José Antonio Labordeta, grande.

José Antonio Labordeta died this week after a long struggle with cancer. He leaves a legacy of song, of integrity and love for his homeland, Aragón, and for the people of Spain. The city of Zaragoza has declared three days of mourning. Over 50,000 people lined the streets to pay their respects as his body lay in state in the Aljafería. From everywhere come expressions of love and sadness for this honorable man.





Polvo, niebla, viento y sol
Donde hay agua una huerta
Al norte los Pirineos
La tierra es Aragón

Al norte los Pirineos,
al sur la sierra callada
Pasa el Ebro por el centro
Con su soledad a la espalda

Dicen que hay tierras al este
Donde se trabaja y pagan
Y al oeste el Moncayo
Como un Dios que ya no ampara

Desde tiempos a esta parte
Vamos camino de nada
Vamos a ver como el Ebro
Con su soledad se marcha

Con él, van en compaña
Las gentes de estas vaguadas
Los valles de esta sierra
Las huertas arruinadas

Polvo, niebla, viento y sol
Y donde hay agua una huerta
Al norte los Pirineos
La tierra es Aragón

This song is "Albada," in the tradition of songs sung at dawn as people went out to the fields to work.


Here he is, acting as "pregonero," officially opening the Fiestas del Pilar in Zaragoza, evoking with love the thousands of years of history of his beloved Aragón and its capital Zaragoza (text here)





And the song that many consider the song of Aragón, Canto a la libertad




Letra:

Habrá un día en que todos
al levantar la vista
veremos una tierra
que ponga LIBERTAD

Hermano, aquí mi mano
será tuya en mi frente
y tu gesto de siempre
caerá sin levantar
huracanes de miedo
ante la LIBERTAD

Haremos el camino
en un mismo trazado
uniendo nuestros hombros
para así levantar
a aquellos que cayeron
gritando LIBERTAD

Habrá un día en que todos
al levantar la vista
veremos una tierra
que ponga LIBERTAD

Sonarán las campanas
desde los campanarios
y los campos desiertos
volverán a granar
unas espigas altas
dispuestas para el pan

Para un pan que en los siglos
nunca fue repartido
entre todos aquellos
que hicieron lo posible
por empujar la historia
hacia la LIBERTAD.

Habrá un día en que todos
al levantar la vista
veremos una tierra
que ponga LIBERTAD

También será posible
que esa hermosa mañana
ni tú, ni yo, ni el otro
la lleguemos a ver,
pero habrá que empujarla
para que pueda ser.
Que sea como un viento
que arranque los matojos
surgiendo la verdad
y limpie los caminos
de siglos de destrozos
contra la LIBERTAD.

Habrá un día en que todos
al levantar la vista
veremos una tierra
que ponga LIBERTAD.

Remember: 11 de septiembre de 1973 AND 9/11/2001

Chile: The Other 9/11 is the title of a program made by the BBC last year. But maybe it should be the other way around?

This short film by Ken Loach (made in 2002) is narrated by a Chilean refugee who addresses family members of those killed on 9/11/2001, on another Tuesday, Sept 11. Maybe you know that this date also has grim meaning for Chile and all of Latin America because it was Tuesday, Sept 11, 1973 that Gen Pinochet and the armed forces of Chile, with the active support of U.S. president Nixon, Sec. of State Henry Kissinger, and the CIA and the School of the Americas, seized power by bombing the presidential palace, assassinating the democratically elected head-of-state Salvador Allende, and rounding up and torturing, killing, and disappearing thousands of people, Chileans and others. At least 30,000 were killed by the regime-and many, many more were tortured, exiled, or lived in fear for decades. The fact that Pinochet is now dead has not ended the divisions in Chile.

The impact of this event on all of Latin America was as devastating as 9/11 has been to us in the U.S.A. and to the world. As Pres. Bush says in the film, "On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country, and night fell on a different world, a world in which freedom itself is under attack." Those words have a terrible resonance for those of us who remember the responsibility the U.S. had in supporting the dictatorships and savage repression in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and the countries of Central America in the 80s. So while I remember and mourn with everyone the events of 8 years ago in 2001, I cannot forget, I must not forget, the legacy of suffering of that first "martes 11 de septiembre."

11 de septiembre

A little history of Portalrubio

Portalrubio has its own Wikipedia entry in Spanish! It is obviously written with great love for the village.

Here is a page that situates Portalrubio as a "localidad" of a neighboring ayuntamiento Pancrudo, in the comarca of the Comunidad de Teruel, which is one of the 10 comarcas making up the province of Teruel. Teruel, Huesca and Zaragoza are the three provinces of Aragon, one of the Autonomous Communities of Spain. This site about Aragon has been put together by Javier Mendivil, an amateur historian who has dedicated himself to documenting on Internet the history of Aragon. I'll bet he makes regular visits to the Rastro, the flea market in Zaragoza, on the hunt for old pamphlets, books and documents to add to his collection.

I also turned up this fascinating page, created by Manuel P. Belanche, a history buff and "friend of Gregorian chant", in which he has compiled a list of all the towns and villages of Aragon in order to document the existence of a particular type of structure called a "peiron":

Los peirones, también denominados pairones, son pilares o monolitos construidos en piedra o ladrillo que señalan, a la salida de una gran parte de los pueblos de Aragón -principalmente en Teruel y Zaragoza- un inicio o confluencia de caminos. Suelen terminar, en su parte superior, con una hornacina (a veces una cruz) decorada por la imagen de un santo o virgen.

These stone or brick pillars marked the crossroads. Originally probably of pagan origin, they now have a cross or a Christian image, since the conquest of the territory by Alfonso el Batallador in 1120. The word peiron is not Castilian Spanish, but rather Aragonese. In a second page on this site, he has a list of Aragonese words that he collected years ago; with the exodus of people from the villages into the cities and the extension of education in Castillian Spanish to the entire population, the use of Aragonese has declined.

Here is the page for Portalrubio and its peirones. Although the village has been reduced to no more than 30 or so official residents, in August several hundred will gather, from Zaragoza, Valencia, Barcelona and other towns, to reunite generations of families.

The legacy of Eugene V Debs

Today is Labor Day, and so I set out to learn more about why this is a national holiday. This led me to learn more about Eugene V. Debs and his extraordinary legacy of activism, struggle, principled dissent, solidarity and integrity.

David Rodiger reminds us that we also learn from what visionaries like Debs couldn't see in their moments. Debs worked in solidarity with black laborers in the Pullman strike, but his confidence in socialism led him to subsume the particularities of racism into the class struggle in some instances. I will make it a goal to learn more about Eugene Debs and his time, but also to continue to think about what we need to our understanding of labor today if we want to keep that legacy alive.