From Page to Mouth

Oral History Projects

ARGENTINA

Crafting connections with new technologies and shared projects.

For those of us who have the opportunity to attend various international and national Oral History conferences, most of us would agree that we attend with the goal of meeting 'face to face'' other colleagues whose research projects have this methodology in common. Many times (as is my case) I come across people whom I have never met in person, but have known through exchanges that new technologies (ICT) offer such as email. The possibility of strengthening links with colleagues who are working on the construction and application of oral sources in different settings provokes a multiplying effect. ….

Beyond the changes that email has brought, I would like to highlight the benefit of  blogs in the creation of spaces for students and teachers interested in collaborative projects. These can be used as an extension of a physical space, such as the classroom. Yet the question that we can ask is if it is possible that these spaces can exist entirely online and without the participants being physically in the same space. Could blogs provide the tools necessary to bridge these distances across 'thin air'?

Motivating me to ask such questions is a real experience of a collaborative distance work project. Over a two year period, the ArCA Project (Argentina-Catalunya) in the ORT School in Buenos Aires, Argentina with my colleague (and eventual friend) Tomás Biosca Esteve from the El Morell Secondary School in Tarragona, Spain completed  a Oral History project through email. This project was awarded a prize for innovative methodology and student centered learning by the University of Barcelona.

Using Oral History methodology, this project focused on how people remember the last military dictatorship, being Francoism in the Spanish case and the Dictatorship of '76 for the Argentines, as well as the persistence of silence in both instances. In this sense, Oral History is a useful tool for reflecting upon individual and collective pasts and promoting dialogue between generations.

It should be pointed out--despite it being obvious given that we are speaking of two countries--that each one of our educational Centers is set in a different reality (student composition, geographical space, social context, etc) and that the study alone has inspired  students to continue analysis their interviews. These circumstances has  made the exchange much more enriching given that we can now come together and get to know--and through this evaluate--other cultures, lifestyles and other histories that relate to our own.  

Laura Benadiba
lbenadiba@yahoo.com.ar

Preserving the past in Argentina: Interview with William Clarke, coordinator of the Oral History Program at the   Buenos Aires Provincial Historical Archives

By Laura Benadiba

Guillermo Clarke, was born in Chascomús, Province of Buenos Aires. He current lives in the city of La Plata. He teachers history in the Faculty  of Humanities and Educational Sciences  in that city. of Education of that city, where he is completing a  master's degree in History and Memory.

He  is also a researcher in the Research Department of  the Buenos Aires  Historical Archives.  He is currently coordinating the Oral History Workshop on the first Buenos Aires Peronists, the veterans of the Malvinas and the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in La Plata.
 As the  Program Coordinator of the Oral History Archives William Clark has developed (among other activities) two oral history programs "Memory in Motion" (1999) and "Memory with Image " (2000-2003).

Last 18 December 2008, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Oral History Programme was presented. This project has been put into practice in the city of La Plata and will be extended to the rest of the province of Buenos Aires.  On the same day, Dematti Adelina Alayan’s collection of documents was declared a UNESCO Memory of the World.
In relation to the importance of the recovery of these 'space of memory' for countries such as Argentina that lived the horrors  of dictatorships , we undertook the following interview with William Clarke.

L. B - What was your first contact with oral history?
G. C.-Contact with the Oral History came in various ways. To begin with, by the mid-90s a new generation of historians from the Historical Archives, found ourselves responding to requests received from across  the Province of Buenos Aires. One request, for example, explained that his school had no history as its records  were lost in a flood; another reported  that  residents of a certain village rejected its founding date as it did not agree with memories of the town's elders.  In principle--and following our intuition and belief that history is collective-- we began to use oral sources. We contacted Graciela Saez of the Historical Archives of Morón and Liliana Barela Institute of Historical Institute in Buenos Aires and discovered that beyond our  good intentions, there was a substantial theoretical base to learn and like all oral historians, we were self-taught. .When I speak in the plural, I refer to those who created the Oral History Program in the Provincial Historical Archives such as Alice Sarno, John Ghisiglieri and myself. In Chivilcoy in 1998, we organized the first provincial  Oral History meeting. During this event  we noted that oral sources were being used throughout our vast province. 
 L.B. -What led you to gather these sources in your research?
 G.C -As a researcher interested in social history, I always look in  the sources for the human and subjective side, even if these were written, for example, in the eighteenth century. Carlos Moya, my professor of colonial history, showed me that we could attempt to "interview" these documents and find within court declarations, passion, breakups and the world-visions of a gaucho. It is a short step from there to Oral History  when dealing with recent history. Oral history is a powerful tool to unravel the subjectivities and meanings that we persue to understand the past.
 L.B.- What differences, particularly in methodological, do you find between using traditional and oral sources in your research?
G.C.- I think in the case of the recent past Argentine oral sources have an added value created by the the shortage, deliberate removal and unreliability of written sources. These characteristics are found in the three areas that our research team is working on. In the case of Buenos Aires Peronism that governed for thrity years (with the exception of the period between 1973 and 1976),  administrative policy created a situation where official archives (and ours in particular) contain few references to the government of Domingo Mercante of the Province of Buenos Aires (1946-1952). We should also remember that this government had already suffered censure by Peron's government and with Mercante's fall, the silence only deepened. This documentary void--this silence--makes this research project as important as any other  topic.

The other large topic which we are focusing on is the Falklands War. Here we are working with sources created from interviewing former combatants. Again, we encounter the silence, falsification and destruction of documentation by the state and the armed forces, alongside the silence from a society that for many years did not want to know (and did not ask) and the combatants silenced by indifference.   It is worth noting that these people were forced to sig a declaration pledging not to speak of what they had seen in the Falklands. In these cases of former combatants,   oral sources are invaluable. Life stories of happy childhoods,  teenage years lived under the dictatorship and war experiences  are all different. This diversity is also true when speaking of the case of two soldiers who shared a trench and the harshness of the war;  later they also coincide with democracy and Argentine forgetting, silence and even in suicide, whose numbers equal those killed in combat.

Currently, I am working on a third topic that involves the Madres de Plaza de Mayo [The Mothers of May Square]. In this project, Oral History allows us to look at each woman's life histories. Ranging between eighty and ninety years old, these women's stories are particularly revealing: in most cases [the testimonies] deal with people who had lived up to the cultural parameters expected for their gender until the disappearance of their children. Many come from Argentina's large middle class and include housewives and teachers. Some speak of not being allowed outside as children without the supervision of parents or siblings in their youth, while later not leaving their towns without their husbands and families. Suddenly the unimaginable occurred and they found themselves the plaza organizing, learning to speak in code, writing requested and facing some the fiercest forces in history, questioning the institutions on which they had built their subjectivity. From the oral history interview one can come to understand that the world that each person surrounds himself or herself and  in this find new answers to the historical processes of the twentieth century, such as the great cultural transformations, politics and the many responses to state terrorism through using  tools crafted  for ancient processes. 

 L.B.-How do traditional and oral sources "get on" in the Archive?   Did you find any resistance to include them? What arguments were used?
G.C.-Today, we can say that oral sources and more traditional sources coexist symbiotically. Indeed, one needs the other; moreover the issue is how historians can live with both without feeling bigamous.

Beyond this game of words, with the Madres de Plaza de Mayo section in the Archives of the Province of Buenos Aires we can showcase an ideal situation a parallel process with the incorporation of one of the most important written and photographic collections. Here, I refer to the archive of Adelina Dematti that was declared Memory of the World by UNESCO in 2006 and has been evidence in court cases against those responsible for repression.  At the same time, we have started the oral history program with the Madres de Plaza de Mayo that have generated other sources.  As I mentioned before these new sources create a dialogue with the past. To put it differently, oral sources make written documents speak or reveal new things: a picture that captured a moment of anxiety and tension in a protest may suddenly be put in context with a testimony of laughter giving details of what actually happened at that instant. Here, a specific photo activates a memory. In one example, Adelina Alay appears in a ten day hunger strike in Quilmes with his right hand bandaged. In her testimony, Adelina said that she hit her arm several times against a table to obtain  a medical license in the school where she worked.

L.B. Could you give us an anecdote of an interview that has been important to you as a researcher?
G.C. I always remember anything that was related to  issues such as reliability, accuracy and places like that when it took away from oral history. While I was working on a project involving provincial Peronism, I focused on interviewing children who had been present at the inauguration of the Republic of Children (the predecessor of the famous Disneyland). This theme park sums up the characteristics of the first Peronist government in the province of Buenos Aires. It also was one of the probable causes of enmity towards the government of Peron and Eva. In the opening ceremony, there were thousands of children. Peron attended, but not Eva --she was now gravely ill and was not able to attend; nonetheless, many of those interviewed claimed to have seen Evita that day and some women even described the clothes she wore. What was this about? A collective error? There was a factor or rather a series of factors starting with children's subjective view of  Eva Perón. For children, Eva Peron was omnipresent and associated with children's rights. Children even perceived the essence of the conflict between between the government of Colonel merchant Eva and the resulting competition between the two. These findings were very interesting. 

In our country there is much that suggests that there is a lack of understanding about conservation. The lack of support from the state and cultural institutions for recovering and preserving historical memory is often coupled with indifference and  neglect by society in general. Fortunately, in recent years, this situation is beginning to change. This is seen among many projects currently underway in Argentina, such as the work of the Oral History Archives of the Province of Buenos Aires. 

Linda Shopes once said that oral history projects in community have a tremendous potential to change a people's relationship with its past ... and its future. Taking the past out of the realm of the trivial and nostalgic and begin to generate awareness about history as the story of human action and human choice.  

Laura Benadiba
lbenadiba@yahoo.com.ar

SPAIN

Asturias: The Archive of Oral Sources for Asturian Oral History (AFOHSA).

AFOHSA came to life in 1999, in response to the growing need to gather and preserve the collective memories of the Asturian people. Before that time, the region lacked an oral history archive capable of being a reference point for specialists. The creation of the archive, on the one hand, overcame the internal limitations of oral source creation in individual research projects. On the other hand, it provided a space for ad hoc oral source generation, in addition to private research efforts such as the collective research of universities.

Between 2003 and 2005, groundwork research was conducted, resulting in the realization of 85 interviews that recorded the in life histories of their subjects. This work was achieved with the assistance of the Foundation for the Promotion of Scientific and Technological Investigation (Fundación para el Fomento en Asturias de la Investigación Científica y la Tecnología - FICYT). The realization of these interviews provided the raw material for the foundations of the archive.

From 2007 to 2008, AFOHSA became an archive of reference for oral history research. With the support of the University of Oviedo, a grant was received from the Council of Education and Science of the Principality of Asturias. The archive provided a perfect space for the preservation and storage of the interviews. The archivists also began the challenging work of transferring old cassette-based materials into modern digital formats, in addition to cataloguing those materials in conformity with rigorous archival criteria. Also, the archive undertook the process of gaining succession rights over previous investigation projects. Furthermore, it delved into the task of bringing to life individual specialized seminars. The archive also established its own website.

Since August 2008, AFOHSA has counted on the help of the Ministry of Science and Innovation, through the IDI national plan. This assistance guarantees the continuance of the archive and makes possible groundbreaking oral history work. Linked to this is the ambitious project of recovering the oral history of Asturian work cultures. The theoretical groundwork has been defined and, since 2009, field work has been undertaken.
AFOHSA’s organization is governed by the General International Norm for Archival Description (ISAD – G), in its second version. AFOHSA has a unique foundation structured organically and functionally around three parts. The first consists of the archive’s administrative management of the organization. It operates independently and services only the administrative needs of maintaining the administrative dimension of the organization, rather than the archives users themselves. The second part of the archive functions around a series of five oral testimonies which are denominated following the contents of the research projects themselves. Some are yielded to the archive and others are produced by the archive itself.

The only series presently open for consultation is the first part; Asturian Life Histories. The other parts, for the moment, are awaiting finalization of archival cataloguing. They are currently in the process of being prepared for public access. They include the following collections: Labour Lawyers; Voices from the Past; Oral Testimonies of Political Repression and Violence in Asturias; the Asturian Strikes of 1962 and Work Cultures in Asturias. The archive also has a third section which includes the recordings of the proceedings of meetings, conferences and seminars undertaken since 2003.

The Life Histories Series is made up of 85 oral testimonies recorded on magnetic tape, and organized in 55 units. In order to facilitate consultation and to preference preservation of the original material, copies on CD-R and DVD-R have been made in 5 units, producing more than 2000 hours of recordings.

The testimonies of manual workers (especially miners) make up the major part of the recordings. Also featured are the testimonies of lawyers, priests, farmers and other professions (fisherman, assistants, textile workers and nurses). The testimonials of Asturian housewives (with or without employment outside the home) makeup a total of 18 cases. More than half have developed some political or trade union activity, in either the communist, socialist or Christian apostolate ranks. Some isolated cases associationism with anarcho-syndicalist, falangist or minority sincialist interests also exist. The majority of the testimonies (more than 40%) are made up of people between 70 and 80 years of age, with another 25% being over 80 years of age.

Irene Díaz Martínez afohsa@uniovi.es
Coordinadora del AFOHSA

Basque Country: Guide to sources on the Civil War in the Basque Country

In 2006, to mark the seventieth anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, the Basque Regional Government's Department of Culture asked us to direct a program on documentation and bibliographic sources on the Civil War (1936-1939) in that region of Spain. A team of six researchers from the History-Geography Section of the Society of Basque Studies carried out the project, with a network of 28 colleagues in Europe and America. Completed in 2008, this guide will soon be published in a book by the Basque Government. It covers the period from the Civil War, from July 18, 1936 until April 1, 1939, and includes the provinces of Alava, Guipuzcoa and Biscay, which form the current Basque Country.

This guide begins by considering current historiographical thought concerning the Civil War in the Basque Country. After this we addressed the more extensive core issues, concerning archives and documentation centers. Given the broad amount of information gathered, we decided to create a joint edition for this part of the guide: the 328 archives will be included in DVD format. Fifteen of them are also published on paper, both for their importance in studying the Civil War in the Basque Country and to bear witness to the work done. All the archives were in a standard format with three sections: the data needed to query their location and a description of their funds and tools of documentary description existing catalogues, inventories, databases and related literature. The 328 archives originate from various provinces, communities and countries: 202 belong to the Basque Country, 38 were from eight other regions of Spain, 59 in ten European countries and 29 in seven Latin American countries. Sources vary and include those from national archives as well documents from military, ministry, diplomats, clergy, academic, provincial, municipal, political parties and unions, associations and foundations, financial institutions and professional associations, museums and photography archives, centers of the Basque overseas and some private collections.

One section of the guide deals with the 173 Basque journals published between July 1936 and April 1939, both in the Basque Country and overseas in the European and American diaspora, with basic data. Another section includes films about the Civil War in the Basque Country and hundreds of documentaries, both films for television, video or DVD, with relevant production data and brief synopsis. Its geographical scope encompasses several countries in Europe and America.

The guide's broad, central focus is a collection of sources and oral testimonies of those who lived through the Civil War, including not only those published in books and documentary films, but also abundant unpublished material located in eleven oral archives and collections, highlighted for their quantity and quality in Irargi, the Center for Documentary Heritage of the Basque Country (Bergara, Guipuzcoa. Other collections include oral archives (such as the Church Archives of Biscay, the Basque Ikaskuntza, the Archives of Oral History the Eibar or Ronald Fraser collections). Some of them are still being developed, such as the oral and documentary collection of journalist Aitor Urkizu concerning the repression in the Basque Country. Specific archives of these centers with the description of its collections and the relationship of the informants. in all, several hundred men and women who have given their oral or written testimony about the conflict in the Basque Country. Some agreed to share their identity (at least a given and surname) or remain anonymous (given name, pseudonym or initials). This work is vital for the recovery of collective memory, currently sought throughout Spain.

The Civil War in Spain has generated an enormous body of literature. Much of this relates to the conflict in the Basque Country, especially the most controversial event: the bombing and destruction of Gernika. This guide includes an extensive bibliography to compensate for the lack of up-to-date printed source materials. This makes sense because many of the works included are in this format, published during the Civil War period and during the dictatorship (1936–75) which is the largest part of the guide. Most of the subsequently published material of the last three decades (1975-07) is included along with another section from the so-called Transition period (1975-82). The latter was a golden age of personal memories and oral testimony from those who lived through it but were silenced for so many years. Both bibliographies add several thousand titles, including books, pamphlets and journals published in major languages throughout Europe and the Americas.

The guide ends with a detailed Civil War chronology, highlighting the major events in both Spain and the Basque Country in the Republican and Franco Nationalist sides, and several addenda list films, the main libraries, archives and documentation Centers consulted.

We believe this guide is a pioneering work in source work, unparalleled by any other Civil War document in geographic and thematic scope, as Professor Angel Viñas acknowledge in the preface. It can serve as a model to carry out similar work in other regions or concerning other relevant events. Henceforth it will be a consultative reference work for any historical research on the Civil War in the Basque Country, facilitating historians’ arduous task of tracking down sources. In this sense, it is an essential tool. In addition, it can help others locate documentation in various archives of the Spanish military and civilian libraries concerning the victims of war, for the survivors or their relatives. And we hope to help improve the knowledge about this crucial twentieth century period that was the Spanish Civil War.

From 2006, the Aranzadi Science Society multidisciplinary team of historians, anthropologists and physical anthropologists has been investigating the social consequences of the Civil War and Franco's first years (1936-45) in Tolosa, Guipuzcoa province. This study aims to document how the war and subsequent dictatorship affected the local citizens and their social networks in response to claims by victims who want to uncover the truth concerning events so long ignored. Various initiatives have been carried out so far including:
 

• Creating a database of original historical documents, oral literature, organized according to the social action of each recorded person (to date 4962 people are included or one third of the population).
• Documentation on the development of the war and its consequences.
• Exploration, identification and digging up of several mass graves.
• Recording of testimonies of those individuals and / or relatives who endured different aspects of the war.
• Provide information to victims and / or relatives who might request it.

Mikel Errazkin Agirrezabala merrazkin@aranzadi-zientziak.org
Sociedad de Ciencias Aranzadi

Galicia: The Galician Oral History Project

The Oral History of Galicia resource was initiated at the end of the 1980s by Isaura Varela, Professor of Contemporary History of Spain at the USC, in collaboration with Marc Wouters and Xurxo Pantaleon. At the moment, the resource consists of more than 1500 interviews and their transcriptions, which concern events of Galicia’s most recent history.

The key themes referenced in the resource material are: repression during the Civil War; exile; emigration to America and Europe; and references to nutrition, daily life and education in Galicia.

From 1987, the resource’s collection process has been founded on two principles. First, to recover the memory of Galicia which is being lost with the passing of its elderly. Secondly, to raise the consciousness of students of contemporary history concerning the importance and necessity of recovering that memory and the history of their own land. During the first phase of development, a grant was acquired from the Xunta de Galicia, the Galician local government, which permitted the creation of a basic infrastructure (tape recorders and filing cabinets). The faculty was able to provide a small space where work could be carried out and the results of interviews could be archived. Alongside this, the working team kept up frequent meetings in which the objectives of the project were discussed and student’s enthusiasm and focus was fostered.

Without the existence of a specific oral history subject in the faculty, the team had to create parallel seminars for the students of Professor Varela Gonzalez, in which the students were introduced to the methodological questions. Interview results were also discussed and, within the realm of possibility, solutions were found to the challenges raised of travelling to and from interview locations. These beginnings were difficult. Many of the members of the university community looked upon the « experiment » with scepticism. But with great enthusiasm and vision, Historga continued its work, facing and overcoming many of the usual ups and downs that new projects come upon. And we continue.

At the moment, our theme of study is focusing on the history of Galician women from 1936 to 1945. Our objective is to understand those tragic years of war and survival, as told through life stories. The seminars concerning “Women and Civil War: survive in times of hunger, 1936-1945”, are intended for students in their fourth year of studies, as an option within the broad curriculum. They are delivered and assessed as part of the final evaluation. As a way of avoiding an excessive number of students in each seminar, which would make it difficult to accompany each student fully, the seminar is held for a maximum of between six and eight students, during four sessions of two hours each. Between the first two and the last two sessions there is a break period, during which the students can undertake their respective interviews and produce transcriptions.

The outcome of the seminars consists of a collaborative work produced by the team which covers the content of all of the interviews realized. Logically, the geographical locations of the interviewed subjects are conditioned by the residence of the students. Inevitably, certain Galician provinces receive greater representation than others in the Historga resource. This is, unfortunately, a consequence of the financial constraints of the organization. No easy solution to this problem is at hand.

At the moment, we are contining  with the same seminars of oral sources, aiming to maintain the interest and expectations of the students of contemporary history, without whose efforts Historga could not exist. Amongst the propositions for the future is the aim of publishing the testimonies recovered thus far.

Isaura Varela González
Universidad de Santiago de Compostela
isaura.varela@usc.es 

Navarre: Forced labor in the Pyrenees: Oral evidence of the Franco concentration camps.

For the past 5 years, the Memoriaren Bideak group (The Path of Memories) and the Uztariz Gerónimo Historical Institute have been researching how anti-Franco prisoners were forced to work on road crews in the western Pyrenees. This initiative combines historical research and social outreach to recognize formally those who suffered this repression and try to understand the economic impact that these jobs had on consolidating the dictatorship in Spain.

Extensive research has been carried out on this topic, supplemented by the oral testimonies of dozens of people who worked building roads. These accounts enable us to understand the Franco regime’s complex concentration camp system which extended well beyond the barb wire fences. The work has been fostered by different activities including the exhibition “Slavery under Franco: Road and Fortress Construction in the Western Pyrenees,” the documentary film, “Outcasts” directed by Eguzki Bideoak, the library catalogue “Forced Labour in the Franco dictatorship” which was put together by different specialists. There is even a web page which is progressively collecting more testimonies (www.esclavitudbajoelfranquismo.org).

From May 1937, amid civil war, Franco’s supporters organized a complex network of forced labour camps that exploited nearly 150,000 people in different organizational structures, controlled mostly by the Inspección de Campos de Concentración de Prisioneros (Concentration Camp Prisoner Inspectorate). After the war, the Pyrenees came to be considered a strategic concern so the government launched plans to defend the country by building roads and fortresses where several thousand prisoners (some 20,000 in all) worked in the western region of the Pyrenees.

Regarding everyday prison life and their treatment, the testimonies provide an important insight into Franco's correctional rhetoric. Even as the work crew regulation proclaims how this work benefited the New Spain, Granada-based Andrés Millan’s work shows a very different image of that reality in which terror is the main teaching tool. As he recalls “Our spirit ... was broken. We were herded like wet cattle, beaten by the shepherd as he felt like it, with no emotions, no defence, cowering indifferently. (...) like being on death row ... waiting for our number to be called."

One of the most sensitive aspects of the research was the interviews with the soldiers who guarded the prisoners. In this sense, these presented an array of images which, in some cases, portrayed harshness of the situation while others describe idealized situations of coexistence between the guards and the guarded, as if we were all brothers." This diversity not only reveals the complex world of personal memory, especially for those who infringed on other people's human rights.

Beyond the barbed wire, the testimonies of villagers in the Pyrenees and the families of prisoners help us understand the social impact of forced labour. Those who were mere children of 10 years old in those days have never forgotten seeing that parade of famished prisoners, being beaten and even killed, or the army officers occupying their homes. Moreover, family solidarity, and especially women's work was crucial to the survival of the prisoners and their families, as José García Faya of Asturias relates: “My father was in prison, my mother had five siblings at home (...) My mother was left with three or four cows that saved her life (...) by selling that milk, she could just manage.”

Finally, these interviews allowed us to delve once more into the interrelationships between personal and family memories and public policy of memory. We find the people develop a variety of strategies for remembering and forgetting family memories, as in the case of the daughters of the Biscayan prisoner Txomin Uriarte, who had sung with him throughout their life, songs he had composed in captivity. As  Marisol Celis described the interview with her father Vicente: “ I never heard my father talk about this, (...)  do you understand? I never thought he had gone through so much,” to which Vincente then replied:  “I did not want to talk to them about this. Why? Why upset them? (...) What can I say? Bad things? Well I just kept my mouth shut!"

Understanding this silence from a historical perspective involves dealing with the politics of memory during the dictatorship and also in the Transition. Both involved a blanket silence concerning forced labour. Policies aimed at stifling memory may be understandable in a dictatorial regime, but reveal the political shortcomings of the Transition era as well. Even today, despite some institutional initiatives and funding, the so-called Law of historical memory has been criticized generally and especially regarding forced labour. Memories of slavery seem to lack any educational and social use and thus the companies that turned a profit from this slavery have not been required to compensate any of the victims or families involved. Nor has any democratic use been found for the most Francoist of all monuments, the Monastery of the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen), near Madrid, which was built largely by prison workers.

Since June 2004, the Memoriaren Bideak group has made an annual tribute to the prisoners of Franco at the Roncal Valley, a commemoration that began with the placement of a memorial sculpture on the Igal Vidángoz highway. In 2008 a sculpture will also be placed on another road that was built by prisoners, at the instigation of these two associations and the town council of Valle del Baztan, in Navarre.

Fernando Mendiola Gonzalo fernando.mendiola@unavarra.es
Member of the Asociación Memoriaren Bideak and lecturer at the Public University of Navarre – Nafarroako Unibertsitate Públikoa

UNITED KINGDOM

The Niños: Memories of refugee children of the Spanish Civil War. Oral History Project.

The University of Southampton (UK), in partnership with Hampshire Archives and Local Studies, have embarked on a project to record the memories of the refugee children of the Spanish Civil War. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the project aims to record 30 life stories of the ‘niños’ who were evacuated to Britain in 1937 following the bombing of Gernika in the Basque Country.  

Volunteers trained in oral history techniques will record in-depth interviews with niños and niñas who eventually settled in the UK, to understand not only their experiences of evacuation and exile, but also the question of return, and the complex issues that arise from forced migration and displacement. By following a life story approach, the project aims to also document their entire life trajectory – memories of Spain before the war; and also how this life-changing event of leaving homes and families for a new country at such a young age has shaped the rest of their lives and those of their families.

Photo 1. Launch of Los Niños touring exhibition at the University of Southampton on the first day of the Conference 'Coming Home - Conflict and Return Migration in 20th century Europe (1-3 April 2009)’

The recordings and any related material such as photographs and documents will form a permanent public archive at the Special Collections of the University of Southampton Hartley Library. This oral archive will eventually be joined by the archive of the Basque Children of ’37 Association UK that is also to be deposited at the University of Southampton in the near future.  

Photo 2. Some volunteers and supporters of Los Niños Oral History Project at the exhibition launch (Southampton, 1 April 2009).

This project also aims to disseminate this lesser known story to a wider audience through a touring exhibition, a popular publication, a website with images and sound extracts and an educational resource pack with a DVD and a book of activities to be used in secondary education.  

The touring exhibition was launched during the Coming Home: Conflict and Return Migration conference that was held at the University of Southampton between 1-3 April 2009. Over the next year it will be displayed at a variety of venues across the region to raise awareness of this largely forgotten event in the history of Spain and the UK.  

The conception of this project stems from the ideas that were generated amongst a group of niños, researchers and representatives of community groups and institutions following a successful symposium, Exploring the Experience of Exile, in 2007, which brought together surviving niños, their children, and present-day refugees. This symposium, held as part of a series of events to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the evacuation and arrival of the niños in Southampton, highlighted the urgency to record these memories before it was too late (for a report on this symposium in IOHA newsletter see issue Vol 16:2 June 2008). The Niños Project now represents a further step in the collaborative and enriching ethos that emerged between academia and community at that symposium.

Padmini Broomfield and Alicia Pozo-Gutiérrez
e-mail: A.POZO-GUTIERREZ@soton.ac.uk

UNITED STATES

Following the Steps of Gamio: Mexican Immigrants in California. [Los Pasos de Gamio: Cultura y Migración Mexicana en los Estados Unidos].

In the year of 1930 Manuel Gamio, one of the most salient Mexican anthropologists of the 20th Century, published the results of his research project documenting the experience of Mexican immigrants in the US (Gamio, 1971[1930]). The oral histories collected by faculty and students associated to this project revisit the different aspects of migration explored by Gamio.

Mirroring the work of Gamio has the potential to illuminate not only what has changed throughout the decades, but to show in what fundamental ways we conceptualize the question of migration, culture and memory differently today. To look back at the work of Gamio today is interesting too because when he was publishing his book –not unlike today- the US was facing a major economic recession that brought migrants to the forefront of the political life and public imagination. The hardships of the Great Depression are often related to stories of forced migration and strained social relationships. As we enter now into a likely period of depression of global proportions, the review becomes pertinent and timely.

The stories cover different aspects such as the process of integration into the host culture, entrepreneurial experiences, labor history and family. I have selected a case of an immigrant from the state of Jalisco who decided to write his experience and vision of the world for present and future generations in a book that he entitled Atomorfósica. His manuscript painstakingly written by hand, is a collection of stories, philosophical views and contentions on science that speak of a world view marked by the experience of migration and trans-cultural life. His life story is a reminder of how Mexican immigration has intertwined culturally, politically and economically the two nations to a degree that was unimaginable at the time the Mexican anthropologist was conducting his research.

Juan José Gutiérrez juan_gutierrez@csumb.edu
California State University, Monterey Bay.