The legacies of the Spanish Civil War in Latin America: from “Reconquest” to the transitional “Consensus” (1939-1998)

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

In recent years, historians of Cold War Latin America have been contending that the continent’s “long Cold War” had begun not in 1945, but rather in 1936, with the break of the three-year Civil War on the soil of Latin America’s Mother Nation. The aim of this panel is to explored the usage and full impact of the legacies of this immensely symbolic event in Latin America, during moments of political mobilization on both the Right and the Left ideological spectrums. The panel members’ work indicates that the Civil War, and Francoist regime that emerged from it, profoundly influenced notions of social justice, national sovereignty, and political legitimacy during the Cold War. As importantly, this panel sets out to discuss the ongoing perceptions of the Civil War during the time of the Spanish transition and the emergence of Spain’s 1970s democratic “consensus.” A model of democratization devoid of retrospective criminalization of the dictatorial past, the “consensus” was constantly justified in the name “avoiding yet another civil war.” Thus, the panel will broaden the discussion over the meanings of the Civil War to include not only its influence of authoritarian thought in Latin America, but also its legacies of belying processes of retrospective justice making in the continent, during the 1980s and 1990s.

Sub Track

• History and Historiography

Session Organizer

• Daniel G Kressel, Columbia University

Chair

• Pablo A Piccato Rodriguez, Columbia University

Discussant

• Marysa Navarro Aranguren, Dartmouth College, DRCLAS - Harvard University

Individual Presentations

• Uncomfortable Legacy: Spanish Fascism in Latin America after the Spanish Civil War (1939-1945) - Eduardo González Calleja

• From the “consensus” to the accountability of the past: the legacies of the Spanish Civil War in Latin America’s process of democratization - Sophie Baby, Université de Bourgogne; Daniel G Kressel, Columbia University

• The Other Latin America: Catalan Exiles in Mexico - Marcela Junguito, Stanford University

• A Guatemalan Reconquest: Falangist Ideology and Arbenz’s Overthrow - Kirsten A Weld, Harvard University