Artículo de Yahoo sobre las manifestaciones de ayer (en inglés)

Es mejor no leer de los lectores los comentarios ridículos que siguen este artículo (en el sitio de Yahoo), pero es un buen resumen breve sobre las manis de ayer.

Visto en: Yahoo.com
Large protests held in Spain in support of judge

By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer Sat Apr 24, 4:11 pm ET

MADRID – Tens of thousands of people marched through Madrid and other Spanish cities Saturday in a boisterous show of support for a judge indicted on charges of abusing his authority by investigating atrocities committed during the civil war and the early years of Gen. Francisco Franco's dictatorship.

In the Spanish capital, demonstrators waved posters mocking Franco as a vampire and flags of the prewar government he ousted as they snaked through the city center. The protesters included members of Spain's showbiz world, such as Oscar-winning film director Pedro Almodovar.

Rallies also were held in Barcelona and more than a dozen other Spanish cities.

In Madrid, a small rally against the judge was staged by Falange Espanola, the fascist political party that had backed up the Franco regime.

Judge Baltasar Garzon — best known abroad for going after former Chilean ruler Augusto Pinochet and Osama bin Laden — has been indicted on grounds he knowingly overstepped his jurisdiction by investigating tens of thousands of executions and disappearances of civilians during the war and in the early Franco years.

Those crimes were covered by an amnesty approved in 1977 as Spain moved toward reconciliation after the dictator's death two years earlier.

Garzon launched his probe in 2008 in what was widely seen as a bid for an indictment, albeit a symbolic one, of the Franco regime itself. He ordered mass graves dug up and said the Franco regime should be charged with crimes against humanity for waging a systematic campaign to eliminate opponents.

Garzon reluctantly dropped the probe months later in a dispute over jurisdiction. His was the first official probe of a dark chapter of Spain's past, one that Spanish conservatives say he has no business resurrecting.

"Garzon is a symbol of many people and judges who would like to dig up graves," one demonstrator, Pedro Matanzas, a 55-year-old businessman, said Saturday.

Jose Inocencio Rodriguez, a 33-year-old Madrid subway driver, said Garzon is being punished for going where no other judge dared go before.

"There is a taboo surrounding the civil war. Garzon is trying to break it, and they are trying to silence him," he said.

Garzon is expected to go on trial some time in the coming months and could be suspended in the next few weeks. If convicted, he does not face jail time but could be removed from his judicial post for up to 20 years.

Desde Iowa, también asisto a la manifestación

Hace unas semanas, escribí aquí de un congreso internacional que se iba a tener lugar en la Universidad de Minnesota el 23-24 de abril. El congreso, titulado Exhuming Bodies, Producing Knowledge:Collective Memory, Justice and Restitution in Contemporary Spain, tenía como motivo explorar el papel de las exhumaciones de fosas en el movimiento memorialista al principio del siglo XXI. El congreso, que yo sepa, es el primero en este país para tratar específicamente la cuestión de las fosas, y contaba con la participación de nombres destacados como Emilio Silva, Francisco Ferrándiz o José Antonio Martín Pallín. Realmente esperaba poder asistirlo, pero habría significado salir de aquí en coche ayer a las 16h y manejar casi 5 horas a Minneapolis, después de una semana larga en el trabajo, sólo para volver a casa hoy por la tarde. Creo que hice bien en quedarme aquí; estoy esperando que una amiga en Minnesota me cuente un poco sobre las ponencias y que tal vez alguien las grabe y suba a internet.

El hecho de que el congreso coincidiera con las manifestaciones en apoyo a Garzón fue una de las razones que quería ir a Minnesota. No para manifestar, sino para demostrar mi solidaridad por estar allí, presente con otra gente comprometida con esta causa. Si hubiera estado en España, yo también habría llevado mi propia pancarta, y fue así que me llegó la idea de crearla desde aquí. Aunque no me agrada nada poner mi foto en línea, quería hacer algo más que firmar una petición o escribir otro post sobre el caso contra el juez. Así es que me tenéis en la foto de abajo, sacada hace un par de horas, con una pancarta un poco patética, pero bueno...

Desde que cursaba el doctorado, siempre me fascinaba la figura del juez Garzón. Tengo que decir que no es necesariamente él mismo, sino lo que representa. Y es que el juez ha terminado encarnando, quererlo o no, la lucha entre la memoria y el olvido, la justicia y la impunidad. Por mi parte puedo decir que cuando hablo de apoyar al juez Garzón, no hablo tanto de Baltasar Garzón mismo, sino de la investigación que se atrevió a poner en marcha contra los crímenes del franquismo. Desde mi rinconcito del mundo, también apoyo al juez porque apoyarlo es demostrar a la vez mi oposición a políticos corruptos, al revisionismo histórico, a partidos fascistas y a jueces imparciales. Es entender que este es un momento clave en la democracia española, pero bien podría estar sucediendo en cualquier otro país.

Reconozco plenamente las críticas, tanto de la izquierda como de la derecha, que le han hecho al juez, y no niego que algunas pueden ser muy válidas. Es cierto que ha estado involucrado en todo, y puede que sí se haya metido en donde no debía, sólo por ser un egocéntrico...pero lo dudo. Paradójicamente, apoyo al juez porque lo que está en juego con su procesamiento no es solo él, sino la naturaleza de la democracia en sí. En lo que se refiere a procesarle por investigar los crímenes del franquismo, la cuestión no es si nos cae bien o mal Garzón o si ha cometido un "delito de prevaricación" -- es entender que sus acciones han impulsado un debate abierto (o más abierto que antes, quizá) sobre la Ley de Amnistía y, como consecuencia, la Transición. Es entender que el "delito de prevaricación," cuando lo pensamos al lado de las violaciones de derechos humanos citadas en el auto del juez de octubre 2008, no lo es. El auto del juez Garzón nombró por primera vez, y oficialmente, a los desaparecidos como un resultado de crímenes contra la humanidad. Es por eso que procesarle a Garzón, como dijo un título del diario Público, simbólicamente "'ensucia' la memoria de las víctimas" del franquismo. Es por eso que apoyo al juez Garzón y me uno a miles de "ciudadanos del mundo" que se sienten lo mismo.

Artículo de Scott Boehm: "The Trial of Baltasar Garzón"

Este blog tiene una cita de Martin Luther King, Jr., de su ensayo "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," un discurso que es, para mí, mucho más importante e impactante que la cita referenciada en exceso de "I have a dream." En el siguiente artículo, de la revista progresista Counterpunch, Scott Boehm, investigador y estudiante doctorando en la Universidad de California, San Diego, cita este ensayo de King, Jr. en un análisis sumamente detallado del caso contra Garzón. Las conexiones entre las manifestaciones a favor de derechos civiles de los años 60 y lo que está pasando actualmente en España pueden parecerles a algunos un poco lejanas, pero la verdad es que los dos momentos sí representan, como dice Boehm, una "prueba" de la fuerza de la democracia. En mi próximo post, yo haré, desde Iowa, mi propia manifestación a favor del juez Garzón.

Amid the Minefields of Spain's Bloody Past
The Trial of Baltasar Garzón

By SCOTT BOEHM

On April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King penned his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in response to criticism about the tactics of the civil rights movement. King had been arrested for non-violently protesting segregationist laws through a series of boycotts, sit-ins and demonstrations.

Forty-seven years later, his letter speaks to the current situation in Spain, where defenders of unjust laws are criticizing public meetings and non-violent protests of the Supreme Court case opened against Judge Baltasar Garzón for his investigation of crimes against humanity committed in Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco (1936-1975).

Calling such actions “anti-democratic,” such indignation is reminiscent of segregationists defending the system of legalized racial segregation that King challenged in the 1950s. History has proved that segregationists were on the wrong side of justice, something the Supreme Court should take to heart when deciding this case, which is a litmus test of the health of Spanish democracy.

Garzón’s investigation came under public scrutiny as soon as it was announced in the fall of 2008. It focused on the coup that launched the Spanish Civil War, as well as the hundreds of thousands of disappeared. The remains of the majority of those, like the celebrated poet Federico García Lorca, still lie in mass graves across the country. Under extreme pressure, Garzón was forced to close his case less than two months after opening it. Shortly thereafter, the Falange, Spain’s fascist party, and Manos Limpios, a far-right organization, filed lawsuits against Garzón charging him with “prevaricación,” or abuse of power for conducting his investigation of the dictatorship. Their central argument, that Garzón knew he didn’t have jurisdiction to investigate the dictatorship because of Spain’s 1977 Amnesty Law, convinced the Supreme Court, which admitted the suits last year. On Friday, Garzón will stand trial.

If found guilty, Garzón’s illustrious, if controversial, judicial career will come to a sudden end and the world will lose one of its champions of international criminal law and universal jurisdiction. This is the same judge who had Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested and tried for crimes against humanity, who was behind the conviction of an Argentine naval officer for his role in the involuntary disappearance of thousands during the “dirty war” of the late 1970s and early 80s, and who opened an investigation into torture at the U.S. military base in Guantánamo.

In Spain, public opinion is divided almost equally on the issue of Garzón’s fate. A small minority, composed mainly of victims of the dictatorship and several civic organizations that form the historical memory movement, are using his trial as a means to draw attention to the unjust nature of the situation that victims and the family members of the disappeared face, which Garzón sought to amend by ordering the opening of mass graves. At the same time, they are defending Garzón from what appears to be the threat of a fascist victory well into in the twenty-first century, and calling attention to what his conviction would mean for democracy in Spain.

The tactics of this movement, which are rather timid when compared to the direct action strategy of the civil rights movement and the approach of similar movements in Chile and Argentina, have provoked outrage among the Partido Popular (PP), Spain’s conservative opposition party—which has resisted nearly every attempt by the state to address the crimes of the Francoist dictatorship—as well as a significant number of the media which view holding public meetings and demonstrations as “attacks on democracy.”

These were the very words used by María Dolores Cospedal, the PP’s secretary general, to describe an act organized by the rector of a Madrid university last week. Other critics of the public support for Garzón have claimed that putting pressure on the Supreme Court is inconsistent with democratic behavior and have called for a return to law and order.

These critics sound very similar to those who stood behind the legality of a deeply unjust situation for blacks in the U.S. under legalized segregation. hey would almost certainly disagree with the comparison, but to the ears of an American familiar with the history of the civil rights movement, the similarities are undeniable. From behind bars, Martin Luther King responded to such critics by saying that “law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice” and that “when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” But the wisdom of King’s words is lacking not only in the comprehension of these critics, even Garzón’s defense lawyer has criticized the outpouring of public support for his client. Strategic or not, his comments are lamentable in a case of this magnitude, in which not only the integrity of Spanish law is at stake, but also the very concept of justice in Spain.

If Martin Luther King were alive today, he would undoubtedly support Garzón and those brave enough to publicly challenge the state of impunity that is the glaring stain on the sunny, smiley surface that characterizes Spanish democracy. From prison, King made a clear distinction between law and justice. Drawing on religious thinkers, he quoted St. Augustine who believed that “an unjust law is no law at all” and St. Thomas Aquinas who thought that “any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” Following their logic, King wrote that “all segregation statues are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.”

As someone who has spent the better part of the past four years researching the genocide carried out in Spain, as well as my experience interviewing more than fifty victims of Francoist repression for the Spanish Civil War Memory Project—an audiovisual archive housed at the University of California, San Diego—and as a volunteer in mass grave exhumations with the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, I believe that the state of impunity in Spain has distorted and damaged a great many of its citizens. Aside from letting torturers and mass murderers live and die without ever having to face any consequences for their crimes, it has also caused a majority to believe that the wounds from the war and the dictatorship shouldn’t be examined now that democracy has provided Spain with decades of peace it has never before enjoyed. At the same time, a largely forgotten minority is forced to bear the on-going effects of trauma because their wounds haven’t been addressed in any significant way by the Spanish state.

The 1977 Amnesty Law that has foiled Garzón’s quest to bring the same relief to his fellow Spaniards that he has to victims of state violence in Latin America, released political prisoners from the notorious prisons of the dictatorship, such as Burgos and Carabanchel. At the time, the law was a victory for those who had fought against the dictatorship and who had paid the price of torture and imprisonment. But more than thirty years later, the law is being used as an excuse not to rectify the situation of the families of the disappeared. Amnesty law or not, they have what Martin Luther King, or Antigone, would call the moral right to locate and properly bury their dead, a right consistent with international law. Spain is not only a signatory to the conventions that establishing this right, it has also been a world leader in applying those conventions to investigate crimes against humanity in other countries.

Something is rotten in the state of Spain

While the widely celebrated transition to democracy that followed Franco’s death in 1975—referred to in Spain simply as “la Transición”—was successful in many regards, in recent years it has been exposed as a moral failure by the inability of many of Spain’s citizens to hear the cries of those traumatized by the dictatorship. Regrettably, these people—particularly the family members of the disappeared—have been re-traumatized by the Supreme Court decision to grant fascism political legitimacy by admitting the Falange’s lawsuit against Garzón. If this sounds like an exaggeration, keep in mind that the Falange—working in conjunction with Franco and the other generals behind the coup, as well as with Italian fascists and the Nazis—was responsible for the majority of the disappearances that Garzón was investigating before he was forced to withdraw his case.

Long after Franco’s death, Spain is segregated along unspoken lines of privilege that are the direct inheritance of lived experience under the dictatorship. As a general rule, those individuals and families privileged by the dictatorship continue to be privileged under democracy. An egregious example of this is the fact that a handful of Spanish judges who took their oaths under the dictatorship and who formed part of the Tribunal of Public Order—a key instrument of legalized state repression—are still practicing law in Spain’s high courts today. Many of those victimized by the dictatorship continue to face comparative economic hardship, alienation from mainstream society and the frustration that accompanies a lifetime of unsuccessfully searching for a loved one who was taken from them one night at gunpoint and never heard from—and barely spoken about—again.

In his letter, Martin Luther King discussed the negative psychological effects that segregation had on blacks, such as being “humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading ‘white’ and ‘colored,’ being plagued with “inner fears and outer resentments,” and the emotional cost of “forever fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness.’” I have witnessed these very same effects in many of the people I have been fortunate enough to interview and to meet on the edge of mass graves. For them, the “nagging signs” are the surprisingly large number of fascist symbols still hanging in public spaces throughout most of Spain, as well as the many street names honoring Franco and his willing executioners. Imagine swastikas on the sides of apartment blocks and streets named Der Führer, Joseph Goebbels or Josef Mengele in Germany today. Now try to imagine being a Jew living in Germany under such conditions more than a half a century after the end of WWII.

This is what the victims of Francoist repression and the survivors of genocide in Spain face everyday. For this reason, la Transición is an empty signifier, if not a cruel joke for many of Franco’s enemies and their descendants. King used the word “transition” when discussing the necessity of a “transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men [sic] will respect the dignity and worth of human personality.” This is precisely the sort of transition that Spain needs now, thirty years after the la Transición failed on moral grounds. Removing Garzón from his post would be a step in the wrong direction. Allowing him to re-open his investigation would be a small step in the right one. So would making the Falange illegal, as most fascist parties in Europe have been.

Obviously, the majority of Spaniards are not fascists. On the contrary, they are firm believers in the political institutions formed during the Transition. If asked, most of them would probably describe themselves as “democrats” and “moderates.” Many Spaniards, particularly those born after Franco’s death, are proudly apolitical, particularly when it comes to issues related to genocide and the Spanish Civil War. This is largely due to the internalization of myths about the Spanish Civil War promulgated by the dictatorship from 1964 onwards, in which the events between 1936 and 1939 were described as the expression of collective madness and the inevitable confrontation between “two Spains” polarized by radical politics.

This way of narrating events, which remains dominant even after a decade of mass grave exhumations that began in October 2000 when Emilio Silva exhumed the remains of his grandfather and founded the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, keeps Spaniards mystified about the war and the nature of the dictatorship and ignorant about the genocide carried out by Franco and the Falange. It also contributes to a generation— largely distracted by mass diversion and wild consumption—that prefers politics in variations of “moderation,” if at all. Anything perceived as lying outside the realm of “center” politics is negatively labeled radical. In the case of the Falange and proud Franco supporters, “nostalgic” is the adjective of choice, which reveals more about the speaker than their object of analysis.

The historical memory movement has not been immune to attacks from the majority who advocate a “moderate” politics rooted in the spirit of the Transition, even though the most organizations that constitute this heterogeneous movement have consistently framed their mission in the language of human rights, conscientiously avoiding any hint of the politics of revenge. Yet some Spaniards consider digging up mass graves a radical political act worthy of insult. Considering the political framework in Spain, they might be right about the former, but they couldn’t be more wrong about the latter. Sadly, most Spaniards just don’t care and wouldn’t lift a finger to help the family members of the disappeared.

This sort of apathy, rather than outright hostility, is what has characterized the state’s attitude towards victims of the dictatorship under democracy. Such neglect has been sanctioned by the widely held belief that moderate politics is a means to prevent the return of civil war, something that is simply inconceivable in modern Spain, whose government currently holds the presidency of the European Union. But such a myth is extremely effective in maintaining the political status quo, in which progressive politics are easily labeled “radical” or “extremist” or “anti-democratic.”

During his struggles with white racists, King grew increasingly tired of moderates. What he has to say on this topic is revealing when considered in the Spanish context: “I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

Those defending Garzón and the ethical claims of the victims that his investigation sought to assist have been audacious enough to call for the presence of justice in the face of a state of impunity. Like King’s supporters, they understand that when order is exposed as immoral and peace is unmasked as another form of repression for those repressed under the dictatorship, it is impossible to remain silent. Protesting the effects of decades of political “moderation” is the only alternative to complete resignation.

When King wrote his letter from an Alabama jail, he described the events taking place in Birmingham as a “time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men [sic] are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.” In Spain, that time is finally arriving, long overdue. It looks like a battered train slowly plowing through a sinister fog.

Scott Boehm is a researcher for the Spanish Civil War Memory Project, an audiovisual archive of the University of California, San Diego where he is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Literature Department. His is also a former fellow of the Human Rights Center at Berkeley, and a volunteer with the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain. He can be reached at sboehm@ucsd.edu.

Más de 100 profesores en EE.UU. firman la petición a favor de Garzón

Estoy orgullosa de haber agregado mi nombre a esta lista.

De: Rebelión.org

Entre los firmantes hay catedráticos, profesores titulares, investigadores, y doctorandos, que representan a universidades de todo el país

Más de 100 profesores, investigadores y docentes de EEUU apoyan al Juez Garzón y denuncian la perpetuación de la impunidad en el Estado español

Rebelión

Como profesores e investigadores de la Guerra Civil y la dictadura franquista de distintas universidades norteamericanas queremos expresar nuestro más profundo desacuerdo con la reciente decisión del Tribunal Supremo de procesar al juez Baltasar Garzón. Independientemente de la opinión que nos merezcan las actuaciones del Juez Garzón en otros ámbitos, estamos convencidos de que la decisión y los argumentos del Juez Luciano Varela contribuyen decisivamente a consolidar la impunidad y ampliar la situación de desamparo que sufren las víctimas de la represión franquista. Los sobrevivientes de la violencia exterminadora del franquismo y sus familiares llevan décadas esperando que la justicia española esclarezca y castigue a quienes sean responsables de delitos tan graves como la desaparición forzada, la tortura o el secuestro de niños.

La causa abierta contra el franquismo por el Juez Garzón era un primer paso para revertir una situación de impunidad y desamparo establecida durante la dictadura y consolidada durante la transición a la democracia. Por ello, invocar la ley de amnistía de 1977 como fundamento para procesar al Juez Garzón por carecer de competencias no es más que una fórmula legal para seguir perpetuando la impunidad dictada por el aparato legal del franquismo. El propio Juez Garzón en su auto de procesamiento contra Pinochet y otros jueces de la Audiencia nacional en casos similares, han revocado leyes de amnistía por entender que el delito de desaparición forzada no prescribe y por considerar que el exterminio planificado y sistemático de un grupo (i.e. “los rojos”) constituye un delito de crímenes contra la humanidad y/o genocidio que, como tal, puede ser perseguido en cualquier juzgado del mundo. En este sentido, cabe señalar que estos argumentos legales aplicados a otros países (Chile, Argentina) se llevaron a cabo sin que ningún juez fuera procesado por ello y con el apoyo mayoritario de la sociedad civil española. Por tanto, exigimos al Tribunal Supremo y a la judicatura española que sea coherente con sus propias decisiones legales y que aplique en España las leyes del derecho internacional que con tanta vehemencia ha aplicado en otros países que han sufrido episodios similares de violencia política y exterminio

Asimismo, observamos con suma preocupación que se admita a trámite una denuncia presentada por un grupo, Manos Limpias , que es heredero directo de Falange Española y del más rancio fascismo español. En la mayoría de otros países Europeos (Alemania, Italia) estos grupos son simplemente ilegales, como lo son también las expresiones de exaltación y glorificación del pasado fascista. Admitir como legítimos participantes del Estado de Derecho a quiénes participaron en la destrucción violenta del primer período enteramente democrático que hubo en España –la II República—es una cruel ironía del destino y un sinsentido político.

Por todo ello, pedimos al Juez Varela que desista en su intento de juzgar al Juez Garzón o que, al menos, considere los testimonios y pruebas aducidos por especialistas en derecho internacional y por historiadores de la represión franquista como parte del proceso. Sin embargo, aún más importante que el proceso abierto contra Garzón es entender que en España las víctimas de la represión franquista siguen viviendo en una situación de desamparo legal sin parangón en el mundo. A pesar de la Ley de Memoria Histórica y de otras medidas reparatorias en España la mayoría de las fosas comunes se exhuman sin la presencia de un juez y sin que se establezca ninguna responsabilidad penal por los presuntos delitos evidenciados en la exhumación. Ninguna democracia digna de ese nombre puede dejar en las cunetas a miles de ciudadanos e ignorar las posibles responsabilidades legales que se deriven de tan ignominiosos hallazgos. Si finalmente se condena al Juez Garzón y se le aparta de la judicatura, España no sólo no habrá habido reparación y justicia para las víctimas de la dictadura, sino que éstas además seguirán siendo silenciadas y juzgadas por sus verdugos.

Queremos, finalmente, expresar nuestra más absoluta solidaridad a todas las asociaciones cívicas que trabajan por la recuperación de la memoria histórica y exigir con ellas el fin de la impunidad y la reapertura de los procesos legales que sean necesarios para dar un decisivo paso adelante hacia el establecimiento de la justicia.

Virgnia Adán-Lifante Foreign Language Coordinator, University of California, Merced.

Carlos Aguirre, Associate Professor, History, University of Oregon

Enrique Álvarez, Assistant Professor, Florida State University.

Tabea Alexa Linhard, Assistant Professor, Washington University

Emilia Alonso Marks, Associate Professor of Spanish, Ohio University.

Ana María Amar Sánchez, Professor, University of California, Irvine.

Pepa Anastasio, Hofstra University, Nueva York

Reinhard Andress, Professor, Saint Louise University.

Alicia Arribas, Department of Romance Languages, University of Georgia

Daniel Arroyo-Rodríguez, Researcher and Graduate Student, University of Michigan

Edward Baker, Professor Emeritus University of Florida

Alda Blanco, Chair Departament of Spanish and Portuguese, San Diego State University

Carlos Blanco Aguinaga, Profesor Emérito de la Universidad de California, San Diego

Erick Blandón, PhD,Professor, University of Missouri-Columbia.

Maria Bernath, Researcher, University of California, San Diego

Aaron Boalick, Graduate Student, University of Michigan

Scott Boehm, Researcher of The Spanish Civil War Memory Project, University of California, San Diego.

Kristina L. Bonsager, Chair of Department of International Languages & Literatures, St. Catherine University

José Antonio Cano, Director Overseas Program in Spain, University of Alabama

Nuño Castellanos, Lecturer of Spanish, Department of Romance Languages, University of Georgia.

Francie Cate-Arries, Professor of Hispanic Studie, The College of William & Mary

Mary Coffey, Professor, Pomona College.

Jaime Concha, Professor, University of California, San Diego.

Helena Contreras-Chacel, Escritora, Los Angeles.

Jessica Córdova, Researcher The Spanish Civil War Memory Project, UC, San Diego

Lucile C. Charlebois, Asistant Professor, University of South Carolina

Justin Crumbaugh, Associate Professor, Mountholyoke College.

Nuria Cruz-Cámara, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Tennessee

Isabel Cuñado, Assistant Professor of Spanish, Bucknell University.

Juan Carlos de los Santos, Spanish Lecturer and Language Coordinator, University of Michigan.

Andrea Davis, Researcher of The Spanish Civil War Memory Project, University of California, San Diego.

Thomas Deveny, Professor, McDaniel College

Simon Doubleday, Associate Professor of History, Hofstra University.

Jodi Eisenberg, Researcher of The Spanish Civil War Memory Project, University of California, San Diego.

Cecilia Enjuto Rangel Assistant Professor, University of Oregon.

Javier Entrambasaguas, Researcher, University of Michigan.

Sebastiaan Faber, Professor and Chair, Dept of Hispanic Studies, Oberlin College

Ofelia Ferrán, Associate Professor, University of Minnesota.

Francisco Fernández Alba, Assistant Professor, Weathon College

Joaquin Florido Berrocal, Assistant Professor of Spanish, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Pedro García Caro, University of Oregon.

José M. García-Sánchez, Professor of Spanish, Eastern Washington University

Yvonne Gavela, Assistant Professor of Spanish, University of Miami.

Anthony L. Geist, Chair, Division of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Washington

David T. Gies, Commonwealth Professor of Spanish, University of Virginia.

Juan M. Godoy Márquez, Associate Professor, San Diego State University.

Luis M. González, Assistant Professor of Spanish, Connecticut College.

Linda Gould Levine, Professor of Spanish, Montclair State University.

Margarita Graetzer, Professor of Spanish and General Studies, Berea College

Ginna Herrmann, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Oregon.

María Hernández-Ojeda, Associate Professor of Spanish, Hunter College-CUNY.

Juli Highfill, Associate Professor, University of Michgan.

Roberta Johnson, Professor Emerita, University of Kansas

Santiago Juan-Navarro, Professor of Spanish, Florida International University

Patricia Keller, Assistant Professor, Cornell University.

Susan Kirkpatrick, Professor Emerita, University of California, San Diego

Kathy Korcheck, Assitant Professor, Central College.

Misha Kokotovic, Associate Professor, University of California, San Diego.

Larry La Fountain-Stokes, Associate Professor, University of Michigan

Margarita Lezcano, Professor Emerita, Eckerd College

Ignacio López-Calvo, Chair of the World Cultures Graduate Group, University of California, Merced.

Kern L. Lunsford, Professor of Spanish and Chair, Modern Languages, Lynchburg College.

María Cristina C. Mabrey, Professor, University of South Carolina.

Viviana Macmanus, Researcher of The Spanish Civil War Memory Project, University of California, San Diego.

Shirley Mangini, Professor Emerita, Cal State, Long Beach.

Monica Marcos-Llinas, Ph, Department of Romance Languages and Literature University of Missouri.

Andreea Marinescu, Assistant Professor, Colorado College.

Jorge Mariscal, Professor, University of California, San Diego

Luis Martin-Cabrera, Assistant Professor and Director of The Spanish Civil War Memory Project, University of California, San Diego.

Eduardo Matos-Martín, Researcher, University of Arizona.

Elize Mazadiego, Researcher of The Spanish Civil War Memory Project, University of California San Diego.

Nancy J. Membrez, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Texas at San Antonio

Hugo Moreno, Professor, University of Western Ontario

Santiago Morales-Rivera, Assistant Professor, University of California, Irvine.

Cristina Moreiras-Menor, Associate Professor, University of Michigan.

Sara Nadal-Melsió, Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania.

Nancy Newton, Department of World Languages & Cultures, Indiana University

Janet Pérez, Miembro Numerario, Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española

Cindy Pinhal, Graduate Student, University of California, San Diego.

Beatriz Pita, Profesora, University of California, San Diego.

Jonathan Pitcher, Associate Professor, Bennington College.

Amanda Powel, Senior Instructor of Spanish, University of Oregon

Michael P. Predmore, Professor, Stanford University.

Alicia Ramos Jordán, University of California, Merced

Ricardo Ramos-Tremolada, University of Richmond

Christian M. Ricci. Assistant Professor, University of California, Merced.

Brandon Rigby, University of Oregon.

María Robles Gila, Graduate Student, University of Michigan.

Rodney Rodríguez, Ph.D., Manhattan College

Esperanza Roncero, Associate Professor of Spanish, Hartwick College

Víctor Roncero-López, Dept. of Hispanic Languages and Lit. Stony Brook University

Benita Sampedro Vizcaya, Associate Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Hofstra University.

Rosaura Sánchez. Professor, University of California, San Diego

Cintia Santana, Lecturer, Division of Literature, Culture and Languages, Stanford University.

John Snyder, Independent Scholar.

Jose Schraibman, Profesor, Washington University, Romance Languages

William Sherzer, Prof. Emérito, Brooklyn College y el Graduate Center (CUNY)

Doris Sommer, Profesora, Harvard University.

Juan Carlos Toledano Redondo, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Lewis & Clark College

Sarah Thomas, Ph.D. Candidate, New York University

Joan Torres-Pou, Associate Professor, Florida International University, Miami.

Ángel T. Tuninetti Associate Professor of Spanish / Chair, Department of Foreign Languages, West Virginia University

Michael Ugarte, Prof. de Literatura Castellana, Universidad de Missouri-Columbia

Amanda Valenzuela, Estudiante de Doctorado e investigadora, UCLA

Mabel Velasco, Profesora, Virginia Wesleyan College.

Alejandro Yarza, Associate Professor of Spanish, Georgetown Universtiy.

Barbara Zecchi, Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts.

El Wall Street Journal arremete contra el juez Garzón

Como siempre publico aquí noticias a favor del juez Garzón, he decidido incluir el artículo de abajo, publicado el martes 13 de abril en el diario conservador neoyorquino, el Wall Street Journal. Nunca leo este diario, pero me parece necesario compartir esta editorial, si es sólo para expresar mi más profundo desacuerdo con su postura, que se desentiende por completo de los asuntos más relevantes relacionados con el caso contra el juez.

Como para competir con la editorial recién publicada en el New York Times, aquí, los editores sostienen que el juez ha traspasado los límites de la jurisdicción. No hay ningún intento por parte de éstos de explorar el origen de las querellas contra el juez o los problemas fundamentales con la Ley de Amnistía, porque para ellos, lo único importante es 1) la personalidad del "juez hiperactivo," y 2) la cuestión de la justicia universal. Lo más aborrecible del artículo es cuando los editores recuerdan el caso contra Pinochet, y, en vez de reconocer el alto valor de aquel intento de perseguir al ex dictador chileno, dicen: "The judge's admirers considered the warrant against Pinochet the very essence of justice. We warned at the time that it was a recipe for legal anarchy and international discord, and profoundly antidemocratic to boot."

Aquí, los editores vuelven a recordarnos de su perspectiva de aquel momento, en que avisaron que la persecución de Pinochet era una "receta para la anarquía legal y la discordia internacional, y además, profundamente antidemocrático" (traducción mía). El uso simultáneo de las frases "anarquía legal," "discordia internacional" y el adjetivo "antidemocrático" intentan crear un sentido de miedo de qué podría ocurrir si los gobiernos de unos países se involucraran inncecesariamente en los asuntos de otro. Los editores escriben suponiendo que un país "democrático" nunca requiere la perspectiva legal de un "tercero." ¿Qué pasa, en otras palabras, cuando una supuesta democracia comete crímenes contra derechos humanos? ¿Se ha de suponer que sólo ese país -- por ser "democrático" y capaz de manejar sus propios asuntos en su propio sistema jurídico -- tiene derecho a juzgar tales crímenes?

Este tema no es el en que los editores deben estar enfocándose, pero resulta más fácil sugerir que todos los problemas de Garzón han surgido a raíz de casos en que el juez se ha atrevido a mirar tras las fronteras de su propio país -- Pinochet, Bush, Bin Laden, etc. Puede que la cuestión de la justicia universal sea uno de los motivos por los que ha enfadado a tanta gente, pero en 1998, estoy segura que la misma gente que ahora arremete contra el juez, antes lo apoyaban. Nunca es lo mismo perseguir a dictadores en otros países, que hacerlo en el país de uno mismo.

Yo apoyo al juez Garzón, pero me importa un comino que se llame "Garzón," o que sea un "juez estrella," un "juez hiperactivo," etc. Sigo sin entender cómo un país democrático pueda haber permitido que pasaran al Tribunal Supremo querellas de grupos como Manos Limpias, o de los políticos corruptos encarcelados. Es una burda de la democracia!!! Con tanto enfoque en el juez, estamos perdiendo de vista cada día más el origen de todo este lío -- la decisión de perseguir crímenes contra el franquismo. La prensa y el público, tan obsesionados los dos con seguir el esplendor y la decadencia de una figura como la del juez, se están olvidando de que las querellas presentadas contra su persona representan al mismo tiempo, querellas contra las víctimas del franquismo que el juez ha intentado defender. El circo mediático que rodea este caso es como el sueño de la derecha -- con un enfoque extendido en la persona del juez, resulta fácil re-enterrar la cuestión de la memoria histórica. Porque a algunos les gustaría creer que es el juez quien está ensuciando el camino de la modélica Transición, ensuciando implícitamente los nombres de sus autores.

Los editores del Wall Street Journal operan sobre la base de que "lo que pasa en España queda en España:" "Whether it's legal for the Spanish judge to re-fight Spain's 70-year-old civil war will be settled by Spaniards, in Spain, according to Spanish law. Which sounds right to us. Here's hoping Mr. Garzón's imitators grant other countries the same respect." (Los españoles decidirán si es legal o no que el juez re-luche contra una guerra civil de 70 años, y lo decidirán en España, según la Ley española, lo que nos parece correcto. Esperemos que los imitadores del sr. Garzón concedan el mismo respeto a otros países" - traducción mía). Qué fácil y sencilla visión de la democracia tienen los editores del WSJ! La democracia, y ser ciudadano democrático, no significa preocuparse sólo por lo que pasa en el país de uno. Significa entender cómo los ataques injustos contra el proceso democrático en otros países terminan afectándonos a todos nosotros.

Artículo del 13 de abril

A 'Torture' Judge's Comeuppance
Spain's Garzón is indicted for judicial overreach.

Spanish judge Baltazar Garzón was indicted last week for his probe into Civil War-era executions and disappearances. A Spanish Supreme Court judge charged him with manipulating justice, overstepping his jurisdiction and ignoring a 1977 amnesty on atrocities linked to Francisco Franco's dictatorship.

So it turns out there are limits to Spanish jurisdiction—in Spain at least.

Mr. Garzón first rose to global legal stardom for issuing the 1998 arrest warrant that prompted U.K. authorities to place former Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet under house arrest for over a year. The warrant rested on the concept of "universal jurisdiction," whereby a judge of any state claims legal jurisdiction over an individual from any other state suspected of having committed certain classes of crime. The judge's admirers considered the warrant against Pinochet the very essence of justice. We warned at the time that it was a recipe for legal anarchy and international discord, and profoundly antidemocratic to boot.

The hyperactive judge has since gone after everyone from Osama bin Laden to Argentine military officers to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Last year he launched proceedings against former Bush Administration officials on "torture" allegations. Mr. Garzón's colleagues in the Spanish judiciary have also followed his lead with moves against Israeli, Rwandan and Chinese officials for various abuses, real or imagined.

Few of these cases have amounted to much, unless you count a lot of ruined travel plans. And now, at long last, the Garzón shtick is wearing thin. Jaime Alonso, one of the lawyers who filed the case, accuses the judge of employing "judicial gymnastics" to gain "a political platform for his own glory." Spain's Congress has also attempted to curb the judiciary's extraterritorial enthusiasms by limiting its purview to cases with a Spanish connection, and where the target's home country isn't already investigating.

Judge Garzón faces a trial and, if convicted, a ban of up to 20 years from court. Whether it's legal for the Spanish judge to re-fight Spain's 70-year-old civil war will be settled by Spaniards, in Spain, according to Spanish law. Which sounds right to us. Here's hoping Mr. Garzón's imitators grant other countries the same respect.

Artículo de Scott Boehm, Universidad de California, San Diego

Visto en: La memoria viva

Published on Thursday, April 8, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
The Shame of Spain and the Ghost of Fascism

by Scott Boehm

When Spain is mentioned in the English-speaking world, romanticized images of Mediterranean landscapes quickly come to mind. They are usually set to a passionate flamenco-inspired soundtrack and mingle with the fantasy of tantalizingly fresh paella, golden olive oil and ruby red wine. This is the Spain most outsiders imagine and experience, and it is largely what the Spanish economy has depended upon since the 1960s when the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco launched a massive tourist campaign to stimulate a struggling economy. The campaign was the stuff of economic miracles. Spain rapidly became one of the world’s premier vacation destinations.

But all the sun in the world couldn’t hide the horror lying in the shadows of a country haunted by a recent war that touched every aspect of Spanish life. At least not forever.

In 2000, twenty-five years after Franco’s death, Emilio Silva, a journalist searching for answers to questions about that war and his family’s relation to it accidentally discovered and exhumed the mass grave where his grandfather’s remains were located. Silva’s grandfather, a humble shop owner and supporter of the democratic state established in 1931, was summarily executed by members of the Falange—the Spanish fascist party—along with twelve other people from his village in the north of Spain shortly after Franco and a handful of generals launched a coup against the Spanish Republic in July 1936. Hitler, Mussolini, and the Catholic Church backed the conspirators while the United States, England and France turned a blind eye to the massacre that ensued.

While the events of 1936-1939 are popularly referred to as ‘the Spanish Civil War,” the term misrepresents what actually occurred. More than a war between two more or less equally prepared and similarly matched sides, it was the mass extermination of “los rojos”—anyone considered part of “the anti-Spain” by the self-proclaimed, and well-armed, guardians of national identity and patriotic spirit. The “reds” put up a long fight, but ultimately they were killed, tortured, raped, imprisoned, kidnapped, used as slave labor and/or driven into exile for four decades.

Like Emilio Silva’s grandfather, hundreds of thousands of the victims of such repression—continued by the Francoist state at the conclusion of the war—continue to lie prostrate in mass graves. Since the exhumation in 2000, their descendents and sympathizers have formed a growing historical memory movement. Like Antigone, they have repeatedly asked for one thing from the Spanish state: nothing more than the possibility of exercising their desire to properly bury their dead. Like Creon, the Spanish state has consistently responded with statements, actions and laws that laugh in the face of their ethical claim.

In 2008, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, internationally famous for having put Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on trial for genocide in 1998, admitted a series of lawsuits filed by several historical memory organizations and individuals seeking assistance with the location and exhumation of the remains of family members. Garzón subsequently opened the first criminal case into the 1936 coup and the Francoist dictatorship. He concluded that the generals who launched the war were guilty of crimes against humanity, and ordered the exhumation of nineteen mass graves. A few weeks later, Garzón was forced to close his case under pressure from fellow judges of the National Court and the Attorney General’s office. Once again, the hopes of family members were crushed by the weight of law and the callousness of the Spanish state.

(For a brief description of Garzón’s case, see my article “On Human Rights, Spain is Different” published on Common Dreams December 10, 2008: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/10 [1]).

If the story ended here, it would be yet another sad lament in a long litany of historical wrongs for the victims of Francoist repression. But this story, unfortunately, is not over.

Shortly after Garzón withdrew his case, a far-right lobby and the Falange—the same Spanish fascist party that killed Emilio Silva’s grandfather and dumped his body in a ditch like hundreds of thousands of others—filed lawsuits against Garzón for opening the historic case. To the surprise of many international law and human rights organizations, the Supreme Court admitted the suits last May. Yesterday Judge Luciano Varela ruled that Garzón must stand trial. He faces removal from the National Court and banishment from the bench for twelve to twenty years, which would mean the sudden end of Garzón’s illustrious, if controversial, legal career.

While Garzón has been roundly criticized for self-promotion and basking in the spotlight of high-profile cases, such personal faults are irrelevant to the case at hand. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Fascist party and its associates—which appears quite possible—it will be a far-reaching victory for the state of impunity that characterizes contemporary Spain and a devastating loss for those seeking the most minimal act of justice for the dead. It will also be a significant blow to international criminal law, convert Spain into a legal embarrassment in the eyes of the world and discredit the integrity of Spanish jurists.

This would seem bad enough, but if Garzón is debarred it also means that fascism will be validated as a legitimate and effective political force in democratic Spain. Not only will the family members of the victims of fascist violence lose the only judge daring enough to challenge the 1977 amnesty law protecting those responsible for mass extermination and state repression—a law considered illegal under international law—they will also be forced to swallow the fact that, in Spain at least, democracy means that fascist complaints carry more weight than the burden of those traumatized by the Spanish state during much of the twentieth century.

Ten years into the twenty-first, the political panorama looks chillingly familiar to those who have survived or studied Francoist “justice.” Once again, the force of law is being used to discipline those who challenge a deeply unjust social order. But it is more than simply punishment; it is a threat to those who might follow in the footsteps of Garzón, and an insult to all the Antigones of the world. It is also the apparition of fascism, alive and well in sunny Spain, rearing its ugly head from behind long, haunting shadows.

In Madrid, you can almost hear its voice echoing throughout the hallowed halls of justice: “Olé! Somebody pass the sangría…”

Scott Boehm is a Researcher for the Spanish Civil War Memory Project (http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/scwmemory/ [2]) at UC San Diego where he is a Ph.D. candidate in Literature. His dissertation, "Trauma and Transitionism" examines the intersections of culture, memory and justice related to mass extermination and state repression in Spain. He can be contacted at sboehm@ucsd.edu [3].

"An Injustice in Spain" - editorial del New York Times

Bravo, New York Times.

Frase clave: la primera, donde dice que este es "un caso políticamente motivado, que debe haber sido retirado"!!

De: The New York Times
April 9, 2010
Editorial

An Injustice in Spain

Spain’s best-known investigative magistrate, Baltasar Garzón, is now being prosecuted in a politically driven case that should have been thrown out of court.

Judge Garzón is charged with ignoring a 1977 amnesty law when he decided to investigate the disappearances of more than 100,000 people during Spain’s 1930s civil war and the decade of Francoist repression that followed. The charges were brought by two far-right groups who fear an open investigation of the Franco-era record. Unfortunately, one of Mr. Garzón’s fellow magistrates sustained the complaint and brought formal charges this week.

As a result, he will now be suspended from his duties pending trial. If convicted, he could be barred from the bench for up to 20 years, effectively ending a career dedicated to holding terrorists and dictators accountable for their crimes. That would please his political enemies, but it would be a travesty of justice.

The real crimes in this case are the disappearances, not Mr. Garzón’s investigation. If, as seems likely, these were crimes against humanity under international law, Spain’s 1977 amnesty could not legally absolve them. The suspected perpetrators are all dead, and Mr. Garzón long ago halted his investigation, passing jurisdiction to local Spanish courts in the areas where the victims were exhumed.

Mr. Garzón is a fearless and controversial prosecutor who has made many enemies over the years. He has brought cases against Basque and Al Qaeda terrorists, powerful Spanish politicians, Latin American dictators and Russian mafia thugs.

High-profile cases, like his bid to try the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, appeal to him, and sometimes he overreaches. But his consistent goal has been to deny impunity to the powerful and expand the scope of international human rights law.

Mr. Garzón should be allowed to resume that work at the earliest possible date. Spain needs an honest accounting of its troubled past, not prosecution of those who have the courage to demand it.

23-24 de abril en Minnesota: Congreso internacional

Después de un invierno interminable, por fin parece que la primavera está llegando. Así, es un buen momento para viajar; la próxima semana iré a un congreso en Montréal, donde daré una ponencia sobre el documental Bucarest, la memoria perdida, de Albert Solé. Hace más de 10 años desde que fui a Canadá por última vez, y nunca he estado en Montréal, así que tengo muchas ganas de saber cómo es esta ciudad de la que tanto he oído hablar.

Por desgracia, puesto que ya voy a tener que perder varios días de clase este mes, dudo que podré asistir al congreso Exhuming Bodies, Producing Knowledge, que tendrá lugar en la Universidad de Minnesota el 23-24 de abril. Ojalá no tenga que perder este congreso internacional, especialmente porque queda prácticamente en mi "patio trasero." De momento, estoy explorando una manera de viajar allí, o por coche o por avión; si no puedo asistir, voy a contar con la experiencia de una amiga que vive y estudia en Minnesota para comentarnos un poco sobre las ponencias.

Habrá dos días de ponencias de personas tan destacadas como Emilio Silva o Francisco Ferrándiz, tanto como de profesores de la Univerisdad de Minnesota. Algunos de los temas del congreso son las exhumaciones de fosas comunes, la justicia, los DD.HH., y la memoria colectiva en España. Este congreso internacional e interdisciplinario es el último componente de un año de coloquios sobre temas parecidos, en varios contextos posdictatoriales. Están bienvenidos profesores universitarios, profesores de secundaria y estudiantes graduados.

Aunque la mayoría de los lectores de este blog no se encuentra en Estados Unidos, abajo podéis leer el horario y guardarlo en PDF, por si os interesa.

Exhuming Bodies, Producing Knowledge: Collective Memory, Justice, and Restitution in Contemporary Spain

An International, Interdisciplinary Conference, Part of the Body and Knowing Symposium of the Institute for Advanced Study

Friday, April 23

9:00-9:30 Opening Remarks
Carol Klee
Assistant Vice President for International Scholarship,Office of International Programs,
Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, University of Minnesota

Ofelia Ferrán and Lisa Hilbink
Conference Co-organizers, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies/Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota

9:30-11:00 Session 1
“Afterlives: Tracing Exhumed Bodies beyond the Mass Grave”
Francisco Ferrándiz
Científico Titular, Instituto de Lengua, Literatura y Antropología (ILLA)
Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (CCHS)
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) (Spain)

“Unsettling Accounts: Perpetrators’ ‘Truths’ Revealed and Their Impact on Democracy”
Leigh Payne
Professor of Sociology and Latin American Studies, University of Oxford

11:30-13:00 Session 2
“Pictures and Consciousness/The Visualization Of Trauma”
Francesc Torres
Artista Multimedia (Spain)

“The Battles of Memory and Testimonial Literature in the Southern Cone: The Female Body as the Locus of Betrayal”
Ana Forcinito
Associate Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, University of Minnesota

13:00-15:00 Lunch Break

15:00-16:30 Session 3
“Rude Awakening: The Decomposition of the Spanish Transition Dream”
Ignacio Fernández de Mata
Profesor Asociado de Antropología Social y Cultural, Universidad de Burgos (Spain)

“Remembrance and Punishment in the Wake of Dictatorial Regimes: The German Model”
Eric Weitz
Distinguished McKnight Professor, Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair in the College of Liberal Arts, Department of History, University of Minnesota

17:00-18:00 Roundtable Discussion

Saturday, April 24

9:30-11:00 Session 1
“Exhumation, Mass Graves and Prisoners’ Cemeteries from the Spanish Civil War and Postwar Years (1936-1943): An Overview”
Luis Ríos
Comisión Docente de Antropología, Departamento de Biología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain)

“The Body as Evidence: The Minnesota Protocol and the Use of Forensic Science in Protecting Human Rights”
Barbara Frey
Director, Human Rights Program, University of Minnesota

11:30-13:00 Session 2
“Exhumando Fosas, Enterrando Silencios”
Emilio Silva
Periodista, Presidente de la Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica
y nieto de la primera víctima de la represión franquista identificada por una prueba de ADN (Spain)

“The Justice Cascade: The Spanish Case of Transitional Justice in Global Context”
Kathryn Sikkink
Regents Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota

13:00-15:00 Lunch Break

15:00-16:30 Session 3
“No Se Puede Enterrar El Olvido”
José Antonio Martín Pallín
Magistrado emérito de la Sala II del Tribunal Supremo, Comisionado de la Comisión Internacional de Juristas (Spain)

“Atrocities, Law and Collective Memory”
Joachim J. Savelsberg
Professor of Sociology, University of Minnesota

17:00-18:00 Roundtable Discussion

Artículo sobre el juez Garzón en el New York Times

El artículo de abajo recopila lo que la mayoría de los lectores de este blog ya sabe bien sobre el caso del juez Garzón, pero lo cuelgo aquí de todas maneras. He estado esperando ver noticias sobre este caso en la prensa estadounidense -- ya era hora!

Cita para destacar: "He has argued that the amnesty does not cover crimes against humanity."

Spain Allows Case Against Noted Judge
By ANDRÉS CALA
Published: March 25, 2010, New York Times

MADRID — Spain’s Supreme Court announced Thursday that an investigating magistrate could proceed with a case against a crusading judge known internationally for indicting Osama bin Laden and the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, according to court papers.

The judge, Baltasar Garzón, is facing possible charges of abuse of power over his decision to investigate crimes committed during the dictatorship of Franco. If Judge Garzón is indicted he will be automatically suspended.

In its decision, the five-judge panel ruled against Judge Garzón’s motion for dismissal, saying it saw no legal or procedural reasons to drop the proceedings. The case was filed by several conservative organizations that contend that he abused the powers of his office by investigating Franco-era crimes that were covered by a blanket amnesty issued by Parliament in 1977, two years after the strongman’s death.

In 2008, Judge Garzón started investigating the forced disappearances of a few of the more than 100,000 people who were detained by government forces and remain unaccounted for. He has argued that the amnesty does not cover crimes against humanity.

José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that “Spanish courts have routinely failed to investigate allegations of horrendous crimes of the past, but are being surprisingly active in prosecuting a judge who tried to push for accountability.”

Judge Garzón has long been a polarizing figure in Spain, and this case is no exception. Conservatives see him as a tireless self-promoter, while more liberal voices, like the left-leaning daily newspaper El País, call the legal proceedings against Judge Garzón “harassment” aimed at punishing him for reopening the wounds of the Franco era.

Judge Garzón has spearheaded much of the judicial pressure against the separatist Basque group ETA. He is also a hero among human rights groups that would like to see broader powers to prosecute international crimes against humanity.

Included in several high-profile cases he is currently investigating are the torture claims of former Guantánamo Bay detainees, criminal activity by Colombia’s FARC rebel group and corruption cases in Spain.

Judge Garzón is also facing court proceedings in two separate cases. In one he is suspected of receiving payments from Banco Santander for a series of lectures he gave at New York University while he was involved in a case against the bank’s chairman.

The other case is related to some phone taps Judge Garzón ordered of conversations between lawyers and defendants in prison in a broadly publicized corruption case incriminating top politicians of the opposition Popular Party.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 26, 2010, on page A10 of the New York edition.

Mis "libros de la semana"

Hace una semana que estoy de vacaciones, pero mañana vuelvo al trabajo, así que voy a aprovechar estas últimas horas para recomendar algunos libros importantes, que, aunque estén en inglés, puedan interesarle a alguno.

1. Cazorla Sánchez, Antonio. Fear and Progress. Ordinary Lives in Franco's Spain, 1939-1975. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010 (ISBN: 978-1-4051-3316-6)

Este libro forma parte de una nueva serie de libros publicados sobre la experiencia de personas cuyas vidas se vieron cambiadas radicalmente por la opresión y conmoción política en la historia moderna. Pronto saldrán dos volúmenes más, uno sobre la Alemania nazi, y la otra sobre la Rusia estalinista. Según la descripción de la editorial:

This series focuses on the experience of ordinary people living through times of radical upheaval and oppression in modern history. Drawing on a variety of source materials, authors explore the social, economic, and cultural interactions between different authoritarian states and their citizens. They also shed light on the importance of factors such as class, gender, age, and ethnicity in history. Above all, the books remind us of the profound, daily struggles people often faced under these regimes, and they attest to the resilience of the human spirit.

El libro se divide en cinco capítulos, enfocando al principio en la política del miedo que invadió al pueblo al entrar en poder Franco. Después se tienen en cuenta la pobreza y el hambre, la emigración y el llamado "tardofranquismo." Lo que se destaca en este libro, como indica el título, es la narración de testimonios personales de la vida diaria durante el franquismo. Estas historias, que se cuentan al lado de datos "históricos," subrayan la importancia de entender lo que experimentaba la gente durante el franquismo -- la Historia no es sólo fechas, nombres, batallas, sino que se hace también de la gente "sin nombre" que vivió y sufrió por épocas autoritarias como el franquismo. El libro cuenta con una amplia bibliografía en inglés y español. El autor es profesor de Historia en Trent University.

2. Everly, Kathryn. History, Violence, and the Hyperreal. Representing Culture in the Contemporary Spanish Novel. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 2010 (ISBN: 978-1-55753-558-0) [no hay una imagen disponible suficientemente grande para subir aquí]

Kathryn Everly es profesora en Syracuse University (New York) y su nombre se vincula con muchos estudios feministas de la literatura española. Su primer libro, Catalan Women Writers and Artists: Feminist Views from a Revisionist Space (2003), es un estudio de escritoras catalanas como Carme Riera, Montserrat Roig y Mercè Rodoreda. El nuevo proyecto de Everly se enfoca en la conceptualización de la historia en la literatura española reciente.

Este libro se divide en dos secciones principales; en la primera, "History or Creating the Past," la autora vuelve a la obra de Carme Riera, esta vez en un análisis de Dins el darrer bleu (En el último azul) y La meitat de l'ànima (La mitad del alma). También trata las dos últimas novelas de Javier Cercas y La voz dormida, de Dulce Chacón. Me sentí especialmente atraída a esta sección del libro puesto que he leído y estudiado con profundidad todas las obras tratadas, menos Dins el darrer bleu. Aunque Everly esté estudiando aquí la novela histórica, no indaga precisamente en las dimensiones de qué es lo "histórico," sino cómo la novela puede usarse para representar y enseñarnos sobre la historia. Según la autora, las novelas tratadas tienen que ver con una especie de "metahistoria," en que piden que los lectores analicemos la relación del pasado con el presente y lo histórico en relación con lo imaginario (29).

La segunda sección del libro retoma la literatura de la llamada "Generación X," como las novelas Historias del Kronen o De todo lo visible y lo invisible. Hay que decir que no soy gran aficionada de esta "literatura," probablemente porque leer Historia del Kronen me dejó con un mal sabor en la boca por sus descripciones misóginas y homófobas. Como objeto, supongo que se puede leer como un síntoma interesante de un determinado momento de la historia. Como Everly comenta, hasta ahora los estudios de la literatura de "Gen X" han tendido a enfatizar el rechazo a la Historia por parte de sus protagonistas jóvenes. Sin embargo, lo que propone la autora aquí es un análisis de estas obras basado en su aproximación al momento contemporáneo. Es decir, Everly afirma que mientras que estas novelas no desean echar la vista atrás, sí se interesan profundamente por el momento actual, como vemos en las descripciones detalladas de la cultura popular. De esta manera, según la autora, estas obras "reconcilian la novela con la globalización" (111).

3. Jerez-Farrán, Carlos and Samuel Amago, eds. Unearthing Franco's Legacy. Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain. Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 2010. (ISBN 13: 978-0-268-03268-5)

De todos los libros citados aquí, este es el que más me interesa. Como indica el título, el libro tiene que ver con las fosas comunes y la recuperación de la memoria histórica en España. El libro surgió de un simposio, "Franco's Mass Graves: An Interdisciplinary International Investigation," organizado por uno de los editores en 2005, en la Universidad de Notre Dame (Indiana, Estados Unidos). Los autores de los ensayos representan nombres destacados en el hispanismo (Jo Labanyi, Joan Ramon Resina y Gina Herrmann), al igual que la historia (Paul Preston, Julián Casanova) y la antropología (Francisco Ferrándiz), haciendo que este libro sea realmente interdisciplinario, y que se apele a una variedad de públicos. En otro momento, después de haber leído detenidamente este libro, quizá lo reseñe aquí. Por ahora, decir que sin duda, representa una publicación significativa en torno a la memoria histórica en España. El hecho de que esté en inglés significa que estudiosos no hispanohablantes en este país tienen la oportunidad de conocer mucho más profundamente la historia española reciente. Me interesa especialmente la sección que considera el cine documental y su relación con la exhumación de fosas.

Editorial en el L.A. Times sobre el caso de Garzón (inglés y español)

En los últimos días, al buscar información en la prensa estadounidense sobre el caso Garzón, encontré en el blog progresista The Daily Kos un post elaborando la investigación del juez en torno a los crímenes de guerra de la era Bush. Esta investigación, dice el post, empezó el 15 de febrero en Madrid. Como era de esperar, la blogosfera progresista estadounidense ha estado aplaudiendo este paso; sin embargo, lo que nunca se menciona en el citado post es lo que está sucediendo al mismo tiempo en España - o sea, que preparan el procesamiento del juez por investigar los crímenes del franquismo.

Hay una ironía triste en el comentario de esta persona bien intencionada que escribe en el Daily Kos, "El buen juez Baltasar recuerda con horror los crímenes del franquismo que quedaron impunes durante y después de la Guerra Civil Española. Los republicanos lucharon bajo el lema de 'España - la tumba del fascismo europeo.' Esperemos que la España actual sea la tumba del fascismo estadounidense con el juicio a Bush, Cheney y otros fascistas caseros, quienes literalmente han mutilado nuestra propia República" (traducción mía). Por supuesto, el que cita el "fascismo estadounidense," no parece ser consciente que en España el juez afronta a su propio juzgado. Por eso, me alegra poder colgar la siguiente editorial del diario Los Angeles Times, que apoya al juez y expone el caso actual que le afecta. Después, pongo una noticia de Europa Press sobre la editorial.

De: The Los Angeles Times

Editorial
The case against Baltasar Garzon
Spain's famed judge has run afoul of his own countrymen over an inquiry on Spanish Civil War victims. The case could end his career.

February 15, 2010

Spain's world-famous magistrate, Baltasar Garzon, has made many enemies over the years. He has indicted Osama bin Laden. He has gone after Spanish paramilitaries, Basque separatists and members of drug mafias. On this side of the Atlantic, Garzon is best known as the judge who pushed the frontiers of international law, trying to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet from London and launching an inquiry into the suspected torture of detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo.

After all that, it is perhaps ironic that the biggest threat to Garzon right now comes not from some hit man but from his own judiciary, which alleges that the judge has overreached at home by trying to probe Spanish Civil War atrocities that were covered by an amnesty the country's parliament passed in 1977. Many of Garzon's adversaries on the right and the left have come together in support of the case against him. It's possible Garzon will be suspended from his duties in the coming days. If convicted, his career as a judge would be over.

Tens of thousands of Spaniards died or disappeared in the civil war, which ushered in the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco in 1939. When Franco died in 1975, the amnesty was widely seen as essential for a transition to democracy. But many of the victims have never been accounted for, and the country has not fully come to terms with its violent past. Garzon opened the case on behalf of relatives who sought to exhume and identify the dead. After right-wing groups filed a complaint, an investigative judge concluded that Garzon "consciously decided to ignore" the will of parliament in pursuing the case, and now a five-judge panel must decide whether to put him on trial for criminal intent. Garzon denies wrongdoing; the disappearances, he says, were crimes against humanity and, therefore, cannot be covered by an amnesty.

We admire Garzon for a lifetime of pursuing criminals without regard to ideology or political bent, often at great personal risk. We also recognize that his outsized ego and appetite for attention have antagonized colleagues and politicians. Though we are in no position to judge the legal challenge against him, we worry about politicization of the Spanish legal system with this divisive case, and the haste with which events are unfolding: An administrative panel is considering Garzon's suspension even before judges decide whether to allow charges to be filed.

We sincerely hope that the Spanish courts will put aside personal animosities and political vendettas, and that Garzon's enemies will not use this case to bring down a judge they dislike. Love him or hate him, he deserves a fair hearing. And a democratic Spain deserves an upstanding judiciary.

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

De: Europa Press

ante su posible suspensión

'Los Angeles Times' sale en defensa de Garzón y critica la "politización" de la Justicia española

NUEVA YORK, 16 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

El periódico estadounidense 'Los Angeles Times' salió este lunes en defensa del juez de la Audiencia Nacional española Baltasar Garzón a raíz de las causas abiertas contra él en el Tribunal Supremo y criticó en un editorial que la posible suspensión del magistrado se haya adoptado por "animosidades personales" en un contexto judicial "politizado".

El diario considera que "el magistrado español más famoso en el mundo" se ha creado "muchos enemigos" durante su carrera. En ella, el rotativo destaca las causas contra el líder de Al Qaeda Usama Bin Laden, la persecución de los crímenes del franquismo, las investigaciones sobre ETA, la lucha contra las redes de delincuencia organizada, la petición de extradición del dictador chileno Augusto Pinochet o su intención de analizar los casos de tortura en la prisión estadounidense de Guantánamo.

Con esta experiencia, 'Los Angeles Times' considera "irónico" que la amenaza le llegue no de una persona en concreto sino de "su propia judicatura, que alega que el juez se ha excedido al intentar probar las atrocidades de la Guerra Civil española que quedaron cubiertas por una amnistía aprobada en el Parlamento en 1977". En la lucha contra Garzón se han unido "adversarios" tanto de derechas como de izquierdas", añade.

El periódico denuncia que España "no ha asumido por completo su violento pasado", y que en este contexto aún existen víctimas del franquismo por identificar y cuerpos por localizar.

"Admiramos a Garzón por una vida dedicada a perseguir criminales sin importarle la ideología o la inclinación política, asumiendo a menudo un gran riesgo personal", apunta el artículo. No obstante, "también reconocemos que su desmedido ego y su ansias de atención le han enemistado con sus compañeros y políticos".

"Aunque no estamos en posición de juzgar el proceso legal contra él (Garzón), nos preocupa la excesiva politización del sistema legal español con este polémico caso, y la precipitación con el que se están desarrollando los acontecimientos", denunció el texto. En concreto, 'Los Angeles Times' se refiere al hecho de que el Consejo General del Poder Judicial (CGPJ) debata la suspensión del juez "antes incluso de que se determine si se archivan los cargos".

El periódico norteamericano confía "sinceramente" en que los tribunales españoles "dejen de lado las animosidades personales y las 'vendettas' políticas, y los enemigos de Garzón no usen este caso para tumbar a un juez que no les gusta". "Le quieras o le odies, se merece un juicio justo. Y una España democrática se merece una judicatura digna", concluye el artículo.

El juez Garzón dará una conferencia en Seattle

El juez Baltasar Garzón dará una conferencia en inglés el 23 de febrero en la Universidad de Washington (Seattle), a las 18 h. La conferencia está patrocinada y fundada por la Facultad de Historia y otras entidades de la universidad y el tema será "Derechos Humanos y Memoria Histórica." La conferencia se abre al público y es gratis. Si alguno de los lectores puede asistir (por desgracia, no podré ir yo), le agradecería mucho que nos hablara aquí de la conferencia, usando el botón de "comentarios." Espero que la universidad ponga un podcast o un vídeo para que todos podamos escucharla. Se puede contactar con el profesor Tony Geist para más información. Aquí, la noticia en inglés:

Baltasar Garzón, the esteemed Spanish judge and human rights advocate, will deliver a major public lecture on the topic of “Human Rights and Historical Memory.” His lecture, which is free and open to the public, is part of the Gates Public Service Law Program. His lecture is also one in a year-long linked film and lecture series, “Lives, History, Memory: The Spanish Civil War Seventy Years After" that is sponsored by the Department of History's Hanauer Outreach Fund and other units on campus, including the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities.

Garzón is one of the six investigating judges for Spain’s National Court. His function is to investigate the cases that are assigned to him by the court, gathering evidence and evaluating whether the case should be brought to trial. He does not try the cases himself. Garzón rose to prominence as an international figure with his indictment of leaders of the former Chilean military junta, including dictator Augusto Pinochet, on charges of genocide, terrorism and torture during the 1973-1990 dictatorship. Garzón has also played a key role in indicting suspected Basque terrorists. Most recently he has brought charges against the Franco regime for crimes against humanity, and ordered the exhumation of mass graves from Spain's bloody civil war (1936-39). For more information, contact Prof. Tony Geist ( tgeist@uw.edu , 206-543-2022).

Documental y entrevista sobre mujeres estadounidenses en la guerra civil

Into the Fire (2002) es una película documental, dirigida por Julia Newman y disponible para ver en Google Video, sobre las 80 mujeres estadounidenses que se juntaron con los casi 3.000 hombres voluntarios en la guerra civil. El documental incluye entrevistas con Martha Gellhorn, corresponsal conocida de guerra y tercera esposa del escritor Ernest Hemingway. Bajo el vídeo he puesto una entrevista extensa entre la directora y Amy Goodman, que dirige el programa radiofónico Democracy Now. Se puede escuchar y descargar el mismo programa en un archivo mp3, que fue emitido el 30 de abril de 2007. Un dato interesante es que los padres de la directora apoyaron la causa republicana en la guerra civil, y fue, en parte, lo que le motivó a investigar las historias desconocidas de estas mujeres valientes.




De: democracynow.org

Fighting Fascism: The Americans–Women and Men–Who Fought In the Spanish Civil War

In July 1936, rightwing military officers led by fascist General Franco attempted to overthrow the newly elected democratic government of Spain. Hitler and Mussolini quickly joined in support of Franco. In response, nearly 3,000 Americans defied the US government to volunteer to fight in the Spanish Civil War, they called themselves Abraham Lincoln Brigade. We speak with two surviving veterans, Moe Fishman and Clarence Kailin. We also play excepts form the documentary “Into the Fire: American Women in the Spanish Civil War” and speak with filmmaker Julia Newman.

“No man ever entered the earth more honorably than those who died in Spain.” Those are the words of Ernest Hemingway. He was referring to the Americans who volunteered for the Spanish Civil War, the first major battle against fascism.

In July 1936, rightwing military officers led by General Franco attempted to overthrow the newly elected democratic government of Spain. Hitler and Mussolini quickly joined in support of Franco. The Spanish Civil War lasted until 1939. Half a million people are believed to have died on all sides.

Yesterday in New York, hundreds gathered to honor an exhibit at the museum of the City of New York called “Facing Fascism.” Among those there was Julia Newman who made the film, "Into the Fire: American Women in the Spanish Civil War. The film begins with Martha Gellhorn, a world-renowned war correspondent. She was the third wife of Ernest Hemingway.

* “Into the Fire: American Women in the Spanish Civil War”–excerpt of documentary. Courtesy, First Run Features.

Ruth Davidow–one of the nearly 80 American women who fought in the Spanish Civil War. They joined over 2,700 of their countrymen in defiance of their government to volunteer for what was known as the “Good Fight.” The Americans who fought fascism in Spain called themselves the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

Today, an hour on the Spanish Civil War and the Americans–women and men–who fought in it.

* Julia Newman, producer and director of “Into the Fire: American Women in the Spanish Civil War”.
* Clarence Kailin, one of the surviving veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
* Moe Fishman, one of the surviving veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. He is executive secretary of the * Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades*.

AMY GOODMAN: “No man ever entered the earth more honorably than those who died in Spain.” Those are the words of Ernest Hemingway. He was referring to the Americans who volunteered for the Spanish Civil War, the first major battle against fascism.

In July 1936, rightwing military officers led by General Franco attempted to overthrow the newly elected democratic government of Spain. Hitler and Mussolini quickly joined in support of Franco. The Spanish Civil War lasted until 1939. Half a million people are believed to have died on all sides.

Yesterday in New York, hundreds gathered to honor an exhibit at the museum of the City of New York called “Facing Fascism.” Among those there was Julia Newman, who made the film, Into the Fire: American Women in the Spanish Civil War. The film begins with Martha Gellhorn, a world-renowned war correspondent. She was the [third] wife of Ernest Hemingway.

MARTHA GELLHORN: I was in Germany in 1936 and could not avoid seeing these headlines about the “red swine dogs” in Spain. I had been in Spain, but I knew nothing about what had happened, that the king had gone, that there was a republic, but all I needed was to read in a German paper that it was the red swine dogs to know whose side I was on: theirs.

VIRGINIA COWLES: “In spite of numerous and conflicting political terms used to classify the Spanish conflict, the fundamental issue lies neither between republicanism and fascism nor between communism and monarchism. Mainly and simply it is a war between the proletariat and the upper classes.”

MARTHA GELLHORN: The Spanish called it “la Causa”—the cause—and it was the cause. It was the place where, of course, the Second World War could have been stopped, because it was a tryout for both Hitler and Mussolini.

RUTH DAVIDOW: By nonintervention, we were actually helping the fascists, because they were getting materials from everywhere. Everybody knew that. And to me, we didn’t really believe in our democracy. It really shattered me. So I made that decision almost overnight.

AMY GOODMAN: Ruth Davidow, one of the nearly eighty American women who fought in the Spanish Civil War. They joined over 2,700 of their countrymen here in the United States, in defiance of the US government, to volunteer for what was known as “the Good Fight.” The Americans who fought fascism in Spain called themselves the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. That clip was from an excerpt of Into the Fire, that began with the third wife of Ernest Hemingway, the premier war correspondent Martha Gellhorn.

Julia Newman is the producer and director of that film, joining us in the studio today. Explain the significance of these women joining US men in going to fight for Spain, why you did this documentary.

JULIA NEWMAN: They were extraordinary people, but they were ordinary people who had found their way to a cause that caught their heart. And this is part of my own background. My parents were supporters of the republican side in the Spanish Civil War, and they had friends who fought and died in Spain. And I realized that I knew nothing about the fact that there were eighty women who had gone to Spain as volunteers to serve, primarily as medicals, in support of the international brigades. And I wanted that history to be known.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain who Martha Gellhorn was.

JULIA NEWMAN: Martha Gellhorn was a writer and correspondent and a novelist who was quite well known in this country for a book she had written about the sufferings of the Americans under the Depression called The Trouble I’ve Seen. And Spain was her first foreign war, her first war of any kind, and she went there to see what was happening to the Spaniards in that war. She went there with Hemingway. Actually, she followed him there. They had agreed to go together. And she began reporting from the fronts. She had never been a war correspondent before and was very caught up in the cause.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go now to another clip of the film. The most famous attack in the Spanish Civil War came in 1937, almost seventy years ago to the day in the town of Guernica. At 4:40 p.m. on the 26th of April, 1937, German and Italian war planes carpet-bombed the Basque town. Three-quarters of Guernica was destroyed, and as many as 1,600 civilians were killed. The attack was immortalized in Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica,” one of the most iconic paintings of the twentieth century. Franco claimed the attack on Guernica never took place and was, in fact, republican propaganda. This is how Virginia Cowles, a correspondent for the New York Times, described the incident. Her words are read by an actor.

VIRGINIA COWLES: "Dictators will keep agreements only as long as they are profitable. They will maintain order only as long as might forces them to. They will talk peace only until the day when they think they can make a war and win it.

"When I arrived, a press officer asked if I had been subjected to the Guernica propaganda, declaring that everyone knew that Guernica was not bombed by the whites, but burned by the reds.

“Guernica was a lonely chaos of timber and brick. One old man was inside an apartment house that had four sides to it, but an interior that was only a sea of bricks. I asked him if he had been in Guernica during the destruction. He nodded his head and declared that the sky had been black with planes. ’Aviones,” he said, ‘italianos y alemanes.’ The press officer turned pale. ‘Guernica was burned,’ he contradicted. The old man stuck to his point, insisting that after a four-hour bombardment, there was little left to burn. The press officer moved me away. ’He’s a red,’ he said.

“When later in the day we ran into two staff officers, he brought the subject up. ‘Guernica is full of reds,’ he said. ‘They all try to tell us it was bombed, not burned.’ ‘Of course, it was bombed,’ said one of the officers. ‘We bombed it and bombed it and bombed it. And bueno, why not?’ The press officer never mentioned Guernica again.”

AMY GOODMAN: Virginia Cowles, she was writing for the New York Times. This, from the film Into the Fire. Julia Newman, the significance of what was being said at the time?

JULIA NEWMAN: Well, Virginia Cowles got to Guernica right after the bombing and was shown around Guernica by a press agent, and Franco was putting out propaganda that said that anarchists had burned, had set fire to the city and that the Italians and the Germans had nothing to do with the destruction of the city. And Virginia Cowles got there and put the lie to that. She said what she saw, and what she saw was that the town had been just destroyed by German aircraft, primarily. And it was a revelation.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s interesting that recently in the New York Times, in reference to the exhibit, “Facing Fascism,” that they put the term “international fascism” in quotes, when you have here Virginia Cowles so powerful in describing fascism.

JULIA NEWMAN: It’s a bizarre thing to do all these years later, to say that international fascism is something that you would even begin to put in quotes. It was very real, and for a lot of people it continues to be that.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, the “Guernica,” the famous painting by Pablo Picasso, is also in reproduction in a tapestry at the United Nations. And listeners and viewers may remember right before the invasion of Iraq, when Colin Powell came to the United Nations to push for war, February 5, 2003, the tapestry of “Guernica” was shrouded so that that famous image of war, Picasso’s antiwar painting, would not be the backdrop of the news conferences of the US officials. When we come back, we’ll be joined by two survivors of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Paul Robeson singing “Freedom,” the great singer Paul Robeson, a great supporter of the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and those who went to fight in Spain, on this seventy-first anniversary of the beginning of that war, the seventieth anniversary of the bombing of Guernica. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

I want to turn to the words of one of the surviving veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Clarence Kailin. He’s ninety-two now. I interviewed Clarence a month ago at the Barrymore Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you a pacifist?

CLARENCE KAILIN: Oh, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: But you fought in the Spanish Civil War?

CLARENCE KAILIN: Yeah. Well, that takes a bit of an explanation, that we were fighting against fascism. And we were political enough to understand that, so it wasn’t for an adventure, and it wasn’t for money. It was fighting against Italy and Italian fascism and German Nazism, is what it was about. And we felt that if we lost the war, that World War II was pretty much inevitable, which is what happened. And it happened because Britain and France and the United States refused to give us any help at all. And so, we fought bare-handed at times.

AMY GOODMAN: Why didn’t the US intervene? And why did you go over as an American citizen without your government?

CLARENCE KAILIN: Well, yeah, our passports were stamped “not valid for travel in Spain,” so we had to go quietly, not tell people we were going. And we went because we understood what was happening over there, that Germany and Italy were both invading Spain and—two fascist countries—and so we went to stop fascism. This is what it was about.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you go with anyone you knew?

CLARENCE KAILIN: Yes, I did. I went with—there were six of us: two from Madison, two of us, and four from Milwaukee. And we went together.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you come back together?

CLARENCE KAILIN: No. I came back alone. It was sad, because I lost my best friend, who was a very famous scientist, even at a young age. And he was killed right at the end of the fighting. It was a very—it was a great shock to everybody.

AMY GOODMAN: You were injured also?

CLARENCE KAILIN: Yeah. I had a machine-gun bullet in my right elbow.

AMY GOODMAN: In the same fight where you lost your friend?

CLARENCE KAILIN: No. He died later on, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: What was his name?

CLARENCE KAILIN: John Cookson. Yeah, well, I wrote a book about him. And, well, his story is in there.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s the book called?

CLARENCE KAILIN: It’s called “Remembering John Cookson,” yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: How old was he when he died?

CLARENCE KAILIN: Huh?

AMY GOODMAN: How old was he when he died?

CLARENCE KAILIN: Oh, about twenty-four. And the Spanish people felt that this book was so important that it was translated into Spanish, and they published it there, a Spanish edition. So I was happy with that.

AMY GOODMAN: When you came back to the United States, how were you received here?

CLARENCE KAILIN: Well, that depends. Coolly in many areas and, you know, our friends were very supportive. It was nice, but difficult.

AMY GOODMAN: Why coolly, and by who?

CLARENCE KAILIN: Well, you know, there was so much propaganda against us. And, well, that’s how public opinion was affected, you know? Although during the war, I think that about two-thirds of the public was supportive of what we were doing there. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Why was it called the Abraham Lincoln Brigade?

CLARENCE KAILIN: Well, I guess they thought—the people who named it, I think they thought Lincoln was one of the great leaders, one of the best presidents we’ve had. And I agree with that.

AMY GOODMAN: Clarence Kailin, he’s ninety-two. He’s a survivor of the Spanish Civil War. I spoke to him in Madison, Wisconsin, though he was here in New York for the major event yesterday honoring those who fought in the Spanish Civil War. It happened at the City University of New York in the Museo del Barrio. And in a moment we’re going to be going to Harry Belafonte, who spoke there, but right now, one of those who attended is another Abraham Lincoln Brigade survivor: Moe Fishman, executive secretary of Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, joining us in the firehouse studio. Welcome.

MOE FISHMAN: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us, Moe. Talk about that time seventy-one years ago: the significance of the Spanish Civil War and how it relates to World War II. Do you think World War II would have happened if the outcome in the Spanish Civil War had been different?

MOE FISHMAN: I say no, and I’m reinforced by the fact that all of the Lincoln Brigade veterans felt the same way and all of the International Brigade felt the same way. The International Brigade, of which we were a part, consisted of about 40,000 to 45,000 volunteers from fifty-two countries who came to the aid of the Spanish Republic, and I want to emphasize “came to the aid of.” It was the Spanish Republic and their people who fought this war and deserved the major credit for the big fight that they put up, which gave the democracies a two-and-a-half-year window of opportunity to change from a policy of appeasing fascism, led by Chamberlain of Britain and subscribed to by Roosevelt, to one of actively fighting fascism. If they had actively fought fascism in 1936-1939, we would have stopped Hitler, and there would have been no World War II.

AMY GOODMAN: How would you have stopped Hitler? This was Spain. This was Franco. How would you have stopped Hitler?

MOE FISHMAN: Well, Hitler had been appeased by—they permitted him to rearm Germany, and it was done with the finances of both Britain and the United States, the financiers—financed it on credit—that permitted Hitler to march into Austria. And then Spain came along, and they were letting him do as he felt in Spain with this policy of appeasement. If they had turned to fighting fascism and opposing what he was doing, Hitler would not have attempted a two-front war, which he was trying like mad to avoid. He would not have been armed as much as he became armed, when he conquered one country after another and built a war machine that almost succeeded in conquering the world. And he would have been stopped if there had been a conflict, and there might have been. He might have been rash enough to start something there. He would have had a two-front war to confront, and it would have been a minor kind of war. It would not have been World War II, where fascism almost won, and 60 million dead and destruction beyond compare. And, no, there would have been no Holocaust, if Hitler had been stopped in Spain in 1936-39.

AMY GOODMAN: Moe Fishman, I want to turn to another excerpt of the film Into the Fire. This clip begins with a narrator reading the words of Eleanor Roosevelt and ends with the words of Ernest Hemingway.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: “Three very interesting people came to dine with us last night: Ms. Martha Gellhorn, Mr. Ernest Hemingway, both writers, and Mr. Joris Ivens, a [inaudible] maker of films. After dinner, the two men showed us a film which they made. The profits are going into the purchase of ambulances to help the sick and dying in a part of the world which is at present war-torn.”

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: The men, who never fought before, who were not trained in arms, who only wanted work and food, fight on.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the voice of Ernest Hemingway in this film called The Spanish Earth. But Roosevelt would not arm the Spanish government.

MOE FISHMAN: He joined in the Non-Intervention Committee. He didn’t join the committee, but he agreed with them, and he enforced an embargo in the United States which called for no arms being sold to the republic. Let me remind you, the republic didn’t want volunteers. The republic didn’t want anybody to join them. All they asked for is what was happening normally in the world at that time, where a democracy could just buy arms for money from another democracy. And this Non-Intervention Committee, formed by Chamberlain, agreed to by Roosevelt, so Roosevelt has an embargo and will not sell arms to Spain, will not sell them any trucks, and so on and so forth. And this—if they had simply sold the arms, the Spanish Republic would have beaten the fascists.

AMY GOODMAN: Julia Newman, Eleanor Roosevelt disagreed with her husband. Eleanor Roosevelt was a close friend of Martha Gellhorn, the war correspondent.

JULIA NEWMAN: Yes. She did everything she could to help convince FDR to go against the embargo. Ultimately, he was too politically frightened—I guess isn’t too strong a word. He was a consummate politician, and he did not want to alienate what he saw as a collection of powerful lobbies in this country who were primarily Catholic, but who were pro-Franco. There was a strong movement here that was pro-Franco, along with the fact that most Americans were not.

AMY GOODMAN: Led by a powerful radio talk show host.

JULIA NEWMAN: Named Father Coughlin, yes. Father Coughlin was the radio priest, and he was quite rabid in rallying his listenership to Franco, to the right.

AMY GOODMAN: Moe Fishman, you are ninety-one years old right now. You fought in the Spanish—

MOE FISHMAN: A young ninety-one.

AMY GOODMAN: Very young. You fought in the Spanish Civil War.

MOE FISHMAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: When you came back, it was World War II, yet many of you were vilified. The FBI called you “premature anti-fascists”?

MOE FISHMAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: What does that mean?

MOE FISHMAN: It means that you understood fascism before everybody else. They tried to make it a nasty word. For, unfortunately, most American historians, World War—fascism, the fight against fascism in the United States doesn’t begin—World War II doesn’t begin until Pearl Harbor. This way, they avoid dealing with the Spanish Civil War, dealing with the fact that Roosevelt, President of the United States, was wrong on this question, that World War II could have been prevented. He could have been one to do it. And secondly, we were dubbed “reds.” It’s not true that all who fought against fascism were reds then, were reds while the fight was going on in World War II, and are reds today.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of that, I want to turn to another clip of Into the Fire: the women who fought. Into the Fire includes the voices of many American women who volunteered for the Spanish Civil War. Decades later, they described why they joined.

EVELYN HUTCHINS: I couldn’t be a nurse. I wasn’t a nurse. I couldn’t be a doctor, because I wasn’t a doctor. And I wanted to go. And I was doing a lot of driving. I helped to collect clothes and to advertise what was happening in Spain. And that’s what gave me the idea in the first place. If I could do that here, I could do it in Spain just as well. And that would replace some man who would then be able to do what I really wanted to do, which is go up front.

HELEN FREEMAN: I met some friends and went to a meeting. And the meeting was called to aid Spanish democracy. All the different unions were supporting the group. They asked for nurses and doctors and volunteers to go to Spain. And so, I volunteered. They called us in and started organizing the trip. Meeting with the different people who were going, like Fredericka Martin, Lini DeVries, and my friend Anne Taft, who was graduated from the same school that I did. People had to resign from their jobs. Most of us were young nurses. And so, that’s why they had meetings to teach the young people what to expect when they get over there. How are you going to cope under these difficult situations? Can they do a good job while they leave responsibilities at home? Anyway, January 16, 1937, we left for Spain.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I think, basically, it was because I was a nurse that I was very upset about the kind of things that were happening, not only to Jews in Germany, people in Spain and people in Ethiopia. And, you know, for a while, I thought this had nothing to do with us, that these people had to fight their own battles. I was against another world war. I was sort of an isolationist without thinking about it. But as things got worse, and when they went into a country that just had democratically elected a new government, and our own government, which said they were democratic and believe in elections, put an embargo on them. I was terribly upset.

SALARIA KEA: I was not a political person, because you shifted too much.

See, I didn’t know about fascism. Here’s the thing that brought everything to me. It was the way Germany was treating the Jews. I never really thought that white people do against white people, because we don’t look at you as French or Italian. You’re white. I have met a lot of Jewish people who had left Germany, and they told us about what Hitler was doing to them. It was like the Ku Klux Klan. So now, we’re matching what is happening in Germany to the Jews to us here in the United States. So I went downtown to this meeting, and the meeting was all these people from foreign countries, and they said to me that they hoped to go to work with the republican side. So they said, “Would you like to go with us?” I said yes. The next thing I knew, I was accepted to go to Spain.

CELIA GREENSPAN: Personally, I went because my husband was there, and I got to Madrid early in October. And I felt I had a skill and I could work there, I could do or contribute to the fight against fascism that we knew was taking place.

ESTHER SILVERSTEIN: Oh, it was all around me, from the time the war started. By that time, I wasn’t exactly politicized, but I was certainly aware. And I was in the United States Public Health Service, the Marine hospital that took care of the various trade unions from the waterfront early in 1937. I volunteered to the Spanish War Relief Organization. I had to pass an examination. And they wanted to be sure that they weren’t sending out an adventurist. I was sort of overweight, and I wore glasses. I wore my hair in a bun. And it’s hardly likely I would look like an adventurist, but just the same. And they all passed me, and I went on to New York and joined up with a group of people from Chicago and here and there.

IRENE GOLDIN: Somebody mentioned that nurses were needed in Spain, and I decided I would apply. And I was accepted immediately, and I was to leave in one month. There was one question that asked, “Why do you want to go to Spain?” And I all I wrote was, “To fight against fascism.” And I was accepted.

AMY GOODMAN: The voices of women. Almost eighty fought or went to Spain to participate in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. Moe Fishman, we heard an African American nurse describing her experience. What about the forces, the veterans being integrated, those who fought, the volunteers?

MOE FISHMAN: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was the first American military unit that was completely integrated. We had officers, we had ordinary soldiers, sergeants, etc. It didn’t happen in World War II, where the black brothers from the United States fought so valiantly with white officers, and it didn’t happen until Truman in 1948 integrated the United States Army by an official decree. He didn’t dare go to Congress to do it.

I want to make one more point. Fascism, the word has been bandied about a lot, and I want people to remember that it is not just the racist aspect of fascism. If you want to understand fascism, it is the negation of everything that is democratic. It makes it impossible to have a trade union, a neighborhood organization, to fight for civil liberties. It is a system that is terrible.

And in conclusion, I would like to tell you that there is a monument that we’re very proud of that’s going up in the San Francisco on the Embarcadero, and if you would like to send some funds, get on your computer and contact www.alba-valb.com. And thank you. We’d appreciate any contribution you make.

AMY GOODMAN: Dot-org, is that?

MOE FISHMAN: Yes, dot-org.

AMY GOODMAN: Thank you so much, Moe Fishman, executive secretary of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, and Julia Newman, who directed and produced Into the Fire: American Women in the Spanish Civil War. When we come back, Harry Belafonte, he honored the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade here in New York yesterday.