Paratexts and authorial legitimacy in anti-fascist testimonial books printed in Mexico (1937-1945)

Abstract

This article aims to examine the process by which paratexts were integrated into the bodies of anti-fascist testimonial books published in Mexico between 1937 and 1945. It specifically investigates the production and the strategies through which these textual elements helped present and legitimize the authors' authority to the Spanish-speaking reading public. Understanding this printed output and its political and social uses requires combining methodological and interpretive approaches drawn from the history of the book and the sociology of texts. This framework makes it possible to unravel the construction of anti-fascist social narratives by analyzing the mechanisms underlying the production, circulation, and reception of these printed works. The study concludes that paratextual insertions—made by both authors and publishers—served as editorial tools that helped reaffirm the legitimacy of the testimonies by appealing to factors such as the signatories' public reputations, the purported neutrality of their accounts, and the use of their life experiences to warn against the potential emergence of a fascist «danger» in the countries of the Americas.