Popular Army Research Articles

“¡Vivan las tribus!”: persecution, resistance and anarchist agency in the Popular Army during the Spanish Civil War (1936-9)

ABSTRACT The anarchist participation in the Popular Army during the Spanish Civil War has largely been subsumed into wider narratives regarding the modernising impulses of the Republican state on the one hand, and the resistance to statist collaboration mounted within the libertarian movement on the other. In this dichotomy, the anarchists who participated in militarisation are either seen as latecomers to the far-sighted, pan-antifascist project spearheaded by the Republican leadership, or else as passive spectators to the brutal dismantling of the revolutionary project. The weakness of this narrative is that it largely neglects not only the varied motives for accepting militarisation, but also the considerable agency exerted by anarchists at the front in resisting anti-libertarian persecution, while constructing a new identity as the vanguard of antifascism. Drawing on a combination of syndicalist reports, oral testimonies and anarchist press materials, this paper rejects the accepted vision of the front as a space of lethargic defeat. Rather, it reinterprets it as a space in which the anarchists instrumentalised their traditions and practices, alongside their inviolable moral authority achieved through their antifascist war experience, to establish a libertarian subculture within the Popular Army.

Personal archives and transitional justice in Colombia: the Fonds of Fabiola Lalinde and Mario Agudelo

ABSTRACT This article studies two personal human rights archives and their interactions with transitional justice mechanisms in Colombia. The ‘Fabiola Lalinde fonds’ contains documentation produced during the search of truth and justice for the forced disappearance of her son Luis Fernando Lalinde. The ‘Mario Agudelo Fonds’ gathers documentation related to his militancy in the Popular Liberation Army (EPL), his later political activism and his participation in peace processes. The relationship between these archives and transitional justice can be described as a virtuous circle. Both archives preceded and prepared the implementation of transitional justice mechanisms in Colombia and have provided evidence for trials and reparation processes. In turn, transitional institutions have enhanced the public recognition of these archives as paradigmatic examples of memory initiatives of the civil society. The article shows that these types of archives can contribute to the creation of a record of human rights violations, help consolidate collective memory and have symbolic power as testimony of lives dedicated to the defence of human rights and the search for a more just country. They belong to the canon of human rights archives and, in the current Colombian context, face political and material risks that must be addressed.

Fear and Loathing in Spain. Dutch Foreign Fighters in the Spanish Civil War

ABSTRACTDuring the Spanish Civil War, about 700 Dutchmen fought to defend the Spanish Republic against a military uprising they, correctly, deemed the prelude to a Fascist dictatorship. They did so primarily as part of the International Brigades of the Spanish ‘Popular Army’. However, International Brigade command considered the Dutch volunteers’ military performance in Spain quite poor. In Summer 1937 it was therefore decided to create a separate Dutch unit in an effort to boost both morale and combat effectiveness. This article analyses how the Dutch lived and fought in a transnational army, focusing especially on the period before the establishment of the Dutch unit. It suggests that the experience of Dutch volunteers, who were (small) minorities in multinational and multi-ethnic units, form a useful analytical lens to highlight the conflicts and compromises that are inherent in not only the International Brigades, but all foreign fighter forces – including those of the Islamic State. Furthermore, it argues that Dutch behaviours were contrasted unfavourably by the International Brigade command staff with those of the Germans with and under whom they often fought, creating an even more unwelcoming environment for many Dutchmen. The composition of the Dutch volunteer corps, made up mostly of non-communists, served to worsen the failures of intercultural communication. Finally, the author argues that the creation of a (mostly) Dutch unit was, finally, the result of pressure from Dutch volunteers in Spain and Dutch Communist Party fears that the perceived failures of its efforts on behalf of the Spanish Republic would reflect badly on its political position both in the Netherlands and within the Communist International.

The Treatment of Superior Responsibility in Colombia: Interpreting the Agreement Between the Colombian Government and the FARC†

The Colombian Constitutional and Supreme Court’s interpretation of superior responsibility as cases of commission by omission and indirect perpetration excludes most military superiors’ omissions of their duties to prevent, repress and submit subordinates’ international crimes to the competent authorities. Nevertheless, the notion of complicity by omission, as a form of accessorial liability, and the crime of abetting could cover this gap with regard to omissions carried out by military superiors with dolus. Furthermore, although Colombian criminal law does not provide for negligent military superiors’ omissions, the Colombian Armed Forces Operational law attaches disciplinary responsibility to military superiors’ omissions, which are carried out with gross negligence. Moreover, the Peace Agreement of 24 November 2016 between the Colombian Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – Popular Army (‘the FARC’), explicitly provides for criminal liability for gross negligent omissions of Colombian Security Forces superiors and FARC superiors with regard to subordinates’ international crimes related to the armed conflict. Further, the provisions of the Agreement on superior responsibility of Colombian Security Forces superiors have been subsequently incorporated into the Colombian Constitution by the 4 April 2017 Legislative Act 01/2017 and the provisions relating to FARC superiors were incorporated into Colombian law through the 30 November 2017 Law on the Special Jurisdiction for Peace. Although this approach was upheld by the 24 November 2017 Colombian Constitutional Court (‘CCC’) judgment C-674/2017 and the CCC’s 16 August 2018 public statement, which declared, respectively, the constitutionality of Legislative Act 01/2017 and the Law on the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, this position has come at a high prize because not only have all references to international law been eliminated from the definition of superior responsibility for Colombian Security Forces superiors (they have only been kept in relation to FARC superiors), but several additional requirements have also been added to the definition. The result significantly restricts the scope of application. Last but not least, the notion of superior responsibility for civilian superiors is not yet applicable in Colombia due to the absence of an explicit reference to it under Colombian law and the Colombian Constitutional Court’s ‘distinctive approach’ doctrine.

Letters from a Quiet Front: The Censored Correspondence of the Ejército de Andalucía during the Spanish Civil War

This article uses extremely rare extracts of soldiers' letters from the Republican Popular Army censorship services to examine combatant experience in Andalucía during the Spanish Civil War—the only region for which documents of this type produced by Spanish Republican soldiers have survived. It considers the mandate and methods of Popular Army censorship and offers a methodological approach to the ego-documents, as well as using the records to examine soldiers' experiences on a quiet front. Additionally, it assesses the war effort by analysing combatants' morale and the effectiveness of the government's propaganda. Finally, the extracts provide insights into day-to-day material conditions at the front, as well as Republican discipline and its infringements, such as desertion, fraternization and political differences at the front. It concludes that Republican soldiers' morale was, with some rear-guard exceptions, understandably low and serious shortages that contributed to the government's defeat were widespread. In sum, the collection of letter extracts provides an important window on the non-elite experience of the Spanish Civil War and contributes to the re-introduction of individual lives into the structural history of the period. Lastly, it adds a new case study to the large and international corpus of work examining wartime correspondence.

Acercamiento al proceso de Desarme, Desmovilización y Reinserción (DDR) en Nicaragua después de 28 años de la firma de los acuerdos de Esquipulas II

El presente trabajo pretende dar una mirada retrospectiva al proceso de desarme, desmovilización y reinserción de ex combatientes nicaragüenses a la vida civil, después del conflicto armado desarrollado entre los miembros de la Resistencia Nicaragüense y el Ejército Popular Sandinista en los años ochenta. Se hace un repaso general sobre aquellos elementos considerados como fallidos y como causas de los posteriores procesos de rearme, pero también, visualizaremos aquellos elementos que han permitido que en la actualidad Nicaragua siga viviendo en un estado de paz relativa. Asimismo, el artículo abordará alguna información sobre lo que ha ocurrido con las/los ex combatientes nicaragüenses hasta hoy y cuál es la situación del país en torno a la construcción o no de una memoria histórica que garantice la no repetición de un conflicto bélico entre los y las nicaragüenses.

Reluctant Warriors: Republican Popular Army and Nationalist Army Conscripts in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939, by James Matthews

Reluctant Warriors: Republican Popular Army and Nationalist Army Conscripts in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939, by James Matthews

James Matthews. Reluctant Warriors: Republican Popular Army and Nationalist Army Conscripts in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939.

James Matthews. Reluctant Warriors: Republican Popular Army and Nationalist Army Conscripts in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939.

The Prince and His Art of War: Machiavelli’s Military Populism

In chapter XIV of The Prince, Machiavelli warns present and prospective princes not to neglect the art of war and to be a “professore di questa arte.” By exhorting the prince to be an expert in the art of war, this passage establishes the paradigmatic status of the arte della guerra for the arte dello stato. But what precisely is this art of war, which the prince is supposed to master? In order to answer this question, I offer a new interpretation of Machiavelli’s dialogue on military affairs, the Art of War. My essay casts Machiavelli’s politics-war nexus in a fresh light that emphasizes soldiers’ bodies and practices and highlights the popular dimension of Machiavelli’s militia. In contrast to The Prince, where military troops are typically described as a (potentially treacherous) tool of the prince, Art of War figures the popular army as dynamic political and social force and a potential catalyst for popular revolt and upheaval.

Book Review: Reluctant Warriors: Republican Popular Army and Nationalist Army Conscripts in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 by James Matthews

Book Review: <i>Reluctant Warriors: Republican Popular Army and Nationalist Army Conscripts in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939</i> by James Matthews

‘The Vanguard of Sacrifice’? Political Commissars in the Republican Popular Army during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

This article analyses the function of political commissars in the Republican Popular Army during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–9. It evaluates the commissariat’s role in fostering soldiers’ political engagement with the war, as well as the challenges maintaining morale and discipline in a revolutionary army. It also examines the complex relationship between commissars and Republican soldiers, and considers political divisions within the commissariat, particularly the rise and domination of delegates affiliated to the Communist Party of Spain. The article argues that commissars were a central component of the Republic’s relatively successful, and heavily improvised, politicized wartime mobilization in the face of considerable challenges.

Review of James Matthews, Reluctant Warriors: Republican Popular Army and Nationalist Army Conscripts in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939

Review of James Matthews, Reluctant Warriors: Republican Popular Army and Nationalist Army Conscripts in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939

Readings in the Economic Impacts of Recent Changes in Macroeconomic Policies in Sudan (2)

This is the second part of an economic analysis conducted about the current situation in Sudan. The secession of Southern Sudan from the mother nation of Sudan was a direct result of political agreement known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). It was expected by the totalitarian government of Northern Sudan that it can contain the civil war between the Sudan Popular Liberation Army (SPLA) and the Islamized Ingaz totalitarian regime of Khartoum. However, the impacts of an important economic factor was not properly calculated which is that more than 75% of oil produced in unified Sudan is produced from fields that originate in its south. After secession, the Northern country was deprived of that resource while its other real economic sectors, agriculture and industry were in stagnant conditions due to long period of negligence by the state authorities and scavenging by its taxation. The case was typical of applied Dutch Disease of dependency on one natural resource. The country's economic conditions quickly deteriorated from worse to worst. That instigated the government to seek solutions which were by increasing taxation, floating or drastically its domestic currency prices. The results were catastrophic manifested in increasing the inflation from minimal to galloping and rife. Recession that have hovered around its economy since 2008 with the Global Financial Crises effects combined with inflation to manifest in a classical case of strong stagflation. I am not proud to be right of predicting those signs for the past six years. However, I just record it for history with another vision that solutions to Sudan economic crisis will not be solved without reaching political solutions for its current dominating regime. The instigated policies have repercussions whereas people of the country felt with high rates of poverty and absolute destitutions that the imposed economic reforms were like adding insult to injury. The insults were manifested of deceptive lying that economic conditions may improve and injuries of high taxations and no austerity measures or policies imposed on the governmental body, army or its gigantic, centipedes like National and Intelligence Security Service. Their expenditure increased to over 75% of the country's total GNP. The behaviors of the concerned departments' manifest that they never listen to scientific recommendations neither to wise advices. Unless there are true and physical changes in the whole regime, comprehensive restructuring and monetary infusions from outside the country, all of the imagined Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are expected.

Readings in the Economic Impacts of Recent Changes in Macroeconomic Policies in Sudan (1)

The secession of Southern Sudan from the mother nation of Sudan was a direct result of political agreement known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). It was expected by the totalitarian government of Northern Sudan that it can contain the civil war between the Sudan Popular Liberation Army (SPLA) and the Islamized Ingaz totalitarian regime of Khartoum. However, the impacts of an important economic factor was not properly calculated which is that more than 75% of oil produced in unified Sudan is produced from fields that originate in its south. After secession, the Northern country was deprived of that resource while its other real economic sectors, agriculture and industry were in stagnant conditions due to long period of negligence by the state authorities and scavenging by its taxation. The case was typical of applied Dutch Disease of dependency on one natural resource. The country's economic conditions quickly deteriorated from worse to worst. That instigated the government to seek solutions which were by increasing taxation, floating or drastically its domestic currency prices. The results were catastrophic manifested in increasing the inflation from minimal to galloping and rife. Recession that have hovered around its economy since 2008 with the Global Financial Crises effects combined with inflation to manifest in a classical case of strong stagflation. I am not proud to be right of predicting those signs for the past six years. However, I just record it for history with another vision that solutions to Sudan economic crisis will not be solved without reaching political solutions for its current dominating regime. The behaviors of the concerned departments' manifest that they never listen to scientific recommendations neither to wise advices. Unless there are true and physical changes in the whole regime, comprehensive restructuring and monetary infusions from outside the country, all of the imagined Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are expected.

Armed Conflict and Human Rights in Colombia

Armed Conflict and Human Rights in Colombia

‘Our Red Soldiers’: The Nationalist Army's Management of its Left-Wing Conscripts in the Spanish Civil War 1936–9

The ragged division of Spain after the 17 July 1936 military uprising ensured that the two sides were not cleanly split between supporters of the government and the rebels. As a result, many men who subsequently fell under Nationalist conscription decrees had been associated with the various left-wing political parties and unions that expanded their membership under the Second Republic. The challenge for the Nationalists was to incorporate effectively as many as possible into their war effort. The Nationalist Army, as may be expected, relied on threats and violence to maintain a good level of compliance among its conscripted soldiers. However, there was another side to the army's relationship with its drafted soldiers. Men who had left-wing pasts were able to shelter within the Nationalist Army on condition that they provided an effective minimum level of service in uniform. A similar strategic policy allowed the Nationalists to incorporate over half of Republican Popular Army prisoners of war into their own army — a process known as ‘recycling’. The Nationalists' ability to mobilize and manage their conscripts with left-wing pasts is an important factor in explaining their military success in the Civil War.

Mexico City, 1891

Mexico City, 1891 Jeffrey M. Pilcher (bio) Britannia may have ruled the waves during the Victorian age of empire, but upper-crust Britons were nonetheless enslaved to a legion of French chefs. With his headquarters at the Savoy, Auguste Escoffier served as proconsul to this army of occupation, some five thousand strong, in kitchens throughout the kingdom (Trubek 47). From strategic locations in castles, manors, hotels, and clubs, these troops laid down a merciless barrage of champagne bottles, canisters of foie gras, and waves of sauce financière. Resistance was futile. The English elite, like the aristocrats of Tsarist Russia and the robber barons of gilded-age New York, succumbed to this invasion with only a whimper of post-prandial contentment. In 1891, the renowned Parisian chef Sylvain Daumont disembarked in Mexico, determined to extend the culinary imperium to a land where France had recently suffered humiliating defeat. Three decades earlier, the sandal-clad troops of President Benito Juárez had upset the better-armed forces of Napoleon III in the battle of Cinco de Mayo (5 May 1862). Although French [End Page 41] soldiers eventually occupied the country and imposed the Austrian archduke Maximilian as emperor, Mexicans fought a successful guerrilla war, buoyed by their early victory, and restored the republic in 1867. Even as Daumont drilled his kitchen brigade, a popular army of resistance mobilized in working-class taquerías (taco shops) to reclaim the honour of Mexico's national cuisine. Regardless of their nationality, those who aspired to elite status in the late nineteenth century considered the mastery of French cuisine essential. Table manners derived from courtly rituals were purposely designed to intimidate middling folk, and the proliferation of manuals for proper behaviour testifies to the widespread fear of embarrassment from failing to distinguish between, say, a pastry fork and a grapefruit spoon. Censure was particularly intense within the exclusive clubs where elites socialized and forged class identity. The Reform Club, for example, with its kitchen presided over by chef Alexis Soyer, was a bastion of Liberal politics in Britain. The endless parade of banquet courses, like the enormous sideboards carved with images of hunt and harvest, symbolized European mastery over the landscape. But this was still an early consumer society, with hunger stalking openly in the streets. Many felt both guilt at their own indulgence and dismay over French cultural hegemony (Williams 17-48; Ames 67-73; Freeman 195-203). Mexican aristocrats were scarcely parvenus at the Victorian dinner party. France's first intervention, a naval occupation of the Veracruz customs house in 1838, had been popularly dubbed the "pastry war" when word spread that the claims included sixty thousand pesos for a French baker in Mexico City as compensation for eclairs and tartlets supposedly eaten by revolutionaries. The second intervention, the ill-fated court of Maximilian and Carlota, provided a model of continental refinement that was quickly taken up by Mexico's provincial elite, many of whom refurbished their estates in the style of European country manors. The infatuation with French banquets reached a pinnacle under the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911). Wealthy Mexicans, convinced that imported technology assured their future progress, rushed to buy the latest consumer goods as well. In 1881, they organized a Jockey Club in the House of Tiles, a magnificent edifice near the fashionable Alameda Park. General Francisco Zacarías Mena, a personal friend of President Díaz, administered the club's vast wine cellar, while a French chef oversaw the kitchen (Pilcher Mexican Identity, 62-66; Beezley Judas, 13-66; Macías-González 90-91; Tablada 264-65). The arrival of the celebrated Daumont seemed to vindicate these cosmopolitan aspirations. The Mexican representative in Paris, don Tomás de la Torre y Mier, had negotiated his appointment as personal chef for his brother, Ignacio, a bon vivant and son-in-law of the dictator. Daumont was a self-conscious artist who believed that a great chef should combine flavours by instinct, the way a musician uses sounds or a painter colours. Within a year of his arrival, he had to set out on his own, opening an eponymous restaurant just a block south of the Jockey...

The Seventh Crusade, 1244–1254: Sources and Documents (review)

Reviewed by: The Seventh Crusade, 1244–1254: Sources and Documents William Chester Jordan The Seventh Crusade, 1244–1254: Sources and Documents. Edited and translated by Peter Jackson. [Crusade Texts in Translation, 16.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company. 2007. Pp. xvi, 256. $79.95. ISBN 978-0-754-65722-4.) The volume under review here is a selection of texts, 122 in all and many of which have never been published in translation before, that provides information on the preparations for and the execution of Louis IX’s first crusade, 1248–54. The translator, Peter Jackson, refers interested readers to the major sources that already exist in usable translations, but retranslates or supplements even some of these. Jackson is a renowned expert on the thirteenth century, in particular on the Mongol invasions. Here he shows himself to be a superb translator and judicious commentator. The wide variety of texts, from Christian and Muslim sources, furnishes students and scholars alike fresh insights into this expertly planned, yet failed, crusade. [End Page 114] Every aspect of the crusade that has come under scrutiny traditionally and in recent scholarship finds relevant texts here. There is a section on Louis IX’s taking of the cross. With regard to preparations for crusade, there are sections containing texts devoted to preaching and finance, recruitment of former rebels and heretics, and the search for allies. Seven different texts are provided on Emperor Frederick II’s attitude, and they hint at the emperor’s duplicity. More than twenty sources on the crusade against Frederick, coinciding with Louis’s crusade, are also provided. A large part of the translations is of texts that deal with events in the Muslim world while the fighting was going on. Louis’s crusade failed, and Jackson devotes significant space to the texts that at first misrepresented the failure and then acknowledged it. Reactions were widely varied, but one that Jackson emphasizes was the raising of a popular army or, rather, armies to come to the crusaders’ aid. This movement, the Crusade of the Shepherds or Pastoureaux (1251), receives an entire section, fifteen texts in all. Two final sections in the book address the efforts to send additional—and more carefully prepared—aid to Louis IX immediately and during the king’s long, four-year sojourn in the Holy Land after his release from captivity. Where appropriate, Muslim sources are exploited to furnish data on Islamic politics, even when these sources do not explicitly mention the activities of the crusaders. There are many collections of crusade sources in translation. Peter Jackson’s is one of the best. William Chester Jordan Princeton University Copyright © 2009 The Catholic University of America Press

Puerto Rican Revolutionary Nationalism

The origin of the Puerto Rican nationalist revolutionary organizations in 1959 was characterized by the emergence of mass organizations supported by armed clandestine organizations that attacked colonial power in the islands and the United States. Among these were the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (Armed Forces of National Liberation—FALN) and the Ejército Popular Boricua-Macheteros (Boricua Popular Army—Macheteros—EPB-M). As in the cases of other colonized nations, revolutionary nationalism served as the spearhead for the anti-imperialist social movement. Puerto Rican organizations adjusted their maneuvers and objectives to the immediate conditions and facilitated the full development of the struggle for national liberation in the Puerto Rican communities settled in the United States.

Civil-Military Relations in Post-Sandinista Nicaragua

When Nicaragua's Sandinista Revolution ended in 1990 with the electoral victory of an opposition coalition, the Sandinista Popular Army remained under the control of its revolutionary officers. This study examines the subsequent evolution of civil-military relations in postrevolutionary Nicaragua under the governments of Violeta Chamorro (1990-1997) and Arnoldo Alemdn (1997-2002). It then assesses the level of civilian control achieved by combining for the first time Alfred Stepan's widely used military prerogatives indicators with an alternative measurement system recently designed by his ciitic Samuel Fitch. This analysis reveals that the Nicaraguan military has become a nonpartisan force exercising little influence in civilian politics, but it still enjoys wide de facto institutional autonomy and a margin of political independence. The Nicaraguan case falls between the “conditional subordination” and “democratic control” categories in Fitch's civil-military relations typology. Although Latin American armed forces are invariably blamed for most of the difficulties of democractizing civil-military relations in the region, this article concludes by arguing that Nicaragua's civilian political class not its military' leaders-is most responsible for the failure to complete the process of subordinating the armed forces to democratic authority.