Latin America: European and Latin American Federalism and Antifascism - (1930s and 1940s) *

Jean-Francis Billion
Vice-president of UEF France, editor of Pour le fédéralisme – Fédéchoses

Anti-fascist emigration to Latin America does not date from the beginning of the Second World War but from 1922 (Italy), 1933 (Germany), 1939 (Spain)... and accelerates with the Nazi offensive for France and the other countries of continental Europe.

Several intellectuals took a stand on Europe and federalism. Georges Bernanos or the German Paul Zech[i], many Spaniards and Italians. Some, such as Victor Serge or Stefan Zweig, collaborated with the local anti-fascist press[ii]. Bernanos, a monarchist earlier close to Charles Maurras for a time, collaborated with Free France (FF), published a “Letter to the English” on a Europe that had to repudiate nationalism and return to the tradition of unity[iii], while the jurist André Gros expressed his skepticism about the upcoming unification of Europe[iv]. Paul Rivet, ethnologist, collaborated with FF, founded the French Institute of Latin America and was in contact with the Spanish Republicans and the group Socialismo y Libertad (SyL, see below)[v]. In Argentina, Roger Caillois created a review, Les Lettres françaises, publishing Jean Malaquais or Victor Serge (from SyL) and Europeanists (Julien Benda, Jacques Maritain, Jules Romains, Denis de Rougemont…)[vi]. Erich Koch-Weser, ex-president of the German Democratic Party of the Weimar Republic, wrote on the reorganization of Europe (1942-44) and published in Chile in the Deutsche Blätter founded by Zech[vii]…

Federalist movements existed in Latin America, about which I have already published. It is impossible to go back over them here. I merely mention them and indicate in notes some sources.

Union Federal (UF, Argentina)!

Contacts with both Federal Union (UK and USA), forbidden after a military coup d'État (06-43)[viii]; founded by two British emigrants, UF was relaunched at the end of 1944 in particular by Curio Chiaravidio, president of Italia Libera (IL)[ix], and participated in Montevideo in the creation of a Latin Republican Union for the Federation of Democracies (04-45).

Asociación pacifista argentina (APA)

Two French conscientious objectors, Pierre Hovelacque and Jacques Savary, founded the APA and its magazine Pacifismo with the Professor Juan Lazarte later of the Movimiento pro federación americana (MPFA, Bogota 1948)[x]. The APA participated in Montreux in the founding of the World Movement for World Federal Government (08-47) and wanted a “Latin American federation, (...) first step towards the foundation of a pan-American federation, and later a world federation”[xi].

Partido unionista centro-americano (PUCA) and Unión democratica centro-americana (UDC)

Salvador Mendieta created the PUCA (1902) to rebuild the Federación de Centroamerica,  dissolved in 1848. In its wake, the UDC was born in Mexico City (1943) and published Centro-América Libre; its members confronted the Axis supporters and the PUCA organized a very anti-fascist convention. The unionists wrote to Roosevelt supporting the anti-fascist struggle, but denouncing the duplicity of the USA supporting dictators who refused the Federación de Centro-América[xii].

European exiles in Latin America

Germany

Before the war, most activists interested in a federal and democratic Europe were active in the socialist left (Sozialistiche Arbeiterpartei, SAP; Neue Beginnen; Internationaler Sozialisticher Kampfbund, ISK) or among liberals and Christians; the leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was not interested in this before 1943 (nor were the communists or dissident national socialists followers of Otto Strasser)[xiii].

August Siemsen, a former SPD member of parliament, joined the SAP before going into exile in Argentina, where he founded Das Andere Deutschland (DAD, 1938), which spread to Latin America, published Das andere Deutschand-La Otra Alemania and took a position in favour of a European Federation even before the Montevideo congress of German anti-Nazis in Latin America (01-43), which adopted the «Politisches Manifest der Deutschen Antifascisten Sudamerikas»[xiv]. Siemsen stayed in contact with Willy Eichler (ISK) in London and his sister Anna in Switzerland, close to Hanna Bertholet who participated in the meetings in Geneva organized by Spinelli / Rossi and the Delegation of the French Resistance in Switzerland[xv].

Spain

Former President of the Cortes, Diego Martinez Barrio launched an appeal from Mexico City to the Western democracies to contribute to the departure of Franco because “without a free Spain, a free Europe will not be possible” (1941)[xvi]. The Republicans were not united: Acción republicana española (ARE), Unión democrática española (UDE) and when the Junta española de liberación (JEL) was founded, the communists and others shunned it.

José A. Aguirre, of the Partido Nacional Vasco (PNV, Christian Democrat), demanded self-determination for the Basque Region and supported European unity[xvii]; Josep Irla, former Vice-President of the Catalan parliament, demanded independence in an Iberian confederation. In Mexico, the journals España (JEL), Adelante! and El Socialista (Partido socialista obrero español, PSOE) published on Europe, Federalism, Latin Union and Separatism[xviii]. Multiple branches of Centro republicano español (CRE) existed and at the end of 1943 the one in Montevideo contacted IL (BA), other “Republicanos” and then in New York Count Carlo Sforza, future Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, leading to the Montevideo Conference for the Latin Republican Union in early 1945. The Uruguayan Carlos Zubillaga quotes the Declaration of the CRE's organizing committee[xix], while Federal News (London) summarizes the organization's objectives: “in America, a democratic pan-Americanism; in Europe, a federation of free peoples; in the world, peace in equality, freedom and independence for all nations”[xx].

France

French exiles often affiliated with Gaullist networks that “showed considerable reserve, if not hostility, towards the idea of unifying Europe by limiting national sovereignty.”[xxi] There was no local French press developing federalist views and the weekly La France nouvelle founded in Buenos Aires by local FF leader Albert Guérin did not publish federalist positions of the Resistance until after his arrival at the provisional Consultative Assembly in Algiers[xxii]. No trace, either, of Europeanist positions taken during the meetings of the FF committees of Latin America in Montevideo and then Santiago at the end of 1943 and 1944[xxiii].

Without forgetting Rivet, we must mention Marceau Pivert and Julien Coffinet, linked to SyL of which Pivert was one of the founders (03-43). A former leader of the left wing of the French Socialist Party (SFIO), he arrived in Mexico (summer 1940) and kept in contact in Lyon with the L'Insurgé group. Coffinet, a former member of the Democratic Communist Circle and then of the SFIO, emigrated to Uruguay, contacted SyL and wrote in the magazine Análisis of Mexico. With the Italian Anarchist Luce Fabbri and the Republicans Fernando and Pilar de Cárdenas of the CRE, he took care of the local review Socialismo y Libertad[xxiv]. Fabbri's testimony is interesting: “Around 1943 a very interesting experience was born, that of working with people from different tendencies: socialists, anarchists and republicans. The idea was that in each country the European refugees should get together with the objective of a united Europe. (...) We published a magazine (...) in which each of us wrote from his own position”[xxv].

Italy

The vast majority of Italian anti-fascists approached post-war Europe from the point of view of European integration, denouncing the Nazi plan of continental unification through conquest and opposing it with the will to build a free, democratic and federal Europe[xxvi].

The priest Don Luigi Sturzo founded the Partito Popolare Italiano, emigrated to London and created the international Catholic anti-fascist People and Freedom Group (1936-44), then from New York co-wrote the manifesto Facing the World Crisis (1942). He wanted regional federations for Europe, then a federation including Great Britain and the USSR. His Argentine supporters published Tiempos nuevos and apparently disbanded after an international Christian Democratic meeting in Montevideo (1943)[xxvii].

Beyond that, the emigration was divided between the Mazzini Society (MS) and the Alianza internazionale Giuseppe Garibaldi (AIGG). The MS was founded in the United States (1939-43) by people close to Giustizia e libertà (GL), including Gaetano Salvemini, who left it because of his disagreement over the communists, and the writer Antonio Borgese (1942)[xxviii]. The MS wanted to raise awareness among Italian-Americans and influence Anglo-Saxon politics, Carlo Sforza tried to make it the equivalent of the FF and to head a government in exile[xxix]. The disappointing results led him to rely on IL and to organize the Montevideo Congress[xxx]. IL, founded in Argentina (1940), spread throughout the subcontinent and linked up with the MS; its groups took federalist positions[xxxi]. The AIGG was founded in Mexico City (1942) by Francesco Frola, a former socialist parliamentarian who had emigrated to Brazil where he directed the anti-fascist newspaper La Difesa before creating La Giustizia and Il Risorgimento in Buenos Aires, and then settling in Mexico (1938)[xxxii]; its co-founders were communists, Mario Montagnana and Vittorio Vidali, and the AIGG called for anti-fascist unity following the invasion of the USSR by the Nazis. It became international and called on “free men of France, Spain and Italy, both within and outside their national borders, to form an Association of European Peoples; (...) this, however, is not our ultimate goal with regard to the future organization of the world”[xxxiii].

The Montevideo Congress was attended by the American ambassador, British representatives, the LF, European governments in exile, Latin American politicians and about hundred IL delegates. It is the main manifestation of the Italian exile in the Americas.

It should be noted that the three Montevideo meetings organized by the MS and IL (08-42), DAD (01-43) and the JEL (early 1945) took positions in favor of international federal institutions (American, Atlantic or European) in a global perspective.

The international group Socialismo y Libertad (1940-45)[xxxiv]

Created in Mexico City by socialist and « libertaires » refugees, some of whom knew each other before founding the Centro marxista revolucionario internacional (1940, Spanish Partido obrero de unificación marxista [POUM], British Independent Labour Party, Pivert's Socialist Workers' and Peasants' Party, SAP, Italian Socialist Maximalist Party...). Anti-Stalinists, but critical of Trotsky despite their respect and the shock of his assassination, they could not conceive of socialism without freedom and refused the national path to socialism. SyL included Latin Americans and extended to Latin America and the islands, corresponded with ILP, SAP, ISK, Italian Socialist Party, GyL, IL/MS, IAGG, L’Insurgé Group, the Insurgent, the Bund (Jewish socialist organization) or Polonia popular...

Two magazines, Análisis - Revista de hechos y ideas and Mundo - Socialismo y Libertad[xxxv] were created and a Declaration of Principles was published[xxxvi]. Among the main initiators: Julián Gorkin and Enrique Gironnella (POUM)[xxxvii], Pivert, Victor Serge, « libertaire » and former leader of the Trotskyite opposition in the USSR, the former German communist Gustav Regler, Leo Valiani (Pierre Chevalier), a former communist and prison companion of Spinelli, later responsible for his meeting in Lyon with André Ferrat (1945), communist and then responsible for the anti-Stalinist Marxist magazine Que faire? (1934), founder of the French Committee for the European Federation (CFFE, 1944)[xxxviii].

Serge, Gorkin, Pivert and Chevalier published Los problemas del socialismo en nuestro tiempo[xxxix], considered the Manifesto of the group, and numerous articles in Análisis or Mundo on Europe and Federalism. Mundo reported on underground Resistance groups in Europe (Libérer et fédérer, GyL, Franc-Tireur, L'Insurgé…) or exile (UK, Switzerland or the Americas), and in its latest issues published information on two important federalist meetings in Europe.

“¡Hacia una Federación europea!” pointed out, without naming it, the Federalist Declaration of European Resistances drafted in Geneva from March to July 1944 on the initiative of Spinelli, Rossi and the delegation in Switzerland of the French Resistance; Mundo also published the laudatory comments of the National Liberation Movement of Lyons, but reserved its position and questioned its readers about the “confused and insufficient aspect of transforming the economic and social order of the current capitalist regime»[xl].

“Por una federación europea”, in the last issue of Mundo, without any reservations, published an account of the Paris Federalist Conference of spring 1945 organized by Spinelli and Ursula Hirschmann, with the help of Albert Camus and the MLN, at which Pivert's close friend Michel Collinet spoke. The CFFE is mentioned as well as the personalities present or invited in addition to extracts from the reports of Ferrat and Antonelli (Spinelli)[xli].

On the last page of the same issue, the unsigned article “Socialismo y Libertad debe ser organizado en Europa” (Socialism and Freedom must be organized in Europe), gives a glimpse of the decision of Gironella, Gorkin and Pivert to return to Europe and to continue their struggles there[xlii]; they will have an important role in the creation, in particular, of the Socialist Movement for the United States of Europe, together with Henri Frenay, the founder of the Combat movement and one of the main leaders of the UEF[xliii].

* Excerpts from “Europe and federalism as seen by European antifascists in Latin America (1930s and 1940s)”, to be published by Peter Lang, Brussels, in Proceedings of the Colloquium “Visions of Europe in the Resistance”, University of Genoa, March 2019

^[i] See Berlin, Exile and Resistance, cat. 16, German Resistance Memorial Center, 2015.
^[ii] Andres Bisso, «Argentina libre y Antinazi: dos revistas en torno de una propuesta politico-cultural sobre el antifascismo argentino 1940-1946», in Temas de nuestra América, San José (Costa Rica), Vol. 25, n° 47, 2009.
^[iii] Lettre aux Anglais, 3^° éd., Rio de Janeiro, Atlántica editoria, 1943, in Walter Lipgens (WL) et Wilfried Loth (WLo), Documents on the History of European Integration, Plans for European Union in Great Britain and in Exile. 1939-1945, Berlin, New York, De Gruyter, Vol. 2, 1986.
^[iv] «The Unifying forces of Europe», in Les problèmes politiques de l’Europe. Réflexions sur la paix future, RdJ, Atlántica editora, 1942, in WL et WLo, op. cit.
^[v] Nicole Racine, «Paul Rivet, Vichy et la France libre 1940-44 », Cairn.info.
^[vi] https://www.revues-littéraires.com/articles.php?Ing=fr1pg=2876.
^[vii] Karl Voigt, «Erich Koch-Weser», in WL, WLo, Documents…, op. cit.
^[viii] J.-F. Billion (JFB), New York and Ventotene, World Federalism, European Federalism and International Democracy, WFM-IGP and Altiero Spinelli Institute for Federalist Studies, 2001.
^[ix] Ariane Landuyt, «Ideas of Italian Exiles on the Postwar Order in Europe», in, WL, WLo, op. cit.
^[x] JFB ibid. et «Il Movimiento pro federación americana», in Il Federalista, Pavia, Vol. 35, n° 2 1993.
^[xi] Jfb, World Federalism…, op. cit.
^[xii] JFB, «Il Federalismo in America Centrale – XIX e XX secolo», in, Storia e percorsi del federalismo. L’eredità di Carlo Cattaneo, Daniela Preda et Cinzia Rognoni Vercelli (eds.), Bologna, Il Mulino, 2005, Vol. 2.
^[xiii] G. Friedmann, Alemanes antinazis en la Argentina, BA, Siglo veintiuno editores, 2010; Christian Bailey, Between Yesterday and Tomorrow. Germans Visions of Europe, 1926-1950, NY et Londres, Berghahn, 2013.
^[xiv] Ibid, ; WL and WLo, Documents…, « Political Manifesto of the German Anti-Fascists in South America », 31.01.43.
^[xv] C. Bailey, «The Internationaler Sozialisticher Kampfbund: From World Revolution to European Federalism», in Between…, op. cit. ; Francesca Lacaita, Anna Siemsen. Per una nuova Europa, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2010; JFB, « Il Comité français pour la Fédération européenne : le radici, la fondazione i contati », in C. Rognoni Verceli, Paolo G. Fontana et D. Preda (eds.), Altiero Spinelli, il federalismo e la Resistenza, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2012.
^[xvi] Heine Harmut, La oposición politica al franquismo. De 1939 a 1952, Barcelona, Critica, 1983.^[xvii] J-A. Aguirre, Cinco conferencias pronunciadas en un viaje por América, BA, Editorial vasca Ekin, 1944.
^[xviii] See www.cervantesvirtual.com., Fundación Pablo Iglesias (PSOE).
^[xix] C. Zubillaga, «El Centro republicano español de Montevideo : entre la solidariedad y la realpolitik », in Migraciones y exilios, 9° année, n° 9, 2008 and « Acta de Asamblea n° 8, 15.01.44 », in Libro de sesiones de Asamblea (CRE, Montevideo), 1941-47.
^[xx] «Federal Union in the Argentine», in Federal News, Londres, n° 138, 09.46, in JFB, World Federalism…, op. cit.
^[xxi] Pierre Guillen, «Plans by exiles from France. Introduction», in WL et WLo, Documents…, op. cit.
^[xxii] V. Fernandez Anca, «El totalitarismo entre las dos guerras. Notas de introducción », in L. Fabbri, La libertad entre la historía y la utópia. Tres ensayos y otros textos del siglo XX, Antonia Fontanillas Borrás et Sonya Torres (dir.), Barcelona, Medusa SCP, 1998; La France nouvelle, BNF, www.retronews.fr.
^[xxiii] Robert Belot, « Les comités de la France libre en Amérique latine pendant la guerre : enjeu symbolique, politique et diplomatique », in Rennes, De Gaulle et l’Amérique latine, PUR, http://books.edition.org/pur.42525.
^[xxiv] Charles Jacquier, « L’exil de Julien Coffinet ou un marxiste hérétique à Montevideo », in Dissidences. Bulletin de liaison des études sur le mouvement révolutionnaire, 5° année, n° 12-13, 10.12-01.13.
^[xxv] Margareth Rago, Sao Paulo, Entre a història e a libertade. Luce Fabbri e o anarquismo contemporaneo, Editora Unesp, 2001.
^[xxvi] A. Landuyt, «Ideas…», op. cit.
^[xxvii] L. Sturzo, in A. Landuyt, ibid. ; Diego Mauro, « Católicos antifascistas en Argentina (1936-43). Luigi Sturzo las tramas locales de People and Freedom Group », in Itinerantes. Revista de historia y religión, Tucumán, Ar., n° 7, 2017.
^[xxviii] Years later, to be one of the members of the Committee to frame a World Constitution and of the Editorial Board of the Review Common Cause in Chicago (1950).
^[xxix] C. Sforza, cf. A. Landuyt, «Ideas…», op. cit.
^[xxx] Nicola Oddati, «L’antifascismo e il Congresso di Montevideo », in Latinoamerica, analisi testi dibatti, Vol. 12, n°42-43, 05.91.
^[xxxi] Cf. A. Landuyt, «Ideas…», op. cit.
^[xxxii] João Fábio Bettonha, « Um antifascista controverso : Francesco Frola », in História social, Campinas, SP, n° 7, 2000.
^[xxxiii] In A. Landuyt, in «Ideas…», op. cit.
^[xxxiv] Claudio Albertani, « Le groupe Socialismo y libertad. L’exil anti-autoritaire d’Europe au Mexique et la lutte contre le stalinisme (1940-1950) », in Agone, Marseille, n° 43, 2010 ; Willy Buschak, « Sozialismus und Freiheit. Wie eine kleine Gruppe im mexikanischem Exil der 1940er Jahre zu einem neuen Verständnis von Revolution kam und welche Folgen das für Europa hatte », in Bonn, Archiv für Sozialgeschiste, Friedrich-Ebert-Stifung, Vol. 59, 2019, Verlag J. H. W. Dietz Nachf.
^[xxxv] Mundo , http://ddd.uab.cat/record/56854, Universidad autonoma de Barcelona (except Issue n° 2).
^[xxxvi] « Proposiciones para una declaración de principios », in Mundo, Mexico, n° 1, 1943.
^[xxxvii] Lluis Maria de Puig, Madrid, Gironella, la izquierda europeista, Cuadernos de la Fundación Españoles en el mundo, n° 21, 1999.
^[xxxviii] Letter L. (Valiani) to Pantagruel (Spinelli), 02.01.44, in Spinelli Archives, EU Historical Archives (Firenze), file AS, 3, in Edmondo Paolini, Altiero Spinelli. Della lotta antifascista alla battaglia per la Federazione europea. 1920-48, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1996.
^[xxxix] Mexico, ediciones Iberoamericanas, 1944.
^[xl] Mundo, n° 11-12, 03.45.
^[xli] Mundo, n° 11-12, 03.45.
^[xlii] Ibid, p. 32.
^[xliii] R. Belot, Résistance et conscience européenne. Henri Frenay, de Gaulle et les communistes, Lyon, Presse fédéraliste, 2021.