La setta del male. L'affaire Mano Negra (1878-83).

The article examines the Mano Negra affair, a case study on the construction of «evil», both social and political, in the second half of the 19th century. The case revolved around the alleged discovery and persecution of a secret society that lay on the border between anarchist maximalism and rural criminality in Andalusia between the late 1870s and early 1880s. The article analyzes the affair as part of the 19th-century European counterrevolutionary tradition and the emerging criminalization of anarchism. Finally, the author considers the event within the context of the transnational repression of the internationalist anarchist movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]