US Hispanic print culture and anarchist networks brought women together. An early household name on these networks, Florida-born Violeta Miqueli Mayóz de González (1891-1972) was one of the leaders of the antifascist boycotts. [ii] Regular announcements were published in Frente Popular and España Libre to boycott products from fascist countries and picket businesses that were selling them “milking the Fascist hyena.”[i] Miqueli, who also performed as an amateur actress for the SHC fundraisers, was a common contributor of Cuban and US Hispanic periodicals since the 1910s. Miqueli’s parents were cigar-rolling workers in Ybor City. She obtained a master’s degree in education and taught in Tampa and Key West. In the US Hispanic press, she wrote about women’s news, feminism, and social and labor issues in numerous periodicals, among them Cuba Cubana, El Arte, Anagrama, ¡Despertad!, El Hogar, El Internacional, Postal de Key West, El Centinela, El Popular, Pinos Nuevos, all of them published in Key West. Nueva Vida (New Life) in the 1920s (CITY). She also published in Cultura Proletaria and España Libre (New York), La Revista Blanca (Valencia), and La Prensa (Buenos Aires). In 1962 Miqueli published Women in Myth and History, which examines the roles of women in history.
[i] I thank his grandson Tomás González for sharing his family archive and his memories of Violeta.
[ii] A list of these businesses was published in Frente Popular on 8 April 1938.
Exporters: Emilio González, Julio Rojo Fabian, Ramón Garrido, Policarpo Gomez.
Shops owners: Carmen Moneo, Casa vittori, La bodega de Paco, Juan Gallego, García y Díaz, Doctor Castro Viejo, Moure, Torres Perona, Juan B. Castro, Maximo Calvo, Lagueras, Alonso, Joaquin Quirons, Ulloa.
Performers and empresarios: Hermanos Iturbi, Andres Segovia, Benito Collada.
For more information see: Feu, “Transnational Working-Class Women’s Activism in New York’s Confederated Hispanic Societies (1939-1977).” Glenda Bonifacio (ed). Feminism and Migration: Cross-Cultural Engagements. New York: Springer, 2012, 187-208.