Reburial

Almost two decades after the end of the First World War, the Spanish Civil War (1936-9) erupted and set the prelude to the Second World War. It was a brutal civil war with high casualties and shocking atrocities.11

In remembering this conflict and its cruelty and violent crimes, families, communities and governments have undertaken exhumations of bodily remains.

In the location of many of the battles of the civil war, DNA testing has been undertaken. These are especially connected to family burials and commemorative practices, and are crucial to how families are now drawing on this process to remember and commemorate the violence inflicted on their relatives. As Zahira Araguete-Toribio argues, ‘DNA technology has reconvened families with their disappeared relatives and become a political agent in the mediation of complex identification demands in the aftermath of mass atrocity.' In Spain, this commemorative practice was initiated not by the state, but by individuals and families. There have been acts of reburial and these have informed particular commemorative practices. For families of communists, this has become an act of justice.^{^[1086]} But it has connected families, scientists and the state. It is a ‘grass roots' movement, one in which a family is mobilised to define a distinctive commemorative practice in the twenty-first century.

Resisting forgetting has been a central aspect of this process and attempts to keep remembering - through the medium of photography - is a perennial theme, which we will now consider.

<< | >>

↑

Source: Edwards Louise, Penn Nigel, Winter Jay (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 4: 1800 to the Present. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 676 p.. 2020

Reburial

More on the topic Reburial: