América González

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Squares, streets & markets

América González, also known as América Ladeveze, was a political activist with anarchist ideas who was detained, persecuted and ultimately disappeared at the outbreak of the Civil War. Today her name has been given to a street in the city located in the Ifara urbanisation.

This committed woman had grown up in one of the citadels on San Martín street, right in the El Toscal neighbourhood, one of many that proliferated in Santa Cruz at the beginning of the 20th century. From a very young age she became politically aware of social injustice. In April 1929 América married Inocencio Delgado García, a prominent leader of the tobacco workers. The couple were active members of the Juventudes Libertarias, an anarchist group closely linked to the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) union, the most powerful among the working class of the Tenerife capital at that time.

América and Inocencio lived in La Cuesta and during the turbulent years of the Second Republic they took part in demonstrations, protests, strikes, revolutionary threats and solidarity tasks with other workers. Political tension increased in those times as did América's commitment.

In October 1934 the couple were imprisoned accused, without clear evidence, of being responsible for the serious assault on the tram at the Gracia curve that had occurred weeks earlier, an event that resulted in two deaths and several injuries. The incident shocked Tenerife society. After a week of detention during which there were no shortages of beatings and humiliations, América was released and the attempt to hold the anarchists responsible for the assault came to nothing. 

Less than two years later, in July 1936 after the outbreak of the War, things were different. América González, together with her husband Inocencio Delgado, her stepbrother Gilberto Alcalá García, her brother-in-law Alfonso Martínez, all tobacco workers, and her cousin, the metalworker Domingo García Pineda, were captured by the rebel forces. Nothing more was heard of them from then on.

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