INVESTIGADORES
JELIN elizabeth
capítulos de libros
Título:
The past in the present. Memories of past violence in contemporary Latin America
Autor/es:
ELIZABETH JELIN
Libro:
Memory in a global age. Discourses, practices and trajectories
Editorial:
Palgrave McMillan
Referencias:
Lugar: Londres; Año: 2010; p. 61 - 78
Resumen:
In the following, I will present an overview of the historical transformations of the struggles around the meaning of a conflictual political past. I focus specifically on the experience of the countries in the Southern Cone of Latin America – Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, and particularly Argentina – in the aftermath of the dictatorships that pervaded in the region during the 1970s and 1980s. The key question to be addressed refers to the ways in which social and political actors deal with, and try to make sense of, the past (while often remaining in the realm of non-sense). These processes take place on multiple levels and layers: from personal processes of healing and/or the maintenance of open wounds amongst survivors, through symbolic representations and cultural performances, to institutional practices such as trials, investigative commissions, economic reparations, monuments and territorial markers, and commemorations. If the recent past is marked by political conflict that involved harsh state repression, it may be followed by many attempts to find closure, to ‘solve’ and suture the past wounds and ruptures, and to ‘come to terms’ with the past. In this process, different actors express their will to present one unified narrative of the past, trying to make their own interpretation the hegemonic, legitimate, “official” or normal one, with the hope that it will become part of “common sense”, accepted by large parts of the population. However, struggles develop among conflicting and competing interpretations and memories of the past, and debates ensue on where these understandings and memories should be located in the democratization process.