A-Infos (en) Spaine, CNT-CIT, #435: Tampering with memory: distortion and appropriation for partisan purposes - Araceli Pulpillo (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The interested manipulation of history is the daily bread on the part of 
some and others, since it is well known that in memory/history resides 
an engine of momentum-or retreat, and consolidation of privileges for a 
few-in the present. Hence the dispute over the speech. Of course, it is 
not a phenomenon that can be reduced to the Spanish state but, as the 
popular phrase says: the victors write history, or rather, the victors 
discipline and indoctrinate since they are the ones who possess the 
tools and means to create hegemony. Perhaps the particular case of the 
Spanish Civil War is a good model to look at. An example: like a mantra, 
it has come down to our days that in the conflict there were "two 
sides", one fighting for the Republic, the other the rebellious side. 
We, anarchists and/or anarcho-syndicalists, know well that this mantra 
is de-complexifying and self-interested, that it erases from history, 
and from the collective imaginations, the revolutionary process that was 
launched in those years; which is a biased and well-known fiction, not 
only for the victors but for a good part of the defeated who today nest 
in the structures of the State.

This flattening of history-and therefore the construction of memory that 
skewers us-produces phenomena of forgetting that end up making serious 
errors when making genealogies. In some cases these errors are still the 
product of a discourse repeated ad nauseum that we have ended up 
believing at a structural level; In others, it is the product of a 
tortuous historical revisionism that gives rise to the appropriation of 
figures with a certain relevance and who are very useful in political 
and/or cultural campaigns: political marketing in its purest form, a 
"commercial" use of history that is far from It is about truth, justice 
and reparation.

Like a mantra, it has come down to our days that in the conflict there 
were "two sides", one fighting for the Republic, the other the 
rebellious side. We, anarchists and/or anarcho-syndicalists, know well 
that this mantra is decomplexifying and self-interested, that it erases 
from history, and from the collective imagination, the revolutionary 
process that was launched in those years.

With respect to the first case, we can talk about how sometimes blunders 
are made when it comes to historical dissemination. For example, a few 
years ago an illustration by the Jerez anarchist María Luisa Cobo was 
published on a portal in which she appeared with the flag of the 
Republic. She who fought in the CNT and Mujeres Libres from anarchist 
convictions, and made harangues against the new republican government, 
ends up being remembered with a flag that she never carried and against 
which she also fought, since her militancy sought the achievement of the 
libertarian communist . The case of Lucía Sánchez Saornil is quite 
grotesque, since an image of Antonio Fontanillas-also of Simone Weil, 
América Barroso and even Soledad Estorach-has ended up being used as if 
it were Lucía's face, in this case the naive error is intertwined with 
the politician, because although its non-face has ended up being 
reproduced in a multitude of literary, libertarian and activist forums, 
it has also been used in campaigns such as that of Feminismos Podemos 
for the anniversary of the Second Republic.

Memory and political marketing.
Lucía's case helps us make the leap to that grotesque political 
marketing that she talked about before. A poster in which you can read 
Lucía Sánchez Saornil, with the face on the right side of Antonia 
Fontanillas and with a small text that says: «Poet who came into contact 
with anarcho-syndicalism working at Telefónica, where he understood that 
the movement forgot women. She co-founded Mujeres Libres in 1936 to 
fight capitalism and patriarchy. After the War she suffered a triple 
exile: as a republican, as a woman and as a lesbian. Although the idea 
of claiming the figure of an anarchist on Republic Day may at first seem 
strange, I can accept that it is promoted to women who contributed at 
that time to broaden the narrow limits of a conservative society. What 
is unacceptable is that her militancy and her ideas are distorted to 
generate confusion about her political commitment.

Another example takes us to last March 8, in which the Madrid PSOE 
launched a campaign that publicized feminist women in the region. In one 
of her posters you can see an old Federica Montseny under the labels of 
"Madrid politician and trade unionist", with none of them did she define 
herself during her life and none of them represented her militant work. 
. It seems that that is the least of it, there is no interest in honest 
recovery but rather a sum of amount, the amount at the cost of 
disfiguring the fund, of disfiguring who those people were. All to 
attract votes, the same ones that Federica despised in life, since she 
believed in a radical transformation of society in which the State 
structure would end, and therefore with political parties such as the 
PSOE inserted in said structure. Anarchist, how it must sting to write 
just the word.

For a memorable thought.
Of course, these are just some examples, furthermore this distortion is 
not foreign to us in the anarchist and/or anarcho-syndicalist spectrum, 
which is why I am very interested in memorial thinking as theorized by 
Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui: "the game of memory as something active in the 
present life. This makes me think that within our organization we also 
have to reflect to what extent we integrate memory into our political 
praxis, because despite having a lot against us, despite the media siege 
and the instrumentalization and interested silencing of our ideas and 
practices, there is also a responsibility on our part of this handling. 
Without going any further, I was moved to hear in Congress my colleague 
Luis Fuentes explain to the plenary session his concern about the role 
we give to memory-more specifically to what is related to work in mass 
graves-in CNT. I collect that reflection so that this small text can 
also serve us, to (re)think to what extent we do memory thinking, to 
what extent ethics, aesthetics and ambition go hand in hand to 
disseminate our history, honor our dead and continue their fight from 
the present-walk that Rivera Cusicanqui whispers to us, with a future on 
our backs and a past before us.

https://www.cnt.es/noticias/manosear-la-memoria-tergiversacion-y-apropiacion-con-fines-partidistas/
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