Pope Francis has attacked unfettered capitalism as "a new tyranny." But the silence maintained by the former Argentinian bishop Bergoglio (now Pope Francis), during the brutal Argentinian dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s, puzzles many people.
Vicente Navarro got a clue from the recent Tarragona service (honoring the members of the Church who...
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, which is dedicated to educating future generations about the Spanish Civil War, is engaged in a renewed effort to reach out the members of the second and third generations to help recuperate and preserve the collective history of the Spaniards and Internationals who fought fascism. Our aim is to...
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Along with thousands others, Carlos Blanco left Spain defeated but managed to preserve what is most admirable of the Spanish Republican values at the core of his identity, and to return them to the world through his actions.
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One of the two last reported living veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Delmer Berg, is turning 98 tomorrow, Friday December 20. We invited you to send your birthday greetings earlier this week and have been completely overwhelmed by the response. The package to Del has gone out; below is a small sampling of your good...
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Mike Elkin, writing for Newsweek, tackles Spain's lingering legacy of violence committed during the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship.
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Alasdair Fotheringham, writing for The Independent, explores a curiously uninformative official heritage trail--the first of its kind established by a governmental entity--commemorating a Spanish Civil War battlefield outside of Madrid.
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ALBA PROUDLY PRESENTS: A screening of the passionate musical Goodbye Barcelona In 1936, as fascism sweeps across Europe, one country reaches out in its hour of need…and tens of thousands of ordinary people make an extraordinary decision to help. More than 42,000 travel to Spain from all over the world, risking their lives for the freedom of...
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On November 6, the Spanish delegation to the United Nations said that it would not review the 1977 law which gave amnesty for political crimes committed during the civil war and General Francisco Franco's dictatorship. According to Baltasar Garzon, at least 152,000 civilians living in territory controlled by Franco's Nationalist forces disappeared between...
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This weekend! Impugning Impunity: A Human Rights Documentary Film Series with eight powerful and inspiring films exploring issues of governmental abuse, historical memory, civil rights an racial inequality.
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On Nov. 14, 2013, McNally Amphitheatre at Fordham Law School was jam packed with people. The title of the event was “They’re watching us: So what? Assessing the dangers of the new surveillance powers” featuring a distinguished panel: Glenn Greenwald (Journalist), James Bamford (Author and NSA expert), Ariel Dorfman (Novelist, Playwright and Human Rights...
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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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The iconic group portrait of raggedy Lincoln Brigade volunteers that’s become ALBA’s calling card over the years is now finally available in an uncropped, high-res print. When and where was it taken? And who exactly are these 29 men?
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Tina Modotti and Vittorio Vidali, who dedicated a major part of their lives to the Communist International, have long been surrounded by myth. New research by the historian David Jorge suggests that they consistently strove for broad leftist fronts—even when the leadership of the Comintern favored other tactics.
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Leon Bibel, a New-York-based painter, printmaker, and teacher who worked with the WPA and was only discovered by the public years after his death in 1995, was primed from birth to identify with the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War.
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Can conservation be a revolutionary practice? In his new book, The Monument of Tomorrow, Miguel Caballero shows that it certainly can. The story it tells is also the story of the Madrid that the Abraham Lincoln Brigade encountered—and helped shape—during the war.
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Few political leaders of modern Spain have been as maligned as Prime Minister Juan Negrín, who died in exile in 1956. But his personal papers, which have been only open to researchers since 2014, challenge long-standing portrayals of Negrín advanced by anti-Communist critics on both the left and right.
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The war in Spain was barely over, but the scramble to define the legacy of the International Brigades was on. Were they valiant antifascists, or had they been agents, victims, or dupes of world communism? In pre-1945 US popular culture, the brigadistas were often portrayed as heroic antifascists. At the same time, there were...
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China was entangled in multiple local and global crises when this image was published on the back cover of a Shanghai-based magazine.
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The Republic’s fight against fascism was not limited to the trenches. There was also a quieter, though no less vital front—the judiciary—where the Republic fought to preserve legality, due process, and democratic norms.
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Major US films and series about the Spanish Civil War have been few and far between. Why has Hollywood shied away from a topic that, on the face of it, presents such a trove of compelling stories?
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Close to 35 years after serving as a head nurse in the Spanish Civil War, Fredericka Martin, by then an accomplished author, returned to Spain to revisit the hospital sites where she had her fellow volunteers had saved hundreds of lives. Another half century later, Gina Benavidez, a doctoral candidate, followed Martin’s trail.
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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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