Mass grave dug up in search for victims of Franco's fascist regime

[inanna]

Source: Reuters

Tuesday 19 January 2016 20.38 GMT

Spanish campaigners have dug up a mass grave in a search for victims of the country’s civil war and the fascist dictatorship it put in place, as an Argentinian court put pressure on Spain to confront its troubled past.

The exhumation, which started on Tuesday and is expected to last several days, is the first agreed to by a Spanish court at the behest of the Argentinian investigators.

Hundreds of Spaniards turned to the Argentinian court two years ago for help in uncovering crimes committed during the 1936-1939 civil war and the subsequent 36-year dictatorship of Gen Francisco Franco by using an international human rights law.

On the edge of a cemetery in Guadalajara, about 50km (31 miles) from Madrid, volunteers dug open a grave believed to hold 22 or 23 bodies after a campaign by 90-year-old Ascension Mendieta, who is seeking her father’s remains.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/19/mass-grave-victims-spanish-civil-war-franco-fascists

[MADem]

1. I lived under that dictator for a while.

You had to "watch what you say, watch what you do" back then.

It's a very different country today.

[Ghost Dog]

3. Yes. Very different

Stay tuned

[itcfish]

2. Perhaps they will finally

find out what happened to the poet Federico Garcia Lorca!!

[a la izquierda]

4. Spaniards turned to Argentina.

Well that's rich...I mean, Argentina should know how to deal with crimes committed under a horrible dictatorship.

[MADem]

5. They're also real good at digging up mass graves and finding disappeared people.

They've had to do it, themselves....

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/25-Found-in-Mass-Graves-in-Argentina-Dating-From-Dictatorship-20141211-0046.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerry-nelson/mass-graves-excavated-in-_b_3080034.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-16203795


They probably know a lot about hiding atrocities in plain sight--rather like the murderer who stashes the body in a freshly dug cemetery grave--who's gonna look there?

[a la izquierda]

6. I know.

I have a PhD in Latin American history.
I just find this somewhat ironic.

[MADem]

7. What a wonderful course of graduate study that must have been to pursue!

It's absolutely ironic...but it's a hopeful thing that they've taken a dark and hideous chapter of their past, and actually learned some lessons from it that they can apply towards helping others in the same situation.

I think helping Spain with the sorting out of the physical insults of the Franco regime is a very good thing. They are a very different country now, but there are enough old farts still around who remember--vividly--what it was like to live under Franco, where anything could happen and the Guardia Civil were a bunch of jackbooted assholes.

I'm glad people are getting answers. It's been too long.

[a la izquierda]

8. It was. Depressing, for sure, but fascinating.

I mostly focus on indigenous populations, so Guatemala's civil war is more in my wheelhouse (I'm a Mexicanist by training). I have friends who fled Argentina and Chile.
One of my best friends was born and raised in Madrid. She doesn't remember the dictatorship, but her parents and grandparents do.

[MADem]

9. I remember the dictatorship. You just kinda kept your mouth shut. You really did

watch what you said! A lot of the people who were supposedly on "Team Franco" were really less than enthused, but they weren't in a position to say anything overt. You could kind of read between the lines. It was all "Go along to get along."

A family friend was in the thick of it during the fighting, and he told us that the best meal of his life was a chunk of bread a stranger gave him as he sat on the curb of the street, too damn weak and hungry to do much of anything. He said nothing ever tasted ANYTHING as good, before or since.