There Is No Barrier That Can Contain It: Cuban Revolutionary Hope and Transnational Activism from the Anti-Machado Struggle to the Spanish Civil War

Upon President Gerardo Machado’s overthrow in 1933, Cubans who had hoped and struggled for this outcome rejoiced.  They felt the jubilation of victory and the intense energy and momentum of progress during Ramón Grau San Martín’s brief presidency.  They believed for a short time that they were finally achieving democratic governance, an end to U.S. neocolonialism, and significant economic and social gains.  Then their victory fell apart as Fulgencio Batista rose to power. 

Interfering in the struggle against Machado, U.S. Special Ambassador Sumner Welles had attempted to arrange succession of power so as to avoid a revolutionary outcome—but he miscalculated Cuban popular feeling.  As a result, wrote student activist Teté Casuso, Welles found himself “confronted by a broken dike.”  The attempt to avoid revolution had “only succeeded in filling the dam till it burst.”  It would take Batista’s ascendance to quiet the raging waters of political and social unrest.

By 1936 Batista’s forces had achieved the peace and quiet Welles desired in 1933.  Casuso’s metaphoric dam was rebuilt and the revolutionary waters once again contained.  Despite their defeat, Cubans like Casuso and her husband Pablo de la Torriente Brau remained thirsty.  Stuck in exile in the scorching New York summer of 1936, Torriente began to dream of water.  Parched for action and feverish with revolutionary hope, he sought “the great river of revolution” in Spain, noting wistfully that the conflict that erupted there that summer could teach Cuba “that when a people wishes to fight to the death for its ideals and necessities, there is no barrier that can contain it.” 

This paper examines how transnational antifascist activism in support of the Spanish Republic served to sustain revolutionary hope in Cubans defeated by Batista’s rise, and the significance of this sustenance for the island’s domestic politics.