TO MY BROTHER
in memory of my family, so that there may no longer remain half-extinguished fires behind us
There is no family without history. The lives of those who came before us pass through us. Storytelling helps us weave their memory back together, to bring a forgotten past out of oblivion. For our family, the most deeply human of these stories is the murder, at the age of three, of our brother José, affectionately called Pépico.
1939 – The war is over. A civil war is particularly terrible in that it does not end on the day of the ceasefire. It continues through the revenge of the victors against the defeated camp to which we belonged. Hatred and brutality come to power, and we were to pay a heavy price for it. Pépico would pay for it with his innocent life in October 1940. With the last day of the month, the short life of our brother would also come to an end, a few days after his third birthday.
Until then, the pages of this tragedy had remained blank, as if written in invisible ink in the memory of our family. They had been forgotten, set aside. No trace remains except his death certificate and the scar in the hearts of those who knew and loved him.
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TESTIMONY OF MY SISTER ROSE:
“In the last days of October 1940, Pépico began suffering from stomach pains. As his fever kept rising, we took him to the clinic.
The doctor asked for the family record book to fill out a form. He noted that the father was a certain José Ocana García and asked my mother whether he was a former Republican officer. Seeing no harm in it, she answered yes. After a brief examination and without a word of explanation, he dismissed us.
During the night, his condition did not improve and he developed headaches. The next day we returned to the doctor. He placed Pépico on a small bed and asked us to leave so he could examine him quietly, which did not reassure our mother. We were in the waiting room. A few minutes later, he came out carrying Pépico in his arms. He handed him to our mother and, without concern for the other people present, said: ‘tenga un hijo de rojo de menos’ (“have one less red son”), and pushed us outside without ceremony.
On the way home, our mother walked faster and faster, because she could feel that her Pépico was “slipping away.” Once at home, she began to touch him, to caress his body as if to bring him back to life. She looked at his face, which was turning red. Bluish marks formed a collar around his neck. There was no doubt: he had been strangled.
He died a few days after his third birthday. Not a natural or acceptable death—if death can ever be acceptable—murdered because he was the son of a Republican officer and therefore undesirable to this Francoist caste to which the executioner belonged, and which considered us “red vermin,” a term used by Franco to describe the defeated.
He was buried only wrapped in a sheet embroidered with our parents’ initials. Buried as if he were nothing, outside humanity, in common grave no. 3. Without even a modest grave, without a place of remembrance, without markers, which would later make his location difficult, especially as hundreds of Republican executions were buried on top of him every day, in disorder.
For our mother, her child remained forever within her, as if grafted onto her body by the force of an atrocious act. Her rebellion was internal; she could not express it outwardly. There was no recourse against this horrible man. Anyone who has not lived through the worst period of Franco’s dictatorship cannot understand why our mother did not file a complaint. To file a complaint would have put us all in danger.
Wife of a wanted Republican condemned to death, what could she do against the murderer of her son, who was also an important member of the fascist groups in the city? It was a time when the Phalangists, the “blue shirts,” executioners of dirty work, could with impunity decide the fate of people deemed undesirable, subjecting them to the worst atrocities.
Out of vengeance, she feared becoming part of those long processions they formed with naked women, their heads shaved, forced to drink castor oil so that they would empty their bowels while being marched through the streets to humiliate them endlessly before curious onlookers or informers. To one nightmare they added another. When fear, hatred, and threat rule, they render people powerless, consciences are extinguished, and human beings surrender. That is what happened to our mother.
This crime was committed with cold intent. A crime which, by the very fact of its cowardice, is a thousand times worse than the brutality of beasts. Could it be that inwardly the perpetrator took pride and satisfaction in a vengeance fulfilled?
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CEREMONY AT THE CEMETERY OF ALBACETE
On the stele, a plaque bears the inscription:
“Remains of the ossuary prior to the democratic municipalities”
PLAQUE IN MEMORY OF MY BROTHER – 1937–1940
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PHOTO OF THE PARTICIPANTS
From left to right: Alfredito our little cousin – Rose our sister – Enriqueta our aunt – Myself – José María, son of friends of our parents – Alfredo our cousin and Maruja his wife.
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Jean Ocana – Aussillon (France) – October 2014