The powers of masculinization in humanitarian storytelling: the case of the surgeon María Gómez Álvarez in the Varsovia Hospital (Toulouse, 1944–1950)

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis contribution is focused on analysing the power of ‘masculinization’ through which traditional humanitarian storytelling has been shaped. Strongly marked by a patriarchal vision, humanitarian accounts have traditionally hidden the work of women while stressing that performed by men, who appeared represented as true protagonists and, even, as heroes. In particular, this article analyses the professional career of a Spanish female surgeon named María Gómez (1914–1975) between 1944 and 1950, when she worked in a small charitable hospital based in Toulouse (France) for improving the health-care conditions of Spanish Republican refugees. Known as Hospital Varsovia or as Walter B. Cannon Memorial Hospital in the United States, it was supported by several humanitarian agencies, such as the Unitarian Service Committee (USC) and the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee (JAFRC). In order to get funds, both entities filmed a propaganda documentary in 1946, Spain in Exile, which deliberately ignored Gómez’s work as a surgeon in this hospital. By examining this visual record, this article attempts to reconstruct the life and the professional career of this female physician, which was at the crossroads of the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War and the ideological polarization emerging in the Cold War period.