A short biography of Argentinean anarchist activist and poet Iris Pavon.
Iris Teresa Pavon was born in 1906 in Loberia, in the Buenos Aires province of Argentina. Her father was a socialist station master who set up a People’s Library in the town.
She moved to Deán Funes and then to Cruz del Eje , where her father had been transferred.
As a teenager she worked in a haberdashers, and then as a sales clerk for Chevrolet and as a bookseller.
In the 1930s, she discovered anarchism and joined the Federacion Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA). She became an active militant, writer and poet for the local anarchist press-La Idea, and El Tribuna and then began to contribute to La Protesta and Justicia! In Buenos Aires.
She took an active part in the campaign to free the Bragado prisoners in the Comité Pro Presos de Bragado. Pascual Vuotto, Reclus de Diago and Santiago Mainini were anarchist workers that had been arbitrarily detained and tortured by the police, falsely accused of having planted a bomb in the town of Bragado on August 5th, 1931. Iris addressed many meetings in many towns between 1931 and 1932 in Cordoba and La Rioja provinces around this issue.
In the early 1930s she was married to the Oscar Ramon Rojas known as El Pipe , and they had a son, José. She then lived with the anarchist Marcos Dukelsky aka Duke, who worked on the anarchist newspaper Pampa Libre.
She took an active part in solidarity work with the Spanish libertarian movement from 1936 onwards. In the 1940s she organised demonstrations against fascism with the Agrupación Femenina Antiguerra (Women’s Antiwar Grouping).
With the military coup of 1943 she was arrested along with Marcos Dukelsky and imprisoned in Cordoba between January 10th and August 10th, 1944. This severely affected her health. In the women’s prison of Buen Pastor where she was incarcerated, she dedicated herself to the education of the poorest prisoners, which earned her great sympathy. where her health deteriorated. In the women's prison she dedicated herself to the education of the poorest prisoners, which earned her great sympathy.
She was actively opposed to Peronism, especially after the death in Cruz del Eje of the young Montoya, a victim of repression.
Iris Pavon contracted an adrenal gland disease affecting the skin, but continued to contribute to the anarchist magazine Reconstruir based in Buenos Aires and the voice of the Argentine Libertarian Federation (FLA) until her death on September 13th , 1951.
Reconstruir published a collection of her poems and articles written between 1921 and 1947, entitled Pasion de Justicia in 1952. This was republished by Sorridad Editions in 2019.
In 2000, it was proposed by some anarchists that a monument to Iris should be raised on vacant railway land in Cruz del Eje. This was vehemently opposed by Peronist councillors who called her an "anarchist traitor and a person without a country (vendepatria)". At this time a special edition of the daily newspaper La Idea de Cruz del Eje was dedicated to her.
Nick Heath
Sources:
https://archivo.fcc.unc.edu.ar/novedades/noticias/presentacion-de-pasion-de-justicia-el-libro-de-la-activista-anarquista-iris-pavon
https://centrodocumentacion.com.ar/poesia-anarquista-presentacion-del-libro-pasion-de-justicia/
https://militants-anarchistes.ficedl.info/spip.php?article15742
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