COMMUNITIES
Communities: announcements and photographs of rallies and demonstrations, and photos and obituaries of demonstrators.
Through their activism and print culture, US Hispanic workers’ associations and mutual aid societies affiliated with the Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas (SHC) were among the antifascist hubs during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the Francisco Franco dictatorship (1939-1975). Like other ethnic worker antifascist movements in the United States, SHC developed transnational proletarian cultures and networks. These practices included customary mutual aid, such as: (1) sharing headquarters with other grassroots organizations, (2) sharing subscribers to their periodicals and membership, and (3) volunteering performers for their fundraisers. SHC fundraisers were advertised and reviewed in US Hispanic periodicals, consolidating Hispanic antifascism and culture. This proletarian antifascism developed from local, earlier migrant, and exile workers from Europe and Latin America. They brought a deep-seated working-class identity and radical ideologies that linked them beyond national boundaries.
See:
Feu, Fighting Fascist Spain. Worker Protest from the Printing Press. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2020.
Jon Bekken. "Crossing Borders: Reader-Editors and Publishing Communities." American Periodicals. 30.2 (2020).