Tomás Vera’s reasons for fighting in Spain

The Paraguayan volunteers fought for Republican Spain for a number of reasons: ideological conviction, economic reward, guidance or influence from the Paraguayan Communist Party, or the challenging political situation for leftists in Paraguay in the late 1930s. All these reasons were present among the volunteers (sometimes simultaneously), but there is no doubt about their antifascist ideological vocation. Most of the members of the IBs saw their participation as an act of personal responsibility, contributing to the transnational commitment against the fascist regimes emerging in Europe. They interpreted their involvement in the conflict collaboration and the sacrifice it represented as a duty at that historical moment (and time proved them right when, after the Spanish war ended, the greatest war in history began).

In late 1937, one of the Paraguayan volunteers, José Aparicio Gutiérrez, wrote in a letter sent from the front during the Battle of Teruel (late 1937),: "My debut is something exciting and unforgettable: it is beautiful to fight against fascism." This transnational aspect of antifascism remained until the end of the war, in the internment camps in France where, once the foreign combatants were demobilized, the brigadiers, ended up being interned. In the Gurs camp, the Paraguayans Víctor Martínez, Tomás Vera, and Emiliano Paiva, among others, took a photograph with Italian volunteers "to demonstrate international unity against fascism." They also photographed themselves with a Bolivian militia member, Ricardo Valle Closa (alias Gastón del Mar), in a very symbolic image considering that just a few years earlier, their countries had fought a brutal war for control of the northern Chaco.

The object that can be viewed here is one of the page filled out by Tomás Vera for the register of volunteers arriving from abroad to enlist in the ranks of the Republican Army, through the Central Committee of Personnel (Foreigners Section) of the Communist Party of Spain. These forms, called "Biography of Militants," contained more than sixty questions and various elements, one of which was this question: "What is the purpose of your coming to Spain?" several of the Paraguayan volunteers answered in a very similar way to what can be seen in the example of this document in the Museum: "for the war against fascism."

Other Paraguayan volunteers, such as Perfecto Ibarra (who belonged to the Communist Party in Paraguay, stated that he came to Spain "[t]o put myself at the direction of the Spanish Communist Party in political matters." Another Paraguayan volunteer, Víctor Martínez Ramírez, gave a very similar response: "To place myself at the orders of the P.C.E." These other responses reveal a group of Paraguayan volunteers who, while having a strong and clear antifascist and internationalist commitment, also had a strict political discipline, as was common among Communist militants of the time.

ETB