Brazil launches its own "historical memory project"

In 2007, the Spanish Socialist government, led by President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, passed the controversial Law of Historical Memory. The law was intended to provide a public condemnation of the Franco regime, by offering symbolic and economic reparations to victims of the dictatorship (and in some cases, descendants of those victims as well). The law also promised removal of Francoist symbols, except in the case of so-called "artistic religious" reasons. One of the most publicized articles also prohibited political demonstrations at the Valle de los Caídos site, the grotesque Fascist mausoleum where Franco is buried. The site had become the stomping ground of ultra-right Phalangist groups, particular on November 20, the anniversary of Franco's death. In addition to these areas, perhaps one of the most important features of the law was its promise to locate, identify and exhume the thousands of mass graves scattered throughout Spain, graves which are not just remnants of the war, but of the brutal postwar repression. On another occasion, I will write more in depth on the case of Spain, but as I already do this on a daily basis on my other blog, I would like to note here the case of Brazil.

Apparently, the President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio da Silva, has launched a similar project to that of Spain. I first saw this news item in ABC, the conservative Spanish paper, and I haven't been able to find it in English, so I will translate the first paragraph of the original article:

Lula lanza en Brasil su proyecto de «ley de la memoria histórica»

VERÓNICA GOYZUETA | SAO PAULO (ABC.es)

El presidente brasileño, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, anunció ayer la creación de una comisión para investigar los crímenes cometidos durante la dictadura militar, y castigar las violaciones de derechos humanos ocurridas entre 1964 y 1985. Lula declaró que lo más importante es «dilucidar la responsabilidad de los militares». El presidente, que también fue perseguido durante el régimen militar, afirmó que «sufriremos menos si hacemos de nuestros muertos héroes».

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, announced yesterday the creation of a commission to investigate crimes committed during the military dictatorship, and to punish human rights violations carried out between 1964 and 1985. Lula affirmed that of most importance will be "elucidating the responsibility of the military." The president, who was also persecuted during the military regime, stated that "we will suffer less if we make heroes of our dead."

I was originally attracted to this article via my Google Reader, when I spotted the phrase "ley de memoria histórica." However, as I quickly noted, the news article does not ever quote Lula as talking about this law, in the Brazilian or any other context. ABC has never been supportive of Zapatero, or of the Law of Historical Memory, so I'm sure the title was a "wink" to readers. Let's just say I usually read El País.

In any case, regarding Brazil, I think it is always a step forward when leaders address the crimes of past regimes. It may not always be popular at the moment, but it is better than waiting, like Spain did, some 30 years after Franco's death. It is interesting to note that Lula and Michelle Bachelet, the current Chilean president, suffered under military dictatorships (Bachelet and her family were tortured under Pinochet). Each is now trying to deal with that past.

A Different Kind of Anniversary - 20 Years Since the Death of Ceausescu

In contrast with the last article on Stalin....

Somewhere, I recall reading that collective memories begin to take shape some 20-30 years after a traumatic historical event has taken place, because it is the time necessary for a generational shift to occur.

From: BBC News

Romania marks sombre anniversary

By Nick Thorpe
BBC News, Bucharest

The people of Romania are marking the 20th anniversary of the 1989 revolution which brought down Nicolae Ceausescu.

Small commemorations have been held at cemeteries and sites associated with the revolution in several cities, including Bucharest and Timisoara.

President Traian Basescu referred to more than 1,100 people who died during the revolution, as he was sworn in for a second, five-year term in office.

He told parliament the full truth was not known about the bloody uprising.

Those responsible for the deaths had not been punished, he added.

Speaking of the people killed in 1989, Mr Basescu said: "Their sacrifice was the foundation stone of today's democratic institutions."

He made his speech in the House of the People, built by the former dictator Ceausescu, which dominates central Bucharest.

Only a handful of top army and secret police officials were ever put on trial over the events of the revolution.

Two army generals began a 15-year sentence only last year.

There is a sense in Romania that the revolution is disappearing into the history books - and that gives a new urgency to this year's celebrations.

They come as a BBC investigation has disclosed that many Romanian orphans who came to international prominence in the 1990s after the end of communist rule are still in institutional care and living in appalling conditions.

The report uncovered widespread evidence of neglect, with some patients left bed-bound and lying in their own faeces.

Many of the thousands of unwanted babies who were left in state orphanages under communist rule are now in adult institutions.

The Romanian government says it is committed to upholding the rights of those with disabilities.

130th Birthday of Joseph Stalin - "Let's remember the good times"

The "money quote" from this tidbit is the final line. Wow. You can't get much more blatant than that when talking about amnesia and politics. Now might be the time to mention that this sort of request to forget does not just involve erasing the sins of former dictators, but also, those of former democratic leaders. Amnesia is an ideologically-neutral practice (not sure if "practice" is the right word here, but it will do for now).

From: The New York Times
Russia: A Celebration of Stalin
by Clifford J. Levy
published December 21, 2009

The Communist Party celebrated the 130th birthday of Joseph Stalin on Monday with an appeal for people not to bring up the more unseemly aspects of his record. Stalin is a polarizing figure in Russia, still popular for winning World War II and industrializing the Soviet Union while reviled for the purges that killed or displaced millions of people. On Monday, the Communists sought to focus on the achievements, lining up in Red Square to lay flowers on his grave, above. “We would like very much on this day for the discussion about any mistakes of the Stalin era to stop, so that people can reflect on the personality of Stalin as a creator, thinker and patriot,” said Ivan Melnikov, a senior party official.

On the failed search for Federico García Lorca

For those of us that have been following the case of "Lorca's grave," the news today that the Spanish poet's burial site has turned up NOTHING is quite disappointing, though it should not be entirely unexpected. For years, Lorca's biographer, Ian Gibson, has insisted -- along with others -- that the site contained Lorca's remains, and the sign officially marking the location ("Lorca eran todos") drew many visitors each year. Gibson first learned of the grave's purported location from a man known as "Manuel el comunista," who claimed to have buried the poet here. Today, it would appear that that testimony has proven faulty.

Certainly, I can understand and respect, particularly on a scholarly level, Gibson's passion for locating the poet's remains. After all, Gibson has dedicated his life's work to Lorca. However, I am unsure what locating Lorca would mean, particularly because the poet's family has, up until recently, opposed excavation of the site. Would finding Lorca mean, simply, giving the poet a symbolic, dignified re-burial? Would it mean re-writing what we know about his final days? Would the so-called "Lorca case" serve to illustrate the challenges faced by forensic anthropologists and archaeologists in other locations throughout Spain? Would it shed light on victims' families, and the bureaucratic nightmare many of them face when trying to locate, exhume and identify their loved ones?

I am a lover of Lorca's poetry and drama, as well as his essays on "duende" and flamenco. But my interest in this case has to do with the following points:

• the evolution of a "site of memory"
• tourism and sites of memory
  
• the intersection of personal and collective memory
• Lorca as a representative "victim" of the Spanish Civil War (and especially, an icon of the left)
• the contested excavation site and the media portrayal of the case
  
• the other, less visible men purportedly buried with Lorca
  

From: BBC News

Spanish dig fails to find Lorca

Excavations aimed at finding the remains of Spanish poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca have drawn a blank, officials say.

The dig produced "not one bone, item of clothing or bullet shell", said Begona Alvarez, justice minister of Andalucia.

Lorca was murdered at the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 by right-wing supporters of Gen Francisco Franco.

The site on a hillside outside Granada was believed for decades to be a mass grave of civil war victims.

Correspondents say the failure casts doubt on whether the poet's remains will ever be found.

The two-month excavation near the town of Alfacar - carried out under tight security - had been requested by relatives of other men believed buried at the spot.

It was one of several aimed at locating those still missing from Spain's bitter civil war.

"No remains of human bones have appeared or other signs belonging to civil war graves," a report by archaeologists at the University of Granada said.

Ms Alvarez said the soil was only 40cm (16in) deep, making it too shallow for a grave.

Lorca was 38 when he died, murdered by fascists for his left-wing views, Republican sympathies and homosexuality.

He is best known for tragedies such as Blood Wedding and his poetry collections Poet in New York and Gypsy Ballads.

For a much more detailed report in Spanish, click here.

Conference Call for Papers - Trauma and Testimony

From: cfp.english.upenn.edu

UPDATE] NEXUS 2010--Trauma and Testimony
full name / name of organization:
NEXUS
contact email:
dmcgloth@utk.edu

NEXUS—An Interdisciplinary Conference
Trauma and Testimony
University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Thursday, March 18-Saturday, March 20, 2010
Web Address: http://web.utk.edu/~nexus

Plenary Speakers: Cathy Caruth (Emory Univeristy) and Julia Levine

This conference seeks to explore the relationship between trauma and testimony, and in particular the therapeutic possibilities and potential problems that testimony entails. Testimony is the term used in trauma studies to talk about the process of articulating or expressing one’s trauma for an “Other” as a crucial step in recovering from the trauma. Dori Laub argues that trauma destroys the possibility of both the internal and the external “Other” and so the traumatized individuals exist in a space of both knowing and not knowing their trauma.

As an interdisciplinary conference, we welcome submissions from relevant fields and disciplines. Abstracts (250-300 words) are invited on a broad range of topics including, but not limited to, the following:

• Representations of shared traumatic events (the Holocaust, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, etc.)
•Ethical issues of truth versus “creative license” in representation
•The role of both the speaker and the listener
•The limits of representation
•Whose history is it, anyway? First-person testimony vs. bearing witness from the “outside”
•Testimony and Therapy—the therapeutic value of telling one’s story
•Testimony and Justice—the Truth and Reconciliation Commission experiment
•Bearing witness using contemporary media (the Shoah Foundation, blogs, etc.)
•Testimony and Action—Telling as a Catalyst for Change
•Collective Suffering and Collective Guilt—the historical and ethical limits of trauma and testimony
•Interdisciplinary Studies—Trauma as experienced through the prisms of race, gender, sexuality, class, and other categories of identification
•Trauma and the Law—Issues of victims’ rights
•Papers written on literary and/or artistic representations of trauma
•Creative submissions
•The future of trauma studies

Individual papers or panel proposals will be considered.

As this is an interdisciplinary conference, please feel free to submit proposals which speak to your academic interests, even if they do not fit neatly into the categories listed above.

Please submit abstracts to Dennis McGlothin (dmcgloth@utk.edu) or Teresa Lopez (tlopez@utk.edu) by January 15, 2009.

New Book - Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory

I always get particularly excited when a publication comes out with "postmemory" in the title. I wrote my dissertation on postmemory in contemporary Spanish literature and film; however, I drew largely from the field of Holocaust Studies in my discussion of the intergenerational transmission of trauma.

"Postmemory" is a term popularized by -- and most associated with - Marianne Hirsch, although it was also deployed by Andrea Liss in Trespassing through Shadows: Memory, Photography and the Holocaust. I am not positive, but I do think Liss used the term first -- albeit in a slightly different manner -- which Hirsch acknowledges. Hirsch defines postmemory as "the experience of those who grow up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth, whose own belated stories are displaced by the stories of the previous generation, shaped by traumatic events taht they can neither understand nor re-create" ("Projected Memory: Holocaust Photographs in Personal and Public Fantasy," 8). In addition to Hirsch's formulation, Holocaust Studies scholars have created a large, rich body of work on "second generation" cultural production, with "second generation" referring broadly to the descendants of Holocaust survivors (and yes, at times, also to the descendants of perpetrators).

At some point, I will dedicate another post (or several) to the concept of "postmemory" itself, which has recently come under fire in Beatriz Sarlo's Tiempo pasado. Cultura de la memoria y giro subjetivo. Una discusión (to read an excellent review in English of Sarlo's work, see here). For now, I will limit this post to the mention of the following new book from Routledge:

Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory

By Brett Kaplan

Series: Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies

List Price: $95.00
Add to Cart

* ISBN: 978-0-415-87476-2
* Binding: Hardback
* Published by: Routledge
* Publication Date: 31/08/2010
* Pages: 192

About the Book

How do the spaces of the past stay with us through representations—whether literary or photographic? How has the Holocaust registered in our increasingly globally connected consciousness? What does it mean that this European event is often used as an interpretive or representational touchstone for genocides and traumas globally? In this interdisciplinary study, Kaplan asks and attempts to answer these questions by looking at historically and geographically diverse spaces, photographs, and texts concerned with the physical and/or mental landscape of the Holocaust and its transformations from the postwar period to the early twenty-first century. Examining the intersections of landscape, postmemory, and trauma, Kaplan's text offers a significant contribution to our understanding of the spatial, visual, and literary reach of the Holocaust.

Romania's Secret Police

This seems to be a day full of news on repressive secret police forces and the miles of files they left behind. For more on Ceausescu and Romania, click here.

From BBC News:

Romania's state terror legacy lingers

By Oana Lungescu
BBC News, Bucharest

Twenty years ago, communist regimes collapsed one after the other like dominoes across Central and Eastern Europe.

The last one to fall, in a bloody revolution, was Romania's dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. But communism has left a poisonous legacy in the vast archives of the secret police, the dreaded Securitate.

Inside a sprawling military compound at Popesti-Leordeni, on the outskirts of the Romanian capital Bucharest, grey metal shelves are stacked with bulging grey files. There are more than two million files on 20km (12.4 miles) of shelves.

Germina Nagat calls it "an evil library". As the chief investigator for the
Mrs Nagat spends a lot of time poring over the files.

"You can find anything," she says. "It's a story of human guilt, human weakness, sometimes courage."

Boiled bark

What Ioana Voicu Arnautoiu has found here is an incredible story of defiance.

A concert violinist, she was born in a cave in the Carpathian mountains. Her parents were partisans, part of a small desperate band that resisted the communist takeover in the 1950s.

They held out for nine years - surviving sometimes on boiled bark - before the Securitate hunted them down.

Now it is the Securitate's own records that are revealing Ioana's family history, in 85 thick files and a collection of black-and-white photographs.

One shows her mother climbing out of the cave and going down a ladder, carrying baby Ioana under one arm like a doll.

Before her father was executed, the Securitate took a last photograph of his gaunt face, with dark, haunted eyes. Her mother died later in prison.

Ioana was spared. Aged two, she was taken to an orphanage and adopted by a loving family. She grew up without knowing who she really was - until Communism fell and the archives opened.

Her story might be unbelievable - if the Securitate had not archived everything so thoroughly. What in some ways is even more unbelievable is the extensive records on those who did not actively resist.

Blackmail

Almost anything could be a reason for opening a file, Germina Nagat explained: "Persons who had relatives abroad; persons who used to tell jokes; persons interested in studying foreign languages."

By the 1980s, about one in 30 Romanians was a Securitate informer, including 10-year old children.

Some did it out of conviction, some were blackmailed. Most were offered something - a rare opportunity to travel abroad or better career prospects.

Like so many Romanians, I too had a file. In 1983, a Securitate officer tried to get me to spy on people I knew in exchange for a passport to travel abroad, and cancer drugs for my father. I said no.

When I asked to see that file five years ago, I was told it could not be found.

But the bulk of the archives was only transferred to the CNSAS before Romania joined the European Union in 2007. And recently, my file also surfaced.

Strictly secret

It was with some trepidation that I went to the CNSAS headquarters to read it.

The first surprise was that it came not in one, but two volumes. And it started much earlier than I thought - roughly at the time I became a student of English and Spanish at Bucharest University.

In one report, dated April 1983, a Securitate captain wrote that I refused to sign a written pledge to inform. The next page, marked "Strictly Secret" was signed by his superior.

It is a list of measures to be taken for my surveillance, including bugging my phone calls and intercepting my letters.

I suddenly recognise my father's minute handwriting in a letter to a friend abroad that I never knew he had sent.

It was duly photocopied, together with both sides of the envelope. The file contains many of my own letters. Some passages were underlined in blue or red pen by the Securitate.

The second volume is more of a shock. It contains 138 pages with transcriptions of phone-calls, including with my mother and my then-boyfriend. What we mostly talked about was my father's illness and his impending death.

All those conversations replay in my mind, as I go through dozens and dozens of transcriptions, all written in longhand by what appears to be a whole army of Securitate scribes.

The file ends in December 1985, several months after I had been allowed to leave Romania and just as I started working at the BBC's Romanian Service in London.

As the archives show, another arm of the Securitate continued to monitor me, along with many other exiles working for foreign broadcasters, until the last days of 1989...

Bullet in the head

To see the file at last is liberating, but deeply unsettling. So many strangers photocopied my letters and transcribed my phone calls - and for what?

But opening the archives is unsettling for others too. "These files aren't mine or yours, they belong to the state," said Dumitru Burlan, a retired Securitate colonel who was Nicolae Ceausescu's chief bodyguard.

At the CNSAS, chief investigator Germina Nagat believes that these dark secrets have to be exposed.

She and her colleagues regularly uncover evidence that some of those who collaborated with the former secret police are now senior judges, politicians and top civil servants.

"They have a hidden agenda - resistance to reforms," she said. "To violate the human and civil rights every day, that was their job. And now [they] have to do the reverse!

"How can you do this? You cannot be a ballerina after being an elephant!"

Romanian courts are dealing with some 700 cases of alleged Securitate collaborators in high places, but so far judges have ruled on only three.

There may be many Communist-era elephants out there still trampling on Romania's fledgling democracy.

You can hear more in State Secrets , Oana Lungescu's two-part documentary on the
starting on 10 December.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8401915.stm

Published: 2009/12/10 09:55:42 GMT

Germany and the Ghosts of the Past

Note: for more on the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, I recommend the film The Lives of Others (link to the right, under "Film and TV").

From: The New York Times

December 10, 2009
Letter from Europe
Ghosts of Past Haunt Politics in Germany
By JUDY DEMPSEY

Last week, the past caught up with the German state of Brandenburg. Several legislators belonging to the Left Party, the successor to the Communist Party, admitted to collaborating with the East German secret police. Astonishingly, their past had never been an issue in the 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

That began to change when Matthias Platzeck, the popular Social Democrat premier of this poor state, decided three months ago to drop the conservative Christian Democrats as his coalition partners in favor of the Left Party. He said the Left could no longer be stigmatized, especially since it had won 27 percent of the votes during elections last September.

As soon as the coalition was sworn into office, the facts began to creep out. Seven of the 26 Left Party legislators had worked for the Stasi. Some have since resigned. Others are sitting it out. Not Mr. Platzeck. He called for a reckoning with the past. “Since 1990, there has been no systematic Stasi check of any deputies in the Brandenburg Parliament,” he told Parliament last Friday. “We must admit, and I, too, must personally admit, that this was a mistake.”

It was the Social Democrats who since 1990 have governed this state, mostly in coalition with the conservative Christian Democrats. During much of that time, the premier was Manfred Stolpe. He had been a leading member of East Germany’s Lutheran Church and as such had regularly met Stasi agents. Despite repeated allegations, Mr. Stolpe denied he was an informer. But as premier, he never asked questions about the credentials of the legislators or civil servants.

Nor, for that matter, did Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. Jörg Schönbohm, until recently Brandenburg’s conservative interior minister, did not even check the background of the police. Documents released earlier this year showed that hundreds of them had been full-time Stasi officials or informers during the Communist era.

“It was a cartel of silence in Brandenburg,” said Ulrich Mählert, historian at the government-funded Foundation for the Reappraisal of the Communist Dictatorship in East Germany. “It was about realpolitik.”

The revelations in Brandenburg have repercussions for Germany’s Social Democrats, in opposition since a catastrophic defeat in federal elections last September. The party now will have to decide what alliance, if any, it wants with the Left Party in order to challenge Mrs. Merkel’s coalition of conservatives and Free Democrats in 2013. One thing is certain: if the Social Democrats choose an alliance on the federal level with the Left, the past of each Left legislator will be scrutinized. As in Brandenburg, that could leave a very poisoned political atmosphere.

The existence of the secret police files continues to fuel a debate not only in Germany but across Eastern Europe. Even some who opposed the Communists say that keeping the files open will taint the political class because they can be abused for political purposes. Others say politics will never recover from the poison if the files are kept shut away.

“If you do not open the files fully and place them under independent control, the system will remain poisoned,” said Monica Macovei, a former justice minister in Romania who fought against corruption and the continuing influence of the Securitate, or secret police. “Former collaborators are not the people to build a democracy.”

Romania’s files were only opened in 2005 — 15 years after Germany’s and the Czech Republic’s. Only a handful of the two million files have reached the courts. The political parties decide which cases to pursue. Even then, judges are not always independent. “There are so many networks where people protect or blackmail each other,” Ms. Macovei said. “That is why I cannot agree to say ‘enough is enough’ when it comes to the issue of closing the files.” Ms. Macovei, despite — or perhaps because of — her commitment to openness, was fired weeks after Romania joined the European Union in 2007. She is now a conservative member of the European Parliament.

The situation is not much better in neighboring Bulgaria, where successive governments since 1989 have done little to keep former collaborators or secret police agents from holding top government jobs. When it was disclosed a few years ago that President Georgi Parvanov was an informer, there were some calls for his resignation. He is still in power. There are no sanctions barring former collaborators from holding public office. Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, who was elected last July, has vowed to adopt tougher measures in order to end corruption and strengthen democracy. Progress has been slow.

“The political elites are not trusted,” said Daniel Smilov, program director of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia. “But there is a growing consensus that former secret service agents should be kept from public office. There is also a need for a thorough analysis of the past.”

Yet there is always the fear that the files will be used for partisan goals.

Alexander Smolar, president of the independent Stefan Batory Foundation in Warsaw, said that when Poland’s Communists and Solidarity agreed to share power in 1989, members of the Solidarity leadership opted for reconciliation instead of a witch hunt against their former persecutors.

A law was passed in 1997 requiring officials holding public office to declare whether they had worked for the secret police. It involved about 22,000 people. Four years ago, the conservative-nationalist government led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski (and a former Solidarity activist) sought to widen the net to include up to one million people.

“The whole issue has become highly politicized and poisonous,” Mr. Smolar said. “There are names of innocent people in those files because the secret police and informers wrote down how much they wanted to recruit them. The past is so complex.”

It is also very ambiguous. Despite that, back in Brandenburg, Mr. Platzeck has opted to confront the past — for the victims. “We need a Brandenburg in which nobody has the impression that he may be permanently pushed aside, excluded or forgotten,” he said last week. “This concerns, explicitly and foremost, the victims of East Germany’s Communist Party dictatorship.”

E-MAIL jdempsey@iht.com

After 28 Years, Charges for Poisoning Former Chilean President

From: The New York Times
December 8, 2009

Three in Chile Accused of 1980s Crime
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

RIO DE JANEIRO — A judge in Santiago ruled Monday that a former Chilean president, Eduardo Frei Montalva, had been poisoned and charged three people connected with the Pinochet dictatorship with murder in the 28-year-old case.

Alejandro Madrid, a judge with the Court of Appeals, said there was evidence that Mr. Frei, who was president of Chile from 1964 to 1970, was poisoned with low doses of mustard gas and thallium three months before his death on Jan. 22, 1982.

The poisoning at the Santa María Clinic in Chile’s capital compromised Mr. Frei’s immune system, the indictment said, and made him too weak to survive surgery for a stomach ailment, which the original autopsy had ruled as the cause of death.

The indictment charged six people in connection with the killing. A doctor connected to Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s army, a former intelligence agent under the general and Mr. Frei’s driver were charged with murder. Two doctors who were alleged to have falsified the autopsy report were charged with covering up the killing, and a third was charged as an accomplice.

Four of the suspects were in custody on Monday night and two had been released on bail.

At the time of his death, Mr. Frei, who at first had supported the dictatorship, had become the leader of the moderate opposition.

He entered Santa María Clinic in November 1981 for a stomach hernia operation. On Dec. 8, he was found in his room bleeding profusely and suffering from septic shock. Diagnosed with an intestinal obstruction, he was whisked into surgery. A few weeks later he died.

His family had long contended that he had been poisoned.

“There is no doubt that Pinochet ordered this murder,” Álvaro Varela, a lawyer for the Frei family, said in an interview on Monday. “But there are more people involved with different degrees of responsibility and more leads to follow.”

The revelations in the indictment came less than a week before presidential elections in which Senator Eduardo Frei, the son of the late president and a former president himself, is the candidate of the governing Concertación coalition.

The campaign of the opposition candidate Sebastián Piñera questioned the indictment’s timing, saying it may have been intended to build sympathy for Mr. Frei, who is trailing in polls by some 10 percentage points.

Judge Madrid responded by saying that “justice has to be done when the time comes for it,” and noting that when the investigation began in 2000, Mr. Frei was neither a candidate nor a senator.

Mr. Varela said the possibility that Mr. Frei had been murdered first came to light in 2000 when an anonymous caller told a friend of the Frei family that the former president had been poisoned.

Carmen Frei, a daughter of Mr. Frei and a former senator, said in an address to the Senate in 2001 that her father might have been injected with bacteria produced by Eugenio Berríos, a chemist who worked for the military intelligence service. A 2002 book by Jorge Molina, “Imperfect Crime,” also alleged that Mr. Berríos had developed bacteria that were administered to Mr. Frei by intelligence agents. Mr. Berríos was killed in Uruguay in 1995.

A Chilean court agreed to exhume Mr. Frei’s body in 2004. A new autopsy showed the presence of toxic substances and other differences from the original autopsy.

Mr. Frei’s death “was due to the gradual introduction of non-conventional toxic substances,” Judge Madrid told reporters on Monday.

Pascale Bonnefoy contributed reporting from Santiago, Chile.

The mask of Ira Hayes

This is another image (left) I have shared with classes on occasion, mostly due to its iconic status in U.S. collective memory and the way it was later re-staged during 9-11 (below).

This article just appeared today on one of the men behind the Iwo Jima photo, who was featured in the recent film Flags of Our Fathers. The Ira Hayes story is a tragic reminder of the ways in which politics and politicians can manipulate the image of the "war hero" while disregarding the human being behind that image of patriotism and loyalty.

Iwo Jima flag raiser's body 'was never sent to rest'

By Dennis Wagner, USA TODAY

When Ira Hayes was alive, his image was captured in one of the most famous war photographs ever taken — the World War II image of U.S. military personnel raising the flag over Iwo Jima.

Last month, 54 years since his death, his family learned that another image of Hayes, a face mask, had been cast in plaster while he lay in a Phoenix mortuary. The mask of Hayes, a Pima Indian from Bapchule, Ariz., was made without the family's knowledge and ended up on display at the Gilbert Ortega Museum Gallery of Scottsdale.

"In Pima culture, when you pass on, everything you own is supposed to go with you," says Sharon Cook, a Hayes family member. "They say because of this, Ira's body was never sent to rest."

Kenneth Hayes, 78, received his brother's mask in November from the gallery. Hours later, relatives returned it to the Gila River Indian Reservation where Ira Hayes was born and died, according to Larry Cook, Hayes' grand-nephew.

The mask was broken to bits and buried near the graves of his parents, Sharon Cook says.

The discovery of the mask adds one more chapter to the odyssey of Hayes, who has been depicted in books, films (including Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers) and music.

Amid the final battles of World War II, Cpl. Ira Hamilton Hayes, four other Marines and a Navy corpsman were captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal as they raised the Stars and Stripes.

The 1945 picture, which came to symbolize American courage and patriotism, transformed a troubled Indian kid into an unwilling national celebrity. Hayes was one of only 27 of the company of 250 to survive the battle on Mount Suribachi, according to historical reports.

President Harry Truman declared Hayes a hero and ordered him back to the states to join a tour raising money through the sale of war bonds.

According to S.D. Nelson, who wrote, Quiet Hero: The Ira Hayes Story, the 23-year-old corporal considered his fallen comrades the true heroes. After his discharge from the Marine Corps, Nelson wrote, Hayes returned to his home in the poverty-stricken Gila River Indian Community, seeking solitude — and often turning to alcohol. Hayes died of exposure in 1955 at the age of 32 after getting into a drunken fight during a poker game. His body was found lying in a creek, Larry Cook said.

Gilbert Ortega Jr., the gallery president, says the history of the mask can be found in a one-page document written in 1986 by Shirley Nelson of Yuma: A Phoenix artist named Hortense Johnson went to the funeral parlor and made a cast of Hayes' face. It was her intent to make a bust of Ira.

After Johnson's death, her husband gave the mask to Nelson and her mother. "My mom and I were the only people who knew what it was, so he gave it to us," she says.

In the early 1980s, artist Robert Yellowhair expressed an interest in making a sculpture of Hayes. Nelson says she gave the mask to Yellowhair.

Yellowhair never created the sculpture and in 1995 gave the mask to Gilbert Ortega Sr., owner of Native American art and jewelry stores.

"My dad always prided himself on the mask," Ortega Jr. says. "There's no way to put a value on something like that."

Larry Cook and his great uncle, Kenneth approached Ortega Jr. about donating the mask to Ira's descendants. "I believe it still has the spirit in there, and that's what led the family here," Ortega Jr. says.

Wagner reports for the Arizona Republic

Kent State Shooting Site as a National Historic Site?

Type in "Kent State" in Google images, and the first picture to come up is this one:

I have used this image in several courses when talking about the concept of collective memory, as well as postmemory. Most of my students have seen this photograph, but many aren't sure of the historical period or the place. And though I myself was not even born when this photo was taken, it has a certain significance for me because I hold two degrees from Kent State University, and my uncle was a student here when the shootings occurred. In fact, not only was he a student, but he witnessed many of the events that took place. From my grandmother, I learned about the craziness and anxiety of the weekend of May 4, 1970, and how she and my grandfather struggled to get in touch with their son, hoping he was okay. My uncle was a journalism student, and the journalism building was (I think it still is) located very near to where some of the (fatal) shootings took place -- in an area that is now a parking lot. In 1995, I attended a vigil to mark the 25th anniversary of the shootings; Mary Ann Vecchio, the woman in this photograph -- who, at the time, was a runaway from Florida, not a student on the campus -- was one of the speakers.

Looking back, it seems that every year the campus became divided over whether or not this event ought to "be forgotten" or "be remembered." Letters to the editor of the Daily Kent Stater and the Record Courier complained that the campus and town were stuck in the past or only affiliated with the shootings. Others spoke of the importance of continuing to preserve the memory of those who were wounded and killed so as to prevent something similar from happening again. Still others juxtaposed the tragic loss of life in Vietnam with the "four dead in Ohio." Personally, I never understood why the debate had to be so confined to the "forget/remember" dichotomy. I often think that it was at Kent State that my interest in memory began -- long before I began to study it in graduate school, and in the Spanish context.

My mother just sent me an article regarding putting the Kent State shooting site on the National Register of Historic Places.

From: Cleveland.com (AP)

Kent State shooting site recommended for place on historic register

By Associated Press

December 04, 2009, 2:40PM

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio is asking that the site of the 1970 Kent State University shootings be added to the National Register of Historic Places.

A state panel on Friday formally nominated 17 acres of the Kent State campus where Ohio National Guard members opened fire on students protesting the Vietnam War. Four students at the northeast Ohio school were killed and nine were wounded.

State historians say the area where the shootings occurred has national significance and should be preserved.

Ohio's recommendation goes to the National Park Service for review and a final decision on whether the Kent State site is put on the historic places register. Ohio Historical Society spokeswoman Kim Schuette (SHOO'-tee) says that process is expected to take 90 days.

To me, what is more interesting than the article itself are the comments left by readers following the article -- "they need to give it up and move on" versus "After reading several of these shallow comments, Ohio needs more than ever to guarantee that this site is guaranteed a place on the National Register of Historic Places if only to make us all THINK!" Many of the comments are politically-charged, mostly railing against "leftist" or "communist" college professors and students, implying that the National Guard was right in firing upon the crowd. There are also remarks on Vietnam and Cambodia and George Bush and Iraq.

The debate stirred up every time one mentions Kent State reveals how entrenched the memory of a traumatic event can become, on both a personal and a collective level. It also highlights the place where politics and memory meet and how one historical period can become conflated with another. Does "remembering" Kent State imply, for some, the promotion of a particular political agenda, which they still associate with 60s-era movements? Is this debate over ownership of the past and the narratives created about that past? Who gets to decide who remembers and why?

Víctor Jara's second funeral

I only recently learned that the Chilean folksinger Víctor Jara was buried on my birthday. This week, on the way to work, I was listening to Jara sing, thinking about the first time I heard his voice on a trip to Chile nearly 10 years ago. I was only in the country for a short time, but the singer's image was everywhere, along with that of Mercedes Sosa and Violeta Parra, and I became intrigued (plus, my Chilean friend Luis had given me a book and tape of Parra's poemsongs before my trip). The lyrics of this song by Víctor Jara, "Canto libre" ("Free Song"), have stuck with me:




In the song, Jara sings, "Mi canto es un canto libre / que se quiere regalar / a quien le estreche su mano / a quien quiera disparar" (My song is a free song / that wants to give of itself / to whoever extends his hand / to whoever wants to fire upon it) and "Mi canto es una cadena / sin comienzo ni final / y en cada eslabón se encuentra / el canto de los demás" (My song is a chain / with no beginning or end / and on each link of the chain is found / the song of all the rest)."

These words are especially significant when we think of Jara's torture and death shortly after the Chilean September 11 (1973) - the coup which put Pinochet in power. The most recent autopsy reports, which took place in June 2009, identified 44 bullet wounds in Jara's body, as well as evidence of other torture.

Yesterday, 36 years after his death, a wake was held in Chile for Víctor Jara, attended by his widow, Joan Turner, his children, and the president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet. In addition, some 10,000 others attended to honor the singer. In the president's words, "Our country has taken 36 years to return him to Chile and to his family, this Víctor that is ours, that is all of ours" ("Se ha demorado nuestro país 36 años en devolverle a Chile y devolverle a su familia, este Víctor que es nuestro, es de todos nosotros"). A funeral will be held today at 10 am, Chilean time.

Perhaps because I've studied the Spanish case much more than that of Chile, the public funeral for Jara reminds me of some of the more private commemorations and "reburials" that have taken place recently in Spain for the victims of the Franco dictatorship. Everyone deserves to be buried with dignity.

Gendering Historiography

I am so excited to take a look at this book (left)! I just read a very interesting article in the latest issue of the PMLA (special topic: war), which got me thinking again about the often-overlooked connections between memory and gender and all that is still left to explore.

Info:

Gendering Historiography
Beyond National Canons
244 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 3/8
Paper $40.00
ISBN: 9783593389608 Published November 2009

Comparing various European and American historiographies from the past two hundred years, Gendering Historiography provides insights into the establishment and cultivation of gendered power relations in different societies and outlines the devastating effects that exclusionary practices can have on each national canon. This detailed and revealing book will change the face of history writing, bringing overlooked and previously excluded histories back into modern historiography.

War Crimes Fugitives

BBC NEWS
Serbia 'making tribunal progress'
By Mark Lowen
BBC News, Belgrade

The UN's chief war crimes prosecutor has said Serbia's co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is "progressing".

However, in his report to the UN, Serge Brammertz said Serbia must continue searching for two fugitives.

They are Bosnian-Serb military leader Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic, who is wanted for war crimes in Croatia.

Belgrade hopes the largely positive report will help unblock Serbia's European Union hopes.

These were frozen last year by the Dutch government demanding that the fugitives be caught.

EU bid

The Serbian government has been waiting with baited breath for this latest report, eager for the chief prosecutor to make a favourable assessment of Belgrade's performance.

In the end, Mr Brammertz's conclusions were the most positive to date but he noted that Serbia must pursue its attempts to find the two remaining fugitives, who were indicted for war crimes during the 1990s.

In the report, Mr Brammertz said: "Serbia's co-operation with my office has continued to progress.

"Prosecution requests to access documents and archives are being dealt with more expeditiously and effectively... Serbia must maintain these efforts with the clear objective of apprehending the fugitives."

Crucially, the magic words "full co-operation" were not uttered.

That is the phrase that the Netherlands had demanded in order to unfreeze the Interim Trade Agreement - a precursor to Serbia's longed-for EU membership negotiations.

The Dutch government froze the agreement last year, demanding that Serbia prove its commitment to catching the fugitives.

However, Belgrade - and many in Brussels - believe that Serbia's significant progress in its co-operation with the tribunal may now persuade the Dutch to unblock the agreement as early as next week.

This would pave the way for Serbia's formal application for EU membership by the end of the year.

Responding to the report, the Serbian President Boris Tadic said his government is doing everything in its power to locate the two indictees.

It will now be up to the EU foreign ministers meeting on Monday to decide whether to reward Serbia for progress made or maintain pressure on Belgrade, by keeping the door to the EU firmly locked.

John Demjanjuk Case

Questions of the Day: what does this case say to you about the question of justice and reparations in the case of genocidal acts and crimes against humanity? How is the concept of "victim" being defined here?

When I was growing up in northeast Ohio, I often heard about the case of John Demjanjuk. He is currently being tried for the "mass killing of Jews," which he is alleged to have carried out as a Nazi prison guard. He is 89 and was carried into the courtroom on a stretcher today -- his lawyer contends Demjanjuk is very ill and a victim himself, while others claim he is a Nazi criminal putting on a theatrical show.

Read more here: "Demjanjuk trial shows double standards, lawyer says" (BBC)