Fighting Fascism on Empire’s Doorstep

Abstract

Abstract From 1936 to 1939, the Cuban magazine Mediodía brought together Communists, socialists, and other progressives in a common battle against fascism, imperialism, and racism. Published in Havana, Mediodía was centrally concerned with Cuban domestic politics, in particular with struggles for democratic representation and for racial and gender equality. But for the magazine’s editors, these battles could not be disconnected from the broader turbulence afflicting the world in the 1930s, from the Spanish Civil War to the Japanese occupation of China and the Nazi threat in Europe. As a case study in imaginative radical publishing, Mediodía would be worthy enough of scholarly attention. But it also provides a compelling window onto Cuba’s Popular Front politics of the 1930s. Not only were the antifascist, antiracist convergences reflected in Mediodía’s pages formative for a generation of Cubans; they also anticipated the ideological alliances that shaped the island’s trajectory after the 1959 revolution.