Spaces of Antifascism: Political and Jewish Refugees in La Paz, Bolivia, in the Times of World War II

Tens of thousands of Jewish refugees fled to Latin America on the eve of and during World War II. They were joined by significant numbers of political refugees, many of whom were Jews. Via organized movements, informal networks, and everyday pursuits, Jewish and non-Jewish refugees contributed to antifascist awareness across the continent. Without discounting the importance of supralocal antifascist organizations, this paper takes antifascism as a place-based practice involving local networks of connection among political refugees, Jewish refugees, and Latin Americans. Focusing on the city of La Paz, it considers how the remaking of antifascist communities and selves was fostered by engagement in spaces of social and political encounter associated with Europeans or Jews—in European-run restaurants, a refugee-run bookshop, and political and Jewish organizations. As the Bolivian experience shows, the daily life and organizational work of European antifascists overlapped with that of wider worlds of Jewish refugees who were not necessarily party members, political activists, or intellectuals. European political refugees also interacted to varying degrees with Latin Americans opposed to local authoritarian leaders and a Nazi presence in their own countries. Focusing on the sometimes ambiguous ties between political refugees, Jewish refugees, and Bolivians, the paper considers how connections and tensions with Jews reshaped European antifascism in Bolivia. It offers a new perspective on exile antifascism by embedding political refugees and their organizations in the larger and highly visible Jewish refugee world of La Paz.