Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-lrf7s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-29T21:16:22.045Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Women and the Politics of the Spanish Popular Front: Political Mobilization or Social Revolution?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Martha A. Ackelsberg
Martha A. Ackelsberg
Affiliation:
Smith College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Moments of massive social change, almost by definition, open new social and political arenas to individuals and groups previously prevented from participating in them. Whether because of the sense of possibility that revolutionary moments tend to offer, the collapse of existing mechanisms of social control, or the effects of broad-based mobilization, those previously subordinated often use such moments to take their places on the historical stage. Women, in particular, frequently appear as political actors in such contexts. But just as surely as revolutions tend to open opportunities for participation in the political and social life of a community, the consolidation of power often tends to narrow them, once again—albeit with a new “cast” of political actors. And, if women have tended to benefit from revolutionary moments, they have also suffered the consequences of consolidation: no matter what the ostensible goals of the revolution, as the exercise of power is “regularized,” opportunities for women contract.

Type
The Popular Front
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 30 , Fall 1986 , pp. 1 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1. See, for example, Fraser, Ronald, “The Popular Experience of War and Revolution, 1936–9,” in Revolution and War in Spain, 1931–1939, ed. Preston, Paul (New York and London, 1984), 225–42.Google Scholar

2. Broué, Pierre and Témime, Emile, The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain, trans. by White, Tony (London, 1970), 75–76Google Scholar. See also Jackson, Gabriel, “The Spanish Popular Front, 1934–37,” Journal of Contemporary History 5 (1970): 21, 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Payne, Stanley, The Spanish Revolution (New York, 1970), 177.Google Scholar

3. See, for example, Orwell, George, Homage to Catalonia (Boston, 1957)Google Scholar, esp. 3–6; Borkenau, Franz, The Spanish Cockpit (Ann Arbor, 1963)Google Scholar, especially Chap. 2; and de Santillán, Diego Abad, Por qué perdimos la guerra? (Barcelona, 1977), 86–87.Google Scholar

4. In addition to works cited by Abad de Santillán, Borkenau, Broué and Témime, and Orwell, the reader might refer to Fraser, Ronald, Blood of Spain (New York, 1979)Google Scholar; Brademas, John, Anarcosindicalismo y revolución en España, 1930–37 (Barcelona, 1974)Google Scholar; Richards, Vernon, Lessons of the Spanish Revolution (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Bolloten, Burnett, The Spanish Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1979)Google Scholar; and Robinson, Richard A.H., The Origins of Franco's Spain (Pittsburgh, 1970).Google Scholar

5. A full description of the negotiations which led to this outcome may be found in a number of sources, including Oliver, Juan García, El eco de los pasos (Barcelona, 1978), 171Google Scholar; de Santillán, Abad, Por qué perdimos?, 88, 124–25Google Scholar; Lorenzo, Cesar M., Les anarchistes espagnols et le pouvoir, 1868–1969 (Paris, 1969), 102–10.Google Scholar

6. For fuller details on these changes, see sources cited in note 4 above.

7. Nash, Mary, Mujer y movimiento obrero en España, 1931–1939 (Barcelona, 1981).Google Scholar

8. On the vote and “bourgeois feminism,” see Campoamor, Clara, El voto femenino y yo (1936) (Barcelona, 1981)Google Scholar; Arenal, Concepción, La emancipación de la mujer en España, edición y prólogo de Mauro Armiño (Madrid, 1974)Google Scholar; Bazan, E. Pardo, La mujer española y otros artículos feministas, selección y prólogo de Leda Schiavo (Madrid, 1976).Google Scholar For details on some of the struggles around protective labor legislation, see Martínez, Rosa María Capel, El trabajo y la educación de la mujer en España, 1900–1930 (Madrid, 1982), 85–87, 99–100, 266–85)Google Scholar; also Nash, Mary, Mujer, Familia y Trabajo en España, 1875–1936 (Barcelona, 1983), especially Chap. 5.Google Scholar

9. See, for example, Nelken, Margarita, La condición social de la mujer en España: Su estado actual, su posible desarrollo (Barcelona, n.d.), 61–62Google Scholar, 87, 99.

10. Nash, Mujer y movimiento obrero, 176.

11. La mujer ante la revolución, Publicaciones del secretariado femenino del POUM (Barcelona: 1937), makes reference, for example, to the fact that “the reactionary prejudice of women's inferiority … is so deeply rooted that many revolutionary workers don't treat their wives any differently than bourgeois families do …” (20).

12. Nash, Mujer y movimiento obrero, 221.

13. I have addressed these issues in more detail in “‘Separate and Equal’? Mujeres Libres and Anarchist Strategy for Women's Emancipation,” Feminist Studies 11 (1985): 63–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and in “Mujeres Libres: Individuality and Community. Organizing Women in the Spanish Civil War,” Radical America (Fall 1984): 7–19.Google Scholar See also Nash, Mary, Chaps. 1 and 2, and “Mujeres Libres” España 1936–1939 (Barcelona, 1976)Google Scholar; and Kaplan, Temma, “Spanish Anarchism and Women's Liberation,” Journal of Contemporary History (1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Other Scenarios: Women and Spanish Anarchism,” in Becoming Visible, ed. Bridenthal, R. and Koonz, C. (Boston, 1977), 400–21.Google Scholar

14. See, for example, Vázquez, Mariano, “Avance: Por la elevación de la mujer,” Solidaridad obrera, 10 10 1935.Google Scholar

15. See, for example, Montseny, Federica, “Feminismo y humanismo,” La revista blanca, 2, No. 33 (1 10 1924)Google Scholar; “La falta de idealidad en el feminismo,” Ibid., 1 (1 Dec. 1923); and “La tragedia de la emancipación femenina,” Ibid., 2 (1924); and Nash, Mary, “Dos intelectuales anarquistas frente al problema de la mujer: Federica Montseny y Lucía Sanchez Saornil,” Convivium (1975), 74–86.Google Scholar

16. The summary that follows draws heavily on my “‘Separate and Equal?’,” 70–72.

17. Formally, constituent organizations included the CNT, the FAI, and the FIJL, the Libertarian Youth.

18. On the orientation of the AMA, see Nash, Mujer y movimiento obrero, Chap. 7; and Alcalde, Carmen, La Mujer en la Guerra civil española (Madrid, 1977)Google Scholar, especially 141–45.

19. Decrees cited in Iturbe, Lola, La mujer en la lucha social y en la guerra civil de España (Mexico, D. F., 1974), 163–70.Google Scholar

20. Soledad Estorach, interview, Paris, 4 Jan. 1982.

21. For further details see my “Revolution and Community: Mobilization, Depoliticization, and Perceptions of Change in Civil War Spain,” in Women Living Change, ed. Bourque, Susan C. and Divine, Donna Robinson (Philadelphia, 1985), 85–115Google Scholar; and “Sexual Divisions and Anarchist Collectivization in Civil War Spain,” Communal Societies (forthcoming).

22. For a fuller description of these processes, as well as a discussion of their limits, see my “Sexual Divisions and Anarchist Collectivization in Civil War Spain.”

23. Matilde, interview with author, Barcelona, 16 02 1979.Google Scholar

24. See Mary Nash, Mujer y movimiento obrero en España, 243–44.

25. Emilia Elias, Por qué luchamos?, cited in Ibid., 244.

26. Alcalde, La mujer en la Guerra civil, 141.

27. Local AMA reports listed such activities as “mobilizing women to occupy the places of men in workshops, factories, offices, commerce and agriculture” organizing assistance to refugee children, old people, invalids, and women in the war zones; organizing work in the fields of local farms; replacing absent male with female workers in two local factories (one for cement and one engaged in weapons production); rooting out “fifth columnists” in the area; tracking down men who were attempting to escape their military service; and coordinating food rationing. “Estatutos de la Agrupación de Mujeres Antifascistas,” Benicalep, , 26 05 1938Google Scholar; and Agrupación de Mujeres Antifascistas, Buñol, “Al Comité Provincial de Mujeres Antifascistas,” no date, both in Archivo de Servicios Documentales, Salamanca, Sección Político-social de Madrid, Carpeta 159, Legajo 1520.

28. See, for example, “La mujer en la transformación revolucionaria,” which attempted to raise the consciousness of male anarchists about the inclusiveness of their language, Tierra y Libertad, 26 Dec. 1936, 8.

29. Ruta, 30 April 1937, 8. See also Tierra y Libertad, 27 March 1937, 6.

30. “Realizaciones de ‘Mujeres Libres,’ Tierra y Libertad, 30 July 1938, 4.

31. “Actitud clara y consecuente de Mujeres Libres. En respuesta a Dolores Ibarruri,” Solidaridad Obrera, 11 Aug 1938, reprinted in Nash, Mujeres Libres, 109–12.

32. “El antifascismo, de todos y para todos,” Tiempos nuevos, Año 4, Nos. 7–8 (July–Aug. 1937).

33. From interviews with a variety of women who were participants in these events.

34. I have explored these connections in “Separate and Equal.”