“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.”
— Winston Churchill
By Mark L. Taylor
The Commoner Call (6/28/18)
As the brutal Trump child kidnapping program continues on with arrogance, cruelty and casual incompetence we are going to see many of the 2,300-plus children now incarcerated permanently stolen from their parents; they will never be reunited. There are already reports of parents deported back to Central America while their children remain in U.S. concentration camps. (And make no mistake, that is the proper term for these camps. And, no, it is not “separation”, it is kidnapping.)
History provides insight on where this will go next. In 2011 the BBC broke the story of how under the Spanish fascist regime of Gen. Francisco Franco infants of government dissidents were taken away from politically “unsuitable” parents and given to more “deserving” couples connected to the military, government or wealthy childless couples. The Catholic church and hospitals were active facilitators of Franco’s initial program and right up into the 1970’s. The first trial of one of the physicians involved in the program is grabbing headlines in Spain now.
Nazi ‘childcare’
Invading Nazi armies did the same thing across Europe in World War II, snatching up some 400,000 “Aryan-looking” children viewed as being of sound Nordic stock to be sent back to the homeland to be forcibly “Germanized” in SS schools and homes. (Today, we have immigrant children forced in at least one concentration camp located in an old Walmart to recite the Pledge of Allegiance … to the nation that has kidnapped them and brutalized their families.)
Many evangelical churches will step forward to offer their guidance and assistance — with hefty government subsidies, of course. It will all be branded as the only “compassionate thing to do.” We are, after all, a compassionate people. Right?
More recently, the U.S was involved in the same thing in the 1970’s and 1980’s in the aftermath of the Nixon/Kissinger CIA-backed 9/11/73 coup that delivered Chile into the bloody paws of fascist Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Some of the babies were children of tortured and executed dissidents (many pushed from helicopters), others were children of the poor, or single mothers. Some infants were simply given away, others sold. By its continued support of Pinochet — long after the realities of the regime were abundantly clear — the U.S. was actively engaged in the evil. It is one of the reasons Kissinger will — and should — burn in hell.
Hey, just call 1-800
Could the U.S. be approaching such a point here on the ‘homeland’? We already have reports of parents being deported back to Central America while their children remain incarcerated here (see below). When an impoverished Guatemalan mother is deported and her toddler remains in a camp isolated and out of public view in the Texas desert what reasonable chance is there of that mom negotiating with the United States government a return of her child? None. Certainly she can’t afford to retain an American attorney. Hell, she probably doesn’t even have a phone or can afford the international calls. And besides, the Trumpsters are so calculatingly disorganized the 1-800 number supposedly designed to help locate children is for all purposes useless. The White House hasn’t even put together a program of family reunification.
In the coming months we hear of adoptions beginning. Parents, we will be told, either can’t be reached or “have made no efforts to retrieve their children”. Obviously, it will be reasoned, the parents must have never really cared about their children. Right wing media will sigh and cry a few crocodile tears saying that the program “may have been better handled” but, hey, we are where we are and the children need a home. Many evangelical churches will step forward to offer their guidance and assistance — with hefty government subsidies, of course. It will all be branded as the only “compassionate thing to do.” We are, after all, a compassionate people. Right?
Riight…
‘Slaughter houses of the soul’
Many children, especially as they get older and are less “marketable” for adoption — around age 4 — will simply linger on in the private for-profit concentration camps. They may be fed watery calories but there will be no emotional nurturance. The accumulated effects of trauma and neglect and the lack of stimulation of normal childhood activities will effect them emotionally and intellectually and we will replicate here the horrible inhumanity of the Russian and Romanian orphanages. In Romania such institutions were referred to as “slaughter houses of the soul.” The tragic stories a decade or so ago of the many American adoptions out of those institutions proved the lasting cognitive and emotional harm of such separation and dead bureaucratic child “care”.
At the end, Americans will congratulate themselves that when they were needed they once again “stepped up” and — as always — did the right thing. After all, we are Americans and we do the right thing! Right?
Riight.
History tells us where this will go and this will be one of the most shameful chapters of our history, and it will all be done in our name and be a stain on us all.
(Commoner Call column and cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2018. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercll.org )
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Spanish Doctor On Trial Over Fascist Era ‘stolen babies’ Scandal
When an 85-year-old gynaecologist goes on trial in Madrid on 26 June accused of abducting a baby, thousands of victims of a sinister, sprawling network of illegal adoptions will be looking for answers.
They will also be hoping that the case triggers wider investigations into the scandal.
Dr Eduardo Vela will become the first person to stand trial for what victims’ groups claim was a secret practice that saw hundreds of thousands of babies stolen and sold under the dictatorship of Gen Francisco Franco and after his death in 1975.
In the years immediately after Spain’s 1936-1939 civil war, children were removed from families identified by the victorious fascist regime as Republicans and given to families considered more deserving.
Little was known about the private trafficking of babies that continued in the 1960s until two men went public with their story in 2011.
Antonio Barroso and Juan Luis Moreno revealed they had been bought by their respective fathers from a priest in Zaragoza.
Mr Barroso, who founded the association Anadir (National Association for Irregular Adoption Victims) calculates that 15% of adoptions in Spain between 1965 and 1990 were the result of babies being taken without consent from their biological parents.
That would amount to some 300,000 people.
What Eduardo Vela is accused of
Inés Madrigal, the baby Dr Vela is accused of abducting in 1969, believes her birth mother may have been deceived or bullied into giving her away.
“They told my mother that the biological mother was a married woman who couldn’t keep me. She had had an affair while her husband was away,” she says.
Dr Vela has admitted signing the birth certificate stating that Inés Madrigal’s adoptive parents, Inés Pérez and Pablo Madrigal, were her biological mother and father.
He told the investigating judge that, in his capacity as director at the now-defunct San Ramón clinic in Madrid, he signed papers without reading them.
DNA testing has shown that Ms Madrigal is not related to her late parents.
Before her death in 2016, Inés Pérez told the judge that Dr Vela had given her the baby as “a gift” after a Jesuit priest had introduced her to the gynaecologist as a favour, because she and her husband could not have children. …
Read the Rest and 2+-Minute Video
- BBC Investigation: ‘Spain’s Stolen Babies”: 52-Minute Video
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Tug-of-Love: Immigrant Mom Loses Effort To Regain Son Given Away To US Parents
By Brian Ross & Angela M. Hill
ABC 96/18/18)
In a controversial case that involved the rights of illegal immigrants and their young children, a Guatemalan mother lost her effort today to get back the five-year old son who was taken away from her after her arrest on immigration charges and put up for adoption in Missouri despite her objections.
A Missouri judge ruled the boy should stay with the Missouri couple, Melinda and Seth Moser, who took him into their home five years ago while his mother was in federal custody, where she attempted in vain to oppose the adoption proceedings. …
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‘All I hear is my daughter, crying’: Salvadoran Father Yearns To See His Child Again After Being Separated At US Border
By Sarah Kinosian
The Guardian (6/24/18)
“Papa, when are you getting me out of here?” asks the small voice on the telephone.
Arnovis Guidos Portillo holds his mobile phone away from his face as he struggles to hold back tears, but his six-year old daughter, Meybelin, can still be heard on speakerphone, asking when she will be released from custody in an American detention centre.
Though he knows it’s a lie, he tells her that she can’t return to El Salvador because the US government’s plane is broken; the truth is that he has no idea what will become of her.
“They’re going to bring you home soon,” he says. “They haven’t fixed the plane.”
Portillo, 26, was separated from Meybelin in McAllen, Texas, on 27 May – over three weeks after the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, announced the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance policy”, mandating children of undocumented migrants would be removed from their parents. … Read the Rest