By Crystal
Taylor
Southern Exposure 31.1 (Spring 2003)
When the United States adopted a policty of strict neutrality during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, cigar workers in Tampa refused to stand idly by. This community of Spanish, Cuban, and Italian workers and their families boasted a “long tradition of labor activism and radical politics,” as well as the third-largest Spanish immigrant population in the United States, according to Fraser Ottanelli, a history professor at the University of South Florida. The cigar workers, says Ottanelli, saw General Francisco Franco’s rebellion against the democratically elected, leftist Spanish government as a “global attack against democracy.”
From 1936 to 1939, 24 volunteers from Tampa - all of whom were Latino, except for one, who was Jewish – joined with 2,800 other Americans to form the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, the first racially integrated military unit in U.S. history, led by the first black commander. Violating the State Department’s prohibition against travel to Spain, they crossed the Pyrenees to defend the Spanish Republican government against Franco as part of the International Brigades, a force of 35,000 men and women from over 40 different countries. Over the course of the war, more than one-third of the American volunteers, roughly 940 men and women, were killed.
On November 2, 2002, those Tampeños who felt compelled to protect democracy and fight fascism at home and on the battlefield were honored with a monument at the Centro Asturiano de Tampa, consisting of a 3,700-pound rock from Spain’s Ebro Valley, site of the last battle in which the International Brigades participated. In the 1930s, the Centro Asturiano was home to a Spanish mutual aid society, an organization that provided medical assistance to Spanish immigrants. Located in Ybor City, the Latin district of Tampa, the institution provided a fertile breeding ground for support of the war effort.
The day before the dedication, vandals covered the monument with white paint. It is still undecided whether the rock will be cleaned or the paint left as a reminder of the Lincoln Brigades’ struggles, both abroad and at home.
In fact, the Tampeño effort against fascism was fought mostly at home, not on the front lines. Immigrant life in what was once known as the “Cigar Capital of the World” revolved around the cigar industry. Spanish, Italian, and Cuban workers listened to readings from international and national labor publications in cigar factories, mutual aid societies, and other meeting places, fostering a strong political consciousness and sense of solidarity. Tampa Latinos created the Democratic Popular Committee to Aid Spain, held demonstrations, and raised money to support the Loyalists. “There was a strong pro-republican feeling here in Tampa, from the oldest to the youngest,” says Willie Garcia, community relations director at the Centro Asturiano. In a matter of three years, they raised $200,000, roughly $1.57 million by today’s standards. They sent four ambulances, several thousand cans of milk, 20 tons of clothes, and six million cigarettes. Even the children joined in, collecting foil wrappers from cigarette packs, and selling churros on street corners. What made the Latino community in Tampa so remarkable, says Garcia, was their “love for liberty and sympathy for the people, rather than autocratic government.”
While Tampa survivors returned home to a hero’s welcome within the Latino community in Ybor City, many Lincoln Brigade veterans faced a more hostile reception, dismissed by some as “premature anti-fascists.” More than 60 percent of U.S. volunteers were members of the Communist Party, and many fell victim to the witch hunts of the McCarthy era. But the pro-republican sentiment that inspired Tampeños to join the Brigades stemmed less from communist ideology than from liberal political ideals and familial ties to Republican Spain, says Garcia. Outside Ybor City, however, they were treated with the same hostility as their fellow volunteers. Like many Lincoln Brigaders, several of the Tampa volunteers later faced difficulties trying to serve in the U.S. armed forces; one was forced to change his name merely in order to enlist.
With the support of Mussolini and Hitler, Franco was
able to defeat the International Brigades. But the foresight and courage of the
Tampeños and volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade to protect the values of
democracy demand the attention of more than just those who were involved. It’s
a lesson largely absent from the pages of American history books, but art and
photography exhibits have recently memorialized the experience of the Lincoln
Brigades, and monuments have been dedicated in Seattle and Madison, Wis. Local
efforts in the Tampa community, such as an oral history project by historian
Ana Varela-Lago, continue to reveal a movement all but forgotten now and often
despised in its day, but vindicated by subsequent events. “We got beat by some
very, very bad people,” says Garcia, “and it took a World War to show them they
were wrong.”
Crystal Taylor is a former
editorial intern at Southern Exposure.