Mobilizing memories: The social conditions of the long-term impact of victimization
| Author | Francisco Villamil |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343320912816 |
| Published date | 01 May 2021 |
| Date | 01 May 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Mobilizing memories: The social conditions
of the long-term impact of victimization
Francisco Villamil
Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zurich
Abstract
Recent research has focused on the legacies of civil war violence on political preferences, finding that wartime
victimization decreases support for the perpetrator or its political identity in the long run. However, we know little
about the conditions under which this effect takes place. Historical accounts from civil wars suggest that the long-
term effect of violence is not homogenous, nor consistent across areas within a single conflict. Addressing this gap,
this article explores the effects of wartime victimization on long-term political preferences at the local level, looking at
the conditioning effect of the local social context. In particular, I argue that the effect of wartime violence depends on
the existence of local networks that create and maintain memories of the violence and capitalize on them for future
mobilization. This argument is tested in the context of the Spanish Civil War. I build a novel dataset using archival
data, historical secondary sources, and already existing datasets, covering 2,100 municipalities across Spain. In line
with the argument, it is found that Francoist wartime victimization during the civil war is linked to an increase in
leftist vote share after democracy was restored four decades later, but mainly in those municipalities where clandes-
tine, left-leaning political networks were active after the conflict.
Keywords
civil war legacies, political violence, Spain
Introduction
Recent research has explored the long-term effects of civil
war violence on political preferences, and has found that
civilian victimization can lead to a long-term rejection of
the perpetrator or its political identity (Balcells, 2012;
Lupu & Peisakhin, 2017; Fontana, Nannicini & Tabel-
lini, 2017; Rozenas, Schutte & Zhukov, 2017). How-
ever, we know little about why and when violence has
such effect. Moreover, historical accounts suggest a more
complex story.
In the mining valleys of Asturias, in the north of
Spain, the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) involved inten-
sive victimization of the civilian population. Years later,
during the Francoist regime, when the clandestine labor
movement developed in these same mining and indus-
trial towns, the memories of the civil war played an
important role in the mobilization of the next genera-
tion. Despite the paralyzing effect of repression, strong
social networks helped to create collective memories and
perpetuate the labor culture that had been harshly
repressed during the civil war. It might not be surprising
that this area is still a stronghold of communist and
socialist ideology.
These valleys, however, are not the norm in Spain. In
many other parts of the country, networks of opposition
to the Francoist regime were much weaker, or did not
exist at all. There, violent repression during the civil war
and its aftermath had been much more successful in
rooting out pockets of leftist support and demobilizing
the entire population. Memories of victimization became
a social taboo and people would quickly brush over the
reasons why a relative had been killed during the war,
even in private family conversations. Contrary to the
Asturian valleys, these areas lacked a favorable environ-
ment in which collective memories could be kept alive
and resonate within the community. In this context,
there was no leftist mobilization in response to violence.
Corresponding author:
francisco.villamil@icr.gess.ethz.ch
Journal of Peace Research
2021, Vol. 58(3) 399–416
ªThe Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0022343320912816
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If the seed of revolution is repression, not all soils are
equally fertile.
The importance of the social context for the transmis-
sion of wartime memories and its subsequent impact on
political attitudes is the focus of this article. In particular,
I study the local-level legacies of wartime violence against
civilians, and argue that a backfiring effect against the
perpetrator’s political identity as a result of victimization
is dependent on the presence of relevant political net-
works that create, maintain, and mobilize on memories
of the violence.
To test this argument, I create a novel dataset covering
2,100 municipalities in 13 provinces of Spain, includ-
ing information on many political phenomena at the
local level across several decades. In particular, I ana-
lyze the long-term effect of Francoist violence against
civilians during and immediately after the Spanish
Civil War (1936–39), and test whether this effect var-
ies depending on the existence of clandestine left-wing
networks during the Francoist regime (1939–77).
Results support the argument. Using a difference-in-
differences setup, I find that wartime victimization
duringthecivilwarislinkedtoanincreaseinleftist
vote share when democracy was restored four decades
later, but mainly in those municipalities where clandes-
tine political networks were active during the dictator-
ship. Moreover, I rule out that either wartime violence
is causing both postwar clandestine activity and leftist
vote increase or that it is just a story about organiza-
tional persistence.
Even though the empirical evidence comes from a
single case, exploiting internal variation within Spain
helps us to understand how single-case findings on the
effect of victimization might travel to other countries. In
particular, the results suggest that the survival of wartime
memories and its translation into preferences hinges
upon the action by political actors or networks. While
in the case of Spain I point to the role of underground
left-leaning political networks, other type of actors –
such as victims associations or local political brokers –
could have the same effect in other countries.
This article contributes to the literature on the con-
sequences of political violence. Despite burgeoning
recent research on the legacies of violence, we still know
little about their social determinants and how they vary
within a conflict. Here I argue that such an effect is not
homogenous, but conditional on the work done by polit-
ical actors and organizations in turning wartime events
into collective memories and, thus, influencing political
behavior in the long run. Moreover, this article also
speaks to previous research on the relationship between
local organizations and networks and electoral persis-
tence, particularly during periods of authoritarian rule.
The legacies of political violence
In recent years, an emerging research agenda has focused
on the effect of exposure to violence on individuals’
social and political attitudes. The main finding is that
violence increases pro-social behavior towards members
of the same social group, which often translates into
increased capacity for collective action (Bellows &
Miguel, 2009; Blattman, 2009; Voors et al., 2012; Gil-
ligan, Pasquale & Samii, 2014; Gonza
´lez & Miguel,
2015; Bauer et al., 2016). Related to this, similar studies
suggest that, also at the individual level, exposure to
violence is related to less potential for ethnic reconcilia-
tion (Bakke, O’Loughlin & Ward, 2009; Beber, Roessler
& Scacco, 2014) and less political trust (Grosjean, 2014;
De Juan & Pierskalla, 2016).
These findings are limited to the analyses of relatively
short-term effects and, in most cases, do not offer explicit
insights about the effects of violence on preferences vis-a-
vis the perpetrator or other political forces. The long-
term legacy of violence on political preferences is still an
understudied topic. Balcells (2012) and Lupu & Peisa-
khin (2017) try to fill this gap, tracking changes on
individual attitudes across generations in Spain and
Ukraine and find that exposure to violence leads to a
rejection of the perpetrator’s political identity. Despite
their importance in providing new evidence, one of their
limitations is that comparing individuals who were
exposed to violence with those who were not omits those
processes that take place at the level of communities.
Particularly when looking at longer time periods, the
effect of social networks or organizations at the local level
is likely to play a big role in the transmission of wartime
memories and their translation into political ideologies.
Moreover, an exclusive focus on individuals sidelines the
way violence can radicalize entire communities and turn
them into ideological strongholds.
The few works that investigate local legacies of con-
flict support the idea that local-level processes are impor-
tant. Daly (2012) shows how Colombian communities
that suffered conflict in the past are more likely to be
current hotspots of insurgency. Osorio, Schubiger &
Weintraub (2016) show that in Mexico, current forms
of self-defense mobilization against criminal violence can
also be traced back to historical popular rebellions.
Moreover, a few works highlight the importance of the
‘supply-side’ legacies of civil wars, in other words, how
conflicts alter the constellation of local political actors
400 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 58(3)
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