The Context

Europe in the 1920s and 1930s saw fascism consistently increasing, both outside of existing political structures as well as inside, eventually achieving a solid institutional representation. Most prominently, this was in Italy, Germany and Spain. Throughout these years, the political violence which accompanied the growth of fascism forced many of its opponents to flee. As the situation got steadily worse, the further people fled, resulting in many of Europe’s opponents of fascism finding refuge in Mexico among other countries. It is important to mention that those fleeing European fascism were by no means a homogenous group. It included anti-fascists of all political backgrounds, from anarchists to centrists, from artists to business owners. It included those being systematically persecuted to those who thought it was the right time to leave and start a new life elsewhere.

So, across these years Mexico was slowly becoming a destination for those fleeing persecution. It was now a new home to many of Europe’s artists, radicals, writers and revolutionaries, many of whom continued the activities that they were being persecuted for in Italy, Germany and Spain. However, Mexico too had a minor fascist movement, the Camisas Doradas, and importantly for the story narrated in this book, many of the members of the preexisting German community - who had arrived in the decades before - were Nazi sympathisers. Eventually, also present were the mechanisms of fascist institutional power, the European embassies, the diplomats and their spies. 

The lives of many of these artists, poets, and the more famous revolutionaries, have been quite well documented and recounted in various places. However, what has been less considered are the lives of those migrants who arrived with little money and no contacts, yet fleeing for the same reasons and arriving in the same uncertain context. This is what is paid tribute to, explored, and hopefully immortalised in The Lianas that Strangled the Serpent.