Activist writing in and out of Spanish

3 anti-imperialist books for International Spanish Language Day

April 23 is the UN-designated International Spanish Language Day.

Instead of celebrating the language of Cervantes and its spread throughout the world by conquest and genocide, I’ve chosen a few titles from my bookshelf that celebrate women’s resistance to imperialism and nationalism.

Rigoberta Menchú, My Name is Rigoberta Menchú, and This is How my Consciousness was Born

The testimonio of the Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize winner. The title of the English edition, translated by Ann Wright and first published by Verso in 1984, is I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. I prefer the Spanish title, Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú, y así me nació la conciencia, because it captures the political story at the heart of the book. Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú has had a long and often controversial history, from its multilingual roots (Menchú grew up speaking K'iche' and later recorded the story in Spanish while in exile in Paris) to questions about its veracity. For all this, Menchú’s memoir retains, in the words of the historian Greg Grandin, its "integrity” as “both as a political and historical document” of the Cold War in Central America, and the late twentieth-century genocidal war against the Indigenous people of Guatemala.

Martha Ackelsberg, Mujeres Libres: El Anarquismo y la lucha por la empancipación de las mujeres

The Spanish translation (by Antonia Ruíz) of Ackelsberg’s, Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women (1991). This is the history of Mujeres Libres, a group of working-class Catalan- and Spanish-speaking anarchist women founded, in Barcelona and Madrid at the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 . “Strongly rooted in the collectivist and communalist traditions which had developed in Spain, Mujeres Libres was committed to a vision of society in which the self-development of each is connected to the development of all.” Mujeres Libres continues to inspire all those who struggle against imperialism, capitalism and fascism in Spain and beyond.

Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza

First published in 1987, Borderlands/La Frontera is a queer lesbian of colour classic from the Texas/Mexico border, a book written across genres and languages, at “The Crossroads / La Encrujicada”. Anzaldúa writes, “As a mestiza, I have no country, my homeland cast me out; yet all countries are mine because I am every woman’s sister or potential lover”. In the poetic final words of the central essay, “La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a new consciousness”:

This land was Mexican once

was Indian always

and is

And will be again.

Pen in Fist is written by me, Carrie Lou Hamilton. You can find my other writing and projects here. If you like what you read, you can get a paid subscription or leave me a tip.

Thanks for your support.