Engendering Antifascism: The Argentine Victory Board in Transnational and Comparative Perspective, 1930-1946
FAIN: HB-262907-19
Sandra M. Deutsch
University of Texas, El Paso (El Paso, TX 79968-8900)
A book-length study about the Victory Board, a pro-democracy women's organization in Argentina during World War II.
My book project on the Victory Board (1941-1946) is a case study of how disenfranchised women spread democracy, united and energized diverse people, and engendered their project. This anti-fascist women's group defied the Axis-leaning Argentine government by making goods for Allied armies in World War II. Combining support for democracy and women's rights, the Board was the largest women's political association before suffrage. It adapted European ideas to the local setting and organized the grassroots throughout the nation against fascism at home and overseas. The Board's collaboration with similar groups across borders facilitated aid and galvanized members. Women were vital for mobilizing anti-fascism and anti-fascism was vital for mobilizing women, in Argentina and perhaps elsewhere, a gendered dimension that scholars have often disregarded. I would use this grant to write the first book on the Board, one which will transform our understanding of global and women's anti-fascisms.
Associated Products
Un cuento de dos antifascistas: sus trayectorias tortuosas desde las derechas hacia el otro lado de las barricadas, 19191- 1943 (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Un cuento de dos antifascistas: sus trayectorias tortuosas desde las derechas hacia el otro lado de las barricadas, 19191- 1943
Author: Sandra M. Deutsch
Abstract: In this paper I trace the political careers of Dr. Elvira Rawson de Dellepiane and Isabel Gimenez Bustamante. A pioneering feminist, Rawson nevertheless joined the zenophobic antileftist Liga Patriotica Argentina in 1919, whose male leaders opposed feminism. Gimenez Bustamante belonged to several Nationalist (the Argentine homegrown version of fascism) groups in the 1930s. While both women moved from the extreme right to antifascism, their antifascism manifested discomfort with the notion of an egalitarian democracy that included laborers and descendants of immigrants.
Date: 09/20/2019
Conference Name: Izquierdas y derechas en el siglo XX argentino: categorias, problemas, abordajes. Cordoba, Argentina
Networks in Latin American history: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Networks in Latin American history: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches
Author: Sandra M. Deutsch
Abstract: The Junta de la Victoria was an Argentine women's antifascist movement. It engaged in three types of networks: (a) its transnational network with a kindred group in Uruguay, Accion Femenina por la Victoria; (b) an Argentine-wide network of chapters headed by its national board in Buenos Aires; and (c) the network(s) of women who formed the activist core within each chapter. In this presentation I analyzed aspects of these networks.
Date: 05/25/2019
Conference Name: Latin American Studies Association meeting, Boston
“Questioning the Binary: Two Women’s Tortuous Journeys to the Other Side of the Political Barricades, 1919-1946.” In Shaping the Nation in Twentieth-Century Argentina, ed. Benjamin Bryce and David M. K. Sheinin (Article)
Title: “Questioning the Binary: Two Women’s Tortuous Journeys to the Other Side of the Political Barricades, 1919-1946.” In Shaping the Nation in Twentieth-Century Argentina, ed. Benjamin Bryce and David M. K. Sheinin
Author: Sandra McGee Deutsch
Abstract: Radicals versus conservatives, Peronists versus Radicals and leftists, Nationalists (homegrown fascists) versus antifascists. One is tempted to view twentieth-century Argentine politics in terms of stark binaries, solid and unbreachable. Nevertheless, people have switched from one stance to another, although there are few scholarly analyses of these shifts before 1946. Here I discuss two women, the feminist Elvira Rawson de Dellepiane and Catholic writer Isabel Giménez Bustamante (hereafter, Rawson and Giménez), who joined far rightist groups but turned to antifascism, ending my coverage with Juan Perón’s first electoral victory. Their varied political involvements demonstrate that Argentine politics have been more fluid than many might think. Furthermore, they show how women helped shape the nation in ways that deserve more attention.
Year: 2021
Access Model: not yet available. awaiting publication.
Periodical Title: to be published in the book mentioned above.
Publisher: submitted (under consideration)
“Fanny Edelman and Jewish Argentine Anti-Fascist Women, 1930-47.” (Article)
Title: “Fanny Edelman and Jewish Argentine Anti-Fascist Women, 1930-47.”
Author: Sandra McGee Deutsch
Abstract: Fanny Edelman’s story illustrates the women of Jewish origins who were key players in Argentine as well as Uruguayan antifascism. As described largely in her autobiography, Banderas, pasiones, camaradas (Buenos Aires: Dirple, 1996), Edelman’s fascinating trajectory sheds light on the significant yet largely unexplored topic of Jewish women’s participation in Latin America antifascist movements. It also suggests avenues for research.
Year: 2021
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Jewish Quarterly Review
Publisher: Jewish Quarterly Review 111, no. 4 (Fall 2021): 517-520.
Fascism, Populism, and Their Opponents (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Fascism, Populism, and Their Opponents
Author: Sandra McGee Deutsch
Abstract: Donald Trump (United States), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), Boris Johnson (Britain), Viktor Orbán (Hungary), Narendra Modi (India) – it is clear that right-wing populists have come to power in country after country. Few have grasped, however, that Latin America was the first place where the modern version of this phenomenon appeared. This course will trace and explore a variety of rightist movements -- ranging from conservative to right-wing populist to fascist -- around the world. We will compare these groups and analyze the connections among them across ideological, temporal, and national borders. No less important is the opposition they have sparked. How have people contested and fought against rightist movements? We will examine these contending forces using the perspectives of gender, race, class, and culture. The readings will cover Latin America, Europe, the United States, Africa, and Asia, as well as theoretical issues related to gender, revolution, and counterrevolution. History students can take this course either for World (5306) or Latin American (5309) credit.
Year: 2020
Audience: Graduate
Antifascism in Latin America, Panels 1 and 2 (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Antifascism in Latin America, Panels 1 and 2
Author: Jorge Nallim
Author: Sandra McGee Deutsch
Abstract: There are many works on antifascism for different countries and periods, but they are generally scattered and do not provide an overall and encompassing view of the history of antifascism in Latin America. Besides, the literature on antifascism in Latin America has been frequently affected by a Eurocentric bias that has downplayed the role of local actors while overplaying the role of external factors. Seeking to establish Latin American antifascism as field of study in its own terms, the panel presentations pay attention to how different groups, in different contexts, adopted and adapted antifascism, what this term meant to them, and for what purposes they deployed it. Presentations explore the origins and evolution of antifascism in Latin America, its impact in several societies, and the legacies left by “classic” antifascism during the interwar period and World War II for later mobilization and resistance during the Cold War and beyond. While establishing comparisons across countries and time periods, presenters also highlight the networks in which antifascist groups operated or that they helped to create, looking at linkages and interactions across local, national, and transnational dimensions.
Date Range: May 5-8, 2022
Location: to take place in San Francisco
Gendering Antifascism: Women’s Activism in Argentina and the World, 1918-1947 (Book)
Title: Gendering Antifascism: Women’s Activism in Argentina and the World, 1918-1947
Author: Sandra McGee Deutsch
Abstract: Sandra McGee Deutsch provides a compelling narrative of the struggles of Argentine women, often operating in an extremely hostile environment, to combat the rise of fascism at home and abroad.
Year: 2023
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-0822947813
"Las mujeres antifascistas y el golpe" in La dictadura de junio de 1943 (Book Section)
Title: "Las mujeres antifascistas y el golpe" in La dictadura de junio de 1943
Author: Sandra McGee Deutsch
Editor: Miranda Lida, Ignacio López, and Luis A. Escobar
Abstract: A book chapter
Year: 2023
Publisher: Edhasa
“Questioning the Binary: Two Women’s Tortuous Journeys to the Other Side of the Political Barricades, 1919-1946.” In Recasting the Nation in Twentieth-Century Argentina, (Book Section)
Title: “Questioning the Binary: Two Women’s Tortuous Journeys to the Other Side of the Political Barricades, 1919-1946.” In Recasting the Nation in Twentieth-Century Argentina,
Author: Sandra McGee Deutsch
Editor: Benjamin Bryce and David M. K. Sheinin
Abstract: Recasting the Nation in Twentieth-Century Argentina tackles the meaning of "the nation" by looking to the geographical, ideological, and political peripheries of society.
Year: 2023
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032344010
“Latin American Antifascism(s): National and Transnational Perspectives.” American Historical Association meeting (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Latin American Antifascism(s): National and Transnational Perspectives.” American Historical Association meeting
Author: Sandra McGee Deutsch
Abstract: The literature on antifascism in Latin America has been frequently affected by a Eurocentric bias that has downplayed the role of local actors while overplaying the role of external factors. As contributors in the establishment of Latin American antifascism as a field of study in its own terms, presenters in this panel pay attention to how different groups, in different contexts, adopted and adapted antifascism, what this term meant to them, and for what purposes they deployed it. Among other issues, they explore the origins and evolution of antifascism in Latin America, its impact in several societies, and the legacies left by “classic” antifascism during the interwar period and World War II for later mobilization and resistance during the Cold War and beyond. While establishing comparisons across countries and time periods, contributors also highlight the networks in which antifascist groups operated or that they helped to create, looking at linkages and interactions across local, national, and transnational dimensions. The panel will be of interest to a broad audience interested in topics such comparative political and ideological history, transnational history, the interwar years and the Cold War, fascism/antifascism, and Latin American and world history.
Date: 1/5/23
Conference Name: American Historical Association meeting