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Antimuseum
Productions
MASS GRAVE
Günter Schwaiger
y Tom Lavin
A project on the dissappared of the Franquist era
The
Fascist coup d'état led by General Francisco Franco against
the Spanish Republic in 1936 was met with unexpected grassroots
resistance, leading to a long and bloody civil war. Though many
decades have passed since that time, Spanish society is still haunted
by many ghosts from the past.
The military campaign led during the coup was complemented by the
organization of a program designed to exterminate any and all opposition.
It was carried out by State security forces, in particular the Civil
Guard, the Falange fascist party, the clergy and civilians who supported
the coup.
One system that was used in rural areas to carry out the extermination
was the following: in every town, people who supported the coup
were required to draw up a list of those who opposed it or were
suspected of doing so. This list was turned over to the fascists
of the neighboring town, who captured the named individuals and
assassinated them on the outskirts of town, where they were buried
without any further ado.
In this way, destinies and testimonies were lost in obscurity, and
this same darkness was ensured for future generations. The system
was not only gruesome, but also highly efficient. The decentralized
system left no documentation or record of the scope of this operation,
nor of its duration. Civil society's involvement in these crimes
threw an impenetrable shroud of silence over that period in Spanish
history, and the mass graves of Franquism are a taboo subject that
few are willing to discuss.
The Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory
(ARMH) is a private organization formed in 2000
with the objective of locating as many mass graves as possible,
exhuming and identifying the bodies, and burying them in cemeteries,
in order to restore the memory of Spanish society. In 2003, one
containing six bodies was uncovered in the town of Santa Cruz de
la Salceda, province of Burgos. The exhumation was documented by
Günter Schwaiger in the film Santa Cruz,
For Example… The documentary, released in 2005, shows
the work carried out by a team of archaeologists who carefully extract
the bones from the ground. The families of the desaparecidos observe
the process as they wait to transport the remains to the local cemetery.
Interviews with townspeople—relatives of the desaparecidos
as well as public figures such as the mayor or the Catholic priest
and passersby—provide a clear vision of the tensions still
existing around this subject seventy years later.
For the video installation Mass Grave, the film
was projected on a wall and combined with other elements, including
a map of Spain that Tom Lavin outlined on the floor
in earth gathered from the mass grave at Santa Cruz. As members
of the public walked over this map, they came into direct physical
contact with the very soil where the bodies of six victims of the
repression had laid for nearly seventy years, and at the same time,
their steps moved the soil and blurred the map until it was unrecognizable,
thus metaphorically repeating the disappearance of our historic
memory: a memory that has been stolen and distorted, and a human
drama of incalculable proportions.
The exhibition was rounded out with diverse documentary materials
pointing out the connections between the crimes committed so many
decades ago, the efforts to uncover the truth, which are inherent
to democracy, and the personal experiences of the spectators themselves
on coming into contact with earth from a mass grave, as they are
forced to choose between remembering and forgetting.
With funding from:
Austrian Cultural Forum in Madrid
With the collaboration of:
Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory
www.memoriahistorica.org
Acknowledgements:
Luis Gonzalo Martínez, Natasha García
Lomas, Ediciones Despacio, Mobcoop
Ediciones, Ángel Sáenz,
Martin Eller, and the members and supporters of
the ARMH who have offered us their testimonies.
Photos: Top and Centro
Cultural de España en México:
Theda Acha
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