(Workers' Union). Though all 11 were found innocent, Captain-General Camilo García de Polavieja used the situation as pretext for shutting down production of El Productor, and repression of anarchists in general. In 1892, another labor congress was held in which it reconfirmed its revolutionary syndicalist principles and expressing solidarity with the women in the working class (a new idea for a predominantly male working class that felt competed against by women in the workplace), declaring, "It is an urgent necessity not to forget women, who are beginning to fill the workshops of several industries. They are driven by necessity and by bourgeois greed to compete with us. We cannot oppose it; let us help them." However, the outcome of this was government suppression of the movement by means of deportation, imprisonment, the suspension of the right to free assembly, and closing of organizations' headquarters to quell organizing efforts. During the war of independence from Spain, anarchists joined others in the labor movement in distributing propaganda to Spanish soldiers, urging them not to oppose the separatists, and to join the anarchist cause. A few years previously, anarchists had embraced the ideas espoused by Spanish anarchists of organizing not just in unions, but also forming specifically anarchist groups to educate people and commit violent anti-state acts known as "propaganda of the deed", which carried on into the war of independence. Anarchists placed bombs that blew up bridges and gas pipelines, and contributed to the failed separatist attempt to assassinate the colonial head Captain General Valeriano Weyler in 1896. This led to the government further repressing of anarchists, closing the Sociedad General de Trabajadores (which grew out of the Círculo), mass deportations of activists, and even the forbidding of the lectura in the workplace. The early 20th century Following the Spanish–American War, which gave Cuba its independence from Spain, many anarchists were dissatisfied with the conditions that persisted after independence. They cited conditions that were perpetuated by the new government, like suppression of labor movements, US occupations, and dissatisfaction with the school systems. By 1899, anarchist workers had reorganized themselves, under the Alianza de Trabajadores (Worker's Alliance). By September of this year, five of the groups organizers had been arrested, following a mason's strike which spread to all of the construction trade. Around this time, anarchist organizer Errico Malatesta visited Cuba, giving speeches, and interviews to several periodicals, but was soon barred from