(Editor’s note: Some of the following is paraphrased from an original article, in The New York Times Magazine, by Nicolas Casey, updated Oct. 5, 2022. It rang a bell with the author relating current candidates and their hero, blaspheming and spouting Make America Strong Again. –eeb).
By Ashley Herndon
OCEANSIDE, Calif. | In this election cycle before any of us endorse theocratic proto-fascism as a “good” alternative to our democratic republic, understand a miserably failed movement .
Herndon
“Spain’s Francisco Franco called himself Caudillo, meaning ‘strongman,’ and once in power, quickly began stripping away social freedoms. Up to the early 1930s, Spain (having overcome some historical terrors,) was among Europe’s most progressive countries.”
Under Franco, Spain changed in many ways:
- It no longer allowed married couples to divorce;
- Women could seek abortions, up until under Franco, when those rights were swiftly rescinded;
- Contraception was outlawed;
- Adultery was criminalized;
- Women lost the right to vote;
- Newspapers were censored; and
- Many books were banned.
“Franco’s ‘Falange’ even published a ‘schedule for homemakers’ outlining times to take children to school, bleach clothes and prepare dinners.”
The following paragraph really got my attention when I was in college and recently when reviewing Casey’s article.
“One of the lasting abuses of the era was borne by children. In the late 1930s and 1940s, Antonio Vallejo-Nájera, a leading psychiatrist in the regime, who was trained in Nazi Germany, promoted the idea of a Marxist ‘red gene,’ carried only by the children of Franco’s left-wing opponents. The gene, he said, might be suppressed by removing children from their birth mothers and placing them with conservative families. Franco’s men began the abductions on a large scale. They targeted children orphaned by Franco’s firing squads and took newborns belonging to women who had given birth in jail as political prisoners. All were sent to be raised by regime loyalists. The era of the ‘stolen babies’ had begun.”
The article continues: “Franco’s rule also marked a dramatic turn for the Catholic Church, which sadly allowed its nuns and priests to become partners of his right-wing regime. They commanded the education system, where children were to be instructed in Catholic values, learning to read using the Bible. Franco also ceded oversight of parts of the state-run hospital system to the clergy. Nuns often sat alongside top management at hospitals, helping to select staff and overseeing the budget. But their influence was perhaps strongest in the hospitals’ charity floors that took in the poor. There, the nuns were often deployed to encourage single mothers to give their babies up for adoption by married couples.
“Some nuns — aided by doctors, nurses, and midwives — began to abduct babies to meet demand. In certain cases, the nuns still managed to persuade mothers to give up their children willingly, though many say they were coerced into surrendering their newborns. Others say they were sedated in the delivery room and then told, when they woke up, that their babies had died. In reality, the children had been sold to other families.”
If the reader finds some similarities today, it becomes decision time. How do we want to live and what do we want to pass on to our children and grandchildren?
I choose democracy, and hope the majority of my fellow citizens do as well. The proof is Writ Large if we do not.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Follow Us