A B S T R A C TFour decades after the end of the Franco dictatorship, many Spaniards continue to question their country's claims to full democracy. Although Spain is now governed by popularly elected governments, citizens still experience the coercive effects of the dictatorship's policies in their daily interactions with the built environment, state institutions, and even their fellow citizens. These heterogeneous sites through which the dictatorship makes its presence felt constitute an infrastructure of memory that facilitates and impedes the circulation of past experience. In this context, people enact memory politics not only by contesting narratives of the past but also, first and foremost, by disand reassembling the physical, institutional, and social entanglements that undergird democratic politics. [infrastructures, cultural memory, democratic politics, forensic exhumations, archives, Spain] Cuatro décadas después del fin de la dictadura franquista, muchos españoles siguen cuestionando la calificación de su país como democracia plena. Si bien los gobiernos de España son elegidos popularmente, los ciudadanos siguen siendo afectados por las políticas de la dictadura en sus interacciones diarias con el ambiente construido, con las instituciones del estado, e incluso con otros ciudadanos. Estas ubicaciones heterogéneas, a través de las cuales la dictadura hace sentir su presencia, constituyen una infraestructura de la memoria que facilita e impide la circulación de la experiencia del pasado. En este contexto, las políticas de la memoria consisten no sólo en disputar narrativas del pasado, sino principalmente y ante todo en ensamblar y desensamblar los enredos físicos, institucionales y sociales que afianzan la política democrática. [infraestructuras, memoria cultural, política democrática, exhumaciones forenses, archivos, España]

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Four decades after the fall of its dictator, Spain still refuses to undertake its legal and moral responsibilities to locate the disappeared. This essay examines how Spanish activists use forensic exhumations to transform the political status of Franco’s victims. Departing from popular and scholarly depictions of forensic science, I show that, in post-fascist Spain, the impact of exhumations has little to do with their ability to extract historical information directly from the bones of the exhumed. Instead, I argue that exhumations transform the disappeared into dead persons, thereby reincorporating them as integral participants in a democratic public sphere. For memory activists, the project of securing Spain’s democratic future depends on recognizing the personhood of long-excluded victims of fascist violence. Absent any official legal framework, I show how Spanish activists train laypersons to recognize the inherent dignity of the dead and see them as potential participants in an alternative democratic public. Resumen Cuatro décadas después de la caída del dictador Francisco Franco, España aún rechaza su responsabilidad legal y moral de localizar a los desaparecidos. Este ensayo examina cómo los activistas españoles transforman el estatus político de las víctimas del franquismo a través de las exhumaciones forenses. Partiendo de representaciones académicas y populares de la ciencia forense, demuestro que el impacto de las exhumaciones en la España posfascista tiene poco que ver con la capacidad de extraer los hechos históricos directamente de los huesos exhumados. En lugar de ello, sostengo que los desaparecidos se transforman en personas muertas a través de las exhumaciones y, de esa manera, son reincorporados como participantes integrales en la esfera pública democrática. Para los activistas por la memoria, el proyecto de asegurar el futuro democrático de España depende de que las víctimas de la violencia fascista, excluídas por largo tiempo, sean por fin reconocidas como personas. A falta de marco jurídico, demuestro cómo los activistas españoles entrenan a las personas no expertas a reconocer la dignidad de los muertos y considerarlos como participantes potenciales en una esfera pública democrática y alternativa.

This article analyzes the experiences of Neris Gonzalez, one of the three Salvadoran plaintiffs who brought a successful lawsuit against the former heads of the Salvadoran military for the torture she suffered in 1979. In analyzing the presentation of the case, I focus on the specific transformations that political and historical disputes undergo as they are subsumed into the formal rules of U.S. tort litigation. Further, I pay special attention to the ways legal narratives are designed specifically to appeal to a jury comprising 10 lay U.S. citizens, who have no familiarity with Salvadoran history. I demonstrate how torts litigation requires a depoliticization of the plaintiff and a personalization of history. I argue that, due to the form of the court fails in addressing the historical disputes in question.

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