Victims, All
Twenty years ago, the Basque terrorist group, ETA, began its downhill ride into oblivion. It kidnapped a councilor of the town of Ermua, Miguel Ángel Blanco, on 10 July, 1997. ETA sent out a message to the central government; send all prisoners of ETA from prisons all over Spain to the Basque country within forty-eight hours. Otherwise, they would kill Miguel Ángel. The government said no. The people said no. Protests all over Spain shot up and recriminated ETA, telling the terrorists people would not stand for their tactics any longer. ETA didn't listen, and, as the government didn't meet its demands, on 12 July, it shot Miguel Ángel in the back of the head and left him for dead on a path in the woods near San Sebastian. There, he was found and taken to the hospital, but he died the next day.
His death marked the end of ETA and the beginning of peace attempts, which has since seemed to have come about. Yet, it was one more death of many murders which ETA committed over the years. Those targeted were always related to the government, the military, or companies considered Spanish exploiters, such as the Hipercor in Barcelona, with 21 innocent dead. Even when the target was military, many victims were innocents. ETA is to Spain as the IRA is to Ireland and Great Britain.
This year, the twentieth anniversary of Miguel Ángel's death, the conservative Partido Popular and the victims' association that is allied to it, remembered his death in various different ways, including hanging a picture of him on a building in Madrid. But some people did not agree with the commemoration. Not because he was a victim of ETA nor because he had been a councilor for the Partido Popular, but because other victims of other times are being neglected and their families still insulted. And none other than by the conservative government.
This past week, Timoteo Mendieta was finally laid to rest. He had been a union organizer in 1939 when he was taken forcefully from his home in Guadalajara, imprisoned, and after a few days, executed and dumped in a mass grave. His daughter, Ascención, had been searching for him for most of her life. In 2010 she went to Argentina, where a lawsuit had been initiated against Spain, and added her name as a plaintiff. The lawsuit was to obligate Spain to investigate and find various victims of crimes against humanity committed by Franco and his followers. Finally, he was found, along with about fifty other victims, in a mass grave in the cemetery of Guadalajara.
Yesterday, however, the city of Guadalajara presented the Asociación Para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (Association for the Recuperation of Historical Memory), the association which looks to remember and find the victims of the Civil War, with a bill for €2,057 to pay for the exhumation of the bodies, Timoteo's included. It doesn't seem to matter to the conservative city government that the exhumation came about through a court order, nor that a bill was passed at the end of last year with an addendum to the budget to pay for everything. What the conservative government wants is to make people think twice about trying to find their loved ones' remains.
A law was passed in 2007 by the then-Socialist government, the Ley de Memoria Histórica, to remove Francoist symbols, to grant Spanish citizenship to those who fought in the International Brigades if they should ask for it, to give pensions to survivors of the political prisions, and eventually to localize and open mass graves. The arrival of the Partido Popular (PP) in the government, eventually meant that the law disappeared because no funds were dedicated to it. The PP's explanation is that the wounds of the Civil War were cured by the Transition to democracy after Franco's death. The truth is that the wounds of the Civil War are still bleeding because there has never been a true reconciliation.
And so, leftist city governments, including that of Madrid, criticized the commemoration of Miguel Ángel Blanco's murder because it seems the PP only remembers the victims of ETA, and not all the victims whose dignity has never been restored by the country who once took their lives and obfuscated their memories. The supporters of the PP who attended the commemoration only knew how to boo the mayor of Madrid, Manuela Carmena, for not allowing his portrait to hang from the City Hall.
There are too many innocent dead in the name of too many causes, just and unjust. They all need to be remembered and honored. And we need to stop creating new victims.
His death marked the end of ETA and the beginning of peace attempts, which has since seemed to have come about. Yet, it was one more death of many murders which ETA committed over the years. Those targeted were always related to the government, the military, or companies considered Spanish exploiters, such as the Hipercor in Barcelona, with 21 innocent dead. Even when the target was military, many victims were innocents. ETA is to Spain as the IRA is to Ireland and Great Britain.
This year, the twentieth anniversary of Miguel Ángel's death, the conservative Partido Popular and the victims' association that is allied to it, remembered his death in various different ways, including hanging a picture of him on a building in Madrid. But some people did not agree with the commemoration. Not because he was a victim of ETA nor because he had been a councilor for the Partido Popular, but because other victims of other times are being neglected and their families still insulted. And none other than by the conservative government.
This past week, Timoteo Mendieta was finally laid to rest. He had been a union organizer in 1939 when he was taken forcefully from his home in Guadalajara, imprisoned, and after a few days, executed and dumped in a mass grave. His daughter, Ascención, had been searching for him for most of her life. In 2010 she went to Argentina, where a lawsuit had been initiated against Spain, and added her name as a plaintiff. The lawsuit was to obligate Spain to investigate and find various victims of crimes against humanity committed by Franco and his followers. Finally, he was found, along with about fifty other victims, in a mass grave in the cemetery of Guadalajara.
Yesterday, however, the city of Guadalajara presented the Asociación Para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (Association for the Recuperation of Historical Memory), the association which looks to remember and find the victims of the Civil War, with a bill for €2,057 to pay for the exhumation of the bodies, Timoteo's included. It doesn't seem to matter to the conservative city government that the exhumation came about through a court order, nor that a bill was passed at the end of last year with an addendum to the budget to pay for everything. What the conservative government wants is to make people think twice about trying to find their loved ones' remains.
A law was passed in 2007 by the then-Socialist government, the Ley de Memoria Histórica, to remove Francoist symbols, to grant Spanish citizenship to those who fought in the International Brigades if they should ask for it, to give pensions to survivors of the political prisions, and eventually to localize and open mass graves. The arrival of the Partido Popular (PP) in the government, eventually meant that the law disappeared because no funds were dedicated to it. The PP's explanation is that the wounds of the Civil War were cured by the Transition to democracy after Franco's death. The truth is that the wounds of the Civil War are still bleeding because there has never been a true reconciliation.
And so, leftist city governments, including that of Madrid, criticized the commemoration of Miguel Ángel Blanco's murder because it seems the PP only remembers the victims of ETA, and not all the victims whose dignity has never been restored by the country who once took their lives and obfuscated their memories. The supporters of the PP who attended the commemoration only knew how to boo the mayor of Madrid, Manuela Carmena, for not allowing his portrait to hang from the City Hall.
There are too many innocent dead in the name of too many causes, just and unjust. They all need to be remembered and honored. And we need to stop creating new victims.
Comments
Post a Comment