The story of Thane Summers, a student at the University of Washington, provides a case study of one man’s road to the Spanish Civil War. Because he came from a middle class, white, native born, Christian family, Thane did not experience the social discrimination and political disenfranchisement common to many other Lincoln volunteers. He did not adopt political radicalism and anti-fascism to address lived injustices. Instead, activism for him was a way to ameliorate social and personal alienation. It was a way for Thane to feel integrated into society. It was also a way for him to achieve a sense of personal reintegration. Leftist ideology esteemed aspects of Thane’s personality that had been scorned or stifled by the bourgeois values he had so uncomfortably internalized in his early youth.

To establish what these values were, I examine how they were expressed by Thane’s father Lane, who, according to Thane, endorsed a vision of social and personal worth that thoroughly alienated his son. To construct a picture of the values Thane associated with political radicalism, I look at how these values were articulated by people purportedly influential in Thane’s turn left. It was through exposure to these influential figures that Thane likely formed his version of ethically sound action.

This photo of Thane Summers appeared shortly after his death in Spain in October 1937. Click on the image to read the accompanying article. Courtesy of Joe McArdle, Univ. of Washington, Seattle.

These two sets of values gave rise to two distinct emotional styles. Transitioning from one to the other allowed Thane to express aspects of himself he had previously repressed. The transition was not entirely a comfortable one, however, as it put great strain on long standing relationships he had with people who held to mores and methods of expression Thane came to reject. Finally, I examine Thane’s claim that activism and social consciousness “solved” his personal problems, such as listlessness and self-loathing.

The Cathedral of Barcelona on fire, July 1936.

In July 1936, a rightwing military rebellion against the democratically elected government of the Spanish Second Republic plunged the republican state into disarray and divided the country geographically. On territory which remained under republican authority, armed workers who had collaborated in the defeat of the rebellion took advantage of radical changes in political opportunities to stage a spontaneous revolution. As they launched physical attacks against the symbols and representatives of rightwing politics and of the oppressive old order, they destroyed countless ecclesiastical buildings and executed almost 7,000 religious personnel. Priests’ longstanding position as ideological and class enemies had been cemented for many workers during the intense Catholic and anticlerical mobilization of the peacetime republican years (1931-1936). Now, religious personnel became the first and most furiously targeted victims of revolutionary violence.

This essay examines a crucial facet of violence against the clergy: the processes by which male identities, and popular ideas regarding priests’ sexuality and masculinity, influenced the forms and intensity of anticlerical violence. During the conflict, acts of violent anticlerical collective action were committed primarily by male workers. Although women did take part in attacks upon church property—and occasionally upon religious personnel—they were greatly outnumbered by their male counterparts. This essay explores anticlerical violence as an overwhelmingly male phenomenon whose logic and rhetoric were derived from the cultural norms of 1930s Spanish society. In doing so, it scrutinizes the relationship between male sexuality, masculinity and anticlerical violence. It also investigates the ways in which rapid social and political changes during the first third of the twentieth century, and the struggle to define the boundaries between domestic space and public space which was being waged by male anticlerical workers, had a crucial impact upon the ways in which priests and nuns were treated by their attackers.

Maria Thomas is a doctoral student at  Royal Holloway (University of London).

George Watt in Spain. (The 15th International Brigade Photographic Unit Photograph Collection; ALBA Photo 011; ALBA Photo number:11_0186s. Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.)

ALBA’s George Watt Memorial Essay Prizes are awarded annually to a graduate student and an undergraduate student who have written an outstanding essay or thesis chapter about any aspect of the Spanish Civil War, the global political or cultural struggles against fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, or the lifetime histories and contributions of the Americans who fought in support of the Spanish Republic from 1936 to 1938. The award, first established 15 years ago, pays homage to the life of Lincoln vet George Watt (1914-1994), a writer and lifelong activist central to the creation of ALBA.

The jury, consisting of Soledad Fox (Williams College), Fraser Ottanelli (University of South Florida), and Gina Herrmann (University of Oregon), is pleased to announce the results for this year’s contest. We received 15 submissions in total: 10 written by undergraduate students and five from MA or PHD students. Essays came from Spain, England, and the U.S. The research topics included dance performances by Republicans in exile, anticlericalism in the Civil War and how it was perceived by American Catholics, children’s drawings, the mobilization of Northumberland Mining Unions, and the depiction of women in illustrated magazines during the war.

The recipient of the undergraduate award is Zachary Ramos Smith, whose senior thesis in history at the University of Washington deals with the life story of Lincoln veteran Thane Summers. Ramos Smith explores how leftist politics helped Summers overcome feelings of emotional and social estrangement from his bourgeois background. In the graduate category, Maria Thomas, a doctoral student at  Royal Holloway (University of London), impressed the jury with her detailed study of anticlerical violence committed by male workers during the Civil War. Thomas uses this particular case of masculine violence to delve into the repercussions of sexist attitudes and beliefs in 1930s Spain.

Trisha Ziff’s The Mexican Suitcase, another of the documentaries presented in the series, not only elaborates on the digging up of mass graves in Spain, but also shows how the legacy of the Second Republic is maintained in Mexico through the photos of Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and David Seymour, as well as through the memories of thousands of Spanish exiles who fled to the Americas.

“Impugning Impunity” presented a total of five films, including Barry Stevens’ Prosecutor, which covers the International Criminal Court and its goal to prosecute human rights violators; Pamela Yates’ Granito, a documentary about the extermination of 200,000 Mayan people by Guatemala’s military; and Patricio Guzman’s Nostalgia of the Light, which focuses on the disappearance of hundreds of Chileans during the reign of dictator Augusto Pinochet.

The film series addressed the dangers of fascism in today’s society and the role that international courts can play to protect human rights. In partnership with ALBA were other organizations—the Puffin Foundation, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Justice and Accountability, the North American Congress for Latin America, the United Nations, and the International Center for Transitional Justice—which together create a powerful platform to spread awareness about our human rights commitment.

The human rights agenda has also become an integral part of ALBA’s educational mission. In our upcoming teachers’ development programs, ALBA’s documentary sources of the Spanish Civil War will be linked with contemporary issues that address the indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations, the targeting of individual suspects, and the use of anonymous technologies to achieve military ends. Seven decades after the end of the Spanish Civil War, Picasso’s Guernica, Robert Capa’s images of homeless refugees, the drawings of Spanish schoolchildren—key visual documents from the 1930s—remain sadly relevant.

The four brigadistas in Madrid. Photo Guillermo Sanz for Público.

In October, Spain’s Friends of the IBs (Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas Internacionales, or AABI) hosted a commemorative reunion that included the unveiling of a new monument to the Brigades at University City, the campus of the Complutense University. This was a site of continuous skirmishing during the Spanish Civil War—and one where many of the earliest volunteers saw their first combat action. ALBA’s James Fernández, Marina Garde, and Gina Herrmann participated in a series of seminars and related public programs. Speakers at the unveiling included Jaime Carrillo, President of the Complutense (and son of Santiago Carrillo, who was also in attendance); Ana Pérez, President of the AABI (which spearheaded the monument initiative); Josu Larrañaga, Dean of the School of Fine Arts at the Complutense (whose students and faculty designed the monument); and representing the few remaining survivors, the British veteran David Lomon, 92 years old and in excellent shape. “Today,” Lomon remarked, “we must still strive for international solidarity and social justice. And we must oppose fascist ideology in whatever form it takes, whether it is racism, anti-semitism, militarism or dictatorship.”

ALBA’s Benefit Party will be held at 6pm on Friday, December 9th, at La Nacional (239 West 14th St, NYC) . Tickets are $25 (order online here). For a preview of the silent auction or to start the bidding, see here; early bids are accepted: just email Marina Garde.

For more coverage of the 75th anniversary celebrations around the world, see:

• James D. Fernández, “Ciudad Universitaria, 75 years later” and “There’s a Valley in Spain” (on the visit to the Jarama).
• AABI President Ana Pérez’s remarks in Madrid.
• Spanish media coverage.
• Nancy Wallach’s report on the gathering at San Pedro de Cardeña, as well as her speech.
• Blog on the FFALB’s visit to Barcelona and Tarancón (video).
• Video from the Italian contingent.
• IB Homage at Benissa.
• Martin Minchom on the Madrid monument.
• Photos, more photos, and even more photos, as well as video.

Philip Levine

The appointment of Philip Levine as U.S. Poet Laureate for the coming year brings a familiar name to prominence. Ten years ago, Levine presented the ALBA-Bill Sennett Lecture at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, and he presented the ALBA-Bill Susman Lecture at New York University the following year, both on the subject of Spanish Civil War poetry.

Levine’s poetry, famous for its working-class subjects, includes numerous pieces about the Spanish Civil War and the Spanish anarchists. Asked by an interviewer for the Michigan Quarterly Review about his “obsession” with these themes, Levine replied, “It began because it was apparent to me…coming from a Jewish household, I had a very heightened sense of what fascism meant….So my obsession with the Spanish Civil War began during the civil war itself, when I was very young. The things I was hearing everywhere were true, that the Nazis and the Italians were there supporting the fascist army, and it was just more of the advance of fascism….And so-called western democracies were doing a pathetic job of combating it. They were looking the other way. And if you look into the history, you know that they wanted fascism to succeed. It was a way of eliminating communism….”

Some of Levine’s poems about Spain are printed in the anthology The Wound and the Dream: Sixty Years of American Poems about the Spanish Civil War, edited by Cary Nelson.

Ziff weaves in personal, often painful accounts of biographies of those who had survived the war by fleeing Spain, many unable to forget even to this day. An exiled woman tenderly holds up an old, worn out fork while describing hunger she experienced as a child. Another man recalls his teenage years spent eating and sleeping beside his gun. Along with those interviews are ones with a new generation of Spaniards who were only babies when Franco finally stepped down in the early ’70s. Only now are they seeking to connect with a past that has been unknown to them. Ziff says, “I was impacted by how even today 70 years after the war how the haunting memories of repression, dictatorship impact life in contemporary Spain. How this exile still defines the identity of young people—three generations later, and what 30 years of fascism has meant for the Spanish people.”

“The discovery of 4,500 photographic negatives shot by famed war photographers Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David “Chim” Seymour during the Spanish Civil War is given respectful treatment in writer-director Trisha Ziff’s Mexican Suitcase,” Robert Koehler writes in Variety:

The thrilling frontline photography — unique in its era — serves here to illustrate the many stories of exiles — and analysis by authors and historians … The emotional content is best expressed through several achingly beautiful music selections by Michael Nyman, who also co-produced.

More here.

As the programs expand to new participants, we are also intensifying our follow-up efforts, trying to stay in touch with, and lend continued support to, the alumni of our outreach initiatives. To this end, in early July, James D. Fernández and Juan Salas led an intense workshop at NYU, attended by five former participants who were invited back to the Archives to further develop and refine lesson plans and curricular units focused on the Lincolns.

At the start of the three-day workshop, Professor Robert Cohen, of NYU’s Steinhardt School, told the participants of his plans to edit a book on “Teaching the Spanish Civil War” and encouraged them to consider collaborating with him on that project. The participants also enjoyed one-on-one tutorials via skype with Peter Carroll and Sebastiaan Faber. The lesson plans and curricular units that the teachers worked on address a broad range of topics, from the motivations of the volunteers in the Spanish Civil War as compared to those of volunteers in other wars, through the representations in poetry written by IBers of the horrors of war, to the historical and artistic context of Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica.

Judge Baltasar Garzón. Photo by Richard Bermack.

Judge Baltasar Garzón, recipient of the first ALBA-Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism last May, has accepted a special assignment from the Organization of American States (OAS) to work on the peace process in Colombia. As Special Advisor to the Mission to Support the Peace Process (MAPP), he will coordinate the reconciliation between former paramilitary and their victims, a key aspect of the transition process. The MAPP, created in 2004, supervised the demobilization of 31,000 paramilitaries from the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia and is now focusing on safeguarding the peace process as well as victims’ right to truth, justice, and reparation.

Garzón will also spend part of the fall semester in Seattle, Washington, exploring possible future collaboration with the Center for Global Justice at the University of Washington Law School and the Center for Human Rights located in the Jackson School of International Studies.

A year and a half after his suspension from his post at Spain’s national Criminal Court, it remains unclear whether Judge Garzón will ever return to the bench in Spain. While the country weathers a severe economic and political crisis—early elections have been called for November, with a widely expected right-wing landslide—none of the three cases pending against him at the Spanish Supreme Court has made significant headway. The snail’s pace of Spanish justice seems to confirm the suspicion of many that the courts have Garzón precisely where they want him—in a judicial limbo and suspended from his post. If and when the actual trials begin, the whole world’s attention will turn to the astonishing list of irregularities that has characterized the persecution of Garzón.

The three cases are widely considered to lack legal merit and to have been brought primarily as a tool for the Spanish judiciary to rid itself of Garzón. The judge is charged with overstepping his judicial authority when he initiated an investigation into crimes against humanity committed under the Franco dictatorship; violating defendants’ rights when ordering wiretaps in an investigation of corruption involving the conservative Partido Popular; and dismissing a case against a Spanish bank, deemed meritless by government prosecutors, because the bank, months before, had sponsored a series of colloquia in which Garzón participated. He has been suspended since May 2010.

Garzón is not the only one affected by his suspension. The investigation of Francoist crimes, brought to the National Criminal Court by victims and their families, has been paralyzed by Garzón’s absence. Ironically, when an Argentine judge investigating those same crimes inquired in July whether Spain continued to pursue the case—an important element of universal jurisdiction procedures—Spain pointed to Garzón’s work to reply in the affirmative. (See ALBA’s editorial “Justice, Spanish Style.”)

In August the Spanish media reported that the Supreme Court judge in charge of one of the three cases may seek to try Garzón before the November elections. Since the birth of the “15-M Movement” last May, which mobilized hundreds of thousands of Spanish citizens united in their indignation with the political class, Garzón has become more vocal as a public intellectual. “The movement that today fills the streets and avenues of Spain,” he wrote in a widely read op-ed in the progressive newspaper Público in June, “calls on all of the democrats who fought so hard to recover a democracy sequestered during forty years of dictatorship; …it calls on those who, in addition to being indignant, have said enough and decided to take on a leading role over the heads of the bunch of middling soothsayers who, from the cavern of intolerance, are incapable of moving beyond the palm of their own hand, and are oblivious to the changes being wrought in the world around them.”

Denise Urcelay-Maragnès with her new book

The Latin American Herald Tribune alerts us to the publication of a new study of Cuban volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. In La leyenda roja. Los cubanos en la guerra civil española, Denise Urcelay-Maragnès tells the story of the more than 1,000 Cubans–including a sizable number of Cuban exiles from the United States–who helped defend the Spanish Republic against fascist aggression. The portrait of one of these volunteers–whose identity Denise helped us establish–will be on display at the Agustí Centelles exhibit opening in October in New York.