Exhuming Violent Histories Forensics, Memory, and Rewriting Spain’s Past Nicole Iturriaga Columbia University Press Many years after the fall of Franco’s regime, Spanish human rights activists have turned to new methods to keep the memory of state terror alive. By excavating mass graves, exhuming remains, and employing forensic analysis and DNA testing, they seek to provide direct evidence of repression and break through the silence about the dictatorship’s atrocities that persisted well into Spain’s transition to democracy. Nicole Iturriaga offers an ethnographic examination of how Spanish human rights activists use forensic methods to challenge dominant histories, reshape collective memory, and create new forms of transitional justice. She argues that by grounding their claims in science, activists can present themselves as credible and impartial, helping them intervene in fraught public disputes about the remembrance of the past. The perceived legitimacy and authenticity of scientific techniques allows their users to contest the state’s historical claims and offer new narratives of violence in pursuit of long-delayed justice. Iturriaga draws on interviews with technicians and forensics experts and provides a detailed case study of Spain’s best-known forensic human rights organization, the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory. She also considers how the tools and tactics used in Spain can be adopted by human rights and civil society groups pursuing transitional justice in other parts of the world. An ethnographically rich account, Exhuming Violent Histories sheds new light on how science and technology intersect with human rights and collective memory. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nicole Iturriaga is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society at the University of California, Irvine, and was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute Center on Religious and Cultural Diversity. Speaker 1: Back at the grave, Rosa had a red earring resting on her cranium. All four victims still had their wedding rings. I was removing the top soil from Rosa's feet due to the dryness of southern Spain. The soles of the victim's shoes were well conserved. Some locals from the village came by. They whispered that Rosa had been eight months pregnant at the time of her death. Speaker 1: I kept working, all the while, thinking about what they had said later while uncovering her soles. It dawned on me that Rosa and I were the same exact shoe size. I even held my shoe near hers to check. I then quickly scaled myself alongside her, and discovered that we had the same build and stature. I was looking at myself in a mass grave. Speaker 1: I was just paraphrasing from the book, Exhuming Violent Histories. The subtitle is Forensics, Memory, and Rewriting Spain's Past, Columbia University Press 2022. The author is Nicole Iturriaga. And Gail Kligman of this volume says Exhuming Violent Histories is an engaging ethnography of how forensic and genetic sciences are being deployed to recover and reframe literally buried histories in post-Franco Spain. Speaker 1: Through their painstaking work, human rights-oriented forensic specialists and human rights activists are together challenging the necropower of the state and revising the official history of the Franco era. Welcome to ethnography podcast, the first installment. I'm very fortunate to be able to speak to the author of this great book, professor Nicole Iturriaga. She's on the faculty at the university of California, Irvine. Welcome, Nicole. Nicole Iturriaga: Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 1: So, could you tell us about the path that led to you being there, removing the top soil, and doing this study? Nicole Iturriaga: Sure. I was volunteering with the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory as part of my dissertation field work. They are a scrappy activist group that due to lack of funds, and I think also part of their general philosophy, incorporate volunteers in their exhumation technical work. Nicole Iturriaga: And so, if you're volunteering at the right time of the year, they'll train you in the basics of forensic anthropology, forensic archeology, and throw you into the field work. So, in that case, with Rosa and her family, we were in the southern part of Spain, where the team had been actually many times looking for graves in this area. Nicole Iturriaga: They've spent many years searching for the... the south part of Spain has a lot of mass graves, and this was the first time they had actually found anybody. So, it was a really big deal. The town was ecstatic, and that's how I ended up there, even though I am by training, a sociologist, not an archeologist. Nicole Iturriaga: So, I ended up having about a year of actual in-the-field field work experience. So, it doesn't count, I guess, without it being attached to an official degree, but yeah, been part of over 10 exhumations. Speaker 1: And ...
