conferenza tenuta in Buenos Aires nel antico Teatro Iris, il 25 novembre 1900 [The Woman and the Family: lecture held in Buenos Aires in the old Teatro Iris, 25 November 1900]. Edizioni di propaganda Culmine: Buenos Aires, 1927.

La donna e la famiglia: conferenza tenuta in Buenos Aires nel antico Teatro Iris, il 25 novembre 1900 [The Woman and the Family: lecture held in Buenos Aires in the old Teatro Iris, 25 November 1900]. Edizioni di propaganda Culmine: Buenos Aires, 1927.

The founder (in 1925) and editor of the anarchist newspaper Culmine in Buenos Aires was an Italian anarchist named Severino Di Giovanni (b. 1901 Abruzzo - d. 1931 Buenos Aires). Di Giovanni initiated and carried out a campaign of violence in Argentina in support of Sacco and Vanzetti and anti-fascism. He wrote both for his own paper, which advocated direct action and propaganda of the deed, and for L'Adunata dei Refrattari in the U.S. (thus explaining the reference below, and note in the photos that Di Giovanni is listed as the contact for getting copies of L'Adunata and Casa Savoia). On May 16, 1926, several hours after Sacco and Vanzetti were given death sentences, Di Giovanni bombed the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires, destroying the front of the building, and seems also to have been at least partially responsible for the bombing of the Ford Motor Company, Citibank, Bank of Boston in the capital, and the statue of George Washington in the Palermo neighborhood of the city. Di GIovanni was executed by firing squad following his role in a gun fight, shouting "Evviva l'Anarchia!"

Author Pietro Gori was, most would say, an even more famous and internationally known Italian anarchist than Errico Malatesta or Armando Borghi. The inclusion of this South American publication reflects the importance of Gori's role as a leading anarchist thinker and speaker throughout the entire Italian diaspora.

Indeed, as the title of the introduction by Farina D'Anfiano (author, philosopher, adherent of Benedetto Croce) to the work has it, Gori was "Il Poeta dell'Anarchia," the poet of Anarchism. Gori's main point is that just as workers submit to the economic tyranny of the capitalist class, so women are by custom and by laws enslaved by the masculine sex. It is wrong, he goes on to say, to treat the desire of women for elevation and emancipation as a problem separate from all the other social questions - this desire is not different from that of the worker wanting emancipation from his oppression.

We also note that in the inside front cover, anarchist publications throughout that broad Italian world - including the U.S.'s L'Adunata dei Refrattari, for which Culmine editor/owner Di Giovanni wrote articles, q.v. in the Collection - are reflected in this 1927 publication, when Mussolini's political repression of the left was in full force.

Note also the advertisement for Paolo Schicchi's Casa Savoia, q.v. in the Collection.

On the rear cover, to emphasize the unity of anti-fascist Italians wherever they were by 1927, and consistent with Culmine editor Di Giovanni's philosophy, it is noted that the "Edizioni a beneficio totale della stampa anarchica e delle vittime politche d'Italia [these editions for the complete benefit of the anarchist press and of political victims of the Italy of today]"

It was indeed the anarchist press wherever it could be found that kept Italian anti-fascists, who were political victims, united in purpose everywhere, with DiGiovanni as an exemplar of that philosophy.