Viamonte 430, C1053 CABA, Argentina
In 1920, Mika studied odontology at the University of Buenos Aires.
Viamonte 430, C1053 CABA, Argentina
In 1920, Mika studied odontology at the University of Buenos Aires.
Mika with Hipólito, her husband, who died fighting in 1936.
https://www.amazon.com/Ma-guerre-dEspagne-%C3%A0-moi/dp/2742720618/?tag=2022091-20
1998
https://www.amazon.com/mia-guerra-Spagna-Mika-Etchebehere/dp/8898841299/?tag=2022091-20
2016
Micaela Feldman Etchebehere was born in 1902 in Moisés Ville, province of Santa Fa, Argentina. She was the daughter of Russian Jews, Mika grows up with the stories of the revolutionaries escaped from the pogroms and prisons of Tsarist Russia.
In 1920, Mika de Etchebehere studied odontology at the University of Buenos Aires.
In Spain at the start of the Spanish Civil War Hypo became commander of a Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista (POUM) unit, while Mika carried out noncombatant administrative work in the unit. After Hypo was killed on 16 August 1936, Mika remained with the battalion and eventually came to lead a combat unit. She showed decisiveness with her unit at the terrible siege of the Siguenza Cathedral in which 500 soldiers and local townspeople were surrounded and subjected to prolonged bombardment. Subsequently, she was placed in command of a unit in active combat in the trenches at the Moncloa front in Madrid.
Removed from her command as part of the disarming of the independent political militias, Etchebehere remained in Spain until 1938, afterward settling permanently in France. Perhaps by dint of her common sense, she managed to survive the swathe of assassinations that Stalin's agents cut through her political friends and associates.
Micaela Feldman de Etchebehere was the only woman with troop command in the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War.
In 1977, Mika's testimony as a militia was published in the book 'My War of Spain' and in 2012 the Argentine writer Elsa Osorio published a novel 'La Capitana' that recreates the life of Etchebeher.
Mika and her husband joined the Communist Party but were expelled two years later for their disagreement with the party leadership and their support for Trotsky, although they did not join or form a Trotskyist group. They were in Germany in 1932 and 1933, where they saw firsthand the devastating impact of Nazism on German Communists.
Mika was a feminist so she insisted that under her command militias were to be treated as "militiawomen, not domestics," and that in the enterprise of winning the war men and women were equal. Etchebehere has noted that it was necessary to retrain the men in her command before they accepted her regimen. The fact that several militiawomen were keen to transfer into her unit suggests that the environment she created was not typical.
Quotations: "The girls who are with us are militiamen. We fight together, men and women, as equals, no one should forget it."
Mika was also active in the anarcha-feminist organization, Mujeres Libres. The founders of Mujeres Libres were all active in the Libertarian movement, however, they were dissatisfied with the way the movement addressed the particular problems that confronted them as women. Women felt that, despite their cries for equality, their male activist counterparts did not treat women as equals.
Etchebehere wrote about her time in Spain in a substantial volume of recollections, Ma guerre d'Espagne a moi, which reveals a highly intelligent woman devoted to her husband's memory and to the welfare of the soldiers she led. Her great strength of character and administrative skills drew on her strong common sense and what might be called her "womanly virtues." She was at pains to ensure that her troops were warmly clothed, and when they were immured in the trenches in Madrid, she negotiated with the supreme command so that groups of five men at a time could have broken away from the front, usually to go to the brothel, in order to overcome the ennui and wretchedness that overwhelmed men confined in stinking trenches. Above all, she ensured that her unit was properly fed. She instituted hot-food patrols and employed ingenious methods such as the cook using a wheelbarrow to trundle huge cauldrons of steaming food through the trench up to the line. Her real stroke of genius, however, was to acquire several hundred small thermos flasks in which hot coffee could be delivered individually to soldiers isolated at their posts. When it was impossible under fire to provide them with a proper meal, a thermos of coffee would lift the men's spirits. Having originally been opposed to alcohol on "revolutionary principles" and having been "shocked" at the volume of alcohol consumed at the front, she came to accept its virtue in keeping up morale. At the end of the day, Etchebehere would go through the trenches, a flagon in each hand, dispensing a shot of cognac to the men as they bunked down for the night. While these efforts to keep her troops clothed, fed, and in good morale might be described by some as oddly "feminine," it is a truism that an army marches on its stomach; a male commander who made similar efforts would undoubtedly be viewed as a wise leader.
Etchebehere attributed some of her success to the fact that she was careful never to indicate any sexual interest in any of the men and immediately rebuffed any overtures they made toward her. As she said, her soldiers saw her "neither as a man or a women" but as a sort of "hybrid" who was "wrapped in her unapproachability and her legend." She thought that it helped that she was not Spanish; her foreign origins made it easier for the men to accept her untraditional role. She had acquired a light carbine rifle, but in her descriptions of battles, it appears that more frequently than using the gun herself, she passed it to the fourteen-year-old boy who was a volunteer in the militia and her faithful and courageous runner. Overall, it is probable that although she engaged in combat and took her turn on watch, it was Etchebehere's administrative skills rather than her prowess in a battle that bonded the men to her.
Physical Characteristics: Mika was a middle-height woman with dark hair. She had a rectangular face and dark eyes.
Mika Etchebehere, an Argentinian, was married to Hypolito Etchebehere, an Argentinian of French Basque extraction. Hypolito Etchebehere died in action during the battle of Atienza. Mika wanted to commit suicide.
