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Notes
1 The literature on the early role of Spanish speakers in the Communist Party is limited. See Enrique M. Buelna, “The Mexican Question: Mexican Americans in the Communist Party, 1940–1957,” Center for Research on Latinos in a Global Society, University of California, Irvine, 1999; Douglas Monroy, “Anarquismo y Comunismo: Mexican Radicalism and the Communist Party in Los Angeles during the 1930s,” Labor History, 24 (Winter 1983), 53; Jennifer Uhlman, “Limited Engagement: The Communist Party and Latinos in Southern California in the 1930s and Early 1940s,” presented at a Cold War Seminar, Tamiment Library, New York University, May 1, 2008. Randi Storch, in Red Chicago: American Communism at Its Grassroots, 1928–35 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), references Mexican Americans in an examination of the local CPUSA during the Third Period. References to Latinos can also be found in a number of biographies of prominent Communists: Dorothy Ray Healey and Maurice Isserman, California Red: A Life in the American Communist Party (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 42–55, 70, 76, describes her efforts to organize Mexican-origin farm workers and cannery workers in California and the formation of El Congreso; Al Richmond, in A Long View from the Left (New York: A Delta Book/Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1972), 102, 201, 217, wrote about a Spanish American steel worker comrade in Baltimore and the establishment of a page in Spanish in the New York–based National Maritime Union newspaper, the Pilot; John Tisa, in Recalling the Good Fight: An Autobiography of the Spanish Civil War (South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, 1985), 16, 24, 51, mentioned Cubans in New York, a fellow Spanish-speaking party member from Philadelphia, and a Spanish-speaking unit in Spain that included Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and people from Central America. Insights on radicals are also included in ethnic-oriented studies such as Juan Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise, 1940–1990 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990) and Zaragosa Vargas, Labor Rights Are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). Mark Naison's Communists in Harlem during the Depression (New York: Grove Press, 1983) is important to understanding the Spanish-speaking left in New York despite its focus on African Americans because of Harlem's role as the epicenter of the party's multifaceted Spanish language outreach efforts.
2 Despite a socialist party in Spain and the presence of Spanish speaking individuals in the Socialist Party (SP), a federation of Spanish speakers was never formed. At the time of its split following the 1917 Revolution, the SP had the following language federations: Bohemian/Czech, Finnish, Estonian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Jewish, Lettish, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Scandinavian, Slovak, South Slavic, Ukrainian.
3 “Adoption of a Colony by Each Party District,” fond 515, opis 1, delo 2290. Records of the Communist Party, USA, Russian State Archives of Social and Political History (RAGSPI). The Library of the Congress made copies of these archival records, which it has shared with other American Institutions. The author used microfilmed copies of these records at the Cecil H. Green Library at Stanford University (hereafter RGASPI).
4 Mariano Gálvez (Guatemala, shoe worker), Louis Martínez (Venezuela, worker), Albert Moreau (Argentina, intellectual), L. Fernández Sánchez (Cuba, intellectual), Elias Temasevich (Cuba, food worker). Minutes, Language Department, CP, Oct. 22 and Nov. 21, 1929, fond 515, opis 1, delo 1680, RGASPI.
5 CP convention transcript, 1929, fond 515, opis 1, delo 1578, RGASPI.
6 Albert Moreau Biography, Illinois Labor History Web site.
7 “Save ‘Vida Obrera,’” undated, 2–3, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2531, RGASPI.
8 The least known among these groups is the Anti-Imperialist League. In 1931, Robert W. Dunn served as president; vice presidents were Roger N. Baldwin (who later headed the ACLU) and James W. Ford (one of the party's most prominent African Americans). Letter, Wm. Simmons to Secretariat, CC, January 5, 1931, with attached Statement of the Aims and Objectives of the Anti-Imperialist League of the U.S., fond 515, opis 1, delo 2290, RGASPI.
9 Fond 515, opis 1, delo 2531 and delo 2158, RGASPI.
10 “Mass Protest Tonight against Wall St. War on Nicaraguan Masses: Harlem Casino Meet Calls for Support of Mass Struggle in Nicaragua and Honduras,” Daily Worker, May 8, 1931, 1.
11 The identity of Black Hispanics in Harlem, as in Tampa, was complicated; some individuals chose to identify more as African Americans and others, particularly Cubans and Puerto Ricans, tended to identify with their countries of origin. They also shared a regional heritage with Jamaica-born party activists. For an insight on black Latinos, see Jesús Colón, with editing and introduction by Edna Acosta-Belén and Virgina E. Sánchez Korrol, The Way It Was and Other Writings (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1993); Susan D. Greenbaum, More Than Black: Afro-Cubans in Tampa (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002); Evelio Grillo, Black Cuban, Black America: A Memoir (Houston: Arte Público Press, 2000).
12 “Translation of the Constitution and Regulations of the Spanish Workers Centers,” fond 515, opis 1, delo 2158, RGASPI.
13 “Convención nacional contra los linchamientos,” Vida Obrera, November 10, 1930, 1.
14 “Save ‘Vida Obrera,’” undated, 1, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2531, RGASPI.
15 “El Caso de Scottsboro,” Vida Obrera, May 11, 1931, 1; “Por la Defensa de las Victimas de Scottsboro,” Vida Obrera, May 18, 1931, 2; “3,000 at Tampa Scottsboro and Mooney Meeting,” Daily Worker, November 6, 1931, 1.
16 Letter to the district language departments from the language department of the Central Committee, CPUSA, April 15, 1931, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2334, RGASPI.
17 Report on Language Work of the C.C., [1931], 4, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2333; Report, Language Department, CP CC, September 14, 1931, 9, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2334, RGASPI.
18 Report on Language Work of the C.C., [1931], 1, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2333, RGASPI.
19 Report, Language Department, CP CC, September 14, 1931, 3, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2334, RGASPI.
20 There were smaller members in other areas. These included District 5 (Pennsylvania), 6; District 8 (Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin), 5; District 15 (Connecticut and part of New Jersey), 3; District 1 (New England), 1; District 7 (Michigan), 1. Report, Party Registration, November 1931, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2296, RGASPI.
21 Letter, Polobur CC to All District Committees, June 20, 1933, fond 515, opis 1, delo 3139, RGASPI.
22 Healey and Isserman, California Red, 45.
22 “La Cuarta Convención del International Labor Defense,” Vida Obrera, February 15, 1930, 3.
24 “Mitin de Protesta Contra Las Deportaciones en el Centro de New York,” May 18, 1931, 2; “Se Intenta Deportar a Dos de los Prisioneros de la Huelga del Valle Imperial,” Vida Obrera November 4, 1931, 4.
25 “Que debemos hacer por la Trade Union Unity League,” Vida Obrera, July 28, 1930, 4.
26 “Tareas Organizativas Sindicales,” Vida Obrera, September 1, 1930, 3.
27 “Ingrese a los Sindicatos de la TUUL,” Vida Obrera, September 15, 1930, 2; “La lucha de los bajadores en Tampa,” Vida Obrera, Oct. 13, 1930, 2.
28 “Las tareas del Partido entre los obreros de habla española,” Vida Obrera, September 1, 1930, 2.
29 “Las tareas del Partido entre los obreros de habla española,” Vida Obrera, September 1, 1930, 2.
30 Untitled Report, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2158, RGASPI.
31 “Una Buena jornada por la organización de las masas obreras de habla española,” Vida Obrera, November 3, 1930, 2; “Un Centro en Chicago” and “Un Centro en Youngstown, O.,” Vida Obrera, December 8, 1930, 1; “Los Obreros de Youngstown Ahorran para los Banqueros,” Vida Obrera, November 21, 1931, 2.
32 Vida Obrera, 1930–1931. For information on agricultural strikes in California, see Harvey Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1984), 135–152, and Sam Kushner, Long Road to Delano (New York: International Publishers, 1977), 55–79; for the cigar makers’ strike in Florida, see Robert P. Ingalls, Urban Vigilantes in the New South: Tampa, 1882–1936 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1988), 116–162; for the coal miners’ strike in New Mexico, see Harry R. Rubenstein, “Political Repression in New Mexico: The Destruction of the National Miners’ Union,” in Robert Kern, Labor in New Mexico: Unions, Strikes, and Social History Since 1881 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), 91–142.
33 “Todos los Tabaqueros Debemos Organizarnos: Sólo Lucha Revolucionaria nos Emancipará,” Vida Obrera, October 20, 1930, 2; “Por una Organización Nacional de Obreros de la Industria del Tabaco,” Vida Obrera, February 2, 1931, 4; “A la Organización y a la Lucha! Tabaqueros de N. York,” May 18, 1931, 2;“Luches de los Tabaqueros por su Organización: El Pape; de la ‘International,’” Vida Obrera, June 8, 1931, 1.
34 “Election of Officers of Cigar Makers’ International Union,” Cigar Makers’ Official Journal, April 15, 1921, 14–25.
35 Quote from “Fellow Workers at Baer Cigar Co.,” Baer Cigar Worker, April 9, 1931, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2442, RGASPI.
36 José Alvarez, interview by Paul Buhle, March 15, 1983, Tamiment Library, New York University.
37 Jose Yglesias, “The Radical Latino Island in the Deep South,” Tampa Bay History, vol. 7, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 1985), 166.
38 Gary R. Mormino and George E. Pozzetta, “The Reader Lights the Candle: Cuban and Florida Cigar Workers’ Oral Tradition,” Labor's Heritage: The Quarterly of the George Meany Memorial Archives, (Spring 1993), 4–27.
39 Ingalls, Urban Vigilantes in the New South, 116–162.
40 “Resolution” and “Gran Mitin de Protesta y Solidaridad,” fond 515, opis 1, delo 2551, RGASPI.
41 Minutes, National Spanish Burro, December 16, 1931, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2531, RGASPI.
42 “Resolution” and “Gran Mitin de Protesta y Solidaridad,” fond 515, opis 1, delo 2551, RGASPI.
43 Letter, National Secretary, Friends of the Soviet Union U.S. Section, to Albert Inkpin, January 1, 1931, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2292, RGASPI.
44 “Delegación a la Unión Sovieta,” Vida Obrera, April 6, 1930, 1; “Adelante, Camaradas!” Vida Obrera, April 13, 1931, 1.
45 “Adelante, Camaradas!” Vida Obrera, April 13, 1931, 1.
46 The groups: Centro Obrero de Habla Española (New York), Socorro Proletario Española (New York), Asociación de los Nuevos Emigrados Revolucionarios de Cuba (ANERC), Grupo Latino Americano de Trabajadores Revolucionarios (Los Angeles), Branch “Santiago Brooks” de Nueva York (International Labor Defense), Grupo Latino Americano Pro Vida Obrera (San Francisco), Liga de Mexicanos Antiimperialistas (New York), Branch “Julio Antonio Mella” de Dallas (International Labor Defense), Centro Obrero de Habla Española (Youngstown, Ohio), Asociación de Antiimperialistas Puertorriqueños (ADAP) New York, and Centro de Venezolanos Antiimperialistas de Nueva York. “Las Credenciales de Nuestro Delegado para el Primero de Mayo en la Unión Soviética,” April 13, 1931, 3; “Liga Industrial de Obreros Tabaqueros,” Vida Obrera, April 30, 1931, 3.
47 “Enthusiastic Send-Off Given May Day Delegation to USSR,” Daily Worker, April 17, 1931, 1; Program, May Day Delegation, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2291, RGASPI; “Regresa Nuestro Delegado: Conferencias en New York y Youngstown,” Vida Obrera, June 22, 1931, 1.
48 The Communist ticket won only 100,000 votes, or 0.3 percent; this represented an increase over the CP's vote total in 1928 but fell far short of Socialist Norman Thomas's 884,885 votes.
49 Foster's Tour, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2955, RGASPI.
50 Letter, C. A. Hathaway to Browder, October 3, 1932, p. 5, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2961, 8, RGASPI.
51 Letter, C. A. Hathaway to Browder, October 3, 1932, p. 5, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2961, p. 8, RGASPI; Communist Party, State Candidates: Florida, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2964, 62, RGASPI; Letter, C. A. Hathaway, Campaign Manager, to E. D. Ladd, October 31, 1932, fond 515, opis 1, delo 2961, 197, RGASPI.
52 Joseph North, ed. New Masses: An Anthology of the Rebel Thirties (New York: International Publishers, 1968), 351–352.
53 Mike Wallace, “Nueva York: The Black Story,” in Edward J. Sullivan, Nueva York, 1913–1945 (New York: New York Historical Society/Scala, 2010), 70–71; Ana M. Varla-Lago, “’!No pasarán!’ The Spanish Civil War's Impact on Tampa's Latin Community, 1936–1939,” Tampa Bay History, 19 (Fall/Winter 1997), 5–35.
54 James W. Ford, “Forging the Negro people's Sector of the Democratic Front,” Communist, 17 (July 1938), 621.
55 Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism, pp. 186–206; James G. Ryan, Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism, rev. ed. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005), pp. 93–120.
56 Abstract of Votes Cast, 1936, Secretary of State, State of Colorado; Minutes, District Committee, Houston, December 8, 1935, 2, fond 515, opis 1, delo 3893, RGASPI.
57 “The Truth about New York,” Cigar Makers Official Journal, July 1937, 2–4; “UCAPAWA Builds Its Tobacco Division,” FTA News, August 25. 1941, 1; “Why Tobacco Workers Quit the AFL,” FTA News, July 15, 1943, 3; Program, UCAPAWA Third Annual Convention, December 1940, 120, in General Subject File, folder Trade Unions-US-(U)CAPAWA, ILWU Library and Archives, San Francisco.
58 Josephina Fierro de Bright staffed El Congresso. Her husband, screenwriter John Bright, was a secret Communist whose membership went back to the Third Period. Gigi Peterson describes Fierro as a CPUSA organizer in “Recobrando/Recovering the Struggle against Racial Discrimination: The Journey of Pablo O’Higgins, Mural for the Seattle Ship Scalers Union,” Labor: Studies in Working-class History of the Americas, 8 (winter 2011), 18.
59 Quote from Emma Tenayuca and Homer Brooks, “The Mexican Question in the Southwest,” Communist, (March 1939), 263. El Congreso also reflected the party's directive, issued a year earlier, before Congreso's formation, to build broad-based groups within a number of nationality groups: “The program of the democratic front, which is accepted by the majority of the people, is not a socialist program. It is the program of immediate measures required for the protection of the political, cultural and economic needs of the people within the framework of capitalist society,” noted The Communist. The party's program also called for “recruiting and mass work among the national groups and organizations in the first place among Italians, Germans, Poles, Jews, and South Slavs, and Spanish-speaking people.” “Draft Convention Resolutions,” Communist, 17 (April 1938), 351–358. The party reiterated the importance of organizing the Spanish speaking in “Work among National Groups—A Central Communist Task,” Communist, 17 (August 1938), 724. For more on Tenayuca, see Gabriela Gonzales, “Carolina Munguia and Emma Tenayuca: The Politics of Benevolence and Radical Reform,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 24 (2003), 200–229.
60 Vicki L. Ruiz, “Una Mujer sin Fronteras: Luisa Moreno and Latina Labor Activism,” Pacific Historical Review, 73 (February 2004), 1–20; Letter, International President to Manuel González, July 14, 1937, González, Image 6-0225, CMIU Papers, Special Collections University of Maryland; Deportation and Related Activities, Luisa Moreno Benis, box 7, files 53 and 58, Robert W. Kenny Papers, Southern California Library for Research and Social Studies, Los Angeles.
61 Healey and Isserman, California Red, 76.
62 The CP placed the role of Mexican Americans in the Wallace campaign in the context of the larger struggle in “The Plight and Struggle of the Mexican-Americans,” Communist, 28 (July 1949), 75–84.
63 Isabel Gonzales records, obtained by author under FOIA, June 24, 2010. Her party membership was confirmed by Jack Blawis in an interview with author, Tucson, AZ, September 28, 2008; his wife, Pat Bell, worked closely with Gonzales and the CP's Mexican American Commission.
64 Leaflet, Amigos de Wallace, “Manifestó: A Todos los Ciudadanos de Descendencia Hispana en Los Estados Unidos,” author's files.
65 “FTA Leads in New Parties,” FTA News, March 1948, 5; “ACW Delegates Leave Bronx ALP,” Daily Worker, January 19, 1948, 3. Armando Ramírez had reportedly stayed active in the leadership, serving (along with Félix Padilla) as a one of 93 delegates to the 1945 CP convention. Interestingly, a well-sourced (presumably FBI) secret study lists Ramírez and FTA president Donald Henderson as CPUSA members, but does not indicate a Communist relationship for fellow FTA national officers Luisa Moreno and Armando Valdes, both of whom were previously members. John F. Cronin, “The Problems of American Communism: Facts and Recommendations,” 112, 145, box 24, file “Communism: Cronin, John F. Report, 1945,” National Catholic Welfare Council Papers, Special Collections, Catholic University of America.
66 Letter, Armando Ramírez to Elmer Benson and C. B. Baldwin, Febuary 26, 1978, box 7, folder “National Wallace for President Committee, Invitation and Replies,” C. B. Baldwin Papers, Special Collections University of Iowa, Iowa City.