Histories of fascism
It was, I believe, in early April 2001. I was living in New York at the time. I went into a bookstore in Miami because I had run out of reading material and it turned out the bookseller was from Barcelona. His name was Juan Carlos Castillón, he had just published a quasi-autobiographical novel titled La muerte del héroe y otros sueños fascistas and, yes, he had a decidedly fascist past which, out of self-respect, he did not renounce.
What's important about Castillón is not his fascism, but his work (I recommend you read the aforementioned novel, or Nieve sobre Miami, or the essay Extremo Occidente, about the United States), but today I want to talk about his past and his experiences. Now that the report of the Democratic Memory commission has just been published, reviewing 63 violent deaths committed between 1979 and 1982 by far-right groups and police forces (oh, that Transition that some consider so easy), I can use the old escapades of the Barcelona writer as a link between old fascism and the new, so booming.
Juan Carlos Castillón belonged to a cultured (he is very much so) and rather progressive family. But during his adolescence he fell under the fascination of fascist mysticism: the leader, the fight, honor, sacrifice... He was still in high school when he joined Cedade (Spanish Circle of Friends of Europe), a group so finely Nazi that they ended up expelling him for being too moderate: they found it intolerable that Castillón attended the funeral of Francisco Franco, that lenient dictator.
He participated in street fights, stained his fists and face with blood, joined the Movimiento Nacional when it was already dissolving in disarray, was expelled from Fuerza Nueva for being violent, and in 1981 he was arrested, after the attack on the magazine El Papus (in which he did not participate), for illegal possession of weapons. Then he fled to El Salvador. And he joined the Death Squads of Major Roberto d'Aubuisson, hero of the Salvadoran oligarchy and, at that time, the most chemically pure fascist on the planet.
"D'Aubuisson was the best boss I ever had," Castillón told me. Murders, revolvers, danger, alcohol, and mariachis: the years in El Salvador were the consummation of a fascist dream. But D'Aubuisson, with so many deaths on his conscience, moved into parliamentary politics and in 1984 failed in his attempt to become president of El Salvador. Castillón went to Miami, found work as a bookseller, and began to write. D'Aubuisson died of cancer in 1992, at the age of 47.
All this happened about a generation ago.
Last November, I traveled to Guatemala to teach a course. I was invited by Carlos Dada, director of El Faro, the heroic digital newspaper from El Salvador that appeared in 1998 and dedicated itself to investigating the crimes of the old local fascism (especially the murder of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero by D'Aubuisson's people) and the collusion between politicians, gangs, and drug trafficking that defines the country's recent history.
Nayib Bukele was elected president of El Salvador in 2019, by a large majority. He promised to end gang violence and turned the country, under a permanent state of exception, into an immense prison. El Faro soon discovered and published that Bukele had secretly agreed with the main gang, Mara Salvatrucha (M-13), considered a terrorist organization by the United States.
The consequence was predictable: Bukele began to harass the newspaper and pushed its director and its main journalists into exile. That's why, in Guatemala, I was able to meet brothers Carlos and Óscar Martínez, pillars of El Faro and, in my dispensable opinion, two of the best reporters in the Spanish language.
I also met their mother, Marisa, a formidable woman. Marisa's surname is D'Aubuisson, and she was the sister (and political enemy) of Major D'Aubuisson. Carlos and Óscar are, therefore, nephews of that violent oligarchic leader.
They knew old fascism intimately and now know the new fascism up close, too close. The young and modern one, the enthusiast of neoliberalism, the one who makes cryptocurrencies official currency and speculates with them, the one who masterfully controls political propaganda (in this, he is very similar to old fascism) and allies himself with Donald Trump, the grotesque patron of contemporary fascism. The one who, as always, imprisons, threatens, exiles, or kills political opposition and brave journalists.
Fascism transforms, but it does not die. There is always some oligarchy that needs it.