‘Lo nuestro, como en Argentina.’ Humanitarian reason and the Latin Americanization of victimhood in Spain

Abstract

This article looks at the process of incorporation, over the last decade, of three ‘new victims’ in the social and political landscape of Spain: stolen babies, detained-disappeared persons, and victims of Francoism. These three figures, while old in historical time, are very new in sociological time, where they even lack a name. To analyze this paradoxical birth, I will posit the idea that the naming, classifying, and categorizing processes that sustain it are not only explained through dynamics that are internal to the field of victims and/or to the management of the recent past in Spain, they are also explained by movements that have to do with changes in the circulation of transnational memories, stemming from new origins—Latin America, and in particular Argentina—and speeding across oceans and eras, down the very recently paved freeway of humanitarian reason. The article combines ethnographic description with the analysis of data obtained from a multidisciplinary and multi-situated fieldwork.

Keywords:

• Victims
• humanitarian reason
• stolen babies
• detained-disappeared

Notes

1. Preliminary versions of this text were presented at the seminar ‘Ethnographic Approaches to Transitional Scenarios: Perspectives from the Global South’ (Wissenschaftskollegzu Berlin, May 2012) and the workshop ‘Transnational Memories. Subjects, Practices, and Spaces in Transit’ (Konstanz University, May 2013). I thank the participants of both seminars and in particular the organizers, Alejandro Castillejo and Silvana Mandolessi, respectively, for inviting me and giving me the opportunity to present and discuss these ideas there. This article is also based to a large extent on the progress made by the team working on the project ‘Mundo(s) de víctimas’ [‘World(s) of Victims. Devices and Processes for Building the Identity of the ‘Victim’ in Contemporary Spain’] (MINECO, I+D+i CSO 22451–2011).

2. On the social and cultural scope of memory policies and Spain’s recent past (including the ‘memorialist movement’ and the explosion après la lettre of the issue of historical memory in Spain), there is a growing body of academic literature, most notably the reference text by Aguilar (2008). Beyond the scope of this case, and with a critical approach not easily found in this subject, the work edited by Ricard Vinyes (2009) is also recommended.

3. In February 2014, the Popular Party government amended the Judicial Branch Charter by decree, establishing that Spanish judges were no longer authorized to prosecute crimes against humanity perpetrated outside Spain.

4. This is one of the 19 interviews with individuals who are members of associations of relatives of stolen babies. In this case, the association is SOS Bebés Robados Valencia. The interview was conducted in collaboration with Luz Souto in the context of a more extensive fieldwork for the Mundo(s) de víctimas project (www.identidadcolectiva.es/victimas).

5. Literally ‘taken for a walk and executed,’ the term refers to detainees led away on foot to be executed.

6. This number is taken from the data collected by judge Baltasar Garzón in the court actions brought against the crimes committed under Franco (Ferrándiz 2014). Shortly after, in March 2012, Baltasar Garzón was removed from the bench and barred from all judicial activity. Among other things, he was accused of prevarication for ‘declaring himself competent in the investigation of the crimes of the Spanish Civil War and Francoism.’ (see Sketch #2). After that, or perhaps shortly before, he became a global icon of human rights movements, as he has been a leading figure in several international cases, including detained-disappeared cases in Argentina, where he was honored in a tribute by the national parliament, together with Estela Barnes de Carlotto, Hebe de Bonafini, and several Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo; and the stolen babies case in Spain, where he was also honored at a public event held in Madrid, in which Mar Soriano (see Sketch #1) said: ‘I am accompanied by Carla Artés. In Argentina they were lucky [sic], they had Garzón. There are many of us [relatives of stolen babies] … in Spain who have no one who will bring justice … we don’t have a judge who truly administers justice, like Garzón in Argentina’.

7. Some of the images of this exhibition can be viewed on the website of the publishing house Blume, at http://www.blume.es/.

8. Chaumont’s work cannot be taken out of the context in which it was produced, while another intellectual debate was in full swing: that of the use, abuse, misuse, and obligation to use memory, a debate in which many French intellectuals were involved (including Ricoeur 2003, Todorov 2004).

9. An idea that is in fact often found in the slogans of associations of victims or affected persons formed in recent years: ‘You too were on that train’ (3/11 Association of Persons Affected by Terrorism); ‘You could have been one of them’ (SOS Stolen Babies), ‘From citizens to victims’ (Association of Persons Affected by Flight JK5022).

10. The distinction between a new and an old space of the victims is the product of collective thinking among a large part of, if not all, the team working on the project ‘Mundo(s) de víctimas’ and it is one of the main concepts on the (as yet unpublished) theoretical glossary that underpins our empirical research.

11. I am referring to the metro accident that occurred in Valencia on July 3, 2006, which gave way to an association, the Association of July 3 Metro Victims (AVM3 J), which has become a reference in terms of the capacity for citizen mobilization by victims unconnected with anything political.

12. In this case, the reference is to a train accident in early 2014 near Santiago de Compostela.

13. In August 2008, flight JK 5022 of the airline Spanair crashed at Barajas airport in Madrid, killing 154 people.

14. The idea of ‘production of presence’ is taken by Rosa Linda Fregoso (2006) from Saskia Sassen, 2002, ‘The Repositioning of Citizenship: Emergent Subjects and Spaces for Politics,’ Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 47.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación [grant number CSO 2011–22451].