speech – Bad Reputation

Revolting Women: ‘La Pasionaria’ – the woman who fought Franco

Rai — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:00:36 +0000

This post is part of a series on the theme of women and protest. The full series is collected under the tag “Revolting Women”.

“¡No pasarán!”
(‘They shall not pass!’)

-Dolores Ibárruri, July 19, 1936 (Madrid, Spain)

Dolores Ibárruri age 82

No, not Gandalf: La Pasionaria. Or, ‘The Passion Flower’ in English. Before I continue to talk about Ibárruri, I acknowledge that I’m a bit of a giddy schoolchild when it comes to praising anything Basque in a public sphere and that having a Hispanic Studies degree means I take some knowledge for granted. So some background information is probably going to be pretty useful for you all.

The Spanish Civil War began in 1936 when General Francisco Franco led troops in an attempted coup d’état against the Second Republic. Although the government were caught unawares and significant numbers of Spain’s army were behind Franco, the events of July 1936 turned into a three year civil war. Having written several thousand words on the subject during the course of my degree, I could go into much greater detail but I don’t want to detract from our main focus. Basics to remember: Franco et al were far-right/fascist; the Second Republic was left/socialist. Now we can move on to our woman of the hour.

Isidora Dolores Ibárruri Gómez was born on 9^th December 1895 in Gallarta, within the borders of the Basque Country in Spain, into a poor mining family. In 1918 she adopted the pseudonym ‘Pasionaria’ on the publication of an article, highlighting religious hypocrisy, which coincided with Holy Week in a devotedly Catholic country. In 1920 she was appointed as a member of the Provincial Committee of the Basque Communist Party and in 1930 moved up to the Central Committee of the PCE (Communist Party of Spain). In ’31 she moved to Madrid alongside the formation of the Second Republic and was jailed in September ’31 for the first in several arrests over the following five years.

There are many amazing things that she did as a prominent pre-war communist woman in politics in Spain, and for a succinct overview of them all I urge you to have a look over on her Wikipedia entry. There’s only so much I can say within one article and I want to focus on her wartime contributions to the fight against Franco and fascism.

During the war she was, above all, an astounding orator and a passionate figurehead for the men and women trying desperately to battle Franco’s advances. As a communist she was no stranger to strong retaliations against her speeches and actions, but during the Civil War she became much more than just a voice for communism. She became a central figure for the Republicans trying to push fascism back and defend Spain against Franco.

The whole country cringes in indignation at these heartless barbarians that would hurl our democratic Spain back down into an abyss of terror and death. However, THEY SHALL NOT PASS! For all of Spain presents itself for battle.

[…] The Communist Party calls you to arms. We especially call upon you, workers, farmers, intellectuals to assume your positions in the fight to finally smash the enemies of the Republic and of the popular liberties. Long live the Popular Front! Long live the union of all anti-fascists! Long live the Republic of the people! The Fascists shall not pass! THEY SHALL NOT PASS!

– Dolores Ibárruri, No Pasarán speech (translated here)

Youtube:an original speech
Youtube: Maxine Peake reading her International Brigades’ sendoff speech

La Pasionaria statue in Glasgow

Most people will know, however, that Franco won. Ibárruri spent much of her life thereafter in exile, but returned to Madrid in 1977 and lived in Spain for the remaining 12 years of her life. On her 90^th birthday, the PCE organised a party in Madrid with upwards of 15,000 guests; when she died of pneumonia at age 93 thousands of people paid their respects and attended her funeral, where they chanted “They shall not pass!”. The life and actions of La Pasionaria were felt internationally (e.g. there’s a statue of her in Glasgow) and there remains strong opinion on both sides of the political spectrum on her in Spain (if you read Spanish, have a glance at some of the comments on the YouTube video).

I know this has been brief, but there is plenty more to discover for yourself; I am only here to open the door.

It is better to die on your feet than to live forever on your knees.

– La Pasionaria

Sources and further reading (other than Wikipedia)

Daniele Conversi, The Basques, The Catalans and Spain: Alternative Routes to Nationalist Mobilisation (2000)
Helen Graham, The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction (2005)
Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge (2006)

An Alphabet of Feminism #9: I is for Infant

Hodge — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 09:00:25 +0000

I

INFANT

So runs my dream: but what am I?

An infant crying in the night:

An infant crying for the light:

And with no language but a cry.

Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849)

LinkedIn.

Have you ever noticed how many I-words have the in/im prefix? These clarify what something is not.

Thus, in-nocent, in-nocuous = not harmful (the same root as ‘noxious’), im-potent = not powerful, in-capable = self explanatory; &c.

Infant is one such, but cleverly concealed by an unexpected etymology. Along with its archaic variants (enfaunt, infaunt), it derives from the Latin infans, which is the Greek ‘phemi’ in its plundered Roman form, ‘femi’, plus the Latinate negative (in- = ‘without’).

And phemi / femi? ‘To make known one’s thoughts, to declare’ or, simply, ‘to speak’.

Don’t Speak.

So an infant is ‘without speech’; or, as its first definition clarifies, ‘a child during the earliest period of its life (or still unborn)’ – Shakepeare’s ‘Infant, Mewling and puking in the Nurses Armes’.

Mew.

Newborns / kittens must indeed rely on ‘mewling’ for their day-to-day needs, but paradoxically such speechlessness gives them a symbolic potency that rings in the ear.

Indeed, they (babies, not kittens) have ‘spoken’ throughout history, from whistleblowing on promiscuous parents to confirmation of marital fidelity.

But hold on just one gosh-darned minute: that’s female fidelity, of course. The maternal connection is the only one you can prove, sans DNA testing. Male extra-curricular activity is neither here nor there.

And history is full of those awkward occasions when ‘speaking likenesses’ gives rise to speculation about what the child’s mother was up to nine months previously.

Mother’s Ruin.

Strangely, the infant’s own inevitable silence simply compounds the seeming power of what ‘they’ are saying: you’re hearing with your eyes rather than your ears. Or just reading.

Indeed, Paulina, the faithful lady-in-waiting in The Winter’s Tale would prove her mistress’ daughter legitimate by pointing to her book-like qualities: ‘Behold, my lords, / Although the print be little, the whole matter / And copy of the father…’

Well into the seventeenth century, the village gossip could also deduce parental naughtiness through something as seemingly random as a child’s constitution: weakness or disease suggested either that the parents had been having too much sex to copulate at their full vigour, or else that conception had happened during menstruation. You slags.

And it didn’t stop there: infants could also tell tales through the very time of their arrival. It was commonly believed that young’uns entered the world nine months to the day after their conception. Consequently, no child born on a Sunday could be christened until its parents had made a public apology for their desecration of the Lord’s Day. Busted.

Even a child’s existence could be disastrously significant.

To sea, To sea…

In 1741, the retired sea-captain Sir Thomas Coram set up London’s first Foundling Hospital, whence came unfortunates from all walks of life to ensure that their screamingly ill-begotten infants would be cared for and kept from incriminating them (not necessarily in that order).

In many instances, such abandonment was the alternative to killing the child or leaving it to die. So Coram was hardly acting on a whim: the social repercussions of Sin were severe, poverty and gin dependency rife (a woman’s problem, and also a means of inducing abortions – why else ‘Mother’s Ruin’?) and the streets covered with child corpses.

Infantine... 'The Angel In The House', photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron

So Coram’s critics accused him of fostering sin, by giving it a Hospital wherein to hide: to offer succour to bastard infants was to shield the sinful and encourage further debauchery. Let the wages of sin speak loud and clear.

Speak Now, Or Forever Hold Thy Peace.

In its second meaning, infant becomes more defined: it does not simply signify a speechless-screaming babe-in-arms, but also ‘a person under legal age; a minor’ (someone who has not ‘completed their twenty-first year’).

Here it is law-based, in reference, for example, to all those boy-kings of our early royal history (how many can you name????) – whose legitimacy is the most important thing of all, taking priority over minor considerations such as… oh, I don’t know, BEING OLDER THAN SIX.

Infant in this sense connotes something like having yet to earn freedom sui juris; the legal understanding that a person is fit to govern themselves (and, in royal cases, a country), and consequent emancipation from the rule of parent, guardian or Lord Protector.

Among Spanish royals – to this day – children who are not the direct heir to the throne have the title Infante / Infanta; presumably giving us English our third definition for infant (‘a youth of noble birth’), these are princes of the blood, but they ain’t ruling nothing.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear.

It is also worth considering the more direct fate of infants’ mothers: ‘The very being or legal existence of the women is suspended during marriage’ wrote William Blackstone in 1765. A financial, legal and social dependent – like the children she bore – a wife could be ‘infantine’ through her official speechlessness, than which there is no more perfect example than Coventry Patmore’s poem The Angel in the House (1854-62):

He’s never young nor ripe; she grows

More infantine, auroral, mild,

And still the more she lives and knows

The lovelier she’s express’d a child.

Yet, like the screaming infants littering Coram’s Fields, the silent appendage speaks vicariously: dress, jewellery and inactivity declare her husband’s wealth and status; ‘mildness’ and ‘loveliness’ (like youth and innocence) embody the ideals men battle to protect, with smatterings of the overpowering Rightness of the domestic sphere.

She remains, of course, firmly on her pedestal, and statues, as we know, do not speak (unless they are late Shakespearean and have the rather badass Paulina fighting their corner).

So being infantilised does not mean saying nothing; rather, it means saying what those around you choose to hear.

NEXT WEEK: J is for Jade