December 27, 2024 • 23 mins
Filmed over six years, "The Silence of Others" reveals how survivors and their families have struggled to cope in the aftermath of Spain’s 40-year dictatorship under General Franco. The film, executive produced by Pedro Almodóvar, follows the victims as they organize a groundbreaking international lawsuit and fight a “pact of forgetting” around the crimes they suffered. Survivors of the dictatorship and human rights lawyers built a case in Argentina that Spanish courts refuse to hear. Maria Hinojosa speaks about the film with its directors, Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar.
This episode originally aired in 2019.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
From Fudro Media and pr X it's Latino USA. I'm
Mariano Rosa Today. How a lawsuit filed in Argentina brings
closure to victims of the Franco dictatorship.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
In Spain El Pole.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
On April twenty eighth, twenty nineteen, Spain held elections to
choose the National Parliament, which in turn voted to select a.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Prime ministers icon A.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Japerio in Passao, the winning Socialist party has pledged to
exhume the remains of Francisco Franco, Spain's former dictator, who
died in nineteen sen seventy five and is buried under
a massive mausoleum. They say Franco doesn't deserve the honor
(01:06):
of having a major monument to his life. But this
pledge has caused some controversy with people on the right
who supported the dictator, and mixed into all of this,
there are also demands from victims of the Spanish dictatorship
to find and recover the remains of those who were
killed and were buried in mass graves during Franco's forty
(01:29):
year rule.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
He Yo de la Fochia HeLa.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
The issue of victim's remains has been a major feature
of the national conversation in Spain recently and is now
the topic of a documentary film. Over six years, Emmy
Award winning filmmakers On Mudena Carraseo and Robert Bahar have
been following a movement for justice that began with a
kitchen table conversation and has evolved into a groundbreaking international
(01:58):
lawsuit that brought together he hundreds of survivors of the
dictatorship Keggio Framarza Tolousi laos ken.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Francismo.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
The result is a touching documentary, Elilenzio DeRos or The
Silence of Others, which follows the development of this lawsuit
as it pieces together the stories of some of the
victims of Franco's unbridled violence and connects this with the
country's recent history.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Implemento Nolvido Una mistia de toros paratos unlvidos paratos Nalai.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
The film, which was executive produced by acclaimed director Pedrol Modovar,
won the twenty nineteen Goya Award, which is the Spanish
equivalent of the Oscars. In twenty nineteen, directors al Mudena
Carraselo and Robert Bahar join me to talk about their
film all the way from Madrid. We're really happy to
(03:09):
bring you this conversation once again today and welcome to
Latino USA. Al Mudena and Robert oh Law, thank you
so much, thank you, and right now the both of
you are in Madrid. Am I right?
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Correct, yes, I wish I was there is all I
can say. Madrid is one of my all time favorite cities.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
I'm wonderful.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
But you know, when people think now of Spain, they
think of Madrid there like fabulous cosmopolitan city that's like
up all night. They think of Barcelona, this really bohemian place.
But a lot of people right now are not thinking
about the fact that for almost forty years Spain lived
(03:52):
under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
It's great that you bring it out because very often
we think of the Franco dictatorship, if anyone knows about it,
you know, we think of beaches and nice weather. We
don't realize that a lot of the tourists that came
to Spain during that time were coming too a country
where people were being tortured, people were being murdered, so
there was a complete lack of freedom of you know,
(04:18):
freend of a press, freenom of expression. Obviously, for a
lot of people who fought against it, it was a
very deadly dictatorship.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Now, in nineteen seventy five, Francisco Franco, the dictator dies,
and I mean, I just can't imagine what that is
like to suddenly the dictator has died, and now it's
time to move into a democratic system.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
What's really fascinating is that in the case of sping,
Franco died while he was still in power, and part
of what that meant was that his regime had tremendous
power and control in the process of shaping what democracy
would look like in Spain, and that these two models
(05:03):
has transition through rupture. Where there's a revolution is just
to break with the past. This is transitioned through transaction
where they negotiate with the outgoing regime. And so many
of the ministers and the powers that be in the
Franco regime helped shape the democracy. There ended up being
a tremendous continuity between especially judges, the judiciary, the security forces, police, military,
(05:29):
many of the same families and the same officials continued.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
So as part of this there's a discussion about amnesty right,
how to deal with the crimes, you know, human rights
violations that occurred under the dictatorship. And then there's a
decision to create what is known in English as a
pact of forgetting and Espanol.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Is el Pacto de lolo.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
El Pacto del olvido, which.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Is as if you could create a pact for that, and.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
It basically says, we as a country are basically going
to say what's done is done. Forty years of dictatorship done,
and we're going to make a pact to forget.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yes, And its main purpose was originally to free from
the left political prisoners, but they added a clause to
the amnesty law that said none of the crimes of
the dictatorship would ever be prosecuted.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
The big problem with that, obviously, is that you're crafting
a transition into democracy at the expense of hundreds of
thousands of people who will not get justice or even
truth or even reparations. We're talking about thousands and thousands
of people whose family members were killed, murdered and buried
(06:45):
in mass graves still unknown mass graves all over the country.
One hundred and forty thousand people are still buried in
mass graves, and it's very important to remember the film
is about the present. What is the legacy of that
packed into the present day today in a democracy that
it's now forty years old.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
But in your film, actually when you go and you're
asking Spaniards, hey, do you know about you know, the
pact of forgetting? Do you know about this amnesty? You
know in terms of the crimes that were committed under Franco,
And it turns out that a lot of Spaniards don't
even know. So how is that possible?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Well, I think what's so fascinating about the fact that
people don't know is that the pact of forgetting worked,
and the pact of forgetting in a sense comes from
Franco's discourse during forty years. If you look at many people,
if you look at almotin his parents, for example, people
spent their entire lives, they're born under dictatorship and lived
(07:46):
under dictatorship, and so the discourse was we shouldn't talk
about that. It's dangerous to talk about that. And as
you reach the transition this idea to forget, the only
way we can ave forward as a society is to
put this behind us. Turn the page and move on
was very convincing to a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
The film starts with this really beautiful sequence of a
quite elderly woman who's kind of wrapping her hair, and
then she's getting her little walker, and she's in a small,
little Spanish village, and then she gets to the side
of a two lane highway and you know, she just
lays flowers down and says, this is where her mother
(08:42):
was murdered by the Franco regime.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Know that this was a very powerful scene for us
because it represented a lot of well, it's happened in Spain,
and it has happened in Spain right, the fact that
you could pave over a mass grave, tried to bury
the past, try to do as though it didn't exist,
(09:16):
this modern day democracy where the past has been buried,
but where there are people, thousands and thousands of people
who cannot forget and who go every day to the
side of the roads to put flowers.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
So I think that something that a lot of people
will remember is that it actually turns out that in
Spain there is a judge who ends up indicting a
former dictator happens to be the former dictator of Chile
Agusto Pinochet, and that sets a precedent.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
In Spain. There's a judge who for more than a
decade has been chasing drug lords and dictators, terrorists and
corrupt politicians from across the globe. His name Baltasar Garzon.
He is arrest warrant for the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet,
set an international president.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
What's so fascinating is that Judge Garson was a pioneer
and the Spanish courts were actually pioneers in using this
principle called universal jurisdiction to pursue human rights crimes in Chile,
in Argentina, and actually in many places around the world.
And this put Spain at the forefront of seeking justice
(10:38):
after dictatorial regimes. And after indicting former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet,
Garson started an investigation into the crimes of the Franco
dictatorship and he really started to open this and he
was put on trial in Spain for violating space means
(11:00):
amnesty law, and that opened the way for victims of
these crimes to go to Argentina to open the case
there using that same principle universal jurisdiction to investigate the
crimes of Francoism.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
You know, once the doors close in Spain, that's when
the doors of justice can open somewhere else, and the
case falls under Maria Levini the Kurria, which is a
judge that has been following very closely. She's known to
be the judge for the stolen children in Argentina. Between
nineteen seventy six and nineteen eighty three, during the dictatorship
in Argentina, five hundred babies were stolen from their parents
(11:39):
who were opponents of the regime. It's a curious thing because,
as you were saying, you know, Spain became a model
of how to do a transition, and in fact, many
many years later in Spain we look to Latin American
democracies to give us a lesson about memory.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Coming up on Latino USA, the lawsuit moves forward and
hundreds of victims join the cause. Stay with us. Yes, hey,
(12:29):
we're back, and we're going to continue our conversation now
with Almudena Carrasselo and Robert Bahar. They're the directors of
the documentary The Silence of Others, which follows the development
of a lawsuit filed in Argentina to address crimes committed
during this Spanish dictatorship. So it turns out that it's
(12:49):
actually went over six years that you were working on
the film. There's an older gentleman who was tortured by
members of the Franco regime, and he speaks very specifically
about the kind of torture that he experienced. And the
thing is is that he remembers who it was who
(13:11):
was torturing him. And many years later, it turns out
that this man ends up living blocks away from his torture.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
That was absolutely shocking to us. I think, for me,
as someone who grew up in the United States, just
as you said earlier, I don't think of Spain as
a country where someone could be living a few hundred
meters from his torturer. From a policeman nicknamed Billy the Kid,
(13:43):
who actually everyone in Madrid knows the name Billy the Kid.
There have been newspaper articles about Billy the Kid since
nineteen seventy nine or nineteen eighty, and recently it was
even discovered that in the days ear days of democracy,
Billy the Kid was actually awarded various medals for excellent
(14:06):
meritorious conduct, and thus the state pension that he receives
has a fifty percent bump. And then there was even
even more recent issue where there was a party held
at a police station in the center of Madrid and
someone took a photograph and they saw that Billy the
kid was real named as Antonio Gonzales Pacheco, had been
(14:29):
invited to that party, and so the present day National
Police Force was still communicating with him and had welcomed
him at an event.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
One of the things that you uncover in your film
is kind of the crimes of the dictatorship of Franco
really live on. Of course, there's legacy, there's impact, there's trauma,
but then you talk about something that my jaw just
dropped because it's a story that we know so well
from Argentina and it's tatorship, which was the stolen children, right,
(15:03):
children who were taken when their parents were disappeared and murdered,
and it turns out that the same thing exists in Spain.
You have the stolen children of Spain.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Well, the story of the stolen children in Spain goes
back to the very end of the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Laya mammos La Espanola Piro Comentho.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
And it started with a psychiatrist who was the head
of military psychiatry under Franco and his name was Bijonahara,
and he had written books and he had said eugenics
theories under the Nazis, and he believed that by separating
children of the Reds, children of Republican families, that you
(16:06):
could cleanse the children of those ideas and a sort
of a eugenics kind of idea. And so the idea
of stealing children started by taking children from Republican mothers
who were in jail, possibly about to be executed at
the end of the Spanish Civil War, and giving those
(16:27):
children to families that were loyal to the regime, in
some cases perhaps military families. That was in the early years,
and as you moved past the nineteen forties, the patterns
seemed to change and instead of taking children from politically
unfit or unacceptable families, they start to target morally unfit
(16:49):
families to single mothers, families are very poor families with
eleven children, and there are stories of deathbed confessions where
parents have said, I must tell you you are not
actually our child. We bought you, or every summer when
(17:10):
we went, we had to actually make installment payments. And
it is a terrible scandal. It's very difficult to know
the scale. In Garson's investigation, he estimated that there have
been thirty thousand potential cases up to about nineteen fifty five.
There are some people who estimate into the hundreds of
(17:32):
thousands through today.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
So I'm watching the movie at my desk in the
middle of the day, you know, prepping for the interview,
and then I'm getting to the end of the film
and I got to be honest with you, I mean,
the tears just start streaming down my face because what
ends up happening is that thanks to the Argentinian judge,
one of the older women survivors, her name is Asencion,
she's told that her father's remains are going to be exhumed.
(17:59):
And there's this moment when you are there when they
find the remains of Asencion's father, along with the remains
of twenty one other people, and all we're seeing is
a skull. But for us, since you know, who hasn't
seen her father, who has disappeared and put into this
mass grave. The moment when she sees this skull and
(18:23):
we know that it's her father. She says, Oh, it
was so dramatic.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Your pay can do I right, she says, ay a
whole life underground. That was one of the sort of
(18:52):
most emotionally powerful moments for us as filmmakers. When the
viewers crying, you really need to picture us crying there too.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Where do things stand now? Where is the lawsuit? Does
the story end with the lawsuit? What is the next
chapter of Spain?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
In terms of what's happening in the Argentine lawsuit, the
lawsuit continues. Despite many kind words from the government. There
is still this amnesty law. There is still this impunity
and it's actually fascinating. The lawyers told us that after
watching the film there were some people who had been
(19:43):
scared to become plaintiffs and to join the Argentine lawsuit,
and they have now joined the lawsuit and have sent
their stories to Judge Cervini in Buenos Aires. In terms
of the impact that the film is having, just couple
of weeks ago, the film was seen by more than
a million people here that night. Ten minutes after the
(20:06):
broadcast ended, many of the plaintiffs in the suit launched
a petition asking that the government modify that amnesty laws
so that it cannot be applied to crimes against humanity.
There are now more than one hundred and fifty thousand
signatures on that petition, and so there's a hope that
the more visibility that this has, the more that through
(20:30):
cultural means as well as through legal means, this pact
of forgetting is broken and there is remembering that there
can be change.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
We just launched actually something called our less Cone Memoria,
so that every school and high school in the country
can screen the film for free Our Les Memoria, meaning
Classrooms with Memory, and it really is very beautiful and
very powerful what films can do in terms of helping
people understand, helping people empathize, helping people take action. And
(21:03):
so their journey continues.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
But there was also just an election in Spain on Sunday,
and on the one hand, spain Socialist Party won the
most number of votes and will probably be able to
lead the coalition government. But something very concerning also happened,
which is that for the first time there's an ultra
right party that has emerged in Spain, and twenty three
(21:32):
or twenty four representatives in the Congress are now going
to come from an ultra right, ultra nationalist, anti immigrant,
anti abortion, anti women's rights party.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I'm Mudena and Robert. Thank you so much for your
work and thank you so much for joining us on
Latino USA.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
This episode was produced by Miguel Marzias. It was edited
by Marlon Bishop. It was mixed by Julia Caruso with
engineering support from Jjkrubin. The Latino USA team also includes
Jessica Ellis, Victoria Strada, Renaldo Leanoz Junior, Stephanie Lebou, Andrea
Lopez Cruzado, Luis Luna, Glodi mad Marquez, Martin Martinez, Nor Saudi,
(22:40):
and Nancy Trujillo. Pile Ramidez is our co executive producer.
I'm your host and also co executive producer. Join us
again on our next episode. In the meantime, look for
us on all of your social media. That's where I'll
see you, not Te bayas Baye.
Speaker 5 (22:59):
Latino USA is made possible in part by Skyline Foundation,
the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the
Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of
social change worldwide.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Perestan Locos, Burquees Madrid, Viamen de Las and pis La.
Of course, boy, they're crazy to be doing an interviewed. Okay,
here we go. Ready,
From Fudro Media and pr X it's Latino USA. I'm
Mariano Rosa Today. How a lawsuit filed in Argentina brings
closure to victims of the Franco dictatorship.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
In Spain El Pole.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
On April twenty eighth, twenty nineteen, Spain held elections to
choose the National Parliament, which in turn voted to select a.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Prime ministers icon A.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Japerio in Passao, the winning Socialist party has pledged to
exhume the remains of Francisco Franco, Spain's former dictator, who
died in nineteen sen seventy five and is buried under
a massive mausoleum. They say Franco doesn't deserve the honor
(01:06):
of having a major monument to his life. But this
pledge has caused some controversy with people on the right
who supported the dictator, and mixed into all of this,
there are also demands from victims of the Spanish dictatorship
to find and recover the remains of those who were
killed and were buried in mass graves during Franco's forty
(01:29):
year rule.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
He Yo de la Fochia HeLa.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
The issue of victim's remains has been a major feature
of the national conversation in Spain recently and is now
the topic of a documentary film. Over six years, Emmy
Award winning filmmakers On Mudena Carraseo and Robert Bahar have
been following a movement for justice that began with a
kitchen table conversation and has evolved into a groundbreaking international
(01:58):
lawsuit that brought together he hundreds of survivors of the
dictatorship Keggio Framarza Tolousi laos ken.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Francismo.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
The result is a touching documentary, Elilenzio DeRos or The
Silence of Others, which follows the development of this lawsuit
as it pieces together the stories of some of the
victims of Franco's unbridled violence and connects this with the
country's recent history.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Implemento Nolvido Una mistia de toros paratos unlvidos paratos Nalai.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
The film, which was executive produced by acclaimed director Pedrol Modovar,
won the twenty nineteen Goya Award, which is the Spanish
equivalent of the Oscars. In twenty nineteen, directors al Mudena
Carraselo and Robert Bahar join me to talk about their
film all the way from Madrid. We're really happy to
(03:09):
bring you this conversation once again today and welcome to
Latino USA. Al Mudena and Robert oh Law, thank you
so much, thank you, and right now the both of
you are in Madrid. Am I right?
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Correct, yes, I wish I was there is all I
can say. Madrid is one of my all time favorite cities.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
I'm wonderful.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
But you know, when people think now of Spain, they
think of Madrid there like fabulous cosmopolitan city that's like
up all night. They think of Barcelona, this really bohemian place.
But a lot of people right now are not thinking
about the fact that for almost forty years Spain lived
(03:52):
under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
It's great that you bring it out because very often
we think of the Franco dictatorship, if anyone knows about it,
you know, we think of beaches and nice weather. We
don't realize that a lot of the tourists that came
to Spain during that time were coming too a country
where people were being tortured, people were being murdered, so
there was a complete lack of freedom of you know,
(04:18):
freend of a press, freenom of expression. Obviously, for a
lot of people who fought against it, it was a
very deadly dictatorship.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Now, in nineteen seventy five, Francisco Franco, the dictator dies,
and I mean, I just can't imagine what that is
like to suddenly the dictator has died, and now it's
time to move into a democratic system.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
What's really fascinating is that in the case of sping,
Franco died while he was still in power, and part
of what that meant was that his regime had tremendous
power and control in the process of shaping what democracy
would look like in Spain, and that these two models
(05:03):
has transition through rupture. Where there's a revolution is just
to break with the past. This is transitioned through transaction
where they negotiate with the outgoing regime. And so many
of the ministers and the powers that be in the
Franco regime helped shape the democracy. There ended up being
a tremendous continuity between especially judges, the judiciary, the security forces, police, military,
(05:29):
many of the same families and the same officials continued.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
So as part of this there's a discussion about amnesty right,
how to deal with the crimes, you know, human rights
violations that occurred under the dictatorship. And then there's a
decision to create what is known in English as a
pact of forgetting and Espanol.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Is el Pacto de lolo.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
El Pacto del olvido, which.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Is as if you could create a pact for that, and.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
It basically says, we as a country are basically going
to say what's done is done. Forty years of dictatorship done,
and we're going to make a pact to forget.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yes, And its main purpose was originally to free from
the left political prisoners, but they added a clause to
the amnesty law that said none of the crimes of
the dictatorship would ever be prosecuted.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
The big problem with that, obviously, is that you're crafting
a transition into democracy at the expense of hundreds of
thousands of people who will not get justice or even
truth or even reparations. We're talking about thousands and thousands
of people whose family members were killed, murdered and buried
(06:45):
in mass graves still unknown mass graves all over the country.
One hundred and forty thousand people are still buried in
mass graves, and it's very important to remember the film
is about the present. What is the legacy of that
packed into the present day today in a democracy that
it's now forty years old.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
But in your film, actually when you go and you're
asking Spaniards, hey, do you know about you know, the
pact of forgetting? Do you know about this amnesty? You
know in terms of the crimes that were committed under Franco,
And it turns out that a lot of Spaniards don't
even know. So how is that possible?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Well, I think what's so fascinating about the fact that
people don't know is that the pact of forgetting worked,
and the pact of forgetting in a sense comes from
Franco's discourse during forty years. If you look at many people,
if you look at almotin his parents, for example, people
spent their entire lives, they're born under dictatorship and lived
(07:46):
under dictatorship, and so the discourse was we shouldn't talk
about that. It's dangerous to talk about that. And as
you reach the transition this idea to forget, the only
way we can ave forward as a society is to
put this behind us. Turn the page and move on
was very convincing to a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
The film starts with this really beautiful sequence of a
quite elderly woman who's kind of wrapping her hair, and
then she's getting her little walker, and she's in a small,
little Spanish village, and then she gets to the side
of a two lane highway and you know, she just
lays flowers down and says, this is where her mother
(08:42):
was murdered by the Franco regime.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Know that this was a very powerful scene for us
because it represented a lot of well, it's happened in Spain,
and it has happened in Spain right, the fact that
you could pave over a mass grave, tried to bury
the past, try to do as though it didn't exist,
(09:16):
this modern day democracy where the past has been buried,
but where there are people, thousands and thousands of people
who cannot forget and who go every day to the
side of the roads to put flowers.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
So I think that something that a lot of people
will remember is that it actually turns out that in
Spain there is a judge who ends up indicting a
former dictator happens to be the former dictator of Chile
Agusto Pinochet, and that sets a precedent.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
In Spain. There's a judge who for more than a
decade has been chasing drug lords and dictators, terrorists and
corrupt politicians from across the globe. His name Baltasar Garzon.
He is arrest warrant for the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet,
set an international president.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
What's so fascinating is that Judge Garson was a pioneer
and the Spanish courts were actually pioneers in using this
principle called universal jurisdiction to pursue human rights crimes in Chile,
in Argentina, and actually in many places around the world.
And this put Spain at the forefront of seeking justice
(10:38):
after dictatorial regimes. And after indicting former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet,
Garson started an investigation into the crimes of the Franco
dictatorship and he really started to open this and he
was put on trial in Spain for violating space means
(11:00):
amnesty law, and that opened the way for victims of
these crimes to go to Argentina to open the case
there using that same principle universal jurisdiction to investigate the
crimes of Francoism.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
You know, once the doors close in Spain, that's when
the doors of justice can open somewhere else, and the
case falls under Maria Levini the Kurria, which is a
judge that has been following very closely. She's known to
be the judge for the stolen children in Argentina. Between
nineteen seventy six and nineteen eighty three, during the dictatorship
in Argentina, five hundred babies were stolen from their parents
(11:39):
who were opponents of the regime. It's a curious thing because,
as you were saying, you know, Spain became a model
of how to do a transition, and in fact, many
many years later in Spain we look to Latin American
democracies to give us a lesson about memory.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Coming up on Latino USA, the lawsuit moves forward and
hundreds of victims join the cause. Stay with us. Yes, hey,
(12:29):
we're back, and we're going to continue our conversation now
with Almudena Carrasselo and Robert Bahar. They're the directors of
the documentary The Silence of Others, which follows the development
of a lawsuit filed in Argentina to address crimes committed
during this Spanish dictatorship. So it turns out that it's
(12:49):
actually went over six years that you were working on
the film. There's an older gentleman who was tortured by
members of the Franco regime, and he speaks very specifically
about the kind of torture that he experienced. And the
thing is is that he remembers who it was who
(13:11):
was torturing him. And many years later, it turns out
that this man ends up living blocks away from his torture.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
That was absolutely shocking to us. I think, for me,
as someone who grew up in the United States, just
as you said earlier, I don't think of Spain as
a country where someone could be living a few hundred
meters from his torturer. From a policeman nicknamed Billy the Kid,
(13:43):
who actually everyone in Madrid knows the name Billy the Kid.
There have been newspaper articles about Billy the Kid since
nineteen seventy nine or nineteen eighty, and recently it was
even discovered that in the days ear days of democracy,
Billy the Kid was actually awarded various medals for excellent
(14:06):
meritorious conduct, and thus the state pension that he receives
has a fifty percent bump. And then there was even
even more recent issue where there was a party held
at a police station in the center of Madrid and
someone took a photograph and they saw that Billy the
kid was real named as Antonio Gonzales Pacheco, had been
(14:29):
invited to that party, and so the present day National
Police Force was still communicating with him and had welcomed
him at an event.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
One of the things that you uncover in your film
is kind of the crimes of the dictatorship of Franco
really live on. Of course, there's legacy, there's impact, there's trauma,
but then you talk about something that my jaw just
dropped because it's a story that we know so well
from Argentina and it's tatorship, which was the stolen children, right,
(15:03):
children who were taken when their parents were disappeared and murdered,
and it turns out that the same thing exists in Spain.
You have the stolen children of Spain.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Well, the story of the stolen children in Spain goes
back to the very end of the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Laya mammos La Espanola Piro Comentho.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
And it started with a psychiatrist who was the head
of military psychiatry under Franco and his name was Bijonahara,
and he had written books and he had said eugenics
theories under the Nazis, and he believed that by separating
children of the Reds, children of Republican families, that you
(16:06):
could cleanse the children of those ideas and a sort
of a eugenics kind of idea. And so the idea
of stealing children started by taking children from Republican mothers
who were in jail, possibly about to be executed at
the end of the Spanish Civil War, and giving those
(16:27):
children to families that were loyal to the regime, in
some cases perhaps military families. That was in the early years,
and as you moved past the nineteen forties, the patterns
seemed to change and instead of taking children from politically
unfit or unacceptable families, they start to target morally unfit
(16:49):
families to single mothers, families are very poor families with
eleven children, and there are stories of deathbed confessions where
parents have said, I must tell you you are not
actually our child. We bought you, or every summer when
(17:10):
we went, we had to actually make installment payments. And
it is a terrible scandal. It's very difficult to know
the scale. In Garson's investigation, he estimated that there have
been thirty thousand potential cases up to about nineteen fifty five.
There are some people who estimate into the hundreds of
(17:32):
thousands through today.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
So I'm watching the movie at my desk in the
middle of the day, you know, prepping for the interview,
and then I'm getting to the end of the film
and I got to be honest with you, I mean,
the tears just start streaming down my face because what
ends up happening is that thanks to the Argentinian judge,
one of the older women survivors, her name is Asencion,
she's told that her father's remains are going to be exhumed.
(17:59):
And there's this moment when you are there when they
find the remains of Asencion's father, along with the remains
of twenty one other people, and all we're seeing is
a skull. But for us, since you know, who hasn't
seen her father, who has disappeared and put into this
mass grave. The moment when she sees this skull and
(18:23):
we know that it's her father. She says, Oh, it
was so dramatic.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Your pay can do I right, she says, ay a
whole life underground. That was one of the sort of
(18:52):
most emotionally powerful moments for us as filmmakers. When the
viewers crying, you really need to picture us crying there too.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Where do things stand now? Where is the lawsuit? Does
the story end with the lawsuit? What is the next
chapter of Spain?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
In terms of what's happening in the Argentine lawsuit, the
lawsuit continues. Despite many kind words from the government. There
is still this amnesty law. There is still this impunity
and it's actually fascinating. The lawyers told us that after
watching the film there were some people who had been
(19:43):
scared to become plaintiffs and to join the Argentine lawsuit,
and they have now joined the lawsuit and have sent
their stories to Judge Cervini in Buenos Aires. In terms
of the impact that the film is having, just couple
of weeks ago, the film was seen by more than
a million people here that night. Ten minutes after the
(20:06):
broadcast ended, many of the plaintiffs in the suit launched
a petition asking that the government modify that amnesty laws
so that it cannot be applied to crimes against humanity.
There are now more than one hundred and fifty thousand
signatures on that petition, and so there's a hope that
the more visibility that this has, the more that through
(20:30):
cultural means as well as through legal means, this pact
of forgetting is broken and there is remembering that there
can be change.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
We just launched actually something called our less Cone Memoria,
so that every school and high school in the country
can screen the film for free Our Les Memoria, meaning
Classrooms with Memory, and it really is very beautiful and
very powerful what films can do in terms of helping
people understand, helping people empathize, helping people take action. And
(21:03):
so their journey continues.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
But there was also just an election in Spain on Sunday,
and on the one hand, spain Socialist Party won the
most number of votes and will probably be able to
lead the coalition government. But something very concerning also happened,
which is that for the first time there's an ultra
right party that has emerged in Spain, and twenty three
(21:32):
or twenty four representatives in the Congress are now going
to come from an ultra right, ultra nationalist, anti immigrant,
anti abortion, anti women's rights party.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I'm Mudena and Robert. Thank you so much for your
work and thank you so much for joining us on
Latino USA.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
This episode was produced by Miguel Marzias. It was edited
by Marlon Bishop. It was mixed by Julia Caruso with
engineering support from Jjkrubin. The Latino USA team also includes
Jessica Ellis, Victoria Strada, Renaldo Leanoz Junior, Stephanie Lebou, Andrea
Lopez Cruzado, Luis Luna, Glodi mad Marquez, Martin Martinez, Nor Saudi,
(22:40):
and Nancy Trujillo. Pile Ramidez is our co executive producer.
I'm your host and also co executive producer. Join us
again on our next episode. In the meantime, look for
us on all of your social media. That's where I'll
see you, not Te bayas Baye.
Speaker 5 (22:59):
Latino USA is made possible in part by Skyline Foundation,
the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the
Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of
social change worldwide.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Perestan Locos, Burquees Madrid, Viamen de Las and pis La.
Of course, boy, they're crazy to be doing an interviewed. Okay,
here we go. Ready,
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