Introduction

CRENZEL, EMILIO ARIEL Y ALLIER MONTAÑO, EUGENIA

The Struggle for Memory in Latin America: The Recent History of Political Violence

Palgrave Macmillan

Lugar: Nueva York/Londres; Año: 2015; p. 1 - 14

This book examines the struggles that unfolded in Latin America over the memory of the pasts of political violence experienced by the countries of the continent in the second half of the twentieth century. To do that, it takes up the theoretical assumptions of the field of social memory studies founded in the 1920s by Maurice Halbwachs, and the contributions of studies in the field of recent history.   The different contributions that make up the book analyze the struggles that took place in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the United States, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay over the memory of the pasts of political violence. These memory struggles are examined from a political- and social-history-centered perspective, employing tools from both the field of history and other disciplines, including political science, sociology, and anthropology. In this sense, the articles seek to take into account the different ways in which the relevant actors involved look back on these pasts and vie against each other to give meaning to them in the public sphere, and the power relations that result from such confrontations, incorporating to that end various levels of analysis (the initiatives of transnational, regional, and national actors) and different variables (class, gender, ethnicity, geographic location) that shape the changes and continuities in the meanings ascribed to past political violence in each country.   The table of contents includes an introduction presenting the key conceptual and theoretical premises that underlie the articles, the various case studies, and the book?s chief contributions to the fields of social memory studies and recent history. The articles then examine the struggles waged in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay over the memory of each of these countries? violent pasts, and the efforts to declassify the official files on these processes held by the United States government. It concludes with an article that builds on a concrete empirical case to examine the tensions between social memory and the historiography on these pasts.