Better Off With "Their Own People": Basque Refugee Children, Catholic Anti-Communism, and the Geopolitics of Compassion in FDR's America

Abstract

At the height of the Spanish Civil War in 1937, the autonomous Basque government organized the evacuation of 25,000 of the community's endangered children. At the same time, American anti-fascists launched a program to bring Basque refugee children to the United States. Opposed by a restrictionist State Department and powerful anti-communist Catholic leaders, they were ultimately unsuccessful. Close examination of the failed program nonetheless reveals how foreign policy and domestic political interests have long interacted with changing notions of race and religion to determine which unaccompanied children were seen as deserving of asylum in the United States.