Bananas and (Wo)men : Communist Schoolteachers, Socialist Feminism, and the Making of Costa Rica's First Communist Party, 1920–1940

Abstract: In the 1930s, the Communist Party of Costa Rica (PCCR), also known as the Bloque de Obreros y Campesinos (BOC), paved the way for the first massive victories for workers, including women, a population often overlooked within Costa Rica's early twentieth century historiography, especially its feminist labor history. In this article, I argue that Costa Rican women, particularly schoolteachers, were influential figures in the formative years of Costa Rica's first communist party. Moreover, by focusing on the political and literary contributions of Carmen Lyra and Luisa González, I argue that it was militant communist women—building from what I call an inconspicuous "socialist feminist" lens—who influenced the PCCR's political program on women's and children's rights, making it one of the first political parties in Central America to explicitly develop a stance and platform around these issues. They did this by challenging and critiquing traditionally "taboo" issues around gender, sexuality, and reproductive rights, including engaging debates around prostitution, child labor, gender roles, abortion, traditional bourgeois family structures and dynamics, education, and women's suffrage. The groundbreaking organizing of these militant communist women, inspired by their socialist feminist values, was fundamental to the trajectory of the first communist party of Costa Rica.