Cuca García (1889–1973): Por las causas de las mujeres y la revolución

Abstract

María del Refugio García Martínez, or Cuca García, was a central figure in Mexican activist circles; she played a pivotal role in the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) and the women's movement. Born to a middle-class family in Taretan, Michoacán, García's father was a socially minded doctor who served and advocated for rural laborers on local sugar haciendas. He also supported the education of his daughter, an increasingly widespread practice, especially among liberals. When she was 19 years old, García's father died, leaving his widow alone to raise her children in difficult economic circumstances. These early experiences informed García's subsequent trajectory. García was an early member of the Michoacán Socialist Party (established in 1917) and the PCM (established in 1919), and she was a founding member of the Mexican Feminist Advisory Board (established in 1919) and the Sole Front for Women's Rights (FUPDM, established in 1935). García's name has appeared repeatedly in histories of the women's movement in Mexico, such as those authored by Esperanza Tuñón Pablos, Gabriela Cano, and Ana Lau. Building on these works, Verónica Oikión Solano's biography significantly deepens our knowledge of García and of important processes in early twentieth-century Mexican history.Oikión Solano's biography provides a fuller understanding of the overlapping worlds of leftist politics, the labor movement, and the women's movement. The warp and weft of García's trajectory is instructive, for it demonstrates how her grassroots work evolved, from Michoacán to Mexico City, Yucatán, and Veracruz and then back to the national scene in Mexico City. Furthermore, her trajectory sheds light on the practical challenges of maneuvering shifting political contexts. During the 1920s, some state governments supported activists like García, who worked in promoting rural education in Michoacán. However, as political winds shifted, García found herself unemployed. José Vasconcelos, minister of public education, then appointed García to work in Yucatán, where she promoted her vision of education as community development, with women centered in that process. In efforts to organize workingwomen, García also inserted herself in meetings organized by state-allied labor unions and by feminists whom she opposed ideologically. And as the 1940 and 1952 presidential elections heated up, she joined other committed feminists in lining up behind the relatively moderate presidential candidate General Miguel Henríquez Guzmán, who promised women suffrage.Oikión Solano draws on her deep knowledge of leftist politics to enrich our understanding of the opportunities and limits for women within the PCM. That the PCM was resistant to taking up the cause of women has been documented; however, Oikión Solano plumbs the depth of that resistance. When García traveled to the Soviet Union in 1929–30, she attempted to leverage her conversations with Comintern leaders, as well as the women's section and Latin American section of the Executive Committee, to convince the PCM that women should, and could, be brought into the party. Invoking Vladimir Lenin, García insisted that there would be no revolution without women. Upon return to Mexico, García gave speeches, wrote letters, and made repeated pleas that the PCM make women's issues a priority, even if only for the sake of the party's survival. While she made few inroads in convincing her comrades, she built on her organizational experiences to cofound the FUPDM and to make a successful bid for the Mexican Chamber of Deputies in 1937. In the midst of debates over how to interpret the constitution, the government barred García from taking office.Oikión Solano reminds us of the importance of attending to the silences in archives and historical narratives. For example, personal disputes among historical actors have obscured the central role that García played in producing the PCM newspaper El Machete. Oikión Solano has gathered together myriad archival fragments and reads against the grain of histories of the Left to piece together a picture of García's contributions not only to producing El Machete but to party strategy and making working women's needs more visible. García's work in rural communities, factories, and government offices informed her insistence on the need for, among other things, an eight-hour workday, equal pay for equal work, and day care for working mothers. Oikión Solano has so immersed herself in the content and style of García's writing as to be able to assess silences and unsigned documents to suggest García's influence on the direction of the FUPDM.A biography of this caliber opens doors for others. Historians interested in the circles in which García moved will be happy to find reference to other important historical figures whose biographies have yet to be written. Historians of labor, the Left, and women's movements will find rich material for comparisons to other national contexts. Assembled of short and pithy chapters, the book also serves as a captivating new model for writing historical biography.