MASCULINITY, MISOGYNY, AND MASS IN LOS GlRASOLES CIEGOS BY ALBERTO MENDEZ l LISA RENEE DI GIOVANNI Indiana State University During the Spanish postwar years, monoculturalism be- came the chief strategic policy that the Franco regime en- forced in order to hijack the political freedom, cultural diver- sity and economic means of the defeated Republicans. Such monoculturalism was predicated upon the promotion of an ultra-conservative form of Catholicism, patriarchal values and an imperialist reading of history. Certain notions of Catholic righteousness, male superiority, and colonial subju- gation of the vanquished Republicans shaped the National- Catholic ideology and served to sanction social practices of political, gender and cultural oppression. As historian Sebas- tian Balfour contends, Franco's African Army invaded the peninsula in 1936 with a so-called religious mission to de- stroy the atheist enemy and reestablish the "authentic" Catholic Spain (Balfour 2002: X).2 The dictatorship that fol- lowed was portrayed as the continuation of that colonial cru- sade through an intricate web of discourses and images. Like the previous Spanish colonizers that sought to justify im- perial rule through the lens of religion and civilization, Franco's multiplex political machine sought to legitimize the Civil War by underscoring a fellowship between the Church and the regime and their shared vision of a cleansed Nation- aI-Catholic State. 39