John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco, at Dissident Voice, recalls Langston Hughes' poem "Barcelona Air Raid" in relation to the increased use by the US administration of unmanned drones:
In targeting non-state individuals, questions of human rights and rightful protections readily present themselves. They center on uncovering the criteria that deem certain individuals...
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May Franco be called a "dictator" after all? Público reports on a new chapter in the ongoing saga around the controversial Diccionario Biográfico Español whose first 25 volumes were issued a year ago by the Spanish Royal Academy of History: The commission appointed to investigate the case has recommended that an appendix...
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"Witness," the BBC World Service radio show, commemorated the bombing of Guernica last week. Listen to the 9-minute program here. In Germany, Der Spiegel did the same.
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The Los Angeles Times is looking forward to HBO's upcoming film Hemingway & Gellhorn, by Philip Kauffman, starring Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman. The movie premiers on May 28. Trailer here.
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Writing in the Guardian, Fiona Maddocks reviews the Impossible Brilliance weekend dedicated to composer and Lincoln vet Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997):
A charismatic figure with a cult following, who fought in the Spanish civil war and then left anti-communist America to live in Mexico City, Nancarrow wrote most of his music for...
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In this video just uploaded by the Yiddish Book Center as part of the Wexler Oral History Project, Pauline Katz retells her grandfather's story about how Camp Kinderland taught about the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Each bunk was assigned "loyalist," except for her grandfather's, which had the misfortune of...
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This past April 26, our friends at the International Brigade Memorial Trust co-sponsored a wonderful event in London commemorating the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica. Gregg Macdonald's video of the event--which concludes a rousing musical homage to the Lincoln vets by David Rovics--can be viewed here, or below. The event...
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"Tens of thousands of people took to the streets here and around the United States Tuesday calling for an end to what they described as the mounting and corrosive influence of money in politics," CommonDreams reports. Len Tsou--Spanish Civil War expert, ALBA supporter, and photographer--joined the New York march with his camera. See...
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This year marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Port Huron Statement, which was the founding document of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The PH Statement advocated for participatory democracy and helped launch the student movement of the 1960s. On April 12 and 13, a timely conference entitled “The Port Huron Statement...
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Friends & Family of the Lincoln Brigade will be gathering in NYC on May 11, 2012
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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 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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Although this text by Ivens is little known—and has never been translated before—it offers an eye-opening reflection on the power of his filmmaking.
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Antifascism has long been synonymous with American values. In 1934, student activists at New York’s City College arguably understood this better than many do today.
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After the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, the Seegers family did not hesitate to join the resistance. They had experience fighting fascism: their son Piet had fought for the Spanish Republic. When Tom King started digging into his family history seventy years later, he fell from one surprise into the other.
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Tina Modotti’s short life took her from Italy to North Beach and from there to Mexico, Berlin, Moscow, and civil-war Spain. Rightly known as a pathbreaking modernist photographer, she was also a radical activist. “Modotti spent the second part of her working life fighting for revolution.”
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Kirsten Weld has spent years studying Latin American dictatorships and the citizens who fight to hold them accountable. That experience has proven valuable in her current role as president of the AAUP chapter at Harvard, which, in March, sued the federal government for targeting students and faculty—and won.
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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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