The Life and Death of the Spanish Republic, by Henry Buckley. (London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013). Introduction by Paul Preston.
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Savage Coast by Muriel Ruykeyser.  The Feminist Press, 2013.
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‘Homage to Catalonia’ Praised for literary merit but criticised for narrow focus at Len Crome Memorial Lecture
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Get to know two members of the ALBA community.
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On July 25, 1937, the New York Times’ John T. McManus interviewed Joris Ivens, a young Dutch movie director who had just arrived in the United States. What sparked the interview was the premiere of The Spanish Earth, a documentary about the Spanish Civil War financed by a handful of American intellectuals that included...
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As Congress returns from its summer vacation, for the first time in a generation it will confront the meaningful prospect of enacting immigration reform legislation. That reform is even a possibility is due in large part to the courage, militancy, and strategic vision of undocumented immigrant youth across the country, whose risk-taking campaign...
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The wandering Dutchman Bart van der Schelling painted with Willem de Kooning, sang with Woody Gunthrie and Pete Seeger, fought fascists in the Lincoln Battalion, and is credited with the lyrics to "Viva la Quince Brigada"--yet much of his life remains shrouded in mystery. Yvonne Scholten investigates.
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Bay Area ALBA Reunion, October 6 This Land is Our Land: Internationalism, Citizenship, Resistance; a commemorative celebration marking the 77th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War Join us!
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The new Common Core Standards provide ALBA with an opportunity to help more high school teachers introduce the Spanish Civil War into their classes. Students will study history not by rote or memorization, but by confronting directly original primary documents.
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Milton Wolff, last commander of the Abraham Lincoln battalion, marveled that it took him more years to write his memoir of the Spanish Civil War (Another Hill) than it took him to fight in it. For a “little war” (both in duration and scope) that war has had immense consequences and attracted immeasurable interest.
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On July 3, ALBA became the first organization from the United States to join the Plataforma por la Comisión de la Verdad sobre los Crímenes del Franquismo (Platform for the Truth Commission about the Crimes of Francoism). This initiative is the first step toward creating a United Nations Truth Commission in pursuit of justice...
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A broad coalition of organizations, including both ALBA and Baltasar Garzón's new foundation, is calling for a commission to establish, once and for all, the truth about the crimes of Francoism. Will they be successful? And if they are, what can a truth commission actually accomplish?
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A Madrid court order to remove the recently installed monument honoring the foreign volunteers who supported the Republic during the Spanish Civil War has sparked worldwide outrage. Spain’s Friends of the International Brigades (AABI) report.
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(Versión en inglés.) Nueva York, 3 de  julio de 2013 - Los Archivos de la Brigada Abraham Lincoln (ALBA) se convierten en la primera organización de Estados Unidos en unirse a la Plataforma por la Comisión de la Verdad sobre los Crímenes del...
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As a child growing up in Madrid, I frequently used to ask my mom, María Luisa Jerez Marín, about her parents, whom I had never met. My grandmother, Modesta Marín, died of cancer at the early age of 42. And my grandfather, Arturo Martín, I was told ‘died in the war’, like so many...
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Skeletons in the Closet, Skeletons in the Ground: Repression, Victimization and Humiliation in a Small Andalusian Town. By Richard Barker. (London: Sussex Academic Press, 2012).
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Unlikely Warriors: The British in the Spanish Civil War and the Struggle against Fascism. By Richard Baxell. (London, Aurum, 2012).
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Marcus Judson Billings was born on June 10, 1914 in Redlands, California to O. S. Billings, a printer and the former Francis Devore, a housewife. He grew up in Redlands and graduated from Redlands High School.
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George Sossenko, who joined the fight in Spain at the young age of 16 and remained active in the fight for social justice until the end of his life, died March 14 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was 94.
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Luis García Montero is one of Spain’s most prominent public intellectuals. A successful poet and frequent political columnist for the progressive online paper Público, he is also a leading figure in the United Left coalition (Izquierda Unida) and has been among the most vocal supporters of Judge Baltasar Garzón. Last year, he helped found...
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“This is the most photogenic war anyone ever has seen.”* Estas palabras transcritas por Claud Cockburn carecían, en plena guerra civil, de perspectiva, mas no de perspicacia. Cierta magia hubo en esta contienda que la convirtió en epifanía de un nuevo tipo de conflicto bélico: violento y despiadado para una población civil que fotógrafos,...
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There were mixed feelings at the end of last year among those of us dedicated to preserving the memory of the 2,500 International Brigade volunteers from Britain and Ireland. On the one hand we celebrated the fact that the International Brigade Memorial Trust now has over 900 paying members. This is a record figure,...
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Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain until 1975, was obsessed with the notion of a powerful international conspiracy—led by Jews, Masons, Communists, and other “reds”— against the “new” Spain that emerged from his victory in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. He referred to this plot in the very last speech he gave on October...
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Among many other Spanish Civil War commemorations this year, it may be interesting to note that July 2013 marks the 75th anniversary of one of the conflict’s most bizarre episodes. In December 2005, Professor Sandie Holguín of the University of Oklahoma published a piece of research in the American Historical Review, was based on...
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Several hundred undocumented migrants die each year of heatstroke or at the hands of organized crime as they attempt to cross the deserts of Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. Law enforcement officials struggle to identify the bodies, while families in Mexico and Central America wait anxiously, not knowing what happened to their relatives.
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Hurricane Sandy swamped the schools of Bergen County, New Jersey last November, forcing postponement of ALBA’s teaching institute, but the spring term brought an exciting revival as 22 Spanish language and social studies high school educators attended a lively one-day session at the Bergen County Academies, organized by administrator Tim Casperson, in Hackensack.
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President Barack Obama has escalated the Bush administration’s use of targeted killing with drones and other methods. Drones, which avoid U.S. casualties, are more palatable to the American people than ground invasions such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of the 366 U.S. drone attacks that have killed more 3581 people in Pakistan...
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Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and filmmaker Oliver Stone spoke at ALBA’s event in New York, highlighting the connection between the courage of the Lincoln Brigade’s internationalist activism and the courage of the activists of United We Dream. See videos of their speeches. Kate Doyle, senior analyst at the National...
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Courage and fear, hope and despair: those were the recurring emotions expressed by five panelists who spoke about immigration reform at a round-table discussion organized by ALBA in New York on May 5. Speaking from the trenches, they confirmed that much has been achieved. And although the road ahead is long and complicated, every...
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Filmmaker Oliver Stone offered a moving encomium to the volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in his keynote speech at the 77th annual reunion held at Pace University in New York on May 5, where United We Dream received the annual ALBA / Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism (video | pictures).
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Paul Preston is impossible to avoid. Author of twelve books, editor of several more, and director of an important series on the subject, he towers mile-high in the landscape of Spanish Civil War scholarship. And yet in person he can be quite elusive. A previously arranged meeting for an interview in London first had...
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Jim Benét, lifelong journalist and veteran of the American Regiment de Tren (Transport) in the International Brigades, died in December near his home in northern California of a blood infection. He was 98. Born in New York to a literary family on both sides—his father was William Rose Benét, a poet; his uncle, Stephen...
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David Lomon, who died on 21 December 2012, aged 94, was the last known survivor in Britain of the more than 2,500 volunteers from the British Isles who joined the International Brigades.
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Dear ALBA, On behalf of the Broggi family (Dr. Moisés Broggi was my wife’s grandfather), I want to thank you for the thoughtful obituary published in The Volunteer. … As you know, the IB experience was a turning point in his medical career and his political awareness. He recalled that experience often, with clarity...
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Sylvia H. Thompson, who spent her life fighting for the poor and oppressed and championing the legacy of the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, died of cancer in December in New York City. A stalwart supporter of both VALB and ALBA, she volunteered countless hours, year after year, organizing VALB’s annual reunions in...
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