Argentina y el exilio republicano de 1939: las fronteras y el movimiento de solidaridad

Abstract

Much has been said about the Republican exile to France, Mexico and Chile but so little about the exile to Argentinian territory. The simple reason is that the port of Buenos Aires saw few ships arrive with these refugees, many of whom were only in transit to the sister republics. However, this exodus becomes more interesting when placed alongside the broad movement of solidarity organized to help the thousands of Republican exiles who crossed the border into France in the cold winter of 1939. The Argentinian pro-republican aid movement, well established and organized during the years of the Spanish conflict, redirected its functions in 1939 to new areas: republican exiles, war orphans, and victims of Francoist reprisals. Thus, 1939 marked a turning point for this movement, which, on the fall of the republican government reinvented itself: while preserving the same anti-fascist ideology, the solidarity struggle gave way to a prolonged social challenge translated into the formation of new aid committees and the creation of new parliamentary debates by the socialist and radical political opposition.