Memory, Truth, and Justice in Contemporary Latin America

by Roberta Villalón (Editor)

Overview

This powerful text provides the first systematic analysis of the second wave of memory and justice mobilization throughout Latin America. Pairing clear explanations of concepts and debates with case studies, the book offers a unique opportunity for students to interpret the history and politics of Latin American countries. The contributors provide insight into human rights issues and grassroots movements that are essential for a broader understanding of struggles for justice, memory, and equality across the globe, especially during our current unsettled times of political polarization, violence, repression, and popular resistance worldwide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442267251
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	07/06/2017
Series:	Latin American Perspectives in the Classroom
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Roberta Villalón is a Fulbright scholar, associate professor of sociology, and the chairperson of the Sociology and Anthropology Department at St. John’s University, New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Roberta Villalón
Part I: Framing Collective Memory: Counter-Hegemonic and Master Narratives
Introduction to Part I
Roberta Villalón
Chapter 1: Genesis, Uses, and Significations of the Nunca Más Report in Argentina
Emilio Crenzel
Chapter 2: “We’re All Victims”: Changes in the Narrative of “National Reconciliation” in Argentina
Valentina Salvi, translated by Luis Alberto Hernández
Chapter 3: Irreconcilable Differences: Political Culture and Gender Violence during the Chilean Transition to Democracy
Hillary Hiner and María José Azócar
Part II: Defining Historical Periods, Blame, and Reparation
Introduction to Part II
Roberta Villalón
Chapter 4: The Memory of the National and the National as Memory
Juan Poblete
Chapter 5: Between Two Pasts: Dictatorships and the Politics of Memory in Bolivia
Francisco Adolfo García Jerez and Juliane Müller, translated by Margot Olavarria
Chapter 6: Colombia’s Gallery of Memory: Reexamining Democracy through Human Rights Lenses
Erika Márquez
Part III: Cultures of Trauma, Healing, and Justice
Introduction to Part III
Roberta Villalón
Chapter 7: Trauma and the Politics of Memory in the Uruguayan Dictatorship
Lorenzo D’Orsi
Chapter 8: Living with Ghosts: Death, Exhumation, and Reburial among the Maya in Guatemala
Virginia Garrard
Chapter 9: Argentina’s Trials: New Ways of Writing Memory
Susana Kaiser
Part IV: Arts, Media, Museums, and Memory
Introduction to Part IV
Roberta Villalón
Chapter 10: The Murals of La Victoria: Imaginaries of Chilean Popular Resistance
Alexis Cortés, translated by Margot Olavarria
Chapter 11: Choreography of a Massacre: Memory and Performance in the Ayacucho Carnaval
Renzo Aroni Sulca, translated by Margot Olavarria
Chapter 12: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil: The Double-Edged Role of Artistic-Cultural Production
Nina Schneider and Rebecca J. Atencio
Chapter 13: Historical Memory at El Salvador’s Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen
Diana Carolina Sierra Becerra
Conclusion: Complexities, Controversies and the Value of Collective Memory and Social Justice
Roberta Villalón
Bibliography
About the Contributors

Editorial Reviews

This invaluable text offers a nuanced and multifaceted view of the second wave of memory politics in Latin America. Spanning the varied yet aligned contexts from Argentina to Chile and Guatemala to Uruguay, among others, the book is an enormously useful introduction to the contradictory, complex, and intersecting mobilizations of memory, human rights, reconciliation, and social justice that have defined Latin America’s relationship to its history of violence and state terror.

Marita Sturken

An invaluable contribution to our understanding of the ways memory intersects with the political search for justice. By attending not only to institutional practices but also to vernacular rhetorics, the case studies in this volume expand our understanding of the kind of memory work necessary to seek a just and sustainable resolution to conflict. The contributors to this volume provide detailed and compelling studies of memory practices in various countries within Latin America. Taken together, the collected essays open up a dialogue that will be useful for students of the region but also for any who are interested in the way public memory is involved in efforts toward achieving social justice.

Kendall R. Phillips

This volume analyzes memory, truth, and justice struggles in Latin America, and their achievements and limitations, in what editor Roberta Villalón terms the “second wave” of such mobilizations. It also aims to offer “activist scholarship” to contribute to changing the conditions that perpetuate injustice and impunity. The book poses some key issues across a range of countries.. .. The volume raises provocative questions and adds to our understanding of diverse responses to impunity in Latin America.

The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History

Organized in four parts, and with the participation of leading scholars in the field, this interdisciplinary book focuses on different approaches to framing and reframing collective memory and the paradoxes of memory and justice.. . Villalón underscores new ways to reframe memories of the past to promote truth, memory, and justice.. . Without disconnecting trauma from transitional justice, the contributions of Lorenzo D’Orsi, Virginia Garrard, and Susana Kaiser point to silence and traumatic memory, as well as to the truth and justice process[.]

Ana Forcinito