Resumen de Kaleidoscopic Antifascism: María Teresa León and the Refraction of Socialist Realism to Argentina
In this article I reenact the transitional nature defining the antifascist movement during the 1930s and 1940s, and I do so by using as the scenario for my reflections the novel Contra viento y marea (1941) by the Spanish writer María Teresa León. This novel was launched by the principal publishing imprint of the largest antifascist association in Argentina soon after the arrival in Buenos Aires of its author. Considering the fluid nature of a political movement whose orientations took shape according to the historical evolution and the geographical location of the struggle against fascism, Contra viento y marea illuminates new convergences and divergences in the refraction of this movement across Hispanic cartographies. The novel, written by a communist card-carrier, diverges from the author’s political position during the Spanish Civil War and from the Soviet-encouraged literary model, Socialist Realism. Despite this heterodoxy, the text received attention from Argentinian antifascism, which was dominated at that time by local communism and interested in the testimonial value of a work authored by an intellectual who played a prominent role in the fight against Spanish fascism.
