In this new occasional feature of The Volunteer, whose title is the Esperanto word for “archive,” we will present, translate and contextualize iconic foreign language documents related to the anti-fascist struggle in Spain. If you have a favorite document in a language other than English, let us know!

This issue’s document was put out by the Círculo Republicano of Havana during the war, to raise funds for the Spanish Republic, particularly from the large community of Spanish emigrants who were living in Cuba at the time. Because many of these emigrants had achieved a certain level of economic success in Cuba, the strategy of this fundraising campaign is to remind the Spaniards of where they came from, of what their lives had been like in Spain, and what the lives were like of those they had left behind. Winning the war in Spain—so goes the implicit argument of this imaginative fundraising plea—would help eliminate the need to emigrate in the first place.

The document was discovered and analyzed by the scholar Ana Varela Lago in her trailblazing work on Spanish emigration and the Spanish Civil War. A slightly different version was found by James D. Fernández and Luis Argeo in a program booklet of the Centro Asturiano of New York produced by the Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas. The role played in the struggle against fascism by Spanish emigrants in places like Havana, Tampa and New York is not always adequately recognized.

Do You Remember? This Was You

One day you had to abandon your homeland because in the banquet of life you weren’t even given table scraps. Amidst all of Spain’s wealth and marvels, all that was left for you was coarse bread and cold soup after toiling away from sun-up to sun-down day after day. If you had stayed in Spain, you would have gone to Morocco, to kill and to be killed, for no other reason than “to serve the King.”

You saw the speedy automobiles on the highways, and on the trains, the luxurious compartments with beautiful women, with elegant outfits—they were Spaniards like you, though they were as out of your reach as the most remote stars.

Do you remember the Club in your town? How, from the street, you would endure the rain and frost to be able to hear the chords coming from the orchestra, the clinking of fine glassware, and the malignant laughs of the drunk señoritos? They were Spaniards, like you, although they would never consider you as Spanish as they were.

What were you back then? At age fifteen, did you know anything about comfortable shoes, corduroy suits, good bread, fine wine, and comfortable life?

What were you back then? Little more than a cog in the wheel of production, a shoulder butted up against a rifle, little more than the oxen foaming at the mouth as they struggled to pull the plow before you.

You left your homeland, leaving everything behind, in order to find in the democratic countries of the Americas what the priests and the bosses had denied you in Spain: the conditions and opportunities of a free man.

Now that you can choose freely, remember that you were once a pariah, and from the most intimate depths of your conscience, help decide the fate of Spain.

Do you want the old Spain of the fascist military men, rotten to the core with conventionalisms, annihilated by the dead weight of its clergy and lazy, depraved aristocracy? Or do you want the new Spain that we want: vigorous, free and sovereign, with opportunity and equality for all of its children?

Do you want to be a perpetrator and a destroyer, standing beside those who rose up against justice and the law, who mowed down women and children, and who subjected us to the outrage of foreign boots stomping around and defiling our defenseless cities? Or do you want to fight on our side, the side of the people, a people that has finally come into its own and that generously sacrifices its blood on behalf of a future in which Spain will be great and happy for its children?

Don’t expect anything from these “Saviors of Spain” who begin by destroying the country. For them, you will always be the emigrant or the indiano. They only want your money. If you don’t have money, you will be even less than what you have been. On the other hand, your people, the underdogs, will love you for who you are, because you come from the same flesh as them … They are truly the loyal ones, the Loyalists.

Lend them a hand while you still can. Revisit the blurry pages of the sad book of your life as an exile and help them.

Clip and fill out the coupon and send it in to the Spanish Republican Circle. You will get back in the mail receipts for your contribution to this collection on behalf of the War Victims and Spanish Freedom Fighters.