Franco is not dead

The ONION video below announcing that tragically fascist demagogue Glenn Beck is still alive reminded me of a similar joke on SNL in the 1970s when Chevy Chase would announce that Franco is still not dead. Of course, this could be seen figuratively. As long as perpetrators who worked for his regime are alive, so is Franco. This include Judges that are now persecuting Judge Baltasar Garzon in retaliation for his arrest of Gen. Pinochet, re-opening of Franco-era claims, and support for those who want to open mass graves . They are doing so by accepting as valid claims brought against him by neo-fascist groups that support Franco's dictatorship. Imagine if neo-Nazi groups had brought claims against the Nurenberg trial Judges. Meanwhile, according to Amnesty International, the country with the most mass graves after Cambodia is Spain. As long as people lie in mass graves. Franco is still alive. The last family member I had that knew anything about my relatives who fought in the war and were persecuted by Franco died a little over a month ago. He had been giving me information, albeit sketchy and reluctantly, an act of extreme generosity on his part, to enable me to make some sense of the archival documents I found listing some of our relatives. These documents may be found in archives created by Franco's state terror apparatus, designed to systematically exterminate, exile, jail, starve, enslave (many things were built by prison camp laborers and successful corporations emerged and flourished after the war thanks to these workers but no reparations have been paid to them or their descendants), and criminalize former Republicans. Now he is dead, and as long as people like me are left with little information due to early deaths caused by prison torture, internal or external exile that severed family ties, disappearances, and self-censorship due to fear, Franco is still alive.