From Mouth to Page

Books

SPAIN

From Citizen to Exiled. An Essay on the Spanish Republican Women in Mexico. 

Pilar Domínguez. Ediciones Cinca y Fundación F. Largo Caballero. Madrid, 2009.

During my formative years I was, like many other young university students in Mexico, the beneficiary of the extraordinary work of Spanish intellectuals in their Mexican exile: their music, their philosophy, their books, and their magazines. The work of the Spaniards in exile enabled new perspectives, rigor and energy in the academic and intellectual world of post-revolutionary Mexico. The names that we learned to recognize and avidly follow included Alfonso Caso, Luis Buñuel, Enrique Díez-Canedo, Joaquín Xirau, José Giral, José Gaos, León Felipe and many more. All of them had in common the experience of the exile and being extraordinary contributors to the aggrandizement of the cultural life of Mexico. Where were the Republican women? From Citizen to Exiled is a book that challenges an andro-centrist view of the Spanish Exile and completes the list of salient academic, intellectual and political figures with the names of many other women that continued to fight for their republican ideals of liberty and justice, contributing in their every-day efforts to the cultural and social life of Mexico in the 20th Century.

Pilar Dominguez´s book is a detailed study on the experience of the Mexican exile of Spanish republican women at the end of the 1936-1939 civil war that proved devastating in so many ways to this European nation. The work of Dominguez is supported by an impressive documentary base, and offers the reader carefully crafted references to the different historical elements upon which the experience of the republican women in the exile rests. The book was written around the memories of 48 women in exile, from practically all different regions of Spain. The impressive selection includes salient activists such as Clara Campoamor, Victoria Kent and Isabel Oyarzábal, politicians such as Margarita Nelken and writers and intellectuals such as Mercedes Pinto, just to mention a few. These women occupied professional positions traditionally reserved for men well before the beginning of the civil war had. Ironically, the exile offers them new arenas where to continue their fight and extend their influence and reach. Part of the charm and vibrancy of this book is that it goes beyond prominent names, to explore the experience of regular women that had embraced the ideals of the republic and paid in their expulsion of their homeland, the hefty price of their commitment to the republican political project.

The book is a contribution to more than one field. On the one hand it is a contribution to the field of the social and political contemporary history of Mexico. On the other hand it is a contribution to the field of Oral History. The first two chapters of the book explore the historical context of the exile and explain the conditions prevailing in Mexico. This context is important as it offers the reader the basis for an interpretation of the role played by women during the exile. The following chapters offer a detailed and well crafted description of the processes originating in the arrival of the Spanish refugees to Mexico. The reader will find a balance in the representation of the Spanish exiled women as a agents of cultural transformation in all different realms, from the everyday life at the domestic unit, to their presence as educators, in the political arena, and in the organization of support to prisoners of war in Spain, activism well organized and effective throughout the years of exile.

From the standpoint of oral history, this book applies with perfection the selection and use of original sources and materials. The book is supported in the triangulation of written, oral and visual sources, all of which substantially enrich the context necessary to explain and provide depth to the oral narrative. For example, Dominguez utilizes photography as source of information. She sees "...the possibilities in the image to capture the event, the instant, transforms it in a privileged source to the understanding of the history of the exile." It is evident, after reading her book, that the author has provided new and important clues to the oral historian in this methodological arena.

The book avoids loosing sight of the feelings and experiences of the exile from the point of view of a Mexican nationals. The Spanish refugee arrives to take a hold on positions and opportunities in a country that was as generous as it was poor. Dominguez also gives due consideration to the multiple aspects in which the migrant experience unfolds. It explores the relations of the newly arrived with the well established Spanish community - La colonia. It also explores the relationship of the refugees and the Mexican political class, and it also pays attention to the way in which the general population opened to the newly arrived in the cities where they found the possibility of a new start. I have found of particular interest in this book the possibility of getting closer look to the experiential level that transpires the oral testimony: the feelings, the possibilities, the frustrations and lastly, the slow yet relentless process by which the exiled gradually became "just another one of the Spaniards in Mexico," a gachupin, as they are referred to in Mexico: no longer a refugee.

There are two things that make of this book a very important reference. On the one hand, it is a book centered in the clearly differentiated sense and sensibility that comes from the perspective of a feminist scholar. On the other hand, it provides a global insight of multiple perspectives demonstrating in it the strength and maturity of the Feminist thought. As such, I find this book to be a central contribution to the literature of the exile in Mexico, and a seminal contribution to Oral History. The prologue from Dolores Plá Brugat summarizes in an effective manner the value of this publication: "The way in which Pilar Dominguez has worked her sources has enable the confluence of divergent perspectives, of the different threats the will conform the fabric of a history that, by demonstrating women, unveils, even if indirectly, the other authors of the exile."  I celebrate, then, the publication of this work of intellectual mastery, disciplinary rigor, and a most welcome contribution to Mexican history, and to Oral History.

Juan José Gutiérrez | juan_gutierrez@csumb.edu
California State University, Monterey Bay

The Odyssey of Memory: The History of Memory in Twentieth Century Spain.
Cuesta, Josefina, La odisea de la memoria. Historia de la memoria en España siglo XX. Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 2008, 496 pp.

For those who write on the arrival of political consciousness (understood as being conscious of politics and as an precursor for arriving at a position) Josefina's Cuesta's book dedicated to the study of memory in Spain during the twentieth century.

The book, through contrasting faded (but still strong) memories of old testimonies recorded of those two periods, seems to want to carry out operations that history and memory impose on itself. These are the focus of a first theoretical and introductory chapter. In this first section Josefina Cuesta lets us guess that we might be before a work that has some of the characteristics that often makes a monograph important in the humanities and social sciences. That is, the study is written by one person who is long-time specialist in their field. In effect, the carefully selected bibliography and references to key debates are summarized as significant update that can serve as initiation for those wishing to explore the topic.

In subsequent chapters, the book paints a comprehensive picture of the politics of memory in Spain. However, testimonies from the Republican period and the Spanish Civil War are notably absent. Nonetheless, this book confidently advances with the destruction of the Republican memory during the Francoist period and the parallel construction of Civil War memory that served to legitimize Franco's regime. These studies in memory are hidden in the transformation of space-time coordinates that define life. Changes in physical spaces can be observed on street maps in the place most visited and significant, as they befit their symbolic importance. This can also be seen in the erection of statues (of the dictator, above all) or in commemorative monuments to the fallen in the Civil War that was was present in every church. The long-term domination of Francoism was expressed, above all, through the reconstruction of the calendar. Both space and time were redefined, expressing a willingness to break with the Republican past and begin afresh with Franco's Spain. A similar space-time transformation occurred, as is know, during the transition to democracy. The denial of a the republican past was accompanied by an exaltation of the distant past, specifically that of the Catholic Kings and the Empire. This past was held at ransom and was seen in institutions like the General Archive of the Civil War that nonetheless was able transform itself during democracy. This importantly contributed to the role of recuperating historical memory from a period that the General Archive initially wanted to negate. It also reveals the chore of inventing the fleeting heroes of Francoism--above all of Franco himself--and the tortuous path of remembering the Republic and the Civil War after the return to democracy. In our opinion, the book reaches its zenith in Chapter 11 where it tackles the controversy of forgetting or remembrance during the transition and the democratic regime from its foundation until the present. The thesis of the book is thus summed: she rejects the idea of forgetting and supports reinforcing remembering. Nonetheless, the complexity that surrounds this topic leaves the door open to multiple interpretations and which makes this book a cornerstone for future debate.

José Javier Díaz Freire | josejavier.diazfreire@ehu.es
UPV/EHU

Life histories. Oral sources of working class and anti-Francoist struggles in Lower Llobregat

Lluís Burillo e Isabel Graupera. Fundació Utopía. Juan N. García-Nieto. Històries de vida. Fonts orals de la lluita obrera i l´antifranquisme al Baix Llobregat. Estudis Socials del Baix Llobregat. Barcelona 2007. 157 pp.

This book partially incorporates and completely analyzes the oral testimonies collected in the Oral Archive of the Utopia Foundation. At the time, this archive held sixty-four interviews (life histories) of female and male trade unionists, recorded by brother-sister team Juan N. and María Carmen García-Nieto París. These recording were carried in in Lower Llobregat, near Barcelona, regarding their work and trade union experience, their experiences and their everyday lives. For the most part, those interviewed came from other parts of Spain and resided in Lower Llobregat from the 1950s onwards.

The book, while written in Catalan, contains many transcribed Spanish-language testimonies accounting for approximately approximately two-thirds of the interviews. Despite a formal structure and direct and profound style, it is easy to understand and read.

Brief testimonial fragments (99 in total) are also incorporated into the monograph, giving the text argumentative and methodological consistency as well as bringing it alive.

As the book's introduction indicates, the authors wish to reveal how people lived in Lower Llobregat region during Francoism through its protagonist and their own life stories. These sources, duly elaborated and properly analyzed, serve to extrapolate local information to wider areas (a state level, for example) from a geographic, political or ideological point of view without letting us forget about historical perspectives. A consequence is letting us understand labour systems, work and personal relationships, political consciousness, labour struggles, political and trade union militancy or the phenomenon of internal migration during Francoist dictatorship in Spain throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

This book is a social history consistent with the pristine approaches of the Utopia Foundation. From its inception in April 1990 (as the Archive of Social and Trade Union movements in Lower Llobregat). In this study, different topics are present in the life history. These themes where deliberately placed in the questionnaires by the Garcia-Nieto team and include issues such as migration (which serves as a starting point in the recorded archival interviews), motives for migration, the arrival to Catalunya, their social and linguistic integration in Catalan society, their insertion into the industrial workforce of Lower Llobregat, the search and attainment of a dignified home and the general economic and personal betterment. Through assessing testimonies, the enablement of working-class consciousness is identified not as a spontaneous phenomenon but as a result of the presence of trade unions, class politics and family tradition. In the same manner, as a consequence working class oppression carried out by the Francoist regime, these migrants faced difficult trade union and political struggles, creating a clandestine movement. Interspersed in each chapter are important contributions that highlight the grounding thesis of the book and, by extension, the archive, concerning literacy, school and banned texts, the lay apostolate and the workers' struggle. Also considered are the role of the Pyrenees, life in exile; district and factory committees and women workers.

Given the book is based on oral sources, it is not surprising that that it is accompanied by a CD-Rom containing fragments of ninety-nine audio clips from sixty-four interviews. The sound clips range in length from fourteen to ninety-two seconds. These testimonies follow the same pattern identified in the written work of the book.

The book also contains a photo album of those interviewed as well as the Archive's authors. Also included is a sample methodological section, a chronological timeline that begins in the 1950s and ends in the 1970s. Finally, there is an interesting bibliography.

In this study, the authors have thoroughly analyzed the sources. The inclusion of short testimonial fragments support the authors' methodological and discursive arguments as well as their conclusions. These are not entirely left to the reader for reflection as the entire collection would be needed to come to a conclusion. Indeed, it should not be forgotten that these testimonies collected in this work are a simply the authors' synthesis of opinion, analysis and original testimony. This result that the book's contribution is a fresh methodological approach combined with a coherent narrative.

José María Gago jmgagog@yahoo.es
Seminario de Fuentes Orales-UCM. Madrid. España.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

When the Noise Had Ended Geislingen’s DP Children Remember
Compiled by Mai Maddisson. Edited by Priit Vesilind. 2009.

The youngest victims of WWII search their memories to tell how they and their families survived the assault on their nation of Estonia, escaped from the invading Red Army, and found refuge in a Displaced Persons camp in post-war Germany, more than 60 years ago. With stories both searingly honest and accepting, their book of childhood recollections and intimate photographs is a rewarding read that is destined to be a classic in the supporting literature of post-traumatic children’s studies.

Surviving the end of World War II

Europe in 1945 was awash with more than a million refugees.  Many would go home again, but for those who had fled from newly occupied countries bordering the Soviet Union – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania among them – war’s end meant exile from their homelands. To return would mean banishment to Siberia, even execution at Soviet hands.

Their bitter option was to remain in post-war Germany, which was divided into four “Occupation Zones” controlled by the victorious Allies – Great Britain, France, the USSR, and the United States –  until they could find other nations who were willing to accept them as immigrants.  They were housed in temporary “camps”  in Germany, and the largest camp of Estonians was established by the U.S. Army and UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency) in the American Zone, in a mid-sized town in the scenic Württemberg region of southwest Germany, a town called Geislingen an der Steig.

Before the fighting had ended, Jüri Linask recalled his family’s journey through the front lines. His father was in Siberia. His mother, pushing a double pram with the baby and all the family belongings, was walking with her three other sons through the battlefront toward the West, even as Soviet troops encountered the German army. Jüri was six years old:

We went with determination; I imagine also fear, along the crowded highway paralleling the tracks, along with Russian army caravans of American-made trucks, with released war prisoners… through Oberleutendorf, through Viesa to Brüx. Here we encountered horrors of revenge. Germans were being executed in the graveyard we passed. Ushered onto side streets, I vividly recall platform wagons piled with bodies, dripping blood.  I don’t remember the German soldiers pulling them, nor them being pelted with stones and beaten with sticks. Soon we were advised to leave quickly and we did, as fast as possible with the elderly and small children.... Our direction now was over the Hertzgebirge Mountains on smaller roads, to distance us from Russian army caravans on the main roads. The mountain roads rose steeply, only to descend again.

Months later, as the war was lurching to an end in the spring of 1945, the Linasks arrived in Geislingen.

More than 5,000 other Estonian exiles, including 1000 small children, passed through Geislingen Camp in five years, from 1945-1950.  Many had lost their men to the depredations of war.  Many survived in shocked, dysfunctional families whose fathers or brothers had been conscripted into the German or Soviet armies, and were maimed or missing. Others were tightly sheltered by parents desperate to shield them from the austere conditions and dark realities around them.

The Soviets sent “repatriation” officers to the Baltic camps to recruit people back to occupied Estonia; no one would go.

Instead, they quickly transformed Geislingen into a small Estonian village in which every possible culture, sport, or craft was organized. This community of exiles included many of Estonia’s finest artists and professionals, and they created a network of doctors, professors, theater people, musicians, journalists, and politicians that simulated Estonian society, but at even a more intense level than back home.

The children, many not knowing any other reality, flourished. They lived in duplex homes and houses of Germans who had been forcibly removed by the U.S. Army to make room for refugees. They survived on donations from the UN, the Red Cross, and CARE.  Some fathers had jobs at the nearby US Army post. But Geislingen’s children, from toddlers to grade-schoolers, were saturated with the values and cultural icons of their nation, even while surviving as homeless people in a hostile German town of defeated enemies. They were mostly isolated from the Germans that surrounded them, yet constantly exposed to the deep anxieties of their parents. Many were emotionally damaged by their untenable circumstances, others seemed unaffected.

When their families emigrated around the world, few of them kept in close contact, and the decades pulled them even further apart. 

How valid are the memories of children?

Some three years ago an Estonian-Australian family physician named Mai Maddisson was moved to more closely examine the years she had spent in Geislingen Camp as a little girl. She remembered those years in conflicting impressions of community warmth, yet family stress and eventual abuse.   To resolve the emotions that surrounded her about those formative years, and to seek clues and opinions from others, she re-connected the children of Geislingen as a computer discussion group. These discussions generated a reunion of the group in Geislingen itself in 2008, and plans to create this book of memoirs, whose cumulative narrative might help explain or resolve bits and pieces of the exiled children’s lives. 

To craft such a book, Mai sought out Estonian-American Priit Vesilind, a veteran writer and editor at National Geographic magazine and author of other books on the Estonian experience. Other researchers and historians pitched in. Soon they had gathered a collection of childhood memoirs, and more than 400 old photographs of Geislingen life.

Assuming that the incomplete memories of children are of questionable historical value, Dr. Maddisson emphasized that these memories are still valid, and valuable as indicators of mood, priority, and adjustment, particularly if those memories are left unedited.  The answers to some questions about early personality formation, she emphasized, are found in nuance, way of expression, word choice, and often by what is left out of a story.  Thus the words and phrases in “When the Noise Had Ended” ring with authenticity, as seen through the eyes of the little – those who had no voice until now. 

The children of Geislingen eventually emigrated from Germany and the camp was closed in 1950. Fortified by a large dose of Estonian culture, yet conscious of the sadness of war and the dislocation of their families, they grew up as overachievers in such nations as Australia, England, Canada, Sweden, and the United States.

Many earned doctorates and other advanced degrees. Some of the most successful and ardent of the émigré advocates for Estonian freedom in the early 1990s were Geislingen kids.

“When the Noise Had Ended” will be released in Münster, Germany, during the 2009 Esto gathering on June 26-30, as well as the following week in Tartu, Estonia, at the conference on the Baltic Diaspora, on June 7. The book is published by Lakeshore Press of Woodsville, New Hampshire, and may be purchased from its website:  lakeshorepressbooks.com.  

P. Aarne Vesilind | lakeshorepressbooks.com
Lakeshore Press

Catching Stories: A Practical Guide to Oral History

By Donna M, DeBlassio, Charles F. Ganzert. David H. Mould, Stephen H. Paschen, and Howard L. Sachs. Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press, 2009. 323 pp. Cloth: $26.95; Paper: $16.95.

What makes non-historians interested in history? Sometimes it’s because they lived through significant events but more often it’s because they were not there, did not experience past events directly, and are curious about how those events can inform their current lives as individuals and as a community.  It is to this community interest that the five authors of this new guide have directed their attention. They argue that oral history has leveled the playing field between professional historians and community-based historians. Drawing on their diverse personal experiences in education, archives, and media, they offer advice on designing, conducting, processing, archiving, and sharing oral history projects. Theirs is a commonsense approach that will make complex legal and ethical issues less intimidating to the novice interviewer. The volume also addresses such nuts-and-bolts concerns as purchasing equipment and raising funds to support the project. The authors are digitally savvy and devote as much space to video as to audio interviewing, demonstrating the trend in that direction. While their specifics are rooted in practices in the United States, the problems and the many of the suggested solutions are universal in nature. The conversational tone of the text will make it an ideal accompaniment for workshops geared towards local historical societies, libraries, and schools with high aspirations but limited resources.

Donald A. Ritchie | oralhistorians@comcast.net

VENEZUELA

Memory and Contexts, Oral History and Popular Knowledge

Pérez Contreras, Zandra C y Rodríguez Neira, Xiomara P. Memoria y Contextos, Historia Oral y Saberes Populares. Instituto Pedagógico Rafael Alberto Escobar Lara / UPEL – Maracay: Venezuela, 2009.

This book is a collection of articles that are the product of pedagogical practice and research of the Oral History Research group of UPEL-Maracay. These articles highlight the groundbreaking work in individual and collective memory

The life histories of the Turiamo people--the histories of uprooting—consists of reconstructing a rootless population through the narrative of Maximina Mijares y Juana Mijares, two women that belong to the generation expelled from Turiamo in 1957. The vicissitudes lived by the Mijares also presented the opportunity to understand the how the Turiamo population lived, particularly the family and the mother as well as examining values arising from community and identity. Also examined is the country-city shock that Turiameros experienced and their social cohesion (based on their religious-magical beliefs) that led to this people's cultural endurance.

Studying the village of Chuao (incidentally, the source of the best cocoa in the world) was made possible through the fieldwork of students from the Department of Social Sciences at UPEI-Maracay. Studdents’ research involved collecting Chuaeños' life histories (specifically their life practices) as well as the significance of the hacienda and their conuco (subsitance garden plot). Collectively, extensive documentary research was conducted through oral sources and in relation with land ownership.

Life histories from the Francisca Duarte neighbourhood in the municipality of Santiago Mariño and State of Aragua, allows for a foundational understanding in the metropolitan area of the city based on accounts of its the construction and consolidation of the neighbourhood. In the same manner, related elements are proposed in teaching local history through oral history and by teaching these experiences from primary school classrooms.

In the "Emerging Paradigm for Living Research" we find methodological traces that define what is "living research" and its epistemic contribution. Concepts touched upon by authors include hermeneutics, methodics, epoché [Husserl's suspension of judgement], and [postcolonial] signposts . Family values and freedoms (through Ernesto Greiner's concept of understanding the world through people's lives) submerges us in the experiences of a German immigrant's descendant around Colonia Tovar, highlighting times of his childhood. In Mr. Greiner's story, his father's influence offsets the maternal figure, the focus of the home in Venezuelan society.

Selected subjects were everyday people from Aragua; campesinos descended from slaves, immigrants and people lacking in material wealth. Selection of these people was based on their life experience and their struggle to construct a more just and equal society. The language used by the interviewees has been respected and transcriptions are verbatim. Interpretation of interviews was carried out through linguistic discursive analysis, hermeneutics and science of history. Finally, this project proposes a series of educational activities that will enhance the teaching-learning process and reinforce reading comprehension.

Journals

ITALIA

Memoria/memorie – History Sources

The journal Memoria/memorie. History Sources is aimed at deepening the reflection and analysis of the main questions of the 20th Century, a century that has already been considered to have its roots back in the second half of the 19th Century and that has not concluded yet. The study is conducted by utilizing interviews and “documents of memory” in the wider sense (letters, diaries, autobiographies). The objective is not only to complete and enrich the “Grand History” with experiences of “common” people, or more appropriately, with the remembrance these experiences have left behind, but to offer a different perspective of events through reconstructions mainly created “from below.”

For more information on this journal you may visit http://www.centrostudiluccini.it/

After ten years, "Here - Notes from the Present" is drawing to a halt. Ceasing publication. I

mpossible to say, for now, whether this will be temporary or permanent. I think the review's driving principles-so to speak-and goals are still valuable and should be pursued: focusing on individual lives and the lives of individuals; "opening them up" through poetry, literature, and thoughts, and putting poetry, literature, and thoughts before them; helping to build a relationship of "intimacy" with the world... This, and more, is what "Here" has tried to do, and at this point I feel justified in saying it has succeeded.

What is bringing it to a halt, in part, are practical problems, which are nothing new, and have been described in its pages on two occasions: the burden of editorial work, the inadequate distribution (for a magazine that is aimed not at intellectuals or political leaders, but at men and women "of goodwill"); the accounts that are perpetually in the red.

Perhaps it could have forged ahead despite these problems (as it has for years), if I hadn't felt more and more keenly how hard it would be for it to "forge ahead" in another sense: for it not to stay put, not to mark time; continue to be, as it has been, a process, a movement. To do this, I realized, it needed a new influx of thought and sensibility. In other words, what "Here", in its current form, had to say, it has said. Now it needs fresh energy: people who are interested in becoming more deeply involved for another leg of the journey, setting out from what it has been and what it has tried to be. If they are found, and if the review-or whatever it turns into-manages to find a firmer base to work from in terms of finances, distribution, and editorial help, then the project will start up again.

I would be truly pleased to know what you think of the review as it was, of its interruption, and of the reasons that led to this, because it might well prove very useful. I will be writing to subscribers separately to refund them for the issues that they will not be receiving.

Massimo Parizzi | massimoparizzi@alice.it
“Here- Notes from the present”