Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish magistrate who has headed the effort to
identify human rights violations during the Spanish Civil War and the
subsequent Franco dictatorship, will receive the first ALBA-Puffin
International Human Rights Award at the ALBA annual reunion in New York City on May 14. (Full press release here; ticket info here.).
On February 16, twenty-four new sophomores from Bergen
County Academies
High School in Hackensack,
NJ participated in a day-long program of study
at the King Juan Carlos
Center and the Tamiment
Library. The students, who are enrolled in a project we direct,
entitled Political Activism.
The New York program–on May 14th, at the Eisner/Lubin auditorium on
Washington Square, New York City (tickets here)–will feature Judge Baltasar Garzón, who
will receive the first ALBA-Puffin Prize for Human Rights Activism, alongside
Michael Ratner, director of the Center
for Constitutional Rights, and Larry Cox, director of Amnesty International USA,
and a musical program directed by Bruce Barthol. The Bay Area program–on
May 29th at Freight & Salvage(tickets here)–will
feature Jeff Paterson, of Courage to Resist, who will speak on
the political and legal struggle to defend Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused
WikiLeaks whistle blower, and a stirring musical performance of Spanish Civil
War Songs of Courage & Resistance, once more directed by Bruce Barthol.
By James D. Fernández
I recently stumbled across a WikiLeaks-like
March 1945 letter by FDR to the new US
Ambassador in Madrid, saying that the US government
will hold its nose and maintain relations with the Franco regime, but that it
repudiates the origins and ideology of the regime. Little did I know that this
brief archival document actually was involved in a major diplomatic scandal in
1945 involving “leaks.”
By Richard Baxell
By Gabriel
Jackson
Review of Angel Viñas, La Soledad de la República; El Escudo de la República;y El Honor de la República. All three books published by Editorial Crítica, Barcelona, 2006-2008.
By Martin Minchom
Although Picasso experts agree that the painter’s interest in the war as
a subject was sparked some time in late 1936 or early 1937, the precise
circumstances of the “conversion” that made the Guernica possible were never fully made
clear—until now, that is.
By Miguel Domínguez Soler and Richard Barker
Miguel Domínguez Soler was a talented man of humble origin who lived
during tumultuous times, survived many brushes with death, and left a memoir
based on the diaries he kept his entire life.
By Luis Martín Cabrera
The Spanish Civil War Memory Project, an initiative of the University of California
at San Diego in
collaboration with several Spanish civic associations, seeks to build a digital
Archive of the Spanish Civil War and the Francoist repression.
By Martin Maki (transl. Matti Mattson)
By Victor Grossman
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For the print version of the March 2011 Volunteer, click here.
--
Sebastiaan Faber
Professor of Hispanic Studies
Oberlin College
