Imagining the Spanish Civil War: Anti-Fascism among Mexican Artists and Workers

This paper considers the domestic engagement of Mexican unions and leftist artists with the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.  As a central focus of the popular front strategy of the left in the 1930s, anti-fascism in general and the Spanish Civil war in particular loomed large in the imaginary of organized workers and artists. The political context is the progressive, nationalist government of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-40), the creation of the CTM (Confederación de Trabajadores de México) by a mobilized working class, and the popular front strategy of the Communist Party and international left. My primary focus is on the SME (Sindicato de Electricistas Méxicanos) and the artist organizations LEAR (Liga de Escritories y Artistas Revolucionarios) and the TGP (Taller de Gráfica Popular). The paper explores anti-fascist visions of the Spanish Civil War as central to the radicalization of existing unions; the eventual tensions between artists’ increasing concern with European fascism and workers’ concerns rooted in material concerns and class and national identities; and the graphic representations that mirrored and shaped the changing imaginary of the Spanish Civil War for these groups, manifest in LEAR and TGP prints, their collaborations in the Electricians’ publication LUX, and the tense negotiations between a team of Mexican and Spanish artists led by Davíd Alfaro Siqueiros with electrical workers over a 1939 mural, “Portrait of the Bourgeoisie,” in the new SME union headquarters.