An audio reportage courtesy of Free Speech Radio (listen here): Over the last few years, Europe has experienced a severe financial crisis, with countries like Greece and Spain facing skyrocketing debt and unemployment. More than a decade ago, a similar situation was unfolding in Argentina. In 2001, the country suffered a debilitating economic crisis...
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“Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called for Tony Blair and George Bush to be hauled before the international criminal court in The Hague,” The Guardian reports, “and delivered a damning critique of the physical and moral devastation caused by the Iraq war”: “The then leaders of the United States and Great Britain,” Tutu argues, “fabricated...
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The Spanish on-line paper El Plural is reporting a rather shocking story from Madrid. “The State Secretariat of Information has decided that the news conference planned for next week by the Circle of Foreign Correspondents in Spain with former judge Baltasar Garzón “is not appropriate” (“no es idóneo”), and it has denied permission for...
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In the face of "falling popularity" and "economic crisis," state television in Spain will begin to air bullfighting after a six-year hiatus, reports the New York Times. This change in policy comes via the conservative Popular Party government, which, unlike many animal rights groups in Spain today, is staunchly pro-bullfighting, and opposes animal...
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Mexico's highest election court has rejected election runner-up Andrés Manuel López Obrador's legal challenge to overturn the results of the Mexican presidential election, which Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI party won on July 1st. Shortly following the election, López Obrador accused Peña Nieto of having "engaged in widespread vote-buying and campaign overspending...
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In his massive novel La noche de los tiempos, Antonio Muñoz Molina crafts an unforgettable fictional character named Judith Biely. The daughter of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Judith grew up in New York, did doctoral work in Spanish Literature at Columbia, and traveled to Spain in the early 1930s to conduct doctoral research. In...
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You are invited to a celebration of the life of Dr. Michael H. Nash Head of Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives Please join Jeanne Nash, sons Raphael and Gabriel, and Mike’s friends and colleagues for a program of reminiscence and appreciation. Light refreshments to follow. Friday, September 28th, 2012 5:30pm to...
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This summer in Chile a group of volunteers has gained notoriety for their documentation of the illegal police activity demonstrated in student protests across the country. The group, which calls itself the "helmets" (members wear blue or white helmets when covering protests), consists of "ordinary citizens of all ages and walks of life, professionals...
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This past week at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, Republicans have made it an essencial goal to finalize a party platform on the issue of immigration. Whereas Mitt Romney has softened his stance towards undocumented immigrants over the past few months (claiming that he would "consider" passing a Dream Act for undocumented...
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This past Wednesday, authorities in Mexico announced that a group of captured criminals confessed to the killings of five journalists in the state of Veracruz earlier this year, reports the New York Times. One criminal admitted to committing an astounding 36 crimes alone. While this initially may seem like a crucial development, human...
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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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