I sometimes see a prompt and have to sit on it for a while. I have to cogitate my veritabilities as my old friend Bill ( Captain Zero) used to say. This one, ” Books I’ve been given,” was one of those. Then it fell into focus. I went out to the porch and started paging through a shelf full of old ethnographies on Spain.
Back in the early seventies, way before Lou as an applied anthropologist, I was dedicated to going to Spain and doing my Ph.D research there, as my mentor in undergraduate anthropology had. By graduation in 1975, I had absorbed pretty much all the Spanish ethnography in English. And quite a few of those available in Spanish.
Dictadura And Dictablanda
Looming large in the background of these ethnographies were the events and personalities of the Spanish Civil War. Caudillos, Anarcho-Syndicalists, Falange, Franco, Primo de Rivera, and many more. And one phrase stuck out: Dictablanda Y Dictadura. Soft dictatorship ( blanda is soft in Spanish), versus hard ( dura is hard in Spanish). Soft dictatorship and hard dictatorship. Think about dictablanda as a sort of dictatorship in which the appearance of civil liberties is preserved. But not the essence. In dictadura You’ve got the big leader who violates civil liberties with impunity and without much excuse.
Many on the Left in the sixties and seventies perceived America as a dictablanda sort of place. If you were a minority, it was harder rather than softer. The Left packed up and left Dodge at the end of Vietnam, and with Civil Rights, they assumed, won. But many of us continued to see how big money talked. Yeah, we continued to think it was dictablanda.
This morning, listening to continued idiocy on the news, this prompt and hunting through the old shelf of ethnography, I started to wonder if it was slipping into dictadura.
I’ll leave you with a very brief Wikipedia articel on this, and let you connect the dots:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictablanda
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I believe dictadura — if it’s not here now (and I believe it is, perhaps unequally applied) — will be here soon. When HWSNBN made a pitch for nationalized voting? After feeling sick and some sleepless nights last week, I have emigrated. It’s peaceful here in Marthaland where progress is made where progress is possible.
As in Spain, the long-term injury to institutions can’t be repaired with a single election. Spain is still slowly recovering decades after Franco.
Do you know the Clash song, “Spanish Bombs”? I like it.
I’ll look it up!
It’s pretty accurate – reminded me of “the Spanish Cockpit” by Borkenau.
I’ll have to look for that.