World War II on the Equator: Antifascism, Gender, and Democracy in Ecuador’s May Revolution of 1944

From May 28-31, 1944, masses of indigenous, political, student, and labor groups came together in Guayaquil and Quito, Ecuador, to overthrow the Liberal President Carlos Arroyo del Río and install the populist José María Velasco Ibarra for a second term. In this project I focus on the use of antifascism by a number of political and interest groups that participated in the May Revolution of 1944, the gendered makeup of the antifascist movement and the May Revolution, and the ideas of democracy held by Ecuadorians during World War II. By tracing the movements of three groups — the Movimiento Popular Antitotalitario de Ecuador (MPAE), the Alianza Democratica Ecuatoriana (ADE), and the Alianza Femenina Ecuatoriana (AFE) — new debates on the May Revolution can begin surrounding the motivations of its participants and the construction of its memory.