ABSTRACT
Over 1,000 Cubans volunteered on the side of the Republic during the Spanish Civil War – more by far than from any other Latin America country – and a small number of these men and women were medical volunteers. Pre-dating by decades the present-day program of Cuban medical aid abroad, Cuban medical volunteers in Spain exemplified an early ‘glorious epoch of internationalism’, in the words of one Cuban history. Their international solidarity work made up part of a large, vibrant, domestically sited, but transnationally linked movement of Cuban anti-fascism. Investigating the stories of six individual Cuban men and women who served as medical volunteers in Spain, this chapter explores several broad and important themes of Cuban anti-fascism: the significance of Cuban anti-fascists’ transnational identities and experiences; the way in which they situated their anti-fascism in Cuban domestic politics; the nature of their connections to the international left; and in some cases the ambivalence of their politics and character. Human stories both illuminate and complicate political stories in the chapter, contributing to a nuanced view of Cuban anti-fascism as a whole.
