American Relief Aid and the Spanish Civil War

Chapter 3. The Ethnic United Front and Spanish America’s War

Chapter 3 The Ethnic United Front and Spanish America’s War Children of immigrants were nearly one-third of the U.S. population at the time of the Spanish Civil War, so an ethnic component to the Popular Front was inevitable. Obviously, Spaniards in the United States paid close attention to the course of events in Spain and were moved to support the Republic’s struggle for survival. Many recent immigrant groups found in Spain an analogy to their own conditions in the United States. This was as true for Latinos and Spaniards as Jews, Italians, and others, including a segment of African-Americans. The Popular Front, therefore, was as personally ethnic and racial as it was political. To consider a few of these groups, German-American and Polish-American antifascism in the Spanish aid efforts followed anxieties about the rise of Adolf Hitler and Josef Pilsudski in their respective home countries.1 Greek antifascists were politically active not just against Greek dictator General Ionnais Metaxas (who like Franco was sympathetic to Germany), but also on the issue of Spain with some two hundred Greek-Americans volunteering for the International Brigades.2 Finns were historically the largest ethnic group in the Workers’ Party in the decade prior to the Spanish war, though their numbers among the radical organizations were in decline by the mid-thirties as the immigrant Finn population also declined.3 Jewish antifascism had many fires to fight. On the Spanish issue Jewish opinion included a domino theory on the fate of Jewry where the fate of Spain’s Republic would determine the advance or halt to persecution in Europe.4 Nationalist General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, in an October 1936 broadcast, told listeners that his rebellion was “not a Spanish civil war, it is a war of western civilization against the Jews of the entire world. The Jews want to destroy the Christians who, according to them, ‘came from the devil.’” Responding to such vitriol were the no fewer than fifteen percent of the International Brigade volunteers who were Jewish.5 64 65 The Ethnic United Front and Spanish America’s War Of all of the various ethnic committees to raise funds for the Spanish Republic the largest were German-American, Lithuanian, and Italian. Of these, the Italians had the most experience by virtue of their opposition to Mussolini dating back over a decade. Italians established a variety of committees, including the Anti-Fascist Committee and Italian Committee to Aid the Children of Spain. Italian antifascism was also quite exceptional for its intersection of nationalism and internationalism.6 In the case of Spanish aid, the archival evidence suggests that Italian antifascism either had reached its capacity or perhaps had disagreements with the NAC. The Italian Anti-Fascist Committee sponsored several major events, including an April 1937 event at the Hippodrome, but the NAC was often without representation of the group at its board meetings. The IAFC seems to have been more concerned with supporting the Girabaldi Battalion in the International Brigades.7 The Spanish-American experience, then, less studied and far less known, emerged in an already existing context of ethnic concerns about events abroad. And like the Italian case, the Spanish case was also exceptional for its combination of internationalism and nationalism. Spaniards were also joined in solidarity by an even larger Spanish-speaking community. Spanish activists’ influence beyond their numbers was due perhaps because they were joined by internationalist-oriented Latino communities. In New York City, as James Fernandez has found, Spanish referred to all Spanish-speaking supporters of Republican Spain regardless of their backgrounds .8 This pattern is in evidence across the Spanish aid organizations. The Limits of the Ethnic United Front Easily overlooked because of their small population, from Florida to California, Spanish-Americans exerted an impact on the aid efforts beyond their proportion. In San Francisco, communities of Spaniards and other Spanish speakers assured the local Medical Bureau and North American Committee a Popular Front character the movement lacked elsewhere. In Tampa, Florida, home to a sizable Spanish culture, the predominantly working-class Spanish-American population contributed more money than any other Loyalist partisans in the United States outside of New York City. And in New Orleans, Spanish-Americans were the only segment of the local population engaged on the Spanish issue. The cultural front met the ethnic Popular Front with a Spanish accent, but activism for Spain’s cause also raises questions as to how ethnically integrated was the American effort...