Ruins and Glory: The Long Spanish Civil War in Latin America

FAIN: FT-291695-23

Kirsten Weld
President and Fellows of Harvard College (Cambridge, MA 02138-3800)

Writing leading to a book about the legacy of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) in Latin America.

My book project, "Ruins and Glory," is the first major study of the Spanish Civil War’s impact and legacies in Latin America. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) saw right-wing insurrectionists work to overthrow a progressive elected government, and Latin American partisans saw its outcome as fundamental to their own political struggles, which similarly pitted a social, spiritual, and economic order rooted in Iberian empire against the demands of modern secular democracy. "Ruins and Glory" reveals the Spanish war to have been a trans-Atlantic affair, and also shows how its organizations, causes, and actors played key roles in the insurgencies, dictatorships, and social movements of Latin America’s Cold War years. It thus reinterprets the region’s twentieth-century history, sheds light on the dynamics of decolonization, and, in demonstrating the longevity and reach of the ideas behind the Spanish Civil War, helps explain the return of socialism, fascism, and anti-fascism to the global stage today.