SUMMARY This interview, given to Josep Alemany, a militant of the Barcelona CNT, in December 1976, provides a detailed and substantial, if unavoidably incomplete, picture of the thought and analytical clarity of Louis Mercier Vega. What emerges, above all, from this interview is the interviewee's profound knowledge of the problems of Latin America which he is able to use to demonstrate the inconsistency of several fashionable "myths" dear to the hearts of Marxist advertising agencies. Mercier Vega skilfully points out the authoritarian and hence reactionary and anti-popular characters of the Chile of Allende, Castro 's Cuba, and the so-called Left wing military regimes (in this instance, Peru). A similarly critical judgement is laid on the guerrilla movements which operate with purely political objectives, for for the "conquest of power" . . The interview then goes on to theoretical topics including a few "classics" (the fundamental concepts of anarchism, antis/a/ism, the presumed utopian character of the anarchist ideal), and others of more immediate relevance. Of particular interest are observations about the prospects for the anarchist movement today. Its validity is demonstrated for Mercier Vega not only by efforts being made to "hand down the libertarian traditions", but by the blossoming "reinventions" of anarchist thought produced by the latest generations of academics and militants who are carrying out an updating and renewal of ideas which are very useful for understanding social conflicts and intervening in them. Next the origin of' Interrogations is briefly discussed, its aims are reiterated, and its current situation is examined. The interview concludes with a few questions and answers of a ''personal" nature about Merc1er Vega's participalion in the Spanish revolution of 1936, the evolution of his libertarian ideas, and his activities. 39
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