Childhoods and Collective Memory in Latin America

by

Diana García Gómez, Luz Adriana Giraldo Mueller

• LAST MODIFIED: 24 October 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0291

Introduction

The end of the Cold War influenced the fall of military dictatorships and authoritarian regimes throughout Latin America. In tandem with democratization, victims’ rights groups advocating for justice and reparations for the gross violations and state crimes that plagued the region during the twentieth century became critical political actors. These grassroots organizations emerged in the search for redressing and restoring dignity and human rights while undertaking efforts to preserve and transmit collective memory, an ideological process known now as “the memory turn.” This shift highlights how Latin American activism and scholarship center the study of memory as a locus for the revindication of rights and a route for the consolidation of democracy. This “memory turn” has also been considered a catalyst for the numerous estallidos sociales (social protests in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Puerto Rico, and Peru, to name a few) that have swept the continent since 2019. Any understanding of the interconnections between these troubling pasts and the fragile, transitional presents the region faces must include children and young people as crucial participants in the co-narration and transfer of history. Although, in most traditional collective trauma and memory studies, children and youth are solely discussed as victims of human rights violations, critical work centering their active participation in collective memorialization is also being developed in the region. This entry focuses on how Latin Americanists, memory scholars, and childhood scholars have approached the study of children’s and youth’s participation in collective memory. Examples include the reconstruction of fractured family histories by the post-dictatorship generations in the Southern Cone, exile stories across the continent, the recognition of the destruction of racialized collective identities due to political violence in Peru and Guatemala and anti-blackness in Brazil, the memorialization of the “lost generation” in Colombia, and the analysis of literary works for children created under the banners of “never forget” and “never again.” Children’s and youth’s participation in collective memory has served a dual purpose: first, to construct ideal future political subjects responsible for the democratization project; second, as the cure to end the systemic cycles of violence that have constituted the region’s history. These works also show that when one seeks to center children’s and youth’s participation in collective memory work, we must look for children between the lines, as they tend to be overlooked as political agents.

Collective Memory in Latin America

This section provides a broad overview of memory studies in Latin American scholarship, introducing critical theoretical discussions, including regional, comparative research on grassroots work on collective memory. Hatfield 2014, Jelin 2021, and Lazzara 2018 outline the field’s historical development and some of the current obstacles and challenges memory studies face, focusing on the significance of the memory turn for Latin American scholarship. Jelin 2003 offers a rich theoretical discussion of central debates in the field. Daona 2016 uses a theoretical approach to memory as a critical concept to provide a framework for considering how the region has dealt with the tensions between history, memory, and the testimonial genre. The edited volume Memoria cultural y culturas de rememoración en América Latina (Cultural memory and culture for remembrance) gathers and focuses on collective memorialization by Indigenous and other marginalized groups that oppose and challenge institutional memory. Continuing from a grassroots perspective, Crenzel and Allier Montaño 2015 centers on victims’ voices, positioning suffering as a politically agentic habitus, while Jelin and del Pino 2003 foregrounds the rural implications of collective memory work and political violence in peripheral contexts.

• Crenzel, Emilio, and Eugenia Allier Montaño. Las luchas por la memoria en América Latina: historia reciente y violencia política. Mexico City: Bonilla Artigas Editores, 2015.

  This volume focuses on the violence and the struggles for truth and memorialization faced by victims’ organizations. It discusses the military dictatorships of the Southern Cone and Brazil and the authoritarian regimes in Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. It centers victims’ struggles for recognition, reparation, and justice and signals suffering as a politically agentic habitus. Children’s representations define them as victims, not as agents of collective memory.

• Daona, Victoria. “Algunas consideraciones en torno a los estudios sobre memoria en Latinoamérica.” Espacio Abierto 25.4 (2016): 129–142.

  This article reviews the critical engagement with the term “memory” by human rights movements in various Latin American countries and the subsequent analysis and development of the field of memory studies. It analyzes the work of Elizabeth Jelin, a pioneer in the foundation of this field, while addressing the tensions between history, memory, and the testimonial genre. The article also provides some recommendations for future researchers.

• Hatfield, Charles. “The Memory Turn in Latin America.” Política común 6 (2014).

  DOI: 10.3998/pc.12322227.0006.015

  This article traces a genealogy of the “memory turn” in Latin America and critiques “the bad theories” and “even worse politics” behind it. For Hatfield, the problem with the politics of memory is its overly affective identification with people in the past, denying a class-based identification with people in the present, and preventing an economic analysis of the identitarian crisis in the region. The author explains that the memory turn should be understood as a weak response to the neoliberal changes in Latin America, focusing his analysis on five aspects: culture, history, memory, postmemory, and politics.

• Jelin, Elizabeth. State Repression and the Labors of Memory. Translated by Marcial Godoy-Anativia and Judy Rein. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

  Jelin’s book offers a theoretical discussion of some key debates in memory studies. Originally published in Spanish as Los trabajos de la memoria in 2002, it systematizes analytical categories such as memory, history, trauma, testimony, “truth,” and who is a legitimate participant in the reconstruction of the past. Overall, the book grounds memory studies in the Latin American context but constantly engages with European and Anglo developments.

• Jelin, Elizabeth. The Struggle for the Past: How We Construct Social Memories. Translated by Wendy Gosselin. New York: Berghahn Books, 2021.

  DOI: 10.3167/9781789207828

  Originally published in Spanish in 2017, in this book Jelin, a leading figure in the field of memory studies in Latin America, presents an outline of the development of the field, as the author herself “remembers” how the academic inquiries around collective memory were produced. Notably, the book delineates the field’s “Latinamericaness” as she presents collective memory as a site of activism for different social groups and contexts.

• Jelin, Elizabeth, and Ponciano del Pino. Luchas locales, comunidades e identidades. Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno de España Editores, 2003.

  This book is part of the Memorias de la Represión collection, created to promote research and contribute to education on collective memory in Latin America. It deals with memory-building processes in communities traditionally considered peripheral during times of political violence. By including rural contexts, the authors shed light on how political violence and memorialization must be spatially reconstructed, broadening the research possibilities in the field.

• Lazzara, Michael J. “The Memory Turn.” In New Approaches to Latin American Studies: Culture and Power. Edited by Juan Poblete, 14–31. New York: Routledge, 2018.

  In this chapter, Lazzara maps the development of memory studies in the continent, the obstacles the interdisciplinary field faces, and the pedagogical possibilities it offers. He does so by discussing the origins of the field, touching on the memorialization processes of the Southern Cone and its spread to countries that face civil conflicts. Lazzara highlights the contextual importance of studying memory and ends with suggestions for the future of the field.

• Seydel, Ute. Memoria cultural y culturas de rememoración en América Latina. Mexico City: Bonilla Artigas Editores, 2020.

  This compendium gathers contributions from different contexts related to cultural memory, analyzing tangible and intangible media (e.g., testimonies, film, and memorials). It questions the official discourses by the elites in various Latin American countries that have justified human rights violations using a multidisciplinary approach. The book emphasizes the cultural memories of different Indigenous peoples who, from marginalization and spaces of resistance, make themselves heard in the regional cultures of remembrance.