Anti-imperialist and Anti-war Sensibilities during the Chaco War (1932-1935): Communists, Reformists and Socialists in Latin America

Abstract

This article analyzes the emergence of anti-war and anti-imperialist sensibilities in Latin American left-wing movements during the Chaco War (1932-1935). Through the analysis of periodical publications (La Correspondencia Sudamericana, América Libre, Flecha, Contra, Izquierda and Cauce) and key figures such as Aníbal Ponce and Ricardo Setaro, this study examines how these sensibilities –understood as affective, perceptive and intellectual dispositions– articulate transnational political solidarities by interpreting the conflict as part of the inter-imperialist disputes of the period. Córdoba is privileged as the center of analysis due to its role as a strategic node where reformist, communist and socialist traditions converge, generating margins of autonomy from central party leaderships. The article argues that while the Anti-War Congress of Montevideo (1933), organized by the South American Secretariat of the Comintern, represents the institutional peak but also the exhaustion of anti-imperialist unity proposed by the Comintern, Córdoba functions as a peripheral laboratory where this confluence materializes more organically, giving early expression to the Popular Front strategy. The Chaco War thus operates as a formative event for a sensibility that is later reconfigured in anti-fascist terms, constituting part of the affective substrate of mobilizations for the Spanish Civil War.