Contesting Eurocentrism: placing Latin American antifascism(s) on the map

ABSTRACT

Works on antifascism in Latin America tend to be scattered, narrowly focused on national milieus and virtually unknown to researchers in other countries. Women’s activism, antifascist masculinities and antifascist views of race have received relatively little attention. Including writings on Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Puerto Rico and Uruguay, this dossier aims to establish Latin American antifascisms as a field of study. The individuals and groups studied by the contributors varied according to their conceptions and adaptations of antifascism, as well as their purposes in deploying it. The different varieties of antifascism in Latin America were neither rigid nor static; they were inextricably related to the historical periods and national circumstances in which they were defined. The networks in which antifascist groups operated and helped create illuminate the linkages and interactions across local, national and transnational contexts.

Resumen

Los trabajos sobre el antifascismo en América Latina tienden a ser dispersos, tener un foco estrecho en contextos nacionales y ser prácticamente desconocidos para los investigadores de otros países. El activismo de las mujeres, las masculinidades antifascistas y las nociones antifascistas de raza han recibido relativamente poca atención. El objetivo de este dossier, que incluye escritos sobre Argentina, México, Chile, Colombia, Puerto Rico y Uruguay, es establecer el antifascismo latinoamericano como campo de estudio. Los individuos y grupos estudiados por los colaboradores variaron según sus concepciones y adaptaciones del antifascismo, así como en sus propósitos al desplegarlo. Las distintas variedades del antifascismo en América Latina no eran rígidas ni estáticas; estaban indisolublemente relacionadas con los períodos históricos y las circunstancias nacionales en las que se definieron. Las redes en las que los grupos antifascistas operaron y ayudaron a crear iluminan vínculo e interacciones a nivel local, nacional y transnacional.

KEYWORDS:

• Antifascism
• Latin America
• transnationalism
• gender
• antiracism
• networks

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• antifascismo
• América Latina
• transnacionalismo
• género
• antiracismo
• redes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Three of the six articles in issue 19 of Anuario IEHS (2004), including Bertonha’s, are on Italian exiles in Latin America, and one other article is on Italian antifascists in Europe.

2. Regarding Latin American solidarity initiatives and agency in the formulation of international policies, see Hatzky and Stites Mor (2014) and the dossier that follows this, 141–211; Stites Mor (2013, 2022); Rodríguez and Thornton (2022).

3. The Argentine Comité Contra el Racismo y el Antisemitismo participated in the 1937 Congress of Solidarity in Paris (El congreso 1937). Both the Comité and the Congress focused on anti-Semitism. The topic of antifascism and antiracism deserves more research.

4. K. Marino, personal communication, 2022; two works that discussed feminists but underlined their antifascism are Sitman (2008) and Marino (2021).

5. Four of the seventeen papers presented at this conference were published in Bisso and Valobra (2013, 151–247); three more appeared in Nállim and Valobra (2015, 3–87).

6. Extreme-right impunity was not new; see Deutsch (1999).

7. In recent years, many scholars have contested this notion of Jewish passivity. See Ginsberg (2013); Henry (2014).

8. There is much on fascism and masculinity but little on antifascism and masculinity. See Lundberg (2020); Sewell (2020); Meyers (2006).

9. Regarding UAM, see Giordano (2012, 153–66); Queirolo (2005); Valobra (2015); Cosse (2008). On the Junta de la Victoria, see Deutsch (2012, forthcoming) Valobra (2005, 2015); Bisso (2007, 148–52, 162–8, 218–24, 228–9, 366).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sandra McGee Deutsch

Sandra McGee Deutsch is the author of Gendering Antifascism: Women’s Activism in Argentina and the World, 1918–1947 (University of Pittsburgh Press, in press); Crossing Borders, Claiming a Nation: A History of Argentine Jewish Women, 1880–1955 (Duke University Press, 2010; Argentine edition 2018); Las derechas: The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1890–1939 (Stanford University Press, 1999; Argentine edition 2005); and Counterrevolution in Argentina, 1900–1932: The Argentine Patriotic League (University of Nebraska Press, 1986, Argentine edition 2003). Crossing Borders received the Latin American Jewish Studies Association 2011 Book Award, for best book on Latin American Jewish Studies published between 2008 and 2010. Deutsch also co-edited (with Kathleen M. Blee) Women of the Right: Comparisons and Interplay across Borders (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012) and (with Ronald H. Dolkart) The Argentine Right: Its History and Intellectual Origins, 1910 to the Present (Scholarly Resources, 1993; expanded Argentine edition 2001).

Jorge A. Nállim

Jorge A. Nállim is Professor of History at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of Transformations and Crisis of Liberalism in Argentina, 1930–1955 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012) and El antiperonismo. Raíces históricas e ideológicas (Capital Intelectual, 2014), and co-editor of the special issues on “New Directions in Twentieth-Century Argentine Political History” (with David M.K. Sheinin and Jessica Stites Mor, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe, 2014) and “Mujeres, género y antifascismos en Argentina” (with Adriana Valobra, Arenal. Revista de Historia de las Mujeres, 2015). His research focuses on antifascism and the Cold War in Argentina, Mexico and Chile.