Las raices del exilio: Mexico ante la guerra civil espanola, 1936-1939 (review)

Las raíces de exilio: México ante la guerra civil española, 1936-1939. By José Antonio Matesanz. Mexico City: El Colegio de México; Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1999. Bibliography. Index. 490 pp.

Examining the reaction of the Mexican government and society to the Spanish Civil War, José Antonio Matesanz has produced a detailed description and analysis linking the Spanish Civil War with Mexican responses. He juxtaposes complex political agendas with evolving diplomatic and military events in order to explain the depth of support (and opposition) for the Republic from the government, unions, intellectuals, feminists, and the press in Mexico.

Matesanz goes further than earlier studies on this topic by Lois Elwyn Smith (Mexico and the Spanish Republicans, 1955), Patricia W. Fagen (Exiles and Citizens: Spanish Republicans in Mexico, 1973), and Thomas G. Powell (Mexico and the Spanish Civil War, 1981). Matesanz does not like Powell's attempt to explore the mythology of the Spanish exile community in Mexico.

President Cárdenas emerges as a military man who decided to arm workers to defend the Mexican Revolution after a frustrating effort to sell arms to the Spanish Republic, and then confronting the extraordinary legal position of the Nonintervention Committee in its appeasement of Germany and Italy. Narciso Bassols's role in the defense of Republican Spain in the League of Nations is another significant contribution of this study.

The Mexican president saw how vulnerable a progressive political movement could be in the face of even minor parties of the far Right which received support from the great fascist powers. As he came to shift his view about arming workers to defend the Mexican Revolution, the dramatic events surrounding the departure from the United States of the Mar Cantábrico, its visit to Mexico to load arms and munitions, and the ship's eventual capture by the insurgents in Spain all increased Mexican empathy with the distant civil war.

The Mexican decision to offer exile to Spanish republicans, from the humanitarian rescue of some 450 children, the niños de Morelia, to Spanish activists and intellectuals after the war is skillfully described. Amalia Solórzano and María de los Angeles de Chávez Orozco first suggested starting a school for the refugee children; eventually Daniel Cosío Villegas developed the plan into the Casa de España en México and subsequently the Colegio de México.

Matesanz traces the well known story of the reaction by the great powers to what they viewed as Mexico's impertinent intrusion into the power politics of Europe. There are also descriptions of exile politics, the struggle to control republican treasure and the arrival of the best known political, military and cultural refugees in Mexico. Surprisingly, little is made of the experience of less prominent refugees.

The weakness of the book is its strong reliance on a limited number of sources; many sections were based on two main newspapers and a prominent memoir (for example, the accounts of the republican ambassador to Mexico, Gordón Ordáz, or those of Narciso Bassols or Mauricio Fresco, who aided the refugees). In dealing with the international aspects of the Spanish Civil War a single secondary source is used--a 1971 book by Fernando Schwartz. This limited reading of the rich historiography of the Spanish Civil War is lamentable. It also would have been useful to look at the archival records of all of the countries involved in the international aspects of that conflict, and make greater use of the Mexican Foreign Ministry, and the Archivo General de la Nación. Nevertheless, as an addition to the political history of Cardenismo, Las raíces del exilio makes an important contribution.

Stephen R. Niblo
La Trobe University

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