Champ Libre to Diego Camacho
4 August 1980
Sir,


While preparing to reprint your biography of Durruti,[1] I was, as I told you [on the telephone], a little confused by the fact that – concerning the concealment of the circumstances of his assassination – your work had clearly established the terrible responsibility of the leaders of the CNT at the time, even though you didn’t want to reach this conclusion definitively.

Contrary to what you led me to understand, the postface that you’ve since sent me, which only concerns the mystery that surrounds Durruti’s burial, worsens this problem, because I comprehend what you insinuate in it, and I know that you insinuated a truth, but Champ Libre doesn’t publish authors who make insinuations, whatever the political necessities.[2]

Thus I thought that I would once again have to make my position on this clear. But then I read in Solidaridad Obrera #67, dated the first half of July 1980, that the article that was published on page 10 of the prior issue of this newspaper and that was entitled “Sartre: combatienne de la Libertad” was written by Abel Paz.[3] Sartre has successively been the lackey and public defender of the bureaucracies and police forces of Russia, Poland, Cuba, Algeria, China and several other States. If you, as a biographer of Durruti, call this [person] a “fighter for freedom,” then I think that the esteemed Durruti merits another and less uncertain biographer.

Sincerely yours,
Gérard Lebovici

P.S. By registered mail I am returning all the documents concerning the publication of Durruti.


[1] Entitled Durruti le peuple en armes, Camacho’s book was originally published by Editions de la Tête de Feuilles in 1972.

[2] See Guy Debord's letter to Gérard Lebovici dated 3 July 1980.

[3] Diego Camacho’s pseudonym.


(Published in Editions Champ Libre, Correspondance, Vol. 2, Editions Champ Libre, Paris, 1981. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED! August 2012.)




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