The circulation of images and their role in the transnational antifascist movement: the case of the photographs of the Spanish Civil War in the Chilean newspaper La Mujer Nueva (1936-1939).

Abstract

Images have the value of showing/hiding what they portray; therefore, they are a historical construction and not a reflection of reality. Under this premise, we analyze a set of photographs of the Spanish Civil War that circulated in La Mujer Nueva, newspaper of the Movimiento Pro Emancipación de las Mujeres de Chile, during the course of the conflict. We propose that the study of the circulation of images and its impact on the construction of communication channels, as a transnational phenomenon, is a significant contribution to the knowledge of how the Latin American anti-fascist movement was built and its relationship with the European one. Methodologically, from the study of this visual corpus, we consider that there were three contents that articulated the published images: murdered childhood; the massacred woman and the impact on motherhood. This allows us to conclude that these photographs were important in forging the transnational anti-fascist movement of the second half of the 1930s, by promoting awareness of the effects of fascism and making visible its consequences on the civilian population, especially women and children.