Book, "Memory, Truth, and Justice in Contemporary Latin America" edited by Roberta Villalón

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Memory, Truth, and Justice in Contemporary Latin America (Latin American Perspectives in the Classroom) edited by Roberta Villalón

As new social actors have emerged in Latin America, the process of dealing with the legacy of still-unresolved human rights abuses has been significantly reinvigorated. This powerful text provides the first systematic analysis of the second wave of memory and justice mobilization throughout the region. A multidisciplinary group of authors, many from the global south, consider the changed political, economic, and social conditions that have led to new forms of social action. They trace the growth of human rights groups as fundamental political organizations in the post-dictatorship era, the participation of public authorities in the investigation and persecution of human rights abusers, and the implementation of national and international human rights legislation. Pairing clear explanations of concepts and debates with cases studies, the book offers a unique opportunity for students to understand and interpret the history and politics of a range of Latin American countries.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 280 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-4422-6724-4 • Hardback • July 2017 • $85.00 • (£54.95)

978-1-4422-6725-1 • Paperback • July 2017 • $37.00 • (£24.95)

978-1-4422-6726-8 • eBook • July 2017 • $35.00 • (£23.95)

Abstract, The Memory of Inhabiting Modern Architecture: Villa Portales, 1955–2010

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The Memory of Inhabiting Modern Architecture: Villa Portales, 1955–2010
by Rosanna Forray and Francisca Márquez                                                


Villa Portales is an icon of modern architecture and urban planning of the 1950s and 1960s in Santiago de Chile. It embodies the political and institutional project of the time, which sought to respond to the need to establish a balance—although tenuous—in a fragile and strained economic and political system. This fact is crucial to understanding its socio-spatial objective, the administrative model it employed, and especially the crisis it has endured. The testimony of current Villa Portales dwellers points to a deterioration of its residents’ quality of life beginning in the 1980s with the changes in the role of the state introduced by the military dictatorship, the privatization of public services, and the termination of the Caja de Previsión de Empleados Particulares (Private Employees’ Pension Fund). Despite all this, the community was able to make this space a place of resistance and new meaning based on the sense of belonging arising from its architecture and its history.

Abstract, The Memory of Inhabiting Modern Architecture: Villa Portales, 1955–2010

:::::: Abstract ::::::

The Memory of Inhabiting Modern Architecture: Villa Portales, 1955–2010
by Rosanna Forray and Francisca Márquez                                                


Villa Portales is an icon of modern architecture and urban planning of the 1950s and 1960s in Santiago de Chile. It embodies the political and institutional project of the time, which sought to respond to the need to establish a balance—although tenuous—in a fragile and strained economic and political system. This fact is crucial to understanding its socio-spatial objective, the administrative model it employed, and especially the crisis it has endured. The testimony of current Villa Portales dwellers points to a deterioration of its residents’ quality of life beginning in the 1980s with the changes in the role of the state introduced by the military dictatorship, the privatization of public services, and the termination of the Caja de Previsión de Empleados Particulares (Private Employees’ Pension Fund). Despite all this, the community was able to make this space a place of resistance and new meaning based on the sense of belonging arising from its architecture and its history.

Abstract, Reconstructing the Collective Memory of Mexico’s Dirty War: Ideologization, Clandestine Detention, and Torture

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Reconstructing the Collective Memory of Mexico’s Dirty War: Ideologization, Clandestine Detention, and Torture
Jorge Mendoza García                                                                 


A silenced and forgotten period of the Mexican past is that of the dirty war unleashed by the state against social movements in the second half of the twentieth century, especially the guerrillas and suspected guerrillas of the 1960s and 1970s. The dirty war is an unresolved issue in terms of memory, acknowledgment, and justice for those who suffered violence at the hands of those in power. An account of part of this period that reconstructs the ideologization, clandestine detention, and torture suffered by victims of this dirty war from the perspective of collective memory contributes to filling the gap in knowledge about this period.

Abstract, Sealing and Unsealing Uruguay’s Transitional Politics of Oblivion: Waves of Memory and the Road to Justice, 1985–2015

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Sealing and Unsealing Uruguay’s Transitional Politics of Oblivion: Waves of Memory and the Road to Justice, 1985–2015
Gabriela Fried Amilivia                                                                  


Three decades after state terror in Uruguay, counter memory making has endured in successive waves despite the official politics of oblivion, a transitional politics based on the denial of state abuses, absence of redress for victims, and impunity for perpetrators of the crimes of state terrorism. The Uruguayan case illustrates the impossibility of foreclosing memory through political engineering and the unsustainability of blanket impunity. It also highlights the long-term effects of ongoing social mobilization for memory and personal memorialization after social trauma and offers a sociocultural and intersubjective approach to the understanding of the generation of social memory after massive political violence.

Abstract, The Demobilization of Civil Society Posttraumatic Memory in the Reconstruction of Chilean Democracy

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The Demobilization of Civil Society
Posttraumatic Memory in the Reconstruction of Chilean Democracy
Camila Jara Ibarra                                                                   


The return of democracy in Chile was characterized by the fragmentation, weakening, and crisis of social movements, which were barely present in decision making and defining the national political agenda in the postdictatorship period. Of the multiple factors that contributed to this demobilization, an important one was the influence of the collective trauma inherited from previous decades. In time, however, posttraumatic memory contributed to the generation of new identities and inputs for the collective action of the 2011 protest cycle.

Abstract, Studying Other Memories The Colegio Médico de Chile under Socialism, Dictatorship, and Democracy, 1970–1990

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Studying Other Memories
The Colegio Médico de Chile under Socialism, Dictatorship, and Democracy, 1970–1990
Azun Candina-Polomer                                                                   


The Colegio Médico de Chile (College of Physicians of Chile) was a significant professional association with a long history and a leadership position in discussions about physicians as an occupational group and about public health in Chile. It opposed the socialist Popular Unity government (1970–1973), supported the military coup, collaborated actively with the dictatorship for several years afterward, and later joined the opposition demanding a return to democracy. Since the formal return to democracy in 1990, it has continued to participate in public discussions not only about health but also about human rights, reparations, and democratic convivencia in Chile. Examining its history helps us to historicize the construction of contemporary memory, facilitating an analysis of groups that do not correspond to the binary opposition of victims and victimizers that dominates the historical literature. The Colegio’s use of the same memories in different contexts leads us to reflect upon the fact that public memories are much more mobile and pragmatic and less principled than they first appear. This underlines the importance of including class and professional or corporate identity and other differences in analyses of the discourse of memory.

Abstract, Occupying and Reclaiming a National Historical Monument

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Occupying and Reclaiming a National Historical Monument
Francisca Márquez and Valentina Rozas-Krause                                                                      


Conceptual and ethnographic examination of the ideology that has given form to one of Chile’s most representative national historical monuments, the Casa Central of the Universidad de Chile, indicates that monuments are a complex social construction of historically situated ideologies and practices and that, simply by being artifacts, they are always at risk of never achieving unanimity as to their truth. The controversial nature of the monument’s meaning presents us with a problem with regard to its verisimilitude and its incorporation into a shared history. It may be suggested that the historical meaning of a monument is manifested in its commemoration and in corporal uses and practices.

Abstract, Choreography of a Massacre Memory and Performance in the Ayacucho Carnival

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Choreography of a Massacre Memory and Performance in the Ayacucho Carnival
Renzo Aroni Sulca


On August 14, 1985, during the armed conflict between the Communist Party of Peru, known as Shining Path, and the Peruvian state, an army patrol entered the town of Accomarca, in the Andean region of Ayacucho, and assassinated 69 peasants, presumed sympathizers of the insurgents. The majority of the survivors were displaced to the city of Lima, where they created an organization of victims and joined the Asociación de Hijos del Distrito Accomarca. Since 2011, the survivors and relatives of the victims have been remembering the massacre and transmitting their memories to their children through a Carnival performance of music and dance. Carnival is a constructive space for the production of other forms of memory and for the pursuit of justice and reparations through participatory choreography and musical performance.

Abstract, Toxic Memories? The DINCOTE Museum in Lima, Peru

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Toxic Memories? The DINCOTE Museum in Lima, Peru
María Eugenia Ulfe and Vera Lucía Ríos


Memory museums exist as markers in the public domain; meanings and practices are created around them and assigned uses and silences. The Museum of the National Directorate against Terrorism in Peru displays artworks and archives seized from members of the Shining Path Communist Party of Peru and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement and can be visited only with a special permit. The memories it contains are considered “toxic” and are exhibited in a private instead of a public space. This space cannot be understood as a “museum of conscience” or a “site of memory.” Victims are not dignified there, and no symbolic reparations are made. It houses memories in the form of artwork, books, and memorabilia of those who because of their participation in the armed groups during the conflict have been denied the status of victims as defined in the country’s reparations program.

Free Limited Online Access to LAP Article! Between Two Pasts Dictatorships and the Politics of Memory in Bolivia

(May 2015) Table of Contents Between Two Pasts: Dictatorships and the Politics of Memory in Bolivia by Francisco Adolfo García Jerez  and Juliane Muller Click here to READ and SHARE

Abstract, Historical Memory at El Salvador’s Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen

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Historical Memory at El Salvador’s Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen
Diana Carolina Sierra Becerra


The civil war in El Salvador (1980–1992) resulted in the death of approximately 75,000 people, the vast majority killed by state and paramilitary forces. In the postwar era, the Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen in San Salvador promotes historical memory in order to denounce state violence and advance social justice. It departs from the historic role of museums in upholding ruling-class hegemony and offers a progressive model for disseminating and critically engaging with historical memory. This museum makes history relevant to younger generations through the use of oral history, popular pedagogy, and innovative engagement strategies. However, its impact is limited by neoliberal atomization and relatively low levels of grassroots mobilization—common obstacles faced by popular education initiatives around the world.

Introduction, The Resilience of Memory, Truth, and Justice Processes: Culture, Politics, and Social Mobilizations

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The Resilience of Memory, Truth, and Justice Processes: Culture, Politics, and Social Mobilizations
edited by Roberta Villalón                                                                 


A second wave of memory, truth, and justice mobilizations has been spreading in Latin America since the turn of the century (Villalón, 2015). The push to address unresolved human rights violations perpetrated in the 1970s and 1980s has resulted in the (re)opening of trials of perpetrators and a more complex understanding of past and present violence and inequalities. The resilient collective efforts that have fed these processes have also gained depth. Richer collective memories and the achievement of (at least partially) successful outcomes have provided movements a clear sense that not all their efforts have been in vain. Justice, reconciliation, and social equality may not be at all possible, but they are utopic ideals worth pursuing (Villalón, 2016).
This third issue on the politics of collective memory expands on the contents of the first two (March 2015 and September 2016). Theoretically, it contributes to the body of literature in the field by uncovering the politics of framing memory and is developed in terms of a critical epistemology from the bottom up. The research is intended to challenge systems and practices of inequality and contribute to community efforts to generate social change for justice. The contributors dismantle inequalities of knowledge and power by critically pointing to controversies, inconsistencies, and complexities of memory, truth, and justice processes. Their studies allow for a more nuanced comprehension of past violence, breaking up simplistic interpretations that pair victims and victimizers, left and right, pre- and postconflict, truth and injustice to explore the grey areas in between and reveal the misleading effects of dichotomous rationalizations.

Abstract, Reconstructing the Collective Memory of Mexico’s Dirty War: Ideologization, Clandestine Detention, and Torture

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Reconstructing the Collective Memory of Mexico’s Dirty War: Ideologization, Clandestine Detention, and Torture
Jorge Mendoza García                                                                 


A silenced and forgotten period of the Mexican past is that of the dirty war unleashed by the state against social movements in the second half of the twentieth century, especially the guerrillas and suspected guerrillas of the 1960s and 1970s. The dirty war is an unresolved issue in terms of memory, acknowledgment, and justice for those who suffered violence at the hands of those in power. An account of part of this period that reconstructs the ideologization, clandestine detention, and torture suffered by victims of this dirty war from the perspective of collective memory contributes to filling the gap in knowledge about this period.

Abstract, Sealing and Unsealing Uruguay’s Transitional Politics of Oblivion: Waves of Memory and the Road to Justice, 1985–2015

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Sealing and Unsealing Uruguay’s Transitional Politics of Oblivion: Waves of Memory and the Road to Justice, 1985–2015
Gabriela Fried Amilivia                                                                  


Three decades after state terror in Uruguay, counter memory making has endured in successive waves despite the official politics of oblivion, a transitional politics based on the denial of state abuses, absence of redress for victims, and impunity for perpetrators of the crimes of state terrorism. The Uruguayan case illustrates the impossibility of foreclosing memory through political engineering and the unsustainability of blanket impunity. It also highlights the long-term effects of ongoing social mobilization for memory and personal memorialization after social trauma and offers a sociocultural and intersubjective approach to the understanding of the generation of social memory after massive political violence.

Abstract, The Demobilization of Civil Society Posttraumatic Memory in the Reconstruction of Chilean Democracy

:::::: Abstract ::::::

The Demobilization of Civil Society
Posttraumatic Memory in the Reconstruction of Chilean Democracy
Camila Jara Ibarra                                                                   


The return of democracy in Chile was characterized by the fragmentation, weakening, and crisis of social movements, which were barely present in decision making and defining the national political agenda in the postdictatorship period. Of the multiple factors that contributed to this demobilization, an important one was the influence of the collective trauma inherited from previous decades. In time, however, posttraumatic memory contributed to the generation of new identities and inputs for the collective action of the 2011 protest cycle.

Abstract, Occupying and Reclaiming a National Historical Monument

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Occupying and Reclaiming a National Historical Monument
Francisca Márquez and Valentina Rozas-Krause                                                                      


Conceptual and ethnographic examination of the ideology that has given form to one of Chile’s most representative national historical monuments, the Casa Central of the Universidad de Chile, indicates that monuments are a complex social construction of historically situated ideologies and practices and that, simply by being artifacts, they are always at risk of never achieving unanimity as to their truth. The controversial nature of the monument’s meaning presents us with a problem with regard to its verisimilitude and its incorporation into a shared history. It may be suggested that the historical meaning of a monument is manifested in its commemoration and in corporal uses and practices.

Abstract, Studying Other Memories The Colegio Médico de Chile under Socialism, Dictatorship, and Democracy, 1970–1990

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Studying Other Memories
The Colegio Médico de Chile under Socialism, Dictatorship, and Democracy, 1970–1990
Azun Candina-Polomer                                                                   


The Colegio Médico de Chile (College of Physicians of Chile) was a significant professional association with a long history and a leadership position in discussions about physicians as an occupational group and about public health in Chile. It opposed the socialist Popular Unity government (1970–1973), supported the military coup, collaborated actively with the dictatorship for several years afterward, and later joined the opposition demanding a return to democracy. Since the formal return to democracy in 1990, it has continued to participate in public discussions not only about health but also about human rights, reparations, and democratic convivencia in Chile. Examining its history helps us to historicize the construction of contemporary memory, facilitating an analysis of groups that do not correspond to the binary opposition of victims and victimizers that dominates the historical literature. The Colegio’s use of the same memories in different contexts leads us to reflect upon the fact that public memories are much more mobile and pragmatic and less principled than they first appear. This underlines the importance of including class and professional or corporate identity and other differences in analyses of the discourse of memory.

Abstract, Choreography of a Massacre Memory and Performance in the Ayacucho Carnival

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Occupying and Reclaiming a National Historical Monument
Francisca Márquez and Valentina Rozas-Krause                                                                      


Conceptual and ethnographic examination of the ideology that has given form to one of Chile’s most representative national historical monuments, the Casa Central of the Universidad de Chile, indicates that monuments are a complex social construction of historically situated ideologies and practices and that, simply by being artifacts, they are always at risk of never achieving unanimity as to their truth. The controversial nature of the monument’s meaning presents us with a problem with regard to its verisimilitude and its incorporation into a shared history. It may be suggested that the historical meaning of a monument is manifested in its commemoration and in corporal uses and practices.

Abstract, Choreography of a Massacre Memory and Performance in the Ayacucho Carnival

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Choreography of a Massacre Memory and Performance in the Ayacucho Carnival
Renzo Aroni Sulca


On August 14, 1985, during the armed conflict between the Communist Party of Peru, known as Shining Path, and the Peruvian state, an army patrol entered the town of Accomarca, in the Andean region of Ayacucho, and assassinated 69 peasants, presumed sympathizers of the insurgents. The majority of the survivors were displaced to the city of Lima, where they created an organization of victims and joined the Asociación de Hijos del Distrito Accomarca. Since 2011, the survivors and relatives of the victims have been remembering the massacre and transmitting their memories to their children through a Carnival performance of music and dance. Carnival is a constructive space for the production of other forms of memory and for the pursuit of justice and reparations through participatory choreography and musical performance.