Jinamar's chasm, the 'hole of horror' that hides hundreds of killed antifascists

On April 4, 1937, it was the last time that Gregorio Dámaso Álamo's family saw him alive.It was 00:30 in the Gran Canae de Agaete when they woke him up and took him from his house.Gregorio went through the police station on Antúnez Street, but from there he lost his track.This is just one of the stories that continue to exist in the Canary Islands.Young and older, women and men.People who disappeared from the coup d'etat of 1936 and whose bodies have not been found.The case of Gregorio Dámaso does have a point that Mari Luz's memory, his daughter, goes every time he thinks of him.The volcanic tube of the Jinamar Sima.

Mari Luz Dámaso was 22 months when they took her father."I do not say that I believe, but it is".At 85, he still remembers the story his mother told him.First municipal police in the town of Agaete in 1922, according to Mari Luz, Gregorio separated a sympathizer from the phalanx and one on the left who maintained a lawsuit.After locking them together at the barracks, he returned home.When he returned, "it was found that the left was locked up, but that Falange had already released him.My father came, took off his clothes and handed it to the mayor and the judge who were in court.And at that time, my father left being a municipal police ".

Mari Luz details that soon there was a whipped.For the danger of being one of the detainees, "my father went 15 days to the sands.He left in the afternoon and in the morning came ".A story.That is what Gregorio said to his wife Lucia after being going and coming without having suffered damage and what motivated him to return.A decision that would mark the rest of their lives.

The search for the truth led Lucia and Josefina Expósito's aunt, daughter of other reprisals whose body is suspected that may also be in the chasm, to walk to the police station on Antúnez Street."My father sent my mother on the third day, along with another missing, the jacket and shirt stained with blood.He said: Tell Lucia to bring me clean clothes.My mother went to police station and my father was no longer.That night they had already taken it ".

The lack of answers turned each body into a reunion that both his mother and Josefina's aunt persecuted.The arrival of the transition and the 1978 Constitution did not lead, however, the family to demand answers.Mari Luz leads a lifetime with these events in memory and acknowledges that he will "die without collecting any rest".Do not break their voice when you finish explaining your story and mentions administrations."If they were relatives of them, they would have already taken them out".

"Spanish justice is next to fascist criminals"

Justice and repair to the victims of the Sima and many others.These are the purposes of Francisco González, spokesman for the Family Founded Association of San Lorenzo."Jinamar's chasm is a volcanic fireplace from the eruption of the Bandama boiler.A place with very important characteristics for the Canarian people because it is a place where many people were killed, "he details."State crimes" and whose footprint is still after more than 80 years in a space cataloged as a good of cultural interest.

The fame he has acquired is must, as Francisco González points out, to the function that he charged mainly between 1936 and 1940.There "it was illegally executed, at dawn, people arrested in their homes, in the concentration camps, in the detention or torture centers or at the police stations, where they took them out and carried the brigades of the sunrise and threw them".The number is still unknown, but "according to the studies and testimonies of relatives, it is estimated that there may be hundreds of people", such as the Canarian fighter Polllo Florido or Maribel, a republican teacher of Agüimes.

The choice of chasm as a genocide point was not fortuitous or random."They precisely choose it so that the bodies could never be recovered again".The Francoists "started throwing people in the Marfea and killing people on the street, but that caught too much attention.Then they decided that the murders were as hidden as possible ".And who were behind?Personalities of Falangism and fascism, "such as Francisco Julio Guerra, who was head of Social Action of Falange, Juan del Río Alaya, the Count of La Vega Grande...".

Justice continues to cover these murders.The spokesman claimed that it is because "Spanish justice is next to fascist criminals".With the justification that these crimes have already prescribed is not investigated when "crimes against humanity according to universal justice never prescribe".The only examples of exhumations that exist in the Canary Islands are found in "the wells of Arucas and Tanoy.

The bottom of the Sima is located about 80 meters and after it layers and layers of debris separate the surface of the victims' remains whose recovery compromised Antonio Morales, president of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, in 2016.This project, already underway by the Cabildo, hides an institutional abandonment.Francisco González points out that they have let "die a space to forget that they committed murders there.That this becomes even more a stercolero ".Washing machines, refrigerators, spills,...There is a list of the environmental impact that the environment suffers and to which a debris recycling plant is added in its proximities.

The repair of crimes, which are "in the oral history and in the memory of the elderly", goes through protecting the space and exhuming the bodies, in addition to building "a monument in tribute to the victims" that serves as a space of space ofMemory and educational space.Because the story of a town, as Francisco González recalls, is also found in the classrooms.

The transition, "a collective amnesia"

The Sima of Oblivion, documentary by Juan José Monzón premiered in 2017 and that deals with the history of that hole of horror through testimonies of relatives, historians, speleologists and personalities of the Cabildo, collects this vocation.The director, who is also co -author of the novel El Clock of Elwinga, details that the documentary shows "what was that hole and what was used" and tries to "empathize with the families".

Juan Monzón thus responds to the desire to dignify the chasm and whose first steps were found with difficulties."I was looking for information from the Sima and found little things here, loose videos by YouTube, some descent from a collective..."The shortage of information is a variable that also lived in the family nucleus."Since childhood I had heard about the chasm, although between teeth, because there was always talk of doors inside and very low voice".

After its premiere in the Multicines Monopol (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) in November 2017, the Sima of Oblivion has been projected "in some municipalities of Tenerife and in many of Gran Canaria", in addition to "in educational centers of the Peninsula", in Multicines from Barcelona and Argentina and in the Spanish Athenaeum of Mexico.A tour that is sincere with a past still alive."Wounds are still open.The wounds will not close until the remains are delivered and the media are not put ".The 1970.A collective amnesia was made ".

The commitment to rescue the history of Jinamar's chasm is hidden in the words of the interviewees.Antonio Morales, Javier Velasco, Jesús Cantero, Mari Luz Dámaso, Josefina Expósito,...A particular case mentionedHe recognized his guilt.

The drainage that the reprisals faced is put in the mouth of Jesús Cantero.The speleologist tells in the documentary that in one of the descent "he saw as a corpse that had been separated from the group.He believes that person fell alive and was looking for the exit of the chasm, exit that there is no ".This data demonstrates, according to the director, that someone was thrown alive.It was more common for them to shoot them and throw dead, but "maybe they pushed you.They put your back for greater drainage and threw you ".

The regime used the fear of suffering the same rings to avoid talking."The institution itself put fear to the marrow so that people are currently very afraid".With the end of the Franco dictatorship, the crimes are still in the shadow, says Juan Monzón, along with commissioners or judges who "traveled from a dictatorial regime to an alleged democracy.Overnight they stopped singing face the sun extending their hand to turn in the most convinced Democrats ".

Collate the DNA of reprisals with their relatives

The Cabildo de Gran Canaria is already working on the line of what was agreed by Antonio Morales.This is stated by Javier Velasco, technician of the Historical Culture and Heritage Service.The project began on September 24 and is composed of several phases.The first is a diagnosis "to assess how the interior is, but above all to assess how working conditions wouldbeen covered by sediment ".This first approach serves to plan the following phase, when "the technicians of the Historical Heritage Service would descend to prepare for next year a more exhaustive archaeological work".

2021 could be the year in which they are verified "that these human remains exist, where are and under what conditions" and plan a complete uprising.The polls will determine the course of this route that could also be opened for family members.The idea is to compare the DNA of the reprisals with the relatives who are still alive, says the coach.

From the commitment of the president of the Cabildo to the beginning of the project more than three years have passed.The reason?Administrative procedures.Javier Velasco points out that "they are very slow and difficult to explain why there are multiple aspects.One of them is to guarantee health and safety conditions.A professional profile is not the same, as is from the Firefighters Consortium, than ours ".

The results of the works will be overturned on a website developed by a group of historical memory of the Canarian government.With the data already collected, "they can be consulted on that page of the Government," he details.Among future initiatives is also counted "a line of publications aimed at leaving in the collective memory everything that was repression in Gran Canaria".

The environment is another aspect in which you are working.Velasco points out that, although there is an informative panel, "the directional panels have not yet installed them because we have to ensure that the access conditions are the best" and ensure the mouth of 14 meters in diameter.Currently delimited only with tensioners, cover it "is complicated and expensive.Above all, we have to think about the environmental impact ".

The debris between Altos and the Sima have already been mostly removed by the Telde City Council, says the technician and adds that the cleaning of the garbage surrounding the space will be executed by the council probably from January.The recycling plant, which has been one of the points mentioned by Francisco González, is a plant "associated with an environmental recovery program.What is done is to carry the waste to fill the hole of an old aggregate extraction and, once it is covered, cover and plant vegetation ".

Repair to SIMA victims

Sima is just one of the many places in the Canary Islands where Franco imposed death.Act as it should be the next step and hence one of the functions of the Government Historical Memory Technical Commission.Carla Vallejo, Vice Minister of Justice, reviews that "representatives of public administrations, universities and historical memory associations" are present in the Commission ".

Following the works of the council, the Deputy Minister opens the hand to the commission providing the cooperation they need and indicates that the Board "is represented by the FECAI, the Federation of Insular Cabildos and the level of communication and information is continuous".Along the same lines mention the relationship between education and memory in which he ensures that the Ministry of Education, Universities, Culture and Sports already works.The relatives of the victims of the Sima are also a priority."The main thing is to recover the remains of the deceased people, honor them and offer that repair to the victims".