The View from Madrid
m. | 12.03.2004 15:09 | World
Today in Madrid.
This has been one of those days that is an event, a sea change, and the air feels weird. After today it will not be the same as before. There is none of the talk, as there was in the US a couple of years ago, of lost innocence and betrayed faith. The question is political. To understand what is happening here and what today's gruesome bombings mean one has to understand the Spanish scene a bit.
As soon as the trains explode the immediate assumption is that it was ETA, the radios and televisions talk about ETA, all the engines of indignation are primed, all the politicians make strident pronunciations about national unity and the inviolability of the constitution. ETA is a magic word in Spain. It is the word that silences all dissent, rallies all parties. So incredibly effective is the tactic of associating - or threatening to associate - any contradictory voices with ETA that no one dares to speak. Nothing can be said. In everything that has to do with the Basque question the left gets very quiet, the social movements step aside - when they close newspapers, when they take prisoners arbitrarily among young Basques and torture them in jail, when they illegalize a major political party and ransack its offices - the rest of Europe howls in alarm and within Spain there is echoing silence. Every move ETA makes is another little victory for the rightist Popular Party and their Spanish nationalist discourse, another little justification for a general economy of fear, suspicion and control.
Some weeks ago a leftist Catalan politician did the unthinkable and met with representatives of ETA. Soon after, a ceasefire was announced in Catalonia. This was an enormous scandal, criminal, perhaps treasonous: what kind of a monster would sit at a negotiating table with terrorists? What kind of a monster would accept a partial ceasefire, protecting Barcelona and leaving Madrid exposed? With the national presidential campaign in full swing, everyone - the Popular Party, the Socialists, the various liberal Basque and Catalan parties - hustled to distance themselves from the affair. The PP lambasted all the others for their supposed lenience with terrorists, and the others duly cowered. Every radio frequency and every printing press trembled and buzzed with the words 'Spain,' 'National Unity', 'Constitution.'
Thus, any action on the part of ETA could only be a triumph for the PP: demonstrating that indeed there is immediate peril, that indeed the Catalans did buy their safety at the price of Madrid's. Any action by ETA leaves the whole left stuck in a very uncomfortable silence, condemning terrorism, mourning loss, but unable to also condemn the way the PP uses ETA to chanticleer its securitarian centralist policies. So the _quo bono_ is clear.
But why would ETA do this? They have long been politically off the deep end and I certainly don't feel in any position to explain any of the choices they make, but they have maintained their basic principle of chosing specific targets among the political class, maintained at least some element of their Marxist heritage. The trains that were bombed today were coming from the most marginal of the working-class peripheral neighborhoods, largely inhabited by migrants and gypsies. Aznar, echoing Bush's "they hate us because we are free" has declared that "they killed them for being Spanish." In fact, a huge percent of the dead are migrants, many without papers, many whose families are too afraid of the police to go claim the bodies.
Around the rest of Europe and the US the hypothesis that the bombings were produced by Al Qaeda was circulating since midday: here in Madrid the media has treated that hypothesis as a "subversive campaign" and suppressed it entirely. The government has called for a massive demonstration under the slogan "With the victims, For the Constitution, Against Terrorism." "For the Constitution," you must understand, is to say 'for the centralized state', perhaps even 'for the present government': the Spanish Constitution of 1978 was a compromise made to facilitate the transition from Francoism, but which left many (from the Left and from the autonomous regions) extremely dissatisfied. It continues to be a point of tension. Thus the demonstration proposed is a means of gathering up all the pain and fear and anger and confusion of the people and soldering this into a national consensus of support for the PP, a ban on any criticism. Three days before elections.
Now as I troll through newspapers all around the the world, the hypothesis that Al Qaeda is responsible for the attacks seems more and more generally confirmed. Still the Spanish news insists on ETA. Who knows? As was the case with September 11th, to the degree that I don't have any access to the truth or any criteria for judging what is true and what is not in this case, what is important to think about is not so much 'who did it' as 'what are the consequences.' On the level of immediate consequences, many people from social movements breathed a sigh of relief to hear that Al Qaeda claimed the bombings: at least about that we have something to say. At least about that we can intervene, we can respond with things like: "This is the fault of the government that got us involved in a global war despite the opposition of 90% of the population." Or we can denounce them for having assumed it was ETA. Or we can group around the migrants' organizations, which will no doubt find themselves bombarded by a new intensified islamophobic criminalization. For this at least we have some kind of critical discourse, some way of saying 'neither this not that' which in the case of ETA we do not.
Needless to say I feel very ambivalent about this sigh of relief. Indeed, in the very short term and on a very immediate level (that is to say: what should we do about the demonstration this afternoon?) the probability that the bombings were authored by Al Qaeda rather than ETA changes the equation: there is even the possibility that the demonstration change its general message from 'all together with the Constitution and the PP' to 'all together against the PP and its bellicism'. This could have electoral effects. Maybe. But bigger effects? Because on Sunday when the elections are over we have to go on living in the world and see what this means for Spain and for Europe in the global war, what further barbarities this attack serves to justify. Syria? Iran? I tremble to think. If this were the US I am sure that the emerging discourse would be (from those in power) 'see how bad they are? see how we were right going to war?' and from those not in power 'we were against the war before, but now they have attacked us and now there is no going back, onward to the apocalypse and total victory.' In Spain, however, its not so clear what will come out of this. It could go any of several ways. It is important to intervene, to produce discourses, to prevent that the worst conclusions be drawn. It is also important to think seriously about the question of Al Qaeda and not dedicate ourselves exclusively to the sort of intuitive alchemy that permits us to convert any new bad guys into 'los malos de siempre' and continue, unchanged and unrevised, the kneejerk denunciations of the state, capitalism, globalization, militarization, etc. etc.
But astonishingly, as time passes, the radios, the televisions, the special edition newspapers continue to talk uniformly and exclusively about ETA, continue to dismiss hypotheses of Al Qaeda as 'subversive'. How long can they maintain this? Until after the demonstration this afternoon? Until after the elections Sunday? In a globalized world of international information saturation, how is it possible to maintain a separate and hermetic 'truth' in Spain? (More or less as they have in the US...) Now all attention focusses on the heroic interventions of the firefighters and the doctors and the citizen volunteers.
So in the very short term: do we go to the demonstration? How? Many are afraid that we will get beaten up there, just because it will be a big party of the right-wing centralists crowing against ETA and that anyone with a sort of lefty look who shows up will be in danger, not only of cooptation but of real violence. not to mention anyone that goes with the explicit intention of interrupting the blood-consecrated consensus. This is Spain, after all, and 1936 never dies, it is compulsively resurrected and reproduced by all parties. So do we stay home, hide, let them take the day and use the blood of all these poor people to the greater glory of the united crusader state of Spain? And the elections? In a year of war, of ecological disaster, of augmented persecution of migrants, of broken labor agreements, of the growing power of the Church in schools and services, of widespread wife-murder (and its approbation by the Church), of onslaught against gay rights, of realestate speculation and housing crisis, etc etc can we afford to stay home and let terrorism work its consolidating magic: all together behind the state, there is no alternative.
What is clear is that we have to take a camera, just to see what happens when the left, the right, the nationalists, the migrants, the islamophobes, the muslims, everyone has reason to demonstrate and no one knows exactly how or why or against whom or for what and there we all will be, each with our interpretation of the question, our interrogation or demand for transparency or lament or blame or...
Off to a meeting to decide what to do. Just wanted to share the view from here.
This has been one of those days that is an event, a sea change, and the air feels weird. After today it will not be the same as before. There is none of the talk, as there was in the US a couple of years ago, of lost innocence and betrayed faith. The question is political. To understand what is happening here and what today's gruesome bombings mean one has to understand the Spanish scene a bit.
As soon as the trains explode the immediate assumption is that it was ETA, the radios and televisions talk about ETA, all the engines of indignation are primed, all the politicians make strident pronunciations about national unity and the inviolability of the constitution. ETA is a magic word in Spain. It is the word that silences all dissent, rallies all parties. So incredibly effective is the tactic of associating - or threatening to associate - any contradictory voices with ETA that no one dares to speak. Nothing can be said. In everything that has to do with the Basque question the left gets very quiet, the social movements step aside - when they close newspapers, when they take prisoners arbitrarily among young Basques and torture them in jail, when they illegalize a major political party and ransack its offices - the rest of Europe howls in alarm and within Spain there is echoing silence. Every move ETA makes is another little victory for the rightist Popular Party and their Spanish nationalist discourse, another little justification for a general economy of fear, suspicion and control.
Some weeks ago a leftist Catalan politician did the unthinkable and met with representatives of ETA. Soon after, a ceasefire was announced in Catalonia. This was an enormous scandal, criminal, perhaps treasonous: what kind of a monster would sit at a negotiating table with terrorists? What kind of a monster would accept a partial ceasefire, protecting Barcelona and leaving Madrid exposed? With the national presidential campaign in full swing, everyone - the Popular Party, the Socialists, the various liberal Basque and Catalan parties - hustled to distance themselves from the affair. The PP lambasted all the others for their supposed lenience with terrorists, and the others duly cowered. Every radio frequency and every printing press trembled and buzzed with the words 'Spain,' 'National Unity', 'Constitution.'
Thus, any action on the part of ETA could only be a triumph for the PP: demonstrating that indeed there is immediate peril, that indeed the Catalans did buy their safety at the price of Madrid's. Any action by ETA leaves the whole left stuck in a very uncomfortable silence, condemning terrorism, mourning loss, but unable to also condemn the way the PP uses ETA to chanticleer its securitarian centralist policies. So the _quo bono_ is clear.
But why would ETA do this? They have long been politically off the deep end and I certainly don't feel in any position to explain any of the choices they make, but they have maintained their basic principle of chosing specific targets among the political class, maintained at least some element of their Marxist heritage. The trains that were bombed today were coming from the most marginal of the working-class peripheral neighborhoods, largely inhabited by migrants and gypsies. Aznar, echoing Bush's "they hate us because we are free" has declared that "they killed them for being Spanish." In fact, a huge percent of the dead are migrants, many without papers, many whose families are too afraid of the police to go claim the bodies.
Around the rest of Europe and the US the hypothesis that the bombings were produced by Al Qaeda was circulating since midday: here in Madrid the media has treated that hypothesis as a "subversive campaign" and suppressed it entirely. The government has called for a massive demonstration under the slogan "With the victims, For the Constitution, Against Terrorism." "For the Constitution," you must understand, is to say 'for the centralized state', perhaps even 'for the present government': the Spanish Constitution of 1978 was a compromise made to facilitate the transition from Francoism, but which left many (from the Left and from the autonomous regions) extremely dissatisfied. It continues to be a point of tension. Thus the demonstration proposed is a means of gathering up all the pain and fear and anger and confusion of the people and soldering this into a national consensus of support for the PP, a ban on any criticism. Three days before elections.
Now as I troll through newspapers all around the the world, the hypothesis that Al Qaeda is responsible for the attacks seems more and more generally confirmed. Still the Spanish news insists on ETA. Who knows? As was the case with September 11th, to the degree that I don't have any access to the truth or any criteria for judging what is true and what is not in this case, what is important to think about is not so much 'who did it' as 'what are the consequences.' On the level of immediate consequences, many people from social movements breathed a sigh of relief to hear that Al Qaeda claimed the bombings: at least about that we have something to say. At least about that we can intervene, we can respond with things like: "This is the fault of the government that got us involved in a global war despite the opposition of 90% of the population." Or we can denounce them for having assumed it was ETA. Or we can group around the migrants' organizations, which will no doubt find themselves bombarded by a new intensified islamophobic criminalization. For this at least we have some kind of critical discourse, some way of saying 'neither this not that' which in the case of ETA we do not.
Needless to say I feel very ambivalent about this sigh of relief. Indeed, in the very short term and on a very immediate level (that is to say: what should we do about the demonstration this afternoon?) the probability that the bombings were authored by Al Qaeda rather than ETA changes the equation: there is even the possibility that the demonstration change its general message from 'all together with the Constitution and the PP' to 'all together against the PP and its bellicism'. This could have electoral effects. Maybe. But bigger effects? Because on Sunday when the elections are over we have to go on living in the world and see what this means for Spain and for Europe in the global war, what further barbarities this attack serves to justify. Syria? Iran? I tremble to think. If this were the US I am sure that the emerging discourse would be (from those in power) 'see how bad they are? see how we were right going to war?' and from those not in power 'we were against the war before, but now they have attacked us and now there is no going back, onward to the apocalypse and total victory.' In Spain, however, its not so clear what will come out of this. It could go any of several ways. It is important to intervene, to produce discourses, to prevent that the worst conclusions be drawn. It is also important to think seriously about the question of Al Qaeda and not dedicate ourselves exclusively to the sort of intuitive alchemy that permits us to convert any new bad guys into 'los malos de siempre' and continue, unchanged and unrevised, the kneejerk denunciations of the state, capitalism, globalization, militarization, etc. etc.
But astonishingly, as time passes, the radios, the televisions, the special edition newspapers continue to talk uniformly and exclusively about ETA, continue to dismiss hypotheses of Al Qaeda as 'subversive'. How long can they maintain this? Until after the demonstration this afternoon? Until after the elections Sunday? In a globalized world of international information saturation, how is it possible to maintain a separate and hermetic 'truth' in Spain? (More or less as they have in the US...) Now all attention focusses on the heroic interventions of the firefighters and the doctors and the citizen volunteers.
So in the very short term: do we go to the demonstration? How? Many are afraid that we will get beaten up there, just because it will be a big party of the right-wing centralists crowing against ETA and that anyone with a sort of lefty look who shows up will be in danger, not only of cooptation but of real violence. not to mention anyone that goes with the explicit intention of interrupting the blood-consecrated consensus. This is Spain, after all, and 1936 never dies, it is compulsively resurrected and reproduced by all parties. So do we stay home, hide, let them take the day and use the blood of all these poor people to the greater glory of the united crusader state of Spain? And the elections? In a year of war, of ecological disaster, of augmented persecution of migrants, of broken labor agreements, of the growing power of the Church in schools and services, of widespread wife-murder (and its approbation by the Church), of onslaught against gay rights, of realestate speculation and housing crisis, etc etc can we afford to stay home and let terrorism work its consolidating magic: all together behind the state, there is no alternative.
What is clear is that we have to take a camera, just to see what happens when the left, the right, the nationalists, the migrants, the islamophobes, the muslims, everyone has reason to demonstrate and no one knows exactly how or why or against whom or for what and there we all will be, each with our interpretation of the question, our interrogation or demand for transparency or lament or blame or...
Off to a meeting to decide what to do. Just wanted to share the view from here.
m.
