Reading Julian Zabalbeascoa’s novel of the Spanish Civil War, What We Tried to Bury Grows Here, it’s impossible not to hear echoes of our current fractured political climate — and impossible not to think about French philosopher and political activist Simone Weil, her part in that civil war, and her abhorrence of political parties. “I don’t like war; but I found the position of those outside the war far more horrifying than war itself…I couldn’t ethically refuse to participate in the war – that’s to say, I couldn’t wish every day, every hour, victory for some and defeat for others while doing nothing myself.” Weil understood that neither party vying for control of Spain was ideal — she eventually broke with the illusion of anti-fascism Marxism provided — and even though she was a proponent of nonviolence, she would always feel compelled to fight for the oppressed.
Like the beginnings of the Spanish Civil War, our system seems teetering. While I feel it is dangerous, especially in a review essay such as this, to suggest we are on the brink of a new civil war, it is impossible not to suggest that some civil unrest of a violent nature seems imminent. We are watching two parties, or ideologies, both prepared to start trouble: to find scapegoats for their failures and straw men to light on fire. One side, the GOP, seems to increasingly fit the definition of neo-fascism: plans for camps, checkpoints, mass deportations, and jail for political enemies, not to mention blatant racism and misogyny. Fascism, too, though, has become overused. The Democrats now hurl it at anyone they find to be a “bully” or racist. Fascism, as a system, is not to be considered, not to be tolerated. But the other side, promising to uphold the tenets of our democracy, in reality, is promising only to maintain the long-established hegemony. Neither is willing to fully look at reforming the systematic failures that brought them here nor are they willing to even acknowledge those failures exist. What We Tried to Bury Grows Here implores us to look back to history to not fall into passivity but instead take note of the perils of today.
Zabalbeascoa structures his novel as a series of first-person vignettes, giving rise to a chorus of characters. It’s an imaginative and impressive feat of literary ventriloquism to hear from Basque soldiers. This structure allows Zabalbeascoa to comment on the collective nature of war while showing how it is an intensely personal undertaking. Through these characters, we are allowed to see slices of their war and how it builds to something more encompassing.
The thread connecting most of these vignettes is a young Basque soldier named Isidro. Spurred by the writings of the political essayist and “political consciousness of the Basque Country,” Erlea, he’s fighting to uphold a way of life but less as a Republican and more as a Basque. Catholic and largely conservative, the Basques backed the Republicans to secure their autonomy. During the Spanish Civil War, Franco forbade the Basque language, stripped their rights, and ordered the utter destruction of the Basque city of Guernica. Isidro becomes the reader’s moral compass. He floats through the narratives of other characters, a ghost, escaping firing squads and prison, surviving heavy assaults from the Nationalists. When he questions some of his actions during the war, “I thought I was better than — than them.” Through him, we see what’s at stake, what’s worth fighting for. We get a reminder of Simone Weil, someone fighting for something larger on the side of those oppressed.
What We Tried to Bury, for the most part, focuses on the Basques fighting in the war (to be sure, there are other Republicans featured), those already seen as outsiders or minorities. Despite this, he still gives Nationalist characters a voice, acknowledging their losses on a personal level. One chapter focuses on a father whose son was killed, another on a reluctant conscript who recently arrived from Cuba, and a conflicted nun working as a nurse in a Nationalist prison. We don’t necessarily sympathize with them, and we’re not supposed to. But this allows Zabalbeascoa a way to show the war from their end and nod to the atrocities committed by the left.
The last section of What We Tried to Bury is not subtle in its reference to current immigration activity and concerns. Estimates place upwards of 500,000 Spanish refugees in southern France after 1939. They were housed in camps, often on beaches, where there were deaths from cholera, malnutrition, dysentery, hypothermia, and dehydration. This last chapter is narrated by a young French boy, Laurent, as he watches the refugees fill the camps of his seaside town. His father and others predictably gripe about the new arrivals. An old man stands at the camp fence telling the Spanish how he worked his whole life in France “and for that I earn a pension of fifty francs a month. But we’re handing you filthy refugees two hundred and forty a month.” Laurent’s father, who, he tells us, never had a good thing to say about the drunk and destitute around their town now, said, “Our own are dying of cold and hunger in the gutters, but we’re keeping these lazy Spaniards’ stomachs full.” Of course, like their contemporary counterparts, they do nothing to change the situation. They just watch and hope someone else finds a solution.
By the time this essay is published, we will have gone to the polls to choose between former President Trump and Vice President Harris. We will have woken up to news that tells us who we are and who we might become. We were given a task of choosing the lesser of two evils and we will have failed. The rise of authoritarian rule is never by accident, and it’s never passive. The only passivity is ours in not seeing and stopping that rise. Our passivity is denial to become active agents, like Simone Weil. Like her, our duty should be to fight alongside those among us who still, even in subtle, nuanced ways, suffer under oppression.