B1 · Intermediate
11 min
justiceculturehistoryconflict
The Weight of the Past: Syria and Justice
El Peso del Pasado: Siria y la Justicia
Syrian authorities arrested a former military officer this week for his role in the Tadamon massacre during the civil war. Fletcher and Octavio talk about post-conflict justice, historical memory, and what it means to build a new society on the ruins of a dictatorship.
Las autoridades sirias arrestaron esta semana a un exoficial militar acusado de participar en la masacre de Tadamon durante la guerra civil. Fletcher y Octavio hablan sobre la justicia después de los conflictos, la memoria histórica y lo que significa construir una sociedad nueva sobre las ruinas de una dictadura.
7 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| masacre | massacre | Las autoridades arrestaron al oficial por su papel en la masacre. |
| impunidad | impunity | Durante muchos años, los criminales actuaron con total impunidad. |
| justicia transicional | transitional justice | La justicia transicional es el proceso de juzgar los crímenes después de una dictadura. |
| régimen | regime | El régimen controló el país durante más de cincuenta años. |
| herida | wound / injury (also used figuratively) | Las heridas de la guerra civil todavía son muy recientes. |
| memoria histórica | historical memory | La memoria histórica es muy importante para la identidad de un pueblo. |
| consecuencia | consequence | Es importante que los crímenes tengan consecuencias legales. |
There's an arrest in Syria this week that I suspect most people scrolled right past, and I think that's a real shame, because what it represents is genuinely extraordinary.
Sí, las autoridades sirias arrestaron a Amjad Youssef.
Yes, Syrian authorities arrested Amjad Youssef.
Era un oficial de inteligencia del ejército de Assad.
He was an intelligence officer in Assad's army.
Lo arrestaron por su papel en la masacre de Tadamon.
They arrested him for his role in the Tadamon massacre.
Right.
And for listeners who don't know Tadamon, we need to explain what that was, because it's one of the most disturbing documented war crimes of the entire Syrian conflict.
Tadamon era un barrio de Damasco.
Tadamon was a neighborhood in Damascus.
En 2022, unos periodistas publicaron unos videos terribles.
In 2022, some journalists published terrible videos.
Los videos mostraban a soldados del gobierno de Assad matando a personas civiles, personas normales.
The videos showed Assad government soldiers killing civilian people, ordinary people.
These weren't battlefield deaths.
These were executions.
One video showed a man being pushed into a pit and shot.
Another showed a person being burned alive.
Documented on camera, by the perpetrators themselves.
Es que los soldados grabaron todo.
The soldiers recorded everything themselves.
Ellos mismos grabaron los crímenes con sus teléfonos.
They recorded the crimes on their own phones.
Eso fue un error muy grande para ellos, porque los periodistas usaron esas imágenes para identificar a los responsables.
That was a very big mistake for them, because journalists used those images to identify those responsible.
Which is a strange feature of modern atrocity, actually.
The documentation impulse.
People have been trying to understand that for years.
Pero lo importante ahora es que el nuevo gobierno sirio arrestó a Youssef.
But what's important now is that the new Syrian government arrested Youssef.
Esto es histórico.
This is historic.
Durante muchos años, nadie en Siria podía hablar de estos crímenes.
For many years, no one in Syria could speak about these crimes.
La justicia era imposible.
Justice was impossible.
And that phrase, 'justice was impossible,' is really the whole story, isn't it.
Because under Assad, the machinery of the state was the machinery of the violence.
You couldn't prosecute the crimes because the criminals were running the courts.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
El régimen de Assad no era solo un gobierno corrupto.
The Assad regime was not just a corrupt government.
Era un sistema completo de control y terror.
It was a complete system of control and terror.
La familia Assad gobernó Siria durante más de cincuenta años.
The Assad family governed Syria for more than fifty years.
Fifty years.
I covered parts of that story, and one thing that always stayed with me was how thoroughly the regime had dismantled any institution that could challenge it.
Courts, universities, civil society organizations, the press.
All of it, hollowed out.
Y eso es el problema ahora.
And that is the problem now.
El nuevo gobierno quiere hacer justicia, pero el sistema judicial en Siria estaba destruido.
The new government wants to deliver justice, but the judicial system in Syria was destroyed.
No había independencia.
There was no independence.
Los jueces trabajaban para el régimen.
The judges worked for the regime.
So this is a culture question as much as it's a legal one.
How do you rebuild the culture of a society when for fifty years the culture was, essentially, silence or suffer?
Es una pregunta muy difícil.
It is a very difficult question.
Otros países tuvieron que hacer lo mismo después de dictaduras.
Other countries had to do the same thing after dictatorships.
Argentina, por ejemplo, o Sudáfrica.
Argentina, for example, or South Africa.
Cada país encontró una manera diferente.
Each country found a different way.
Argentina is a good comparison actually.
The trials of the junta generals in the 1980s, that took years to prosecute, and there are people in Argentina who would tell you those trials saved the country's democracy.
And people who would say they didn't go nearly far enough.
En Sudáfrica usaron la Comisión de la Verdad y la Reconciliación.
In South Africa they used the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
El modelo era diferente: las personas podían confesar sus crímenes y recibir el perdón.
The model was different: people could confess their crimes and receive pardon.
La idea era curar a la sociedad, no solo castigar a los criminales.
The idea was to heal society, not just punish criminals.
Which is a profound philosophical difference.
Punishment versus healing.
And I think most people, understandably, want both, and those two things are not always compatible.
Para las familias de las víctimas en Siria, el arresto de Youssef es muy importante.
For the families of victims in Syria, Youssef's arrest is very important.
Pero también es solo un hombre.
But he is also just one man.
Había miles de personas que participaron en los crímenes del régimen.
There were thousands of people who participated in the crimes of the regime.
And that's the structural problem with any transitional justice process.
The architects of systems of violence are usually a fairly small group.
But the people who carry out the violence, they're often ordinary people.
Teachers, neighbors, cousins.
That's what makes it so hard.
Hay un concepto que los académicos llaman 'la banalidad del mal'.
There is a concept that academics call 'the banality of evil'.
Muchos soldados en Siria no eran monstruos.
Many soldiers in Syria were not monsters.
Eran personas con miedo, personas que obedecieron órdenes porque tenían miedo de morir si no lo hacían.
They were people who were afraid, people who followed orders because they were afraid of dying if they didn't.
Hannah Arendt.
The Eichmann trial.
That idea has been challenged a lot since she wrote it, but it never goes away completely because it keeps explaining something true about how atrocities actually function.
Pero en el caso de Tadamon, los videos muestran algo diferente.
But in the case of Tadamon, the videos show something different.
No era solo obediencia.
It was not just obedience.
Los soldados se reían.
The soldiers were laughing.
Algunos parecían disfrutar lo que hacían.
Some seemed to enjoy what they were doing.
Eso es mucho más difícil de explicar con miedo.
That is much harder to explain with fear.
There's research on this.
What happens to people inside systems of total impunity, where violence is not just permitted but normalized, even celebrated.
The culture of an institution can corrupt people in ways that are genuinely hard to reverse.
Y por eso la cultura es tan importante después de una dictadura.
And that is why culture is so important after a dictatorship.
No solo necesitas nuevas leyes.
You don't just need new laws.
Necesitas cambiar cómo la gente piensa sobre el poder, sobre la violencia, sobre los derechos humanos.
You need to change how people think about power, about violence, about human rights.
And that takes generations.
That's the uncomfortable truth about this kind of thing.
A law can change tomorrow.
A culture changes on a completely different timescale.
España es un ejemplo muy interesante.
Spain is a very interesting example.
Después del dictador Francisco Franco, España eligió lo que llamaron el 'pacto del olvido'.
After the dictator Francisco Franco, Spain chose what they called the 'pact of forgetting'.
No procesaron a los criminales del franquismo.
They did not prosecute the criminals of Francoism.
Decidieron olvidar para construir la democracia.
They decided to forget in order to build democracy.
And you have complicated feelings about that, I'd imagine.
Muy complicados.
Very complicated.
[sigh] Por un lado, España construyó una democracia bastante estable.
On one hand, Spain built a fairly stable democracy.
Por otro lado, muchas familias nunca supieron qué pasó con sus familiares.
On the other hand, many families never found out what happened to their relatives.
Sus abuelos todavía están en fosas comunes sin nombre.
Their grandparents are still in unnamed mass graves.
That sits very differently depending on whose grandfather we're talking about.
The survivors and their descendants never got to choose whether they wanted to forget.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y creo que en Siria, la situación es diferente de España.
And I think in Syria, the situation is different from Spain.
El régimen de Assad no terminó hace cuarenta años.
The Assad regime did not end forty years ago.
Terminó hace muy poco.
It ended very recently.
Las heridas son muy recientes.
The wounds are very fresh.
La gente todavía tiene miedo.
People are still afraid.
There's also a complication that doesn't get discussed enough, which is that the new Syrian government is itself not a simple liberal democracy.
It emerged from an armed opposition that includes groups with their own very complicated histories.
Eso es verdad.
That is true.
El nuevo gobierno quiere parecer legítimo ante el mundo.
The new government wants to appear legitimate to the world.
Arrestar a criminales de guerra es una manera de demostrar que son diferentes del régimen de Assad.
Arresting war criminals is a way of demonstrating that they are different from the Assad regime.
Pero hay que observar sus acciones, no solo sus palabras.
But you have to watch their actions, not just their words.
Spoken like a journalist.
Soy periodista.
I am a journalist.
Pero también soy español.
But I am also Spanish.
Y los españoles aprendimos algo importante: la memoria histórica no es solo política.
And Spaniards learned something important: historical memory is not just politics.
Es parte de la identidad cultural de un país.
It is part of the cultural identity of a country.
That's the line I keep coming back to.
A country's relationship with its own past, the way it chooses to remember or not remember, that's a cultural document.
It tells you what that society values, what it can live with, what it finds unbearable.
En Siria, hay millones de personas que vivieron bajo Assad durante toda su vida.
In Syria, there are millions of people who lived under Assad their entire lives.
Para ellos, el arresto de Youssef es el primer signo de que las cosas pueden ser diferentes.
For them, the arrest of Youssef is the first sign that things can be different.
Eso es muy importante psicológicamente.
That is very important psychologically.
One arrest.
One man in handcuffs.
And it means something that enormous to that many people.
That tells you something about how deep the damage went.
La justicia transicional es lenta y difícil.
Transitional justice is slow and difficult.
Pero el primer paso es siempre el más importante.
But the first step is always the most important.
Siria tiene que construir una nueva cultura de derechos, una cultura donde la gente sabe que hay consecuencias para los crímenes.
Syria has to build a new culture of rights, a culture where people know there are consequences for crimes.
You used the phrase 'cultura de derechos' just now, a culture of rights.
I want to come back to that word for a second, because the way you used it in this conversation has been interesting to me.
¿A qué te refieres?
What do you mean?
You've used 'cultura' to mean a few different things today.
Culture as in society's values, culture as in a specific way of doing things inside an institution, culture as in heritage.
In English we do the same, but I feel like in Spanish it carries even more weight somehow.
Sí, es interesante.
Yes, it is interesting.
En español, 'cultura' tiene muchos significados.
In Spanish, 'cultura' has many meanings.
Puedes decir 'la cultura española', que es la herencia, las tradiciones, el flamenco, la arquitectura.
You can say 'la cultura española', which is the heritage, the traditions, the flamenco, the architecture.
Pero también puedes decir 'una cultura de violencia' o 'una cultura de impunidad', que es una manera de comportarse.
But you can also say 'a culture of violence' or 'a culture of impunity', which is a way of behaving.
So when someone says 'hay que cambiar la cultura', that sentence could mean almost anything depending on context.
It could mean the arts, or it could mean the entire system of norms inside an institution.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y en el contexto de Siria, cuando hablo de 'cultura', hablo de las dos cosas al mismo tiempo.
And in the context of Syria, when I talk about 'culture', I am talking about both things at the same time.
La cultura artística, la historia, la identidad del pueblo sirio, todo eso existía antes de Assad.
The artistic culture, the history, the identity of the Syrian people, all of that existed before Assad.
Y la 'cultura' del régimen, que era el miedo, el silencio, la violencia.
And the 'culture' of the regime, which was fear, silence, violence.
Esas son dos cosas muy diferentes con la misma palabra.
Those are two very different things with the same word.
I find that genuinely useful, the idea that the word carries both meanings simultaneously.
Because that's exactly what a country like Syria is dealing with: trying to recover one kind of culture while dismantling another.
Same word, opposite project.
Es una buena manera de pensarlo.
That is a good way to think about it.
Y si los oyentes quieren practicar, pueden usar 'cultura' en estas dos formas.
And if listeners want to practice, they can use 'cultura' in these two forms.
Por ejemplo: 'La cultura griega es muy antigua' o 'Hay una cultura de corrupción en ese ministerio'.
For example: 'Greek culture is very old' or 'There is a culture of corruption in that ministry'.
Las dos frases son correctas, pero significan cosas muy diferentes.
Both sentences are correct, but they mean very different things.
And somehow Octavio managed to turn an arrest in Damascus into a Spanish vocabulary lesson.
I'm not sure whether to be impressed or suspicious.
Las dos cosas, Fletcher.
Both things, Fletcher.
Las dos cosas.
Both things.