Puerto Rican volunteers defending Spanish democracy

No fewer than 86 volunteers born in Puerto Rico took part as militiamen, soldiers and officers in the People's Army of the Republic, international brigadiers, combat correspondents, propaganda commissars, and doctors in field hospitals. Their stories are documented in the book Voluntarios de la Libertad. Puertorriqueños en defensa de la República Española, 1936–1939 (2015, 2023), by José Alejandro Ortiz Carrión with Teresita Torres Rivera.

The first Puerto Ricans to join the defense of the Spanish Republic did so in Madrid following the military uprising. They were young people from Puerto Rico’s middle and upper classes studying Medicine, Philosophy, and Law at Spanish universities. Several Puerto Rican doctors living in Spain also joined, as well as exiled journalists who had fled political repression in Puerto Rico. Dozens of Spaniards born in Puerto Rico residing on the Peninsula also joined the Republic’s cause as fighters in the Spanish Mixed Brigades, doctors, government employees, and judges.

About thirty Puerto Rican volunteers living in New York arrived in Spain from early1937 until mid-1938. They had emigrated with their parents in the 1920s, fleeing the precarious situation in Puerto Rico. Most of them worked as cooks and dishwashers in restaurants, elevator operators in hotels, lodging houses and hospitals, tobacco workers, merchant seamen, mechanics, and factory labourers. They joined the American Lincoln and Washington battalions, as well as the Canadian Mackenzie-Papineau battalion of the 15th International Brigade, and fought in the battles of Jarama, Brunete, Quinto, Belchite, Teruel, and the Ebro.

In the summer of 1937, Puerto Rican volunteers traveled from Puerto Rico to New York en route to Spain. They had been recruited across the island by sympathizers of the Spanish Republic and the Puerto Rican Communist Party. They crossed the Pyrenees in August 1937, joined the Canadian Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, and saw their first combat at the Battle of Fuentes de Ebro. Many of them remained in combat until the withdrawal of the international volunteers in September 1938.

Of the 86 Puerto Rican volunteers, 13 died in combat or were captured and executed by firing squad. Among them were two of the three Carbonell Cuevas brothers, Pablo and Jorge, who are seen in the photo taken at the Teruel front in December 1937. Other Puerto Ricans spent months in concentration camps in Spain or refugee camps in France and Africa before returning. A few went into exile in Mexico or the Dominican Republic. The remainder returned to Puerto Rico or New York.

TTR