Kate Doyle of the National Security Archives, winner of the 2012 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, reflects on the pursuit of justice in Guatemala in NACLA's new Report on the Americas--a special issue dedicated to "Central America: Legacies of War." Other contributors include Greg Grandin (who interviews Noam Chomsky),...
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Alan Warren notifies us of an upcoming event around 22 photographs of the retreats in Aragón, depicting American volunteers, for which research has been able to pinpoint the exact location where they were taken (text and announcement in Catalan, in pdf here):
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Severiano Montero, of the Association of Friends of the International Brigades (AABI), sends a report on recent commemorations and other events:
On February 27, we presented at the Ateneo de Madrid the Fanny Edelman's book "Rebelion militante". Jorge Grela, Vicente González and Miguel Pastrana glossed the human and political significance of this fighter for human...
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A former Guatemalan soldier has been convicted to more than 6,000 years in prison for his role in a massacre of more than 200 people during the Internal Conflict, the BBC reports. Yesterday, also for the BBC, Paula Dear covered the story of the country's quest for justice.
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Two winners share the honors of this year’s ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, splitting $100,000 to continue their fight for justice in Latin America. (Read the full press release here. En castellano; order tickets here).
Both Fredy Peccerelli, Executive Director of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, and Kate Doyle, Senior Analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America...
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The Biblioteca Afro-Americana Madrid (BAAM), directed by Mireia Sentís, has just published Spanish translations of James Yates' Spanish Civil War memoir From Mississippi to Madrid and a collection of Spanish dispatches from Langston Hughes. Xavier Montanyà reviews both of them in La Vanguardia (pdf):
Both books are of great interest to experts...
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Granito finally made it to Guatemala. The documentary by Pam Yates and Paco de Onís about the quest to indict the Guatemalan military responsible for massive murder during the Civil War, which ALBA screened at its Human Rights Film Festival last fall, and which features this year's winners of the ALBA/Puffin Award for Human...
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Laurie Levinger and Anna Moccia-Field have launched a new website with testimonies from Maya survivors of the civil war in Guatemala. Laurie, niece of Lincoln vet Sam Levinger, has been interviewing survivors for more than six years. Her book, What War? Testimonies of Maya Survivors / ¿Cuál guerra? Testimonios de sobrevivientes...
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Arturo Conde, writing for Univisión, praises James D. Fernández's exhibit of Spanish immigrants in New York, currently on display in Asturias, Spain:
Fernández’s exhibit, “The Colony: A Photographic Album of Spanish Immigrants in New York, 1898-1945,” which has just made its way from New York to Spain on tour, points out that,...
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Given recent events in Spain, Helen Graham writes in today's Independent "Paul Preston's monumental, rigorous and unflinching study" of repression in the Spanish Civil War has become "important and opportune in ways that reach far beyond the purely academic." Preston's The Spanish Holocaust, which will be released in the US next month, traces "the...
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights. ALBA’s work is inspired by the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Learn more at our website or
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Teesside, an industrial region in Northeast England that in the nineteenth century grew to be a center of shipbuilding and iron and steel production, spawned no fewer than thirty International Brigade volunteers. Of the nine who were born in the borough of Stockton-on-Tees, moreover, six played leading roles in Spain: five rose to the rank of Lieutenant...
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The first thirty-six Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for Phase IV were submitted December 30, 2024. Phase IV is intended to focus on volunteers on whom we have minimal information. At some point in the future, I plan to resubmit some volunteers who were returned as not found or on whom no information...
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My grandfather (Nana), Suresh, moved to the United States in 1959 as a young man on a student visa pursuing his master’s degree. His parents, my great grandparents, sought value in being ‘foreign educated’ and bringing his education home – to Mumbai, India to run their family business. 2 years after my Nana moved...
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Peter N. Carroll, a respected and prolific writer, poet, and US historian, died after a short illness on September 16, surrounded by his family. He was 80. Born in New York City in 1943 to a secular Jewish family, Peter grew up in the Bronx and Queens, where his father worked as a composer,...
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LA RÉPUBLIQUE -QUOTIDINEN DE COMBAT RADICAL ET SOCIALISTE, February 5, 1938 Foreign Volunteer Arrested On March 27 last, 29 North Americans were arrested on board the boat Sans-Pareil while they were attempting to reach the Spanish Coast. They were sentenced to a prison term for violating the decree of February 18, 1937 on the...
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The “Spanija” series translates selected autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatian or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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The Spanija series translates select autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google Translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatioan or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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Peter Verburgh’s translation from the French Newpaper Le Journal about a group of 29 Americans arrested in France. “29 American Volunteers Arrested in Muret” Le Journal, 5 April 1937 Toulouse, 4 April- The Control services of the Non-Intervention Committee do not remain inactive, especially with the help of the French Police and Gendarmerie. Thus...
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ALBA Board Member Steve Birnbaum made the trek on Memorial Day to the Home of Eternity Cemetary in Oakland, California to pay tribute to ALB veteran Hans Joachim. Joachim was born in Berlin, Germany in 1906 and moved to the US in 1924. He served in Spain with the George Washington Battalion and later...
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Please find attached photos of my visits to the graves of Lester Rowlson and Tersil Obriot last weekend. I left a brigade flag and a fresh white rose at each. ,,, I was also proud to include aspects of my Clapton CFC scarf; you might have heard of this small football club in London that...
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ALBA's project to provide a complete list of the more than 2,800 individuals who left from U.S. territory to fight with the Spanish Republic
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