Métodos similares

En general, los métodos de justicia utilizados con intención de venganza, no solamente son poco efectivos, sino que también son usados bilateralmente en muchas ocasiones. En el caso de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, estos métodos son utilizados por ambos bandos- la Gestapo y los fifis- después de la liberación.

Estos son descritos por Juan Manuel de Prada en “El Séptimo Velo.”

En esta novela, la hermana del protagonista, Jules Tillon, es llevada al Velódromo de Invierno después de liberación en Francia. El ambiente de celebración después de que Francia es liberada de los Nazis, se ve opacado después de que los fifis comienzan a tomar la justicia en sus propias manos, cobrando venganza contra las personas que ayudaron a los Nazis durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. A Therese Tillon, la llevan presa junto con otras mujeres del barrio al ser acusadas de “colaboración horizontal.” Luego son llevadas a Drancy donde:

Se interrogaba a los prisioneros sin ahorro de brutalidades; muchos de los carceleros eran comunistas españoles, curtidos durante la Guerra Civil en las checas, aquellas sucursales del infierno ante cuyo umbral se detenía la legalidad republicana. (p. 119)

 En este escenario, de Prada describe una escena que marco a Tillon. Al buscar a su hermana entre las mujeres, se encuentran con “las putas de Henri Lafont”

Habían sido violadas, marcadas como reses con hierros al rojo, sometidas a descargas eléctricas y termocauterios; a alguien, incluso, le habían arrancado los pezones y de sus senos brotaba una sangre exhausta, como el residuo de una lactancia carnívora. (p. 122)

Este escenario se refleja en “The Black Book,” una película Holandesa que narra la historia de una mujer judía apoyando la Resistencia. La Gestapo la apresa y ella también es torturada en una situación similar. Ella también es levada a un centro de interrogación y su tortura es similar a aquella de los fifis en Drancy.

Pienso que estos métodos son poco efectivos ya que son impulsados por un sentimiento de venganza. No es correcto pagarle a aquellos que torturan con mas tortura. Lucia, la protagonista de “El Séptimo Velo” demuestra su carácter noble cuando le preguntan si las “putas de Lafont” merecen esa tortura, ya que ella responde que nadie merece tanto mal.   

Federico García Lorca’s body to be exhumed

Whenever I read about corpses being taken out and re-buried again I get chills down my spine. But when I heard that Federico García Lorca was going to be exhumed from the common burial ground were he lays with three other corpses, I wanted to cry.

García Lorca was a literary genius and his life was cut short by one of the most barbaric forms of punishment of the old Spain– namely the wall of fusillade.

The story published in El Universal, one of Mexico’s daily newspapers in Spanish, really made me think of how cruel this punishment is and how it is a common them throughout the modern history of Spain and the conquest.

The story says that the exhumation is guaranteed to be private, and that the National Audience of Spain authorized the opening of 19 common burial grounds, which include the one where García Lorca is buried with the bodies of three other people who were killed with him during the Spanish Civil War.

García Lorca, who is one of the best-known poets of Spain, was killed near Granada, Spain, by the Nationalists at the start of the Spanish Civil War for his outspokenness, which was not an uncommon occurrence in Spain (and even in Latin America).

Francisco de Goya’s “The Third of May” is a very good visual example of this barbaric tradition. Another good story recounting the accounts of a fusillade wall in Cuba was written by Richard Harding Davis. “The Death of Rodriguez” also tells the story of a Cuban youth who was being killed by the Spanish soldiers. In Harding Davis’ story he describes how the condemned walked to his death in the wall:

…but I confess to have felt a thrill of satisfaction when I saw, as the Cuban passed me, that he held a cigarette between his lips, not arrogantly nor with bravado, but with nonchalance of a man who meets his punishment fearlessly, and who will let his enemies see that they can kill but cannot frighten him.

García Lorca was not the first one to be silenced for his ideals and for thinking differently, nor was he the last one. As history continued to confirmate — and literature and art documented — fusillade was a big part of Spanish history, and it was unfortunately brought over to America.

My place as a resident of the United States

Last night I was finishing “La Suma de los Dias” , or “The Sum of Our Days,” by Isabel Allende and she worded my own worries. On the last chapters she explained how she had finally reunited her “tribe”, which consists of her immediate family and her friends in California, to have them scatter again thanks to the irresponsibility of President George Bush’s administration.

I’ve seen this myself.

When I came to the United States from Colombia eight years ago, I came with my whole family that consists of about 20 people and we all settled in South Florida. Now, after years of struggle trying to get a green card, most of my “tribe” left the United States and headed back to Colombia because of the same reasons Allende discussed in her book.

Allende has similar fears. In the book, she mentions her friend Tabra, an American, who decided to leave the United States and go to Costa Rica just like she left the country during the Vietnam War to protest Richard Nixon’s administration.

Allende also mentions two relatively recent instances when the United States has violated human rights without much consequence: Guantánamo Bay , Cuba, and the incident of the Abu Ghraib prison. The New Yorker published a story about torture at the prison complex the same year Bush was re-elected and some of the wrongdoings that were reported are:

Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

I really don’t think that any of the above mentioned abuses of authority fit into the Geneva Convention agreements dealing with the treatment of war prisoners.

Such atrocities against humanity are really bothering me, and Allende is in tune with me on these issues. Like me, she is a legal resident of the United States and lives here while she stays in touch with her own country. However, she is indirectly (or directly) part of this country. Residents of the United States pay the same taxes citizens pay but have no power over the electoral process. Only citizens of the United States are allowed to vote.

Allende really made me wonder about my place in the United States. Outrages like these ones really make me wonder if someday I want to become a citizen. However, thinking about the power that United States’ citizens have by voting in the upcoming elections somehow makes me reconsider. This is definitively a right I don’t want to pass on.