Memory, Truth, and Justice in Contemporary Latin America ed. by Roberta Villalón (review)

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 chapters vary in their levels of clarity, accessibility, and theoretical contribution. Some offer sharp and clearly written essays with new evidence and analytical insights; in others, high levels of abstraction render the theoretical points rather opaque. Several authors acknowledge the complexity and ambiguity of such concepts as “collective memory” itself (190), while others use that term and others such as “counterhegemony” without defining or interrogating them (for example, 3, 4, 7, 11). All the authors share the view that memory is fluid, something constructed that changes with new contexts and new times (for example, 44). Several critique the “theory of two demons” (Crenzel, 16; Salvi, 38), the idea that armed forces and opposition movements were equally culpable for the violence and terror of the dirty wars. The concept continues to appear in various academic and journalistic works.

Space constraints permit only a few highlights here. Hiner and Azócar show that after the transition in Chile, the language of reconciliation led to judicial pressures on women who were victims of domestic violence to “forgive and forget” and reassume their role in the family (a position codified in the 1994 family violence law; 43). The early Concertación governments, seeking consensus after the 17-year dictatorship, chose to view domestic violence as an issue that could be conciliated, just as the country should seek forgiveness and consensus and “forget” the painful past. Salvi’s incisive piece analyzes the Argentine military’s appropriation of human-rights language to present itself as yet another victim. Márquez tackles the commonly held view that Colombia is a democratic state, despite the state violence and terror carried out by military and paramilitary forces over many years. She notes that the Colombian case cannot be understood within a transitional justice framework (100), and she accents the important role of grassroots human rights organizations that attempt to educate society, whether through a mobile museum of images, the Gallery of Memory, or direct engagement with the public.

Cortés shows how people painting murals in the población La Victoria in Chile “confront the mechanisms of amnesia” and “official truths” not only of the dictatorship, but of the transitional civilian governments as well (162). Schneider and Atencio critique transitional justice accounts for their tendency to ignore the role of culture. Whereas in Brazil, the human rights abuses and legacies of the dictatorship were officially ignored for years, artistic-cultural production (books, telenovelas, fiction films) grappled with questions of memory, torture, and accountability (190).

Yet, the authors also demonstrate that cultural production is a double-edged sword: while remembering and critiquing the past artistically, these works also were depoliticized, as romance and drama overshadowed the harsh realities of dictatorship (199, 201). Sierra Becerra makes the important point that a decade before the first Salvadoran guerrilla organization was formed, state counterinsurgency programs and paramilitary agencies were targeting activists (215) with repression, socioeconomic marginalization, and political exclusion, sparking the armed struggle of the 1980s. She stresses the importance of linking memory work to action to change the structural conditions of inequality and injustice.

There are some interesting disagreements among the contributors. D’Orsi dissects the concept of individual “trauma” and argues that it “evicts victims from history” by psychologizing and personalizing the problem, divorcing it from its historical-political context (119). In contrast, Garrard, in her poignant study of Guatemala, focuses on the role of dreams in helping to heal Mayan victims of state violence within a political context of utter impunity (135, 144). Kaiser seems to border on implying that there was collective responsibility...