Transatlantic Routes and Encounters. European Anti-Fascists in Mexico, 1939-1945

Once the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939, thousands of anti-fascist exiles began to move to Latin American; Mexico, in particular, welcomed several thousand Europeans. We will follow the trajectories of some anti-fascists who had participated in the conflict, and who later decided to cross the ocean and settle in Mexico. While the existence of intra-European anti-fascist exiles is well known (e.g., Italian anti-fascists who exiled to France between the 1920s and 1930), those of transatlantic origins are much less apparent in history, with the remarkable exception of the Spanish fleeing Francoism after 1939. Since history’s recent ‘global turn’, the concept of ‘networks’ has been particularly adept at enabling historians to see the reciprocal connections between local, regional and global actors and to bridge the increasingly artificial divide among national and international spaces. The case we will discuss in this article represents a paradigmatic example of the utility of this approach. Studying anti-fascist exiles and their networks after 1939 on a global scale will allow us to see the flows of people and ideas between Europe and the American continent.