As Time Goes By

With just days before the freely elected orange Himler assumes the most powerful office on earth to disassemble the world order from inside, the Camino a Ítaca takes a look back at how eight decades of anti-Nazi propaganda on the silver screen have proven to be no match for the masses of disinformation fed to all through their tiny screens. What was once bad is now good and what was once evil is now accepted. The hundreds of thousands who lost their lives fighting these extreme righ-wing ideals now sleep uneasily as the very real threat of fascism returns. This time not by violence and force, but mire insidiously by fake news and misinformation. Click over to read the published versions both in Spanish in the HOY and in English in the SUR in English. (castellano abajo)

I’m starting to suspect that everything that comes out of Hollywood isn’t quite real. I’ve been there on many occasions, seen the white letters up on the hillside and tripped over the junkies on Hollywood and Vine. So, I know that the place in fact exists. It’s what it has produced that I am no longer certain of.

I’m picturing Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn climbing the cliffs of Navarone. Or maybe something lighter when Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson make a Luftwaffe colonel’s life impossibly complicated as they try to escape.

We don’t even have to reach so far back to find more films on the same theme. We’ve seen Stephen Spielberg direct Liam Neeson in a most harrowing film about a terrible list and Tom Hanks searching for Private Ryan. Or perhaps more recently, Christoph Waltz’s unparalleled quiet, yet menacing depiction of pure raw evil. One that might even approach the heinous malevolence of someone like Reinhard Heydrich in Tarantino’s inglourious remake.

For eighty years Hollywood has churned out constant reminders of the monumental struggle that took place in the 30s and 40s. All are, in their own fashion, depictions of a time when things were remarkably black and white. The false Hollywood narrative of cowboys and indians temporarily replaced by something more easily digestible. On one side we had people fighting for supposed freedom and democracy. While on the other, supporters of authoritarian regimes who had no compunction about sending millions of people who didn’t fit into their mold to their deaths in purpose-built extermination camps from Fuerteventura to Rivesaltes to Birkenau. Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito’s defeat and the subsequent freeing of the concentration camps have flooded our screens ever since.

In Spain however it would take another 40 years. Franco was never toppled He died peacefully in bed with his death marking the beginning of the end to perhaps Europe’s longest dictatorships. At last, the good guys had beaten the baddies and fascism seemed to have finally been put to rest.

But then something happened. It came back.                                 

Four years ago the world watched a violent mob try overturn a free and fair election. Nazi flags were seen flying in the Capitol building of a country that lost 400,000 plus lives fighting the very ideology invading its legislative core. Worse yet, the coup attempt’s leader, Donald Trump, has now been reelected. In Italy, an open supporter of Mussolini now runs the country. At the same time, in the cradles of the most atrocious crimes of the 20^th century, Germany has seen a surge in support for the far right, while in Austria Nazi supporters may form a government.

In Spain, young people blithely sing fascist songs on school outings while more and more women look back fondly on a dark period when they had next to no rights. Regime apologists now sit in all levels of government and in attempts to whitewash the past, the traditional right has joined them in attempts to repeal laws reminding us of past horrors.

In a world where Mayor Stasser has become the good guy and Rick Blaine the bad, you no longer need dystopian movies, just pay attention. Please Sam, don’t play it again.

Marco Polo and the Three Wise Men

The Three Wise Men woken by an angel Maestre Gislebertus, h. 1130

In an age when American culture seems to permeate and even obliterate traditions around the world, it's refreshing to local traditions hold strong against the ceaseless tide. Here in Spain they have incorportated Santa Claus and the mass consumerism of America into their Christmas season, but the main event is still the Three Kings Day (Epiphany). The thing is, as with many aspects of Christianity, the Spanish have really turned it into a nativist narrative (the legends of Santiago or Saint James and the pagan inspired Virgin cults). In this week's Camino a Ítaca, a reminder that the foundational myths of the faith looked East before looking West. Click over to the version published in English in Sur in English (PDF p.16) or the Spanish version in the HOY. 

Modern-day Tehran tumbles out of the Elburz mountains like an unspooling roll of chimerical fabric. It starts out fresh and clean but as its splendor runs out, it becomes dustier and more frayed at the edges as it loses altitude and peters out on the doorstep of Kavir, the Great Salt Desert. In a question of 30kms the metropolis plunges 600m down from the modern, wealthy mountain heights in the north, through the dense smog that perennially chokes the megacity and then fades into the humbler, haphazard developments and villages it has swallowed up along the fringes of the desert.

In one of these towns, now engulfed by the metastasizing capital, still stands the ancient caravanserai stop of Rayy. A place where a young Italian named Marco Polo just might have passed through in the XIII century enroute with his destiny with the great Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan.

Further along the Silk Road in Saveh (or Kashan depending on your transliteration), the Genovese youngster encountered a square building housing three sepultures, each boasting an unblemished corpse complete with hipster beards and stylized hair. He asked around but no one was able to tell him who these incorruptible Methuselah were.

It was another three-day journey until he found out that they were three ‘kings’ who had set out from the East to worship a prophet in Judea. With them they carried the classical bling of the day, Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh. These gifts were in fact chosen to ascertain whether the prophet was a God, an earthly King, or a Physician. If he took the Gold, then he would be your typical Bourbon or Windsor, that is to say an earthly king. If he fancied the Incense he was a God and if he was after the mysterious Myrrh he was a Healer.

After conferring with Herod, these magi finally found the baby prophet. The youngest went in first and found the child apparently just like himself. The middle one entered next, and like the first, he found the prophet seemingly of his own age. Lastly, the eldest went in and wouldn’t you know it, the same happened to him. To clear up this circus trick they agreed to go in together and to their surprise found a baby that was just thirteen days old. Amazed by the miracle, they presented their gifts and in a truly trinitarian move, the child took all three. In return, the child gave them a small, closed box.

We know curiosity kills cats, and the same might be said for camels. The three kings couldn’t wait to get home to open the box and when they finally did, they only found a small stone. In their disappointment, they tossed the stone into a well only to be surprised by a flame bursting up and creating the everlasting light that would become the foundation of another of the monotheistic faiths, Zoroastrianism.

With so many of its followers xenophobically insisting on their faith being the basis of the West, Polo’s account serves as just another reminder that Christianity was not only born in the near East but once looked further in that direction in its foundational stories.

Chapter 5 - The Crack Between Portugal and Spain

Sierra Fría - Valencia de Alcántara © Fátima Gibello

Chapter 5 begins...

"As you leave the tiny village of Las Huertas de Cansa, a jagged grey shark fin rises out of a patchwork of changing green. The bluff cuts across the horizon like a megalithic dorsal fin of craggy granite, making the way seem impassable until a chink in its sharp, serrated teeth appears and allows the two-lane highway to slip through. Trees and undergrowth, like willows and birch, that wouldn’t look out of place in the milder Atlantic regions of the country, cluster around the multiple courses of water. These sculpt the valleys and feed into the Rivera Avid while, higher up, cluster pines embroider the hills. The Sierra Fría, in the western reaches of the province of Cáceres, is a colossal rock formation you feel instinctively drawn to. It’s a prehistoric landmark, the kind that resounds somewhere deep down in our DNA, somehow answering our evolutionary needs and desires for resource-rich environments that promise food, shelter, comfort, and, of course, beauty. Juanma was definitely right; it was more than impressive, but standing at its feet, it seemed more like a wall than a hike."

"This is La Raya, the sometimes-imaginary rift that marks the border between Spain and Portugal. This geological singularity has been attracting people since the hominids that spread out of Africa to leave their mark in places like the Maltravieso cave. In their wake they left a rich trove of prehistoric graffiti and dolmens around the province. Out here, hidden among these stratified rock folds, like the cave in Cáceres, you find art from some of the first Europeans. And the chain in front of us is the westernmost stop in the province along the Prehistoric RockArt Trails."

"A shiny blue EU sign welcoming you to Portugal stands among a past that has since been left behind. The derelict border post that once registered everyone’s coming and going between countries is now a hollow shell of broken windows and tattered posters announcing bullfights on both sides of the border. The abandoned buildings of what used to be a hard border stand disused and moldering by the sides of the road. Stark reminders of how unnecessary they are between countries that share so much in common. Just up the highway on the Spanish side we found the trailhead to the four-hundred-metre, well-marked trail up to the paintings. You have to hop over the guardrail to access the well-marked trail, complete with an information panel at the bottom, but thankfully traffic was light."

"In less than half an hour we came to a slight alcove in the rock with all of Portugal spread out in front of us. Portugal is a country of supernatural pageantry, as the Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago describes it in “The Sermon of the Fishes” in his travel book, Journey to Portugal, and this view proved his words true. We were standing on a rock shelf big enough to accommodate several families. The alcove itself didn’t offer much protection from the elements, but it would have been very easily defended as you could see anyone or anything coming for miles around. The 974-metre Sierra Fría across the valley was scarred by forest fires and was sliced up in cross-sections by fire cuts. The northern slope is Spanish, while the southern slope falls away into Portugal with a thicker fire cut drawing the line that divides the two."

"The sun was bright and half of the rock shelf fell in the shade, making it difficult to adjust our eyes to the contrast. My eyes were drawn into the deepest recess in the rock and there I saw the first motif, looking like a stitched-up reddish wound on the rock face. Down below it I also made out other symbols, though these were less clear. The brutal onslaught of seven thousand summers had taken their toll on the paintings, but many were still clearly visible. I scanned the rock for more, sometimes mistaking irregular patterns of iron ore left behind by eons of dripping water that had stained the fissures and cracks in the rock for paintings. Neon green lichen covered honeycombed sections of the rock in the shadier areas, adding another hue to the pallet of reds and greys."

"What you can’t do with these paintings is disassociate them from their surroundings. Without the setting and the landscape that surrounds them, they lose context. The handprints on the cave were not only symbols but symbols that had been placed in a specific place. The oldest handprints in the deepest reaches of the Maltravieso cave were not put there because someone happened to be passing by. There was a specific purpose. Up here on this rocky outcrop, the same was true. The artists had chosen to leave their mark here, for the sights or even for the sound, but it had been a conscious choice. No matter the exact meaning, what I understood is that beauty was equally important to them."

Excerpt from Stories Left in Stone, Trails and Traces in Cáceres, Spain by Troy Nahumko published by the University of Alberta Press

Photographs by Juan Carlos Jiménez Durán