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The Death of Yoyes: Cultural Discourses of Gender and Politics in the Basque Country
This paper is an attempt to understand a puzzling event, an unusual political assassination. This act must be considered in the context of the current socio-political life of the Basque country, which is defined to a great extent by the nationalist issue. My concern in this paper is not so much to give a clear answer to the question of why Yoyes was killed, which seems to me an impossible task; neither is it to pursue the socio-political and symbolic implications of her assassination, for it is too early to assess these precisely. My guiding question concerns, instead, the conditions of possibility: how is it that this death could happen? In answering this question I explore different overlapping domains of experience, which, together, form the larger context of Yoyes' death, but which also offer diverse angles and layers of meaning for interpreting it. In exploring these personal, historico-political and cultural domains I present various plausible readings of the death at the same time that I show how seemingly distinct discourses are interwoven. I attempt to see the forms in which cultural constructions, particularly of gender, weave with political and personal action within a particular historical context.
Yoyes' death has provoked multiple interpretations in the Basque Country. These interpretations both express and constitute a struggle for meaning that plays deeply into the political field. I do not claim for my interpretation a special authority outside that arena.
In September, 1986 a political event shocked the Basque country, creating a general mood of reflection and heated debate among Basque nationalist people. A commando from the armed Basque nationalist organization ETA military killed M. Dolores Gonzalez Catarain, an ex-militant woman in this organization, popularly known as "Yoyes." For the first time in the history of Basque nationalism a woman was accused of treason and executed. ETA(m) accused Yoyes of "betrayal to the Basque country and herself" for returning to the Basque country after years of exile, thus morally legitimating the policy of the Spanish government against ETA. From ETA(m)'s perspective Yoyes' return presupposed an acceptance of the Spanish government's "social reinsertion plan" for those members of ETA who wished to abandon the armed fight.