This chapter discusses Caribbean antifascism’s roots and its connection to the Comintern’s regional radical network, tracing the evolution of the movement from its anti-imperialist origins as early as 1924. The discussion provides specific examples as to how visions of fascism and antifascism were created for and/or adapted to the local and regional realities through an anti-imperialist prism. The study also maps the transnational and transatlantic journey of an antifascist discursive formula from its origins as a Caribbean hologram equating fascism with imperialism, to its official incorporation to the Communist internationalist lexicon as Comintern policy in 1935, and finally to its application as a propaganda formula during the Spanish Civil War. In the long run, while Caribbean antifascism’s anti-imperialist sensibilities may have been lost in translation in the mayhem of theoretical battles and iron-fist, Stalinist policies, the gist of the messages survived the turmoil, and perhaps still lingers on in our culture even to this day.

The introduction provides an overview of the volume’s key theoretical concepts and empirical cases. It emphasizes that there have been a variety of antifascisms in Latin America and the Caribbean that were not merely derivative of European antifascism or the product of European exiles. Rather, there were homegrown Latin American and Caribbean antifascist movements forged in the interplay between local, regional, and transnational processes. By placing Latin American and Caribbean antifascists in relation to the broader historiography on antifascism, the introduction illuminates their specific heterogeneous agendas, strategies, and styles as well as their class, racial, ethnic, and gendered dimensions. Latin American and Caribbean antifascists participated in exchanges from the Global South to the Global North and within the Global South. They resembled and yet differed from other Global South antifascisms regarding race and imperialism. The introduction ends by providing an overview of the chapters by placing them within the book’s theoretical framework.