You say something about institutional terrorism and everyone thinks you are referring to Joe Biden’s economic policies, but the truth is that this time the issue falls a little further from home. As I write these lines, a conference on terrorism and freedom is being held in Washington, organized by the Madrid Forum of the Disenso Foundation, which brings together leaders, organizations, and politicians who defend freedom and the rule of law on both sides of the Atlantic, and who are making a common front against communism. The theme of this colloquium is “the legitimization of terrorism from the institutions: the new threat to democracy in Latin America and Europe.” That the initiative should come from a group of fellow Spaniards is of significance, after all we suffered the terrorism of ETA for decades without the international community understanding anything about what those murderous rats were doing, with my sincere apologies to the rats, who are animals of the Lord and not Daughters of Satan.
I grew up in a country where you could get up, take the bus to go to school, or go to a shopping mall, or simply walk in the park with your children, and be blown to bits, caught in the explosion of hundreds of kilos of ammonal. In a country where, once you were treacherously shot by some drugged up ETA gunman, you could not rest in peace in the cemetery of your hometown, because these hyenas desecrated the graves of the victims, forcing many families to take their dead to other latitudes. In a country where, for being a young mayoral candidate of a right-wing party in a small town in the north of Spain, that Marxist-Leninist-Maoist murderous gang could blow your head off, with a single shot from behind, spraying your blood all over your party colleague, with whom you were having lunch in a downtown restaurant at the time of the attack; his name was Gregorio Ordóñez, he was 36 years old, and he was a great guy.
Until the arrival of José María Aznar to the presidency of the Government, and his fruitful agreements with George W. Bush to economically asphyxiate ETA, outside our borders the press continued to paint the most bloodthirsty and cowardly gunmen in Europe as liberators of I don’t know what. That sometimes, with innocent blood still warm, spilled on the ground in some neighborhood of Madrid or Seville, as children watched through teary eyes as their honest and happy father is murdered in the doorway of their house — as it happened to a good friend when he was 12 years old — I would have to hold my nose to read the chronicles of the attack in the international press, as they softened the murder, trying to claim that it was a political action. In some countries of social democratic Europe they did not understand us until the Islamist viper brought terror into their own homes. Too bad it had to be that way.
But if the Madrid Forum is now being held in Washington it is, among other things, to explain that police persecution and economic asphyxiation managed to eradicate ETA after six decades, but that, once defeated, two socialist governments gave it wings, letting the terrorists and their friends into parliament, and more recently, rewarding the most bloodthirsty ETA inmates with transfers to their favorite prisons in order to obtain the parliamentary support of ETA’s political heirs in the general state budgets. This is nothing other than institutional legitimization of terrorism, and having a soul blacker than a cricket’s armpit.
Naturally, this legitimization also happens in Latin America and is equally deplorable, as in Colombia, where new president Gustavo Petro is preparing the ground for new dialogues with the National Liberation Army or the FARC. Terrorism has not disappeared, nor has it been defeated. The only thing we are seeing is that it acts behind new masks, taking advantage of the fact that the political left, throughout history, always finds a way to ingratiate itself with murderers and humiliate the victims.
May the voices of the victims that are ringing out at this time at the Heritage Foundation headquarters in Washington at least gain the comfort and recognition of the many good people in the United States. Our prayers will always be with them.
