Raymond Pedrero, born Ramón Pedrero Pérez in Spain on December 28, 1896, illustrates the mobilization of the Spanish-American community in support of Republican Spain. Pedrero emigrated to the United States in 1920 and later returned to Spain to fight in the civil war.
Spanish-Americans and the Spanish Civil War
Pedrero Pérez came to the United States from Riotinto, a small mining community in southern Spain, during the peak of Spanish immigration in the 1920s. In 1930, he worked in New York as a cook in a hospital cafeteria. Like other Spanish immigrants in the United States, he would have celebrated the proclamation of the Spanish Republic in 1931 and then grown concerned when fascism rose across Europe. Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, and in 1936 Franco revolted against the democratic Republic of Spain.
With the growing threat against the Republic, many Spanish-Americans got actively involved against Franco’s nationalist, at home in the United States or by taking up arms in Spain. The Popular Front, a coalition of governing parties that included the Communist Party, was formed as a common front against fascism. It encouraged Spanish Americans to move beyond the confines of their ethnic communities in the 1930s and to become involved in political activism. Many cultural associations that had been created by immigrants in previous decades, such as the Ateneo Hispano, joined a new organization: the Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas (Confederation of Hispanic Societies). It was an umbrella group of Hispanic cultural organizations from across the United States that sided with the Spanish Republic. It provided assistance by whatever means they could. Because the United States had adopted a policy of neutrality regarding the Spanish Civil War, Americans could legally provide only humanitarian aid but not military support to the Spanish Republic.
Pedrero Pérez was among those who got politically involved. He was a member of the Ateneo Hispano in New York since 1927 and then—in February 1937—he left for Spain to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and later the anti-tank battery of the 129th International Brigade. Little is known about his time in Spain.
Art as Protest
In the midst of the Great Depression, the Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas organized fundraisers, demonstrations, and a variety of public events to raise awareness of what was happening in Spain. It also used art to protest the nationalist attack on the Republic and to aid in the war effort.
Theater was particularly popular. Ignacio Zugadi’s play, ¡Milicianos al Frente! (Militiamen to the Front!), for example, was staged by the Ateneo Hispano in New York in September 1936, only two months after the start of the Spanish Civil War. The play’s main character, Atilano, had anarchist leanings and believed that the Spanish government should be completely dismantled. It was a call to arms. Many Spaniards, like Pedrero Pérez, would have been roused to action through such plays.
Two Worlds
Pedrero Pérez straddled two worlds. With his Spanish heritage rooted in the politically active mining community of Riotinto and his leftist leanings, he called for change while living in New York before returning to Spain. Fighting on the side of the Republic, he witnessed the devastation that befell his people. No theatrical production could have depicted the full horrors of war, but political-based plays motivated people to take up arms against the rise of fascism.
In February 1939, fleeing the advance of the nationalists, Pedrero Pérez crossed the border into France. Together with John Palu, another signatory of the fan, he was sent to the French camp of Argeles-sur-Mer.
When the war was lost, for many Spanish Americans the ties to their homeland were broken. The dictatorship that emerged after the Spanish Civil War alienated them, and also sent hundreds of thousands of Spaniards into exile, not to return until after Franco’s death. For many, like Pérez, the short-lived democratic experiment of the Spanish Republic would live on only in their hearts.
FURTHER READINGS
Montse Feu. 2020. Fighting Fascist Spain: Worker Protest from the Printing Press. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Lisa Jackson-Schebetta. 2017. “Spectacles of Gender and Nation. Red Carmens within and without History.” In Traveler, There is No Road: Theatre, the Spanish Civil War, and the Decolonial Imagination in the Americas. By L. Jackson-Schebetta. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Pp. 23-53.
Ana Varela-Lago. 2015. “From Migrants to Exiles: The Spanish Civil War and the Spanish Immigrant Communities in the United States.” Camino Real 7/10, 111-128.
SOURCES
James D. Fernández. 2012. “Unfinished Journey: U.S. Spaniards face the Civil War.” The Volunteer.
Marta Rey García. 1997. Stars for Spain: La Guerra Civil Española en los Estados Unidos. Sada: Ediciós do Castro.
“Ramón Pedrero.” Personal File. RGASPI. Fond 545, Opis 6, File 961.
“Ramón Pedrero Pérez.” The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Biographical Database.