Despite the limitations imposed on women by both the patriarchal exile and the USA context they inhabited, women were effective activists. They leaned on previous networks and built new ones consisting of overlapping exile, ethnic, radical, labor, and personal relations. This presentation features several women in the context of US Hispanic antifascist print culture. Their scattered records cannot always be pieced together; however, even if only in short biographical sketches, women’s activism can be recognized, made available, and help us think about how antifascist culture was built and how it has been historicized.
In comparison to their male counterparts, women received scant coverage in workers' periodicals, with the exception of fundraisers. Although their activism fulfilled the gendered expectation of caring mothers and wives, women also acted as workers, US residents, and consumers. For example, women delegates attended the SHC yearly national congresses, rallied and demonstrated in US streets, boycotted fascist products, and picketed pro-fascist businesses. US Hispanic periodicals covered their demonstrations in front of the Italian, German, English, and Spanish consulates. On May 7, 1937, for example, hundreds of women protested on the streets of Tampa against the bombing of Guernica, Spain and demanding the lifting of the arms embargo (Varela-Lago 12). On April 2, 1938, women led the demonstrations in front of the British Consulate in New York (“Nuestro piquete en el consulado británico”). The same year, the impressive number of 2,500 women demonstrated in front of the House of Representatives in Washington against the arms embargo during the Spanish Civil War (“Inquietudes” Apr. 8, 1938).
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