Life Under a Dictator

From a pastor friend of mine and well worth the read.

Sorry this is so long! I wrote of my time living in Spain under a dictator once before, and I’ve held off sharing again until now! I am seeing too many similarities in our current administration to keep silent any more!

Many of you are aware that I was raised in an Air Force family and have lived all over the world, including Madrid, Spain, when Francisco Franco was the much feared dictator in the early 60’s! I can tell you that as difficult as it was for us to live as Americans under his rules during his regime, the people of Spain under his dictatorship had it much worse.

But even as an American military family that was in Spain as a protective force during the “Cold War,” we still had things we could and couldn’t do: as a female, I couldn’t wear pants or shorts except in our home, nor could our moms. We could not hang laundry outside because it was “unsightly,” and could only water our yard at a specific time. Most military families did not have phones, even though we did because of my dad’s career field (nuclear munitions), but we had specific ways to answer IF we were allowed to answer!

We bought most of our food from the commissary on base, especially any meat or milk because of the rampant turberculosis among the livestock. Any fresh produce was put through a Clorox and water wash because of contamination. There was only state sanctioned television, which was mostly soccer, bull fights, and Franco speaking! Thank goodness for Armed Services Radio!

We were expected to have a “maid” to help with the economy—there was a very small percentage of the extremely wealthy, and then abject poverty in most of the rest of the population (sound familiar?). There was NO middle class—just extreme wealth or extreme poverty! We saw people who lived in caves and dry irrigation canals. It was common to be accosted on the streets of Madrid by children and women begging for money or food, often dozens at a time. It was also not uncommon to see people use the street as a toilet!

La Guardia, police officers on horseback, rode through the streets of Madrid keeping order 24/7. And by keeping order, I mean taking people off the streets to jail because they spoke a word against Franco, or they were Protestant (Roman Catholicism was the country’s National religion), or they were living on the streets, or for no reason at all! The husband of our maid, that we grew to love while we were there, was arrested and jailed for more than 3 years and never knew why because he was not given any DUE PROCESS!

My best friend the last year we were there was my upstairs neighbor—a sweet, beautiful African American young lady whose dad was in the Air Force, and her mom was a nurse. Unfortunately, Franco decided he didn’t want any black people in “his” country, so my best friend and her family were sent back to the states with only a couple of days notice! Their goods were left behind for the moving company to pack and they left in the middle of the night with only a suitcase each!

Air Force families were allowed to be Jewish, or Protestant, or Catholic because we were guests of the country. We shared the school auditorium for worship services: Jewish Sabbath on Friday night, and then Protestant and Catholic divided up the time on Sunday. Any church meetings, youth group, Bible studies, etc. were held in our homes on base or the military housing.

Unfortunately, the Spanish Jewish and Protestant meeting spaces had been shut down or burned down. My family was very active in the Protestant Chapel, and during the time we were there, my parents became acquainted with the Underground Protestant Church. Although they never met in public (it was illegal), Mom and Dad did attend worship at several homes, offering support for these brave people who faced persecution, prosecution, and, at the minimum, jail time for worshipping outside the mandated Catholic religion. Before we arrived, there had been massive purges of Protestant, Muslim, and Jewish folks through deportation, jailing, and even death! I could go on and on telling you how hard it was, but our lives were easy compared to the common, poor, abused, and terrified Spaniards!

Is any of this registering with you?! As I have watched things transpire in the last several months here in our country, I have been horrified and have had flashbacks of living under Franco’s regime! There have been massive warnings about this authoritarian government we now live in that so many have ignored and are still ignoring! And now, here we are in a Constitutional Crisis where the checks and balances that are supposed to keep the US a Constitutional Republic, that once included due process, justice (though not always “for ALL”), so many freedoms, and that promised ALL the “right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” are fracturing!

Where is the outrage as our freedoms are being ripped away? Where are the voices screaming from the rafters, “This is NOT OK!”? Why are those that are supposed to be part of the checks and balances not stopping the unconstitutional decisions and unlawful Executive Orders that are being made (many by a billionaire who has no LEGAL right to make them!)? When will people see that our current leader aspires to be just like the dictator from El Salvador (who visited today and cares nothing about basic decency or human rights) or better yet, just like his buddy Putin? When will enough be ENOUGH?

I HAVE LIVED UNDER A DICTATOR! Unless we, our senators and representatives, and our leaders stand up to this unlawful wannabe dictator, our democratic republic will be lost! And it likely will go the way of Hungary, El Salvador, China, N Korea, Russia….if you haven’t noticed, dictatorships are on the rise, and so is the gap between the very rich and the very poor! Just look at the things congress is trying to pass—getting rid of help for the most vulnerable to make the wealthy even wealthier, making it even harder to vote, especially married women, and taking away our freedoms one at a time!

These are times when we MUST NOT be silent if we want to continue to live in freedom! My dad, my brother, my uncles, my cousins, and my friends all fought too hard in the military for our freedoms! My uncle (my mother’s only brother) died fighting for freedom! Millions have fought (and many died) so that we can speak freely (that may be gone soon), can live freely (that may be gone soon), can protest injustice freely (that may be gone soon), have freedom of religion (that may be gone soon), soooo many rights that in just an instant can be taken away UNLESS WE STAND UP!

Pastor Martin Niemoller wrote,

“First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionists.

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me.”

Our current leader has refused to return a man to the US who, it was admitted, was mistakenly deported to an inhumane prison in El Salvador in spite of being ordered to return him by the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court! He has made it crystal clear that deporting American Citizens is a very real possibility as well. He has told us what he WILL do. When will you start to BELIEVE HIM? When there is no one left to speak for you?! I continue to pray for our country and will continue to speak out! Freedom is too valuable to stay silent….