Smith ScholarWorks Government: Faculty Publications Government 4-25-2018 Activism, Revolution and War: Mujeres Libres Addressing the Personal and the Political Martha A. Ackelsberg Smith College,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.smith.edu/gov_facpubs Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, and the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Ackelsberg, Martha A., "Activism, Revolution and War: Mujeres Libres Addressing the Personal and the Political" (2018). Government: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA. https://scholarworks.smith.edu/gov_facpubs/12 This Article has been accepted for inclusion in Government: Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Smith ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact
[email protected] Activism, Revolution and War: Mujeres Libres Addressing the Personal and the Political Militancia, Revolución y Guerra: Militantes de Mujeres Libres enfrentando “lo personal” con “lo político” Martha Ackelsberg William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor emerita Smith College, Northampton, MA USA
[email protected] ABSTRACT Mujeres Libres, an organization of anarchist women established during the Spanish Civil War, was characterized by a dual focus on capacitación (empowerment) and captación (mobilization): (a) empowering women to enable them to recognize and act on their own potential and (b) mobilizing them into the organizations of the broader libertarian movement. An exploration of the activist biographies of two of its three founders (Lucía Sánchez Saornil and Mercedes Comaposada), as well as of two of its younger activists (Soledad Estorach and Sara Berenguer), makes clear how reflecting on personal experience within a larger political frame led to the creation of the organization and to its appeal to its base of (largely) working-class women.