Ph. D. Candidate, History
2019-2020 Rothman Doctoral Fellow
This dissertation project examines the impact of Spanish migration to Cuba in the twentieth century, including how Cuban and Spanish revolutionaries recalibrated the relationship between former colony and its colonizer to forge a transnational solidarity network that helped consolidate the Cuban Revolution after 1959. Fernández’s dissertation, “Weaponizing Solidarity: Spanish Republican Exiles, Identity, and the Cuban Revolution, 1929-1976,” reveals that Spanish Republican exiles were at the vanguard of Cuba’s 1940s antifascist mobilizations, of armed insurgency in Cuba’s 1950s struggle against U.S.-backed dictatorships, and of the 1959 Revolution’s most important institutions. More broadly, my research redefines the meanings of revolutionary identity, transforming the spirit of 1930s movements for national liberation into transnational and internationalist processes.