fall 2013

harvard review of Latin america

memory in search of history and democracy editor’s letter by june carolyn erlick

The Past Is Present

Irma Flaquer’s image as a 22-year-old Guatemalan reporter stares from the pages of a 1960 harvard review of Latin america Time magazine, her eyes blackened by a government mob that didn’t like her feisty stance. fall 2013 She never gave up, fighting with her pen against the long dictatorship, suffering a car bomb Volume Xiii No. 1 explosion in 1970, then being dragged by her hair from her car one October ten years later and disappearing. Published by the David Rockefeller Center I knew she was courageous. I became intrigued by her relentless determination—why did for Latin American Studies she keep on writing? However, the case was already old even in 1996, when the Inter Ameri- Harvard University Volume Xiii No. 1 can Press Association (IAPA) assigned me the investigation for its new Impunity Project. Irma David Rockefeller Center was one of Guatemala’s 45,000 disappeared—one of thousands in Latin America, men and for Latin American Studies women forcibly vanished, mostly killed. Yet I learned from the investigation that disappear- Director ance is a crime against humanity, a crime not subject to a statute of limitations. Merilee S. Grindle memory And I also learned from Irma’s courageous sister Anabella that it really is a crime that Executive Director in every issue never ends. “They took my moral support, my counselor; in killing my sister, they stole my Kathy Eckroad human right,” Anabella told IAPA members at a Los Angeles meeting. “I was orphaned again, first take BOOK talk condemned for the rest of my life to not know what happened to my sister...” ReVista Memories and Their Consequences by Merilee S. Grindle 2 Violent Legacies, Intimate Photos 85 Anabella taught me that the past is always present. In Miami, where she has lived for more Editor-in-Chief A Review by Pablo Corral Vega than 40 years, she might just seem to be the pet-loving, doting grandmother that she indeed June Carolyn Erlick the disappeared is. She might have chosen to remain invisible—a silent victim. Copy Editor Because They Were Taken Alive by Kirsten Weld 8 Writing the Rough Draft of Salvadoran History 86 Instead, spurred by my investigation, Anabella’s determination and the steadfast leader- Anita Safran Patchwork Memories by Marjorie Agosín 12 A Review by Jocelyn Viterna ship of the IAPA’s Ricardo Trotti, Irma’s case became the first the organization brought before Publication Interns Our Disappeared/Nuestros Desaparecidos by Juan Mandelbaum 15 the Inter American Commission on Human Rights. In 2001, in a so-called friendly agreement Gabriela Farrell Transforming the Andes 88 Carlos Schmidt Padilla with the IAPA, the Guatemalan state acknowledged its responsibility. Reparations were paid; colombia A Review by Gary Urton Alicia Zamora monuments were built; scholarships were set up. And a funeral mass was finally held in Gua- Liquid Tombs for Colombia’s Disappeared by María Victoria Uribe 18 Design temala for the disappeared journalist. Ricardo and Anabella showed me how reconstructing Prospects of Peace by Paolo Vignolo 20 The Optimist’s Colombia 90 2communiqué memory could help strengthen democratic institutions. www.2communique.com A Search for Justice by Ana María Bidegaín 24 A Review by Laura Jaramillo-Bernal My investigation turned into a book, Disappeared: A Journalist Silenced, The Story of Irma Displacement and Community Organizing by Julieta Lemaitre 27 Printer Flaquer (Seal Press 2004), but when I sought to publish it in Spanish, I was told, “People are P & R Publications The Alchemy of Narrative by Francisco Ortega 30 Mexico’s Great Transformation and 92 tired of hearing about the war. They want to forget the past.” I wanted to tell the publishers Democracy, Citizenship and Commemoration in Colombia 36 U.S.-Mexican Relations A Review by Gabriel Aguilera Contact Us that it wasn’t the past; it was the present; survivors still feel the guilt and the pain and the 1730 Cambridge Street by Maite Yie Garzón anguish of not knowing; perpetrators have not been brought to justice; Irma’s bones have not Cambridge, MA 02138 The Language of Public Memory by J. Luke Pizzato 38 Beyond Mad Men A Review by Simon Romero 94 been found. Telephone: 617-495-5428 Finally, after many years, the book has appeared in Spanish: Desaparecida, Una Periodista Subscriptions and Reader Forum journalism MAKING A DIFFERENCE Silenciada (Sophos/Hoja del Norte, 2012). I get e-mail messages now from young Guatema- [email protected] Keeping the Silence, Breaking the Silence by Robert J. Cox 42 Recupera Chile by Ned Strong 96 lans wanting to know about Irma’s legacy. Website Covering Central America in the 1980s by Scott Wallace 44 That is why this ReVista issue on Memory and Democracy, which accompanies two months www.drclas.harvard.edu/publications/ The First Draft of History by Juan O. Tamayo 52 of events and a major conference at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, revistaonline online focuses on the present. It highlights the disappeared, the press, education, museums, and the Facebook creating citizenship Look for more content online at fascinating ongoing experiment in Colombia—a laboratory for historical memory. These are all ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America The Rub by Doris Sommer 56 drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline. ways in which the past becomes the present and morphs into the future. Copyright © 2013 by the President and Memoryscape by Pamela Yates 58 I’m tempted to dedicate this issue to the memory of Irma Flaquer, who would not be Fellows of Harvard College. Historical Footprints by Laura Barragán Montaña 62 ISSN 1541—1443 silenced until she was forcibly taken on October 16, 1980—33 years ago. But instead, I’ll dedi- Educating the “Good Citizen” by Michelle J. Bellino 64 ReVista is printed on recycled stock. cate it to Anabella and to all the relatives and friends and witnesses who keep the struggle for A New Museum for Independence by Daniel Castro and Camilo Sánchez 67 truth and justice alive, who have taught us that the past is never really past. This issue of ReVista is made possible through generous unearthing the past support of Sovereign/Santander In Search of Miss Esme by Marysa Navarro 72 Discovering Dominga by Mary Jo McConahay 74 On the cover 76 Notes from Exile by Iván Jaksic Marcos Adandia made this portrait of Ana Barimboim de Unearthing the Past by Jedrek Mularski 79 Kierszenowicz, mother of Clara Kierszenowicz, arrested Neruda and the Chilean Open Graves by Paula Molina 83 and disappeared in Argentina on October 28, 1976. first take

Memories and Their Consequences by Merilee S. Grindle

I visited the Museo de la Memoria y los disappeared forming a broad, vertical Derechos Humanos in Santiago, Chile, collage, faces caught in a moment. This two years ago. It was a heart-rending ex- was my generation. Had these young perience. To enter the museum, I moved people not been killed without a trace— through a stark and subterranean passage disappeared—they would now be active and found myself in a somber space of in many walks of life: they would have transition. There, a wall of photographs become parents and grandparents; they transported me back in time—long ago would have experienced the hopes, dis- in a messy graduate student lounge in appointments, joys, and sorrows that the Cambridge, Massachusetts, four of us rest of us have known. Some might have stood in shock, watching television foot- made important contributions to the arts, age of airplanes strafing the government or to the sciences, or to public life. Some palace, La Moneda, tanks rumbling down might have continued to work for a more city streets, and people fleeing, stumbling, just society. In Argentina, Brazil, Guate- looking backward in fear. I remembered mala, Peru, Uruguay, El Salvador, Para- how we began to sense that we were wit- guay and other countries also, so many nessing the end of a dream shared across lives of that revolutionary generation of a student generation that believed in the the 1960s and 1970s are lost to us. possibility and promise of peaceful revo- At the same time, all these years later, lution. For us, these images from Chile in my own understanding of the very real 1973 evoked Armageddon. In Cambridge, threats embodied in radical social and we held hands and we wept. political change had grown, and I could Almost four decades later at the muse- imagine the extent to which these young um, I watched the same television foot- people represented a scourge of upheaval age of airplanes, tanks, and people and and insecurity to many in their societies. I stopped to read the newspaper articles I appreciated the idealism of the young, and the red and black posters promising and hoped I had not turned cynical in a new world. The artistic energy of the wondering what might have happened protesters lived on in their communica- had the forces of order not put a stop to tion: injustice and inequity could be van- their experiment in protest and participa- quished. Then I was confronted with how tion. The museum captured the moment, this message had been rebuffed—I walked it evoked memories of shared experiences, past the iron bed intended to accentuate and it forced me to reflect on how authori- electrical shocks, the tiny shoes and dolls tarian and democratic political institu- of the children held captive with their tions are born, sustain themselves, and die. parents, the letters, journals, and memen- When I returned to my office at the toes of lives cut short. Gradually, however, David Rockefeller Center for Latin Ameri- the museum’s prison-like feel gave way to can Studies, I spoke with colleagues about an architecture of light and hope as the my museum experience in Santiago. Many exhibits unfolded over four floors. of them had similar experiences, and the Along the way was a soaring atrium, gray-haired amongst us shared personal lined with candles, the photos of the stories of where we were and what we

2 ReVista FALL 2013 Photo courtesy of museo de la memoria y los derechos humanos, chile drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 3 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY first take

There is much to remember of that time in Latin America about the lives lost and beliefs betrayed; of the consequences of protest, repression and violence. were doing when violent conflicts and military authoritarians held power, tens political changes took place. One remem- of thousands of individuals were impris- bered being part of a march in Montevi- oned, killed, or disappeared, and millions deo that ended brutally when the military lived with restricted freedoms and height- cleared the streets on horseback—not in ened vulnerability, despite many brave the 19th century, mind you, but in the moments of resistance. 1960s. Another mentioned literary works Repeatedly, my colleagues and I dis- that interpreted those times; another the cussed the importance of understand- work of a famous sculptor who evoked ing how such experiences become woven collective experiences of the past; another into collective memories of particular spoke of the altars to memories created times and places and how they influence for the Day of the Dead; another of the societies and their future. It was through advances in brain science that are help- such discussions that the Democracy and ing us understand how memory works; Memory in Latin America Collaborative yet another of the ways that histories was born in the months after I visited of violence and repression influenced the museum. At the broadest level, we new constitutions based on democratic decided, the Collaborative would assess expectations; while still another warned the authoritarian past and the collective of unresolved tensions in some countries memories it embodied and their implica- Clockwise from above: Sign on Guatema- about how to understand the past. tions for the development of democratic lan bus reads, “Yes, there was genocide”; mothers in wartime Managua; a memorial Yes, we agreed, there is much to remem- governments in the region. Our approach in Cinquera, El Salvador; Sculptor Lika ber of that time in Latin America about the would be broad and multidisciplinary. Mutal created El Ojo Que Llora (The Eye lives lost and beliefs betrayed: of the con- We would focus on the experiences of that Cries) memorial in Lima, Peru. sequences of protest, repression, violence, many countries in Latin America, and we and resistance, of regime changes and would seek to spark discussions across political aftermaths. Through scholarship disciplinary, geographic and institutional and testimony, we are now well aware of boundaries. In time-honored academic the extent to which military governments tradition, of course, we would organize a in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and conference, but that was clearly not suffi- Guatemala made systematic use of vio- cient for all the suggestions that emerged. lence, repression, disappearances, and In the end, we decided that we should also fear to suppress resistance, protest, and schedule special lectures, art exhibits, the- human rights. But someone also spoke atrical and musical events, courses, and about the case of Mexico, where the mili- films. We could engage our sister organi- tary was largely marginalized from direct zations across the university in planning engagement in politics, but the machin- and augmenting these events. ery of the dominant party-state was nev- The ideas kept coming. One colleague ertheless effective in subduing conflict suggested that these events should begin and claims for democracy, including the on September 11, 2013, the 40th anni- use of systematic co-optation and repres- versary of the Chilean coup, and another sion of dissent. In Peru, another colleague indicated how fitting it would be for made reference to how a civilian regime the events to culminate in an altar and re-established state authority in the con- memorial at Harvard’s Peabody Museum text of an ongoing and violent rebellion of Archeology and Ethnology on Novem- and, at the same time, significantly nar- ber 2, the Day of the Dead. Our Brazil rowed the space for democratic dissent. In Studies Program was eager to mark the these and other countries, when civil and 49th anniversary of the 1964 coup in Bra-

4 ReVista FALL 2013 Clockwise from above: Mary Jo McConahay; © SCOTT WALLACE WWW.SCOTTWALLACE.COM; drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 5 Mary Jo McConahay; Maarten Schets. memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY

zil, and those with particular interest in and introduction of democratic institu- experiences. Certainly, memories take on Argentina and Guatemala were not to be tions meant to replace them in the 1980s added significance as those who expe- denied. Staff members contributed ideas and 1990s. We hoped that others would rienced injustice and violence die and and set about compiling lists of films, help us understand the extent to which new generations emerge who do not have artists, organizations and scholars. With politics in some Latin American coun- first-hand knowledge of the impact of time and collaborations from other orga- tries may still be marked by tensions and authoritarianism and know of repression nizations, we filled the calendar between conflicts over the interpretation of trau- only through the interpretations of oth- September 11 and November 2 with a matic political pasts. And we thought it ers. For some of these newer generations, variety of activities. This issue of ReVista important to connect the past, the pres- authoritarian responses to protest are was planned to mark these events and ent, and the future in questioning how a more current reality; could our initia- June Carolyn Erlick immediately began memory survives and shapes future com- tive generate lessons relevant to on-going to canvass for voices and images that mitment to democratic institutions. conflicts about democratic institutions would represent diverse perspectives and Similarly, we wanted to recognize that and participation in them? We hoped encourage further discussion. collective memories of what happened that among many issues to be considered In planning the Collaborative, we in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s are also in the events we planned would be how wanted to learn about how democracy debated and contested. In recent years, memories survive and how they are trans- and memory are brought together from for example, divisions about how past mitted across generations. Such discus- different perspectives, not only through crimes are to be understood and judged sions would bring us back to considering political science, sociology, and history, have sparked controversy in Argentina, the use of museums and public spaces and but also through anthropology, philoso- Chile and Peru. Likewise, plans for mem- to assessing the obligation of current and future generations to honor past struggles and to engage in discussions about differ- ing interpretations of the past. The Democracy and Memory Collaborative looks at— None of the events planned for the among many other issues—how memories survive and Democracy and Memory Collaborative would, of course, put these many issues are transmitted across generations. and debates to rest. The Collaborative the disappeared would be one set of initiatives among many to explore such themes. Never- phy, psychology, law, and human rights. ory museums and public monuments theless, it is our hope here at the David To disappear is to vanish, to become missing, to be suspended We hoped to focus additional attention have been opportunities for debate about Rockefeller Center for Latin American in a limbo without physical evidence of what might have been. on how journalism and archeology have the meaning of historical events and how Studies that our activities will help put played important roles in providing evi- they should be represented. Those who the events of the past and the challenges To disappear causes friends and relatives anguish for years and dence that helps form collective memory. place high value on order have sought to of the democratic present in perspec- decades. Legally, forcible disappearances are crimes against We wanted scholars of religion to help us provide alternative lessons from the past, tives that can obviate breakdowns of humanity—they have no end. understand rituals and beliefs related to indicating the importance of restoring democracy in the future. And may the memory and public life, and to engage stability in societies wracked by violence artifacts and histories that honor mem- archivists, novelists, essayists, poets, and and division. Military organizations have ory in architecture, books, works of art, n Because They Were Taken Alive 8 artists in our discussion, as well as archi- had to reassess their traditions of politi- public spaces, films, and altars continue n Patchwork Memories 12 tects and city planners who consider how cal activism. Throughout Latin America, to invigorate our conversations about to capture memory in public spaces, and civic and religious organizations, aca- how we can learn from the past. For this n Our Disappeared/Nuestros Desaparecidos 15 the scientists who study how memory demic institutions, philanthropists, art- reason, I will return to the Museo de la works in the human mind. ists, and others have been involved in Memoria in Santiago in the future. Early on, then, we agreed to focus discussions over public recognition of on the relationship between democratic historical events. There are many ques- Merilee Grindle is the director of the governance and collective memories of tions about what is to be remembered, David Rockefeller Center for Latin violence, repression, and resistance and but even more important, perhaps, how American Studies (DRCLAS) and subject this relationship to a series of past events are to be interpreted. Edward S. Mason Professor of Inter- interconnected questions. For example, Thus, we hoped the Collaborative national Development at the Harvard we wanted to encourage participants would encourage exploration of these Kennedy School. Her most recent book to consider how collective memories of conflicts and provide an opportunity to is Jobs for the Boys: Patronage and the past decades of violence and authoritar- investigate the extent to which memo- State in Comparative Perspective (Har- ian rule affected the discussion, creation, ries are altered through time and political vard University Press, 2012).

6 ReVista FALL 2013 artistPhotos credit by Gustavo name andGermano url www.gustavogermano.com memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY section header

. Gustavo Germano portrays the effects of disappearances in his series ausenc as. Left: Suzana Keniger Lisboa, Milke Valdemar Keniger and Luiz Eurico Tejera Lisboa in a 1969 family portrait. Right: Suzana and Milke are the survivors. Luiz disappeared in Operación Condor in Brazil.

Cleanup,” state security forces rounded In Argentina, the military junta that women eventually found new partners; Because They Were Taken Alive up at least thirty members of the coun- took power in 1976 elevated forced disap- the guilt of resuming anything approach- try’s Communist party, tortured them, pearance to a perverse art form. Expert ing “normal” life. State-sponsored disap- Forced Disappearance in Latin America By Kirsten Weld and dropped their bodies by plane into manipulators of language to chilling pearances were both political and psy- the Pacific Ocean. Some of their remains effect, the generals thundered that desa- chological crimes, aimed to muzzle and washed ashore, some didn’t. parecidos were “absent forever.” They shatter in order to tighten social control. As the Latin American Cold War heat- developed an elaborate process by which And yet, it was the singular horror of In Guatemala City, a single garage light he will know that his family never gave language that obscures as much as it ed up in the 1970s, the tactic was exported disappeared detainees were interrogated, forced disappearance—what legal ana- has been burning continuously for al- up on him. reveals, as a desaparecido is neither quite beyond Guatemala’s borders, as was a new tortured, bundled into airplanes, drugged lysts Reed Brody and Felipe González most thirty years. The garage’s owner, a Over the course of the Cold War and dead nor alive, simultaneously present epistolary form: the wrenching plea from into submission by licensed medical pro- call “perhaps the cruelest form of govern- woman now in her nineties, cannot bring beyond, well more than a hundred thou- and absent. The Guatemalan sociolo- a victim’s family, addressed to the state fessionals, and dropped into the sea by the ment abuse” for the torture it inflicts not herself to turn it off. sand Latin Americans were made to gist Carlos Figueroa Ibarra describes the and often published in newspapers, for thousands. As one of the pilots of these so- only on detainees but on their emotional On May 15, 1984, her son, Rubén enter the netherworld of forced disap- disappeared as “those who will always their loved one’s safe return. Families may called “death flights” later remembered, networks—that gave rise to some of the Amílcar Farfán, left the house early as pearance—some 40,000 in Guatemala, be nowhere”; for the Chilean theologian not have known where a sister or son had the sedated prisoners would plummet continent’s most iconic 20th-century he usually did, headed for the university. between 1,000 and 2,000 in Chile, as Mario I. Aguilar, they are “those who will been taken, but they knew that their gov- from the planes down into the dark waters social movements. These were groups, But later that afternoon, friends of his many as 30,000 in Argentina, 60,000 never grow old,” men and women and ernments bore the blame. Porque vivos se of the Atlantic Ocean “like little ants.” predominantly of women, who met each rang the doorbell of the family’s house, in Colombia, perhaps 6,000 in El Salva- children forever frozen in time at the los llevaron, vivos los queremos—because We know, from accounts of those other in the course of their daily visits to anguished, to report the worst: witness- dor, 15,000 in Peru, and, more recently, precise moment of their vanishing. they were taken alive, we want them back detained and eventually released, a little the morgues in places like Buenos Aires es had seen strangers force the young over 25,000 in Mexico. The numbers are As a systematic practice of calcu- alive—became, for a generation of heart- about what many disappeared persons and Guatemala City. (Such is the twisted man, a literature student and union necessarily imprecise because the crime lated state repression in Latin America, sick relatives, their central and consum- in Cold War Latin America endured in nature of disappearance—it puts families activist on his way home from work, itself is designed to produce uncertainty, forced disappearance was first deployed ing demand. It was too often unmet. captivity—the interrogations, the electric in the grim position of actually hoping to into a waiting car and then drive away. leaving no corpses, no traces, no expla- in Guatemala. The year was 1966, more In Chile, General Augusto Pinochet shocks, the rapes. We know more about find the physical remains of their kindred.) Farfán, like many of his university con- nations, and hence, no accountability. than a decade after the CIA-sponsored cracked down on the opposition to his 1973 the impact those disappearances had on The first such organization was the temporaries during this period of fierce Even the terminology that has evolved ouster of the democratically elected coup with a withering ferocity. Those trade families, a powerful and multigenera- Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who in state-sponsored violence, would never to describe it—the transformation of president Jacobo Arbenz. By that year unionists and students whom the regime tional multiplier effect. Figueroa Ibarra 1977 began marching in front of Argen- return home; he had joined the ranks of “to disappear” into an intransitive verb, the country’s military and police, forti- tortured to death or summarily executed chronicles family members’ recurring tina’s presidential palace, demanding the Latin America’s desaparecidos, or “dis- as in to be disappeared or to disappear fied by U.S. weapons and training, had had their corpses spirited away, piled in dreams and nightmares; their inability safe return of their disappeared children. appeared.” Today, cold logic dictates that someone—is awkward and incomplete, embarked on a broad crusade, under the remote mass graves in the Atacama Des- to mourn, since the disappeared could For their efforts, which shook the foun- Farfán is almost certainly dead, but still communicating the involuntary nature banner of anti-communism, to crush any ert. There, their aging family members not be proven dead; the intensity of the dations of the dictatorship’s legitimacy, his mother and sister keep the light on— of a person’s disappearance but noth- and all forms of political dissent. As part still walk the rocky plains in the thin air, social pressures on women whose part- several of the Mothers were themselves so that when he comes home, they say, ing about that person’s destiny. It is a of Operación Limpieza, or “Operation searching for bone fragments, like ghosts. ners had disappeared, especially if those disappeared. A similar story unfolded in

8 ReVista fall 2013 Photos by Gustavo Germano www.gustavogermano.com drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 9 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY the disappeared

with other women. And then there was the matter of the disappeared children. In El Salva- dor, soldiers on military sweeps through guerrilla-controlled communities would snatch babies and toddlers—allegedly, in some cases, as war trophies. In Argentina, pregnant women detained in torture cen- ters like the Navy School of Mechanics, or ESMA, were kept alive long enough to give birth, whereupon their infants were taken away and placed with army families in order to “eradicate the seed” of subver- sion. Organizations like the Grandmoth- ers of the Plaza de Mayo, now a separate Above Left: Orlando René Mendez and Leticia Margarita Oliva at the “Happy Turtle” beach, Entre Ríos, Argentina. Right: Both disappeared. organization from the Mothers, and El They are shown on p. 7 with their baby Laura Cecilia Mendez Oliva, photographed as a young woman in 2006. Salvador’s Asociación Pro-Búsqueda, work today to locate these children—now state that is not adequately confronting being mounted across the hemisphere, pearance of their family members fight adults—and, using DNA matching, to the issue of forced disappearance.” Also in although these remain rare amid the stag- on to clarify the crimes of the past, forced restore their birth identities. Chile, a series of families had their desa- gering number of total cases. disappearance continues to be practiced Some countries have developed policy parecidos’ remains returned to them dur- But the law is, ultimately, an imperfect today. Since 2006, when outright war instruments in order to resolve the unre- ing the 1990s—which, while a wrenching instrument for reckoning with the sublime began between the Mexican government solvable and measure the unmeasurable. experience, at least brought closure— horror of a person being erased from the and drug trafficking cartels, some 30,000 When the Argentine dictatorship fell, the only to find after DNA testing that they earth by her government. Instead, disap- Mexicans have gone missing, and an esti- new civilian government, headed by Presi- had been given the wrong bones. State pearance has perhaps been best engaged mated 70,000 more have been killed. The dent Raúl Alfonsín, launched the National security archives contain many clues, with by art. The Colombian sculptor Doris poet Javier Sicilia planned to march, alone Commission on Disappeared Persons including, potentially, confirmation of Salcedo has long worked on the subject; and silently, from Cuernavaca to Mexico (CONADEP), the first of the hemisphere’s some desaparecidos’ deaths, information her Atrabiliarios series uses shoes to City in protest after his son’s murder; many truth commissions seeking to tally withheld from families even after dozens represent the missing, because “when- spontaneously, some 150,000 fellow citi- and account for the disappeared and of habeas corpus requests. But in coun- ever you see a shoe abandoned on the zens, appalled at this ongoing bloodbath, dead. Years later, in attempting to create tries where armies remain powerful, win- street, you ask yourself, ‘What happened joined at his side. “I cannot write more a reparations program for victims of the ning access to the bureaucracy of state here?’” Noemí Escandell’s Disappeared poetry,” Sicilia told reporters after his jour- dictatorship, the national government terror can be an uphill battle. depicts an empty-armed Pietà wearing ney. “Poetry no longer exists inside me.” crafted a new legal status for desapareci- Largely as a result of the Latin Ameri- one of the kerchiefs of the Mothers of the The geography of Latin America is Above: Omar Darío Amestoy and Mario Alfredo Amestoy together in 1975. Below: Omar Darío dos—“absent by forced disappearance”— can experience, international legal norms Plaza de Mayo. The Argentine photogra- now, irrevocably, a geography of forced alone in 2006. Mario Alfredo was one of the 30,000 disappeared in Argentina. that conceded the state’s responsibility for now accommodate and delineate the pher Gustavo Germano, whose brother disappearance, a landscape of deep and a person’s absence without presuming his parameters of forced disappearance. The was disappeared, painstakingly recreates jagged chasms that can never be bridged. Guatemala, where the Mutual Support from the state and onto the disappeared or her death. (Reparations were another Organization of American States rati- decades-old family photographs, retaking But there is another way to visualize an Group, founded in 1984, saw a number individual. The Argentine dictator Jorge terrible practicality: did accepting repa- fied the Inter-American Convention on the image with only the surviving family America, from Ciudad Juárez to the of its founding members disappeared or Rafael Videla agreed that there were rations mean accepting that a brother the Forced Disappearance of Persons in members. (One of Germano’s photosets Tierra del Fuego, forever transfigured assassinated by state security forces. To “missing persons” in Argentina, but he or daughter had died?) As of 2013, the 1994, and as of July 2002, the Rome Stat- refigures a 1970s-era photo of a young, by enforced absence. Picture it as a dis- speak out about a disappearance was a tre- contended that “they have disappeared Argentine census will formally include ute of the International Criminal Court ecstatic couple dandling their baby beside tant satellite image at night, revealing a mendous risk. As the Colombian peasant in order to live clandestinely and to dedi- desaparecidos as a population subcategory. stipulated that forced disappearance is a bed. In the recreated photo, that baby, hemisphere dotted by thousands upon farmer Blanca Meneses Nieves recounts, cate themselves to subversion,” while And yet the legal and logistical chal- a crime against humanity. The distinc- now a striking woman in her twenties, thousands of tiny lights—garage lights, when she sought help from local authori- one of his Guatemalan counterparts, lenges posed by having a subset of citi- tion is an important one, as it means that stares alone at the camera; her parents are burning bright with the impossible deter- ties—both elected and paramilitary— military strongman Oscar Mejía Vícto- zens absent but officially considered alive perpetrators can no longer claim protec- both desaparecidos.) And, mixing perfor- mination that because they were taken regarding the disappearance of her four res, argued that many of the supposedly continue to bedevil. Sebastián Piñera’s tion under national amnesty laws, such mance art with political theater, different alive, alive they will return. daughters, the paramilitary commander disappeared were “perhaps in some Com- administration accidentally placed app- as those passed in Guatemala and El chapters of the group HIJOS, represent- instructed her to “disappear yourself if you munist country with some scholarship or roximately a thousand individuals con- Salvador when these countries’ civil wars ing the children of the disappeared, stage Kirsten Weld is Assistant Professor of don’t want us to kill you too.” in Havana, Cuba.” A common rejoinder sidered disappeared on the voter rolls for concluded. And due to the indefatigable noisy guerrilla protests, or escraches, out- History at Harvard University. Her Almost worse than the original crimes to the anguished entreaties of wives, in Chile’s upcoming presidential elections, efforts of victims’ advocacy organizations, side the homes of accused perpetrators. book, Paper Cadavers: The Archives of were government functionaries’ official particular, was to suggest that their hus- proving, in the words of human rights led by families like Farfán’s, prosecutions While generations of Latin Americans Dictatorship in Guatemala, is forthcom- denials, phrased to deflect blame away bands had only “disappeared” to take up activist Lorena Pizarro, “that this is a for the crime of forced disappearance are transformed into activists by the disap- ing in March 2014.

10 ReVista FALL 2013 Photos by Gustavo Germano www.gustavogermano.com drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 11 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY

Patchwork Memories

Arpilleras and Reflections on Disappearance By Marjorie Agosín

In every season of the year, Violeta Mo- often donated by charity organizations, sents hope and the possibility of return. rales would dress exactly the same: a the women cut out pieces of cloth and With the arrival of democracy in the jacket, black skirt and a pair of worn- then these artists of memory recreate Southern Cone, the names of the disap- down shoes. A leader of an artisans’ group life through cloth, evoking the life of the peared indeed appeared on lists and in engaged in making intricate patchwork home and hearth, the empty seat at the reports such as the well-known Rettig memory tapestries, Morales talked and table, the first steps ever taken, the first Report, officially the National Com- created when others dared not. day of school.... mission for Truth and Reconciliation Practically the moment I arrived back The arpilleras are true compositions Report, but even before then, relatives in Chile, she became my safe haven, my and works of memory. The process of and community groups in support of refuge, my anchor in a country in which no making them is a healing process, as well human rights were remembering these one was talking about anything relevant as a memorializing one. From the scraps of names constantly; memory transformed to human rights. Where silence reigned fabric that are sewn together emerge dis- into a demand to know the truth. together with fear. Every single day. appeared lives that materialize once again. The crime of disappearance, consid- I’d ask her over and over again, “Vio- For these brave women, to disappear ered a crime against humanity, affects leta, aren’t you hot? I always see you is to not cease to exist; it is not only to entire societies and more than anything wearing the same clothes.” She would search for a body, but to reclaim the destroys the family fabric in a slash. New- look at me with her olive-colored, always memory of a daily life. The arpilleras are borns never knew their parents. And they, sparkling eyes, answering, “No, Marjorie, sent to many parts of the world. They those who disappeared, never watched both I and my clothes have been frozen in form part of a collective memory of a their children grow up or their parents get time. Even my worn-down shoes accom- lost generation with its many who disap- old. pany me on this perpetual journey.” peared; other people will hang the patch- To remember them and to keep them She taught me what it means to disap- work tributes on the walls of their homes. from just becoming names relegated to pear, be forcefully disappeared, desapa- The women will manage to always live official lists compiled by the human rights recer. This extremely complex concept is with their pain and the memories—and community, the arpillera makers, with almost impossibly untranslatable, caus- to reconstruct those memories. nimble hands, create wall hangings with ing us to reflect on this sinister condition The patchwork art is similar to memo- images embodied with gestures of solidar- invented by the military dictatorships rializing texts about the disappeared. ity, fruit-filled trees, rivers flowing with of Latin America. To disappear is to be Both have the ability to dredge up memo- deep waters. They honor the memory of neither dead nor alive. It is to enter into ries, to awaken the conscience, to make them, the disappeared, with images of life. a state of shadows. An act of violence, the absent present and in this fashion After the wars and the catastrophes altered destinies, loss of lives, loss of illu- attempt to make the awful horror that dis- that followed, the dead, the wounded sions: a borderline state. And we seem to appearance implies transformed into the and the disappeared in combat appeared feel that the disappeared are evaporating possibility of remembering what it means on list after list. Relatives flocked to bodies, ghosts that can only return to us to exist. Fully human and not truncated human services offices to ask about their through memory. To disappear is to be lives, frozen at such an early age. loved ones and they congregated in those part of the history of absence. To search for I frequently remember my encounters places united in grief and in a common the disappeared is to recover them so they with the arpillera makers and our con- history. However, the victims of forced do not dissolve into the forgetting that the versations about their disappeared rela- disappearances in Latin America and repressive forces so cruelly intended. tives. These disappeared ones had names particularly in the area I know the best, and fruitful lives. Irma Muller, mother of the Southern Cone, do not appear on Since 1973, I’ve worked very closely with a disappeared son, observed that the tac- any lists. Exactly the opposite. Military the original group of women who make tile experience of the arpilleras remind- these arpilleras. This memorial patch- ed her of a soft caress. The arpillera This detailed arpillera entitled Exilio 1974- maker who shows us a large window and work honors the life of the relatives of 1984—exile—depicts a sad airport scene as friends who have disappeared. Work- a woman who looks out over the horizon, families and individuals were forced to flee ing with all sorts of delicate materials Violeta Morales would say to me, repre- Chile because of political persecution.

12 ReVista fall 2013 pidee linares, chile. FONDO PIDEE. courtesy of the museo de la memoria y los derechos humanos, chile memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY the disappeared

that emerged in that period and contin- ue on: the Mothers of the Plaza del Mayo and Active Memory (Memoria Activa), both in Argentina, and Women for Life (Mujeres Por la Vida) in Chile. These movements are essentially activities in which the memory of the disappeared does not conflict with the official memories of history (some spell this “history” with a capital “H”), but works in a dialogue with that history; in the process of reconstructing through memory, witnesses and art in its various forms, ranging from music to the Chilean arpilleras—patchwork testimonies. The memory of those lives transforms into presence, writing that recalls them is an act of conscience, and the mothers who embroider their stories and their

For the 40th anniversary of the 1974 coup against the democratically elected government of names with fragments of cloth convert Salvador Allende, Chile: from within is being released as an e-book. Chilean photographers, them into luminous memories that jour- working for small magazines and underground newspapers, risked their lives to document the ney from one place to another. brutality of the “Pinochet years.” U.S. photographer Susan Meiselas and her Chilean counter- We, the witnesses of these fabrics and parts created a collective account that reflects their hopes for change after a long period of these memorializing gestures, also con- isolation. To contextualize the original book, published in 1990 and now out of print, new ma- terial includes audio interviews with the photographers, Spanish-language versions, contact tribute with our gaze in solidarity by not sheets, CIA documents on the coup and archival footage. The publication can be downloaded forgetting, in denouncing this sinister from www.mappeditions.com/publications/chile-from-within. and diabolical crime. I learned from these arpillera makers authorities deny their very existence. inquire for their family members. that with the love and the delicacy of the Many mothers of the disappeared from In simple words—clear yet profound: handiwork with which they craft these the harsh years of the 70s and 80s told Where are they? These three words con- histories of them, the disappeared, and me that they were told at military head- vey the power of language to clamor for of us, that in this fashion perhaps they quarters that their children had gone over the lives of thousands of people whose can negate the terrible plan of the South- Our Disappeared/Nuestros Desaparecidos the mountains and abandoned them. existence was truncated, suspended. The ern Cone dictatorships and others who Sometimes, as Irma Muller recounted moment that they disappeared was the wished to wipe out an entire generation, The Act of Memory by Juan Mandelbaum about her son Jorge who disappeared moment they began to be looked for, and a generation for the most part of dream- off a Santiago street in 1974, the military that search has not ended. ers and of believers in solidarity. They did would charge, “Your son went to Cuba. So many times, I’ve asked myself what not achieve their evil goal. He is a terrorist.” kind of language to use in talking about An arpillera accompanies me above Memory has a way of finding its way into changes in Argentine society. A friend helped me locate her file, which Argentine writer Julio Cortázar once the disappeared so they do not turn into my desk. I feel its presence always near- the present through small cracks. Ruins Patricia was a beautiful petite bru- included her sister Alejandra’s deposi- said that to disappear in Latin America was mere legal statistics or a mere name on by. Every day I look at it and I sense of an ancient city, a sign on a street or a nette, full of energy and humor. Strange- tion from 1984. In one of the many small a “diabolical invention” of its own countries’ a list, at the petition of family members. that the disappeared are not ghosts hid- poem can keep the past in the present. ly, in all the years up to that moment I miracles of this story, Alejandra was still citizens. The disappeared simply do not To talk about the disappeared, it is den in the shadows, but they are there, One evening about eight years ago I had not thought of looking her up. When listed in the phone book, 21 years later! I appear anywhere except in the memory of necessary to dwell in memory. To live accompanying us in all our actions and was wondering what had become of Patri- I googled her name I expected to find called with a certain hesitation, not quite those who so stubbornly look for them. and to feel, to imagine the disappeared in in our active memory, seeking justice cia Dixon, a girlfriend of mine in 1973. that she had become a teacher or a psy- knowing what to say. But when Ale picked The frozen memory, the memory sus- the spaces of the present, not in the void. and light. We had met at the Sociology Department chologist. Instead I was shocked to find up her reaction was: “Ohhhh…” She knew pended forever and ever, the exhausting In the coffee house, the concert halls, in at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, at a her name on a list of people who had exactly who I was: that young man who search, are all part of the daily experience schools, in the spaces of daily life, every Marjorie Agosín is Luella LaMer Slan- time when the school was a recruitment disappeared during the dark years of the had dated her sister, who was eight years of those whose loved ones disappeared. day, every moment, and to maintain the er Professor in Latin American Studies place for revolutionary organizations. 1976-1983 military dictatorship. She was older. It was almost as if she had been At first, the search is solitary, but later memory of those disappeared as vibrant and Professor of Spanish at Wellesley Juan Domingo Perón was in the process of taken from her home in the early hours of acquires a collective force when groups and fully there. And to try above all to College. A poet and writer, she is the returning to power after 18 years of exile, September 5, 1977, and never seen again. Clockwise: Juan Mandelbaum in ESME base- of desperate women encounter each create communities in which they are author of Tapestries of Hope, Threads of and many in my generation had expecta- In March 2005 I went to Buenos Aires ment; Ale Dixon with portrait of Patricia; an- other in places like jails and morgues to remembered, such as the movements Love, as well as dozens of other books. tions that he would lead to deep structural to try to find out more about Patricia’s fate. niversary of coup; Patricia’s family with tile.

14 ReVista FALL 2013 photos: top left above: Francisco García faure; drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 15 others by or courtesy of juan mandelbaum. memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY

waiting for my call. All those years she appears in the film bragging in 1995 about ing. Family, childhood neighbors, friends had kept a photograph that I had taken of torturing and killing militants), was sen- and work colleagues recalled stories that Patricia by her bedside. tenced to 25 years in prison. Former junta reflected her beautiful soul. Everyone That was the beginning of a profound leader and President Jorge Rafael Videla present felt that the act of laying the tile creative and life experience that led to my recently died in jail, unrepentant. He was and remembering Patricia in this deeply making a feature-length documentary sentenced for the theft of 34 babies and felt way had been very healing. It became film, Our Disappeared/Nuestros Desapa- other crimes. Unfortunately one of the the memorial service she had never had. recidos, that explores what happened to most sinister characters, Admiral Emilio There have been a surprising num- Patricia and to other people I knew who Massera, became senile and died unpun- ber of “coincidences” during the making disappeared during that reign of terror. ished. Many other criminals are going to of the film and since. In preparation for The film aired on the PBS series “Inde- their graves with their secrets unrevealed. making Patricia’s tile, Alejandra and I met pendent Lens” in 2008 and “Global Voic- Of the more than 500 babies who were with two people from the group Barrios. es” in 2011 and played at more than thirty kidnapped or born in captivity, 108 have Ale suggested that they see my film, but festivals worldwide. Audiences from India been identified and reunited with their asked them not to copy it because an older to Colombia to New Zealand have related natural families, thanks to the relentless woman who appears in the film still har- to the universality of the stories. At the work of the Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo, bors some fears and doesn’t want the film Mumbai International Film Festival there the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. widely distributed in Argentina. Mauro was no discussion period after the screen- The children of the disappeared Rapuano, one of the organizers, asked her ing, so I waited outside the theatre to whose stories I tell in my film could have name. “Ruth Weisz,” I replied. His face went white. He had been the best man at her disappeared son’s wedding! For many years the disappeared have In March 2012 we laid a memory tile for Patricia in been remembered on the day of their van- front of the building from where she was kidnapped. It ishing with remembrance ads in the Bue- nos Aires newspaper Página 12. On the became the memorial service she had never had. 15th anniversary of Patricia’s disappear- ance Alejandra wrote a poem, and enclosed Colombia the photo I had taken. The last lines of the meet viewers and chat with them. A num- all been stolen. Two of them were taken poem read, almost in a premonition: ber of people came forward to greet me, with their parents but later returned to Colombia has become a vibrant laboratory for historical memory. held my hands while looking me in the the families. One of the most powerful “Duerme en medio del naufragio y sueña At the same time that the country is simultaneously engaged in eye, and moved on, not saying a word. An developments is that now they are all que se despierta en el corazón de un civil conflict and a dynamic peace process, citizens are seeking Indian friend told me that this was a sign parents themselves. Juan Manuel Weisz hombre que se sacude la pena” of deep respect. At the Docúpolis Festival had Marcelo, the baby who appears in ways to understand the past to construct the future. in Barcelona, several Argentine exiles in the film. Natalia Chinetti had a baby “She sleeps amidst the shipwreck and the audience found ties to the stories I tell girl. Antonio Belaustegui has a baby boy. dreams that she awakens in the heart of n Liquid Tombs for Colombia’s Disappeared 18 in the film—a former boyfriend, acompa - Tania Weisberg had twins two years ago. a man who sheds his sorrow.” ñero in a revolutionary organization, the And on September 5th of this year, on the n Prospects of Peace 20 mother of a close friend. When I present anniversary of Patricia’s disappearance, Patricia has awakened in my heart and n A Search for Justice 24 the film at colleges and universities, stu- Ines Kuperschmit gave birth to her third in the hearts of all who have come across n Displacement and Community Organizing 27 dents connect with the deep commitment boy. As Juan Manuel says in the film, her story. Patricia and the thousands of held by young people who were their own “Life wins in the end.” others who were taken are nuestros desa- n The Alchemy of Narrative 30 age. They ask probing questions and write A movement in the city of Buenos parecidos, our disappeared, and we have n Democracy, Citizenship and Commemoration in Colombia 36 thoughtful papers about the film and this Aires is slowly creating a very particular a duty to always remember them. n The Language of Public Memory 38 dark period in Argentine history. memorial space for the disappeared. Bar- Since the film was finished in 2008, rios por la Memoria, “Neighborhoods for Juan Mandelbaum is an Argentine the judicial process in Argentina has Memory,” helps families and friends of documentary filmmaker living in the made great advances and hundreds of the desaparecidos fabricate and lay tiles, United States since 1977. Mandelbaum cases have been reopened: 250 perpetra- baldosas, near where they lived, worked was a producer on the PBS series AMER- tors have already been convicted. Every or from where they were taken. In March ICAS. His independent films have been day there is a new case in the newspapers. 2012 we laid one in Patricia’s memory in shown on PBS and in many festivals Julio Simón, a.k.a. “Turco Julián” (a for- front of the building from where she was worldwide. For more information visit mer secret detention-center guard who kidnapped. There was music and danc- www.ourdisappeared.com.

16 ReVista FALL 2013 artist credit name and url memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY colombia

iatory bridge between the representation could do as a gesture of Christian charity. ied as “NN” (“No Name”) with only the of the conflict and its unrepresentable I put a lot of effort into the writing of each information about their gender and the suffering. Several Colombian artists have death certificate; I took notice of every year the body reached Marsella. Like- sought to represent violence through dif- detail, the brand of clothing, any particu- wise, no one thought of making a map ferent media. Using video, performance lar characteristics that would allow fami- that would help locate and identify the and photography, they have sought to give lies to identify them.” remains. This act of painting over the shape to what cannot be represented, has This humanitarian labor was con- information transformed the bodies into no expression, what we anthropologists stantly threatened by lack of support unidentifiable beings, an act that created and historians have been incapable of from the municipality; indeed, she a double disappearance. putting into words. One of the recurrent received overt orders from her bosses As an act of reparation for what had themes of these artists has been the void to stop retrieving the bodies. Because of transpired in Marsella and so many other that the disappeared leave behind. frequent episodes of intimidation and towns along the Cauca River, the artist In her book Revolt, She Said, literary pressure, Esperanza quit her post in Gabriel Posada conceived an ephemeral critic Julia Kristeva observed how artists the municipal administration in 2001. work known as “Magdalenas by the Cau- mediate violence through their work. In Her husband was a fisherman and she ca,” a work of historical memory funded appropriating what is not their own, art- often accompanied him on his fishing by a Culture Ministry fellowship. Posada ists manage to build a bridge between trips. When she would see a body float- designed some rafts from tropical guadua the self and the world. This alchemy is ing down the river, she would take it out bamboo cane and added sails. On each a delicate one, whose worth we tend to with her own hands and would advise sail, he used vinyl paint to depict, from underestimate. It is an act of creation the authorities, obliging them to record remaining photos, the faces of some of the that is located precisely in that space that and process the death. As a result, she disappeared victims. Posada set the rafts separates the individual from the world, received death threats and constant pres- adrift in the Cauca River, carrying along a privileged space in which metaphor, sure to abandon her rescue missions. The the images of men and women whose Liquid Tombs for metonymy and other figures of speech threats continued until 2005, when her fate had been erased. The intent of the are all called into play. The role of the art- riverside home was burnt to the ground. performance was to cleanse the stamp Colombia’s Disappeared ist is not to make a faithful copy of reality. She was warned that if she did not leave of the deaths that the Rio Cauca bore for It is to give a form to our attitude in the her neighborhood, the next attack would having received so many mutilated bod- Sounds and Images˜By María Victoria Uribe face of this reality. be directly against her life or that of her ies over so many years. The artist recre- In a bend of the Cauca River, just by husband. She left and went to live far ated this moving spectacle on several the town of Marsella, bodies and other from the riverbanks. occasions, ephemeral art since the rafts objects tend to get stuck as they come crashed against the riverbanks to even- floating down the river. A woman living The Marsella cementery was recently tually become shipwrecked further down there, Esperanza, also called “death lover” declared historic and architectural pat- the river. The performance included the Colombia has been a country with amne- we see many dismembered corpses, but about this disposal method date back to (“la enamorada de los muertos”), worked rimony of the nation by the Colombian victims of the Trujillo massacre—actually sia for a long time. we do not find victims. This is a tre- the 1950s. During the past thirty years, as a secretary in the small hamlet of El Minister of Culture. After the declara- a series of murders that took place along The country has been at war—a social mendous paradox that underscores how some communities along the Cauca River Alto during the chilling period of the nar- tion, the Beautification Society of the the Cauca River from 1988 and 1994— catastrophe since 1948, sparked by the this Violencia, excessive and fratricidal, have become accustomed to seeing muti- co-paramilitary violence. Like Hecuba town ordered the tombs painted. This and was witnessed by the fishermen who murder of the revered liberal leader remained buried along with its crimes, lated bodies float by, headed downriver and Medea in Greek mythology, Espe- procedure erased the data that had been lived along the riverbanks. Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. Although his death which were never brought to justice. The from towns where dealings are resolved ranza disobeyed orders from local kill- handwritten on the tombs of more than Another work of art that alludes to took place in Bogotá, during the follow- country shrouded itself in a mantle of through bullets or machetes. To this day, ers not to retrieve the bodies that came four hundred people, who had been bur- the disappeared is artist Clemencia Ech- ing 16 years Liberals and Conservatives impunity and opted to bury its disgrace- in the northern part of the Valle depart- floating down the river so they could be everry’s The Bier’s Funeral Song (Treno waged a war mostly in the countryside ful past. And from 1980 on, this unre- ment (the Colombian word for “state”), buried. Esperanza told me that she res- Canto Fúnebre). By means of a video that took 250,000 lives. Despite deaths solved violence continued in the form which has been under the domination cued the bodies because she felt a moral installation, Echeverry shows the invis- of this magnitude, for decades no one of drug trafficking and paramilitarism. of the regional drug cartel, mutilated obligation to these people and their fami- ible destruction that has characterized talked about victims nor mentioned the If societies do not examine themselves bodies sometimes are still seen floating lies. She recounted how she always made forced disappearances in Colombia. word “memory.” through the mirror of memory, the cycles down the river. As so many other rivers the effort to register each death and any While we observe the turbulent and It was not until 2005, after the enact- of violence repeat themselves. in Colombia, the Cauca is a liquid tomb appropriate details in an archive she was dark waters of the Cauca River on a ment of the Law of Justice and Peace, through which countless bodies of the assembling: “I couldn’t let those bod- double screen, the room is invaded by a that these words appeared in the public Representations of victims of the armed conflict have jour- ies just float down the river; I knew that soundtrack of the heartrending screams Colombian vocabulary. If we analyze the the Disappeared neyed toward anonymity and forgetting. behind every body was a mother or a wife of loved ones who search for their van- texts written about La Violencia or look In Colombia, murdered bodies are often In the face of such a desolate panora- crying, hoping that perhaps someone Artist Gabriel Posada set rafts adrift in the ished loved ones. Through this blending at the countless photographs taken in tossed into a river to conceal the crimes ma of chronic violence—which is not yet would rescue the body and bury it. More- Cauca River with vinyl paint images of the of image and sound, the artist performs towns and villages during those years, and do away with the evidence; stories over—art has managed to extend a concil- over, it seemed to me this was the least I disappeared in “Magdalenas by the Cauca.” a delicate alchemy to appropriate some

18 ReVista fall 2013 photo: AFP/Getty Images photo by maría Víctoria uribe drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 19 memory colombia

sounds that are heard on both sides of Sign in the April 23, 2012, march, a “dress insurgents had a role to play in the coun- A mass grave underlying the Center of the river and, by association, creates rehearsal” for the April 9, 2013, Marcha try. It was not surprising that the former Memory was an apt but terrible metaphor an echo in the psyche of the viewer Patriótica, reads, “The state returned the president lashed out at the April 9 mobi- that only emphasized the urgent need to body of my dead son, a false positive.” as in the psyches of so many other lization as a “march with the terrorists.” come to terms with the past and exorcize Colombians. The second memorial is the Center for the demons of war. The Center finally The recent history of Colombia This event, a new vision of the coun- Memory, Peace, and Reconciliation, built opened its doors to the public in late 2012. is filled with voices and sounds that try’s national memory, promises to be on the grounds of the city’s Central Cem- The institutional events of April 9 were recall the violence—sounds like the remembered as a turning point when etery, where many victims of political vio- meticulously choreographed to maximize cries of “viva” (long live! cries of affir- relations among allies and foes entered lence are buried. The Center is a mono- their symbolic value. President Juan mations) and “down with!” boos for uncharted territory, opening possibilities lith that resembles a large gravestone, Manuel Santos began the day by deliver- each political party during the 1950s; theretofore considered unimaginable. penetrating into the earth and into the ing a highly patriotic speech to an audi- or the clanking of chains on the truck The physical setting chosen for this entrails of the city’s past—the very roots ence of generals and other military and that set off during the night to pick up dress rehearsal for national reconciliation of the Colombian conflict, from which its police personnel at the Monument to members of the Liberal party and dis- was the Avenida El Dorado, sometimes victims may symbolically reemerge. Fallen Heroes. appear them; or the melancholy, deep referred to since the early years of this The Center was established on the ini- Then he walked up the Avenida El sound of a deer horn that was played century as the Avenue of Memory, a ref- tiative of civil society organizations with Dorado to the Center for Memory, Peace to warn about the arrival of “chusma,” erence point from which to recount the the support of the city government, to and Reconciliation with a group of top a riffraff mob from which one could country’s past for those of the new millen- demand the right to memory as an exer- government officials to pay respects to the anticipate the worst. More recently, nium. Along the avenue, two memorials cise in active citizenship. The goal was civilian victims. They were met there by there’s the strident sound of motor- have arisen, each representing an oppos- to open in 2010, but in 2009 excavators Bogotá’s Mayor Gustavo Petro, Vice-Pres- boats that have come to form part of ing vision of the country’s history. working on the site unexpectedly uncov- ident Angelino Garzón, a group of foreign the repertory of horror for the inhab- The first is the Monument to the ered the city’s historic Paupers’ Cemetery. diplomats and other top city officials. itants along the Atrato River or the Heroes Fallen in Combat, built by newly- The city government then had to decide The event brought together a presi- Great Swamp of Santa Marta because elected President Álvaro Uribe in 2003 whether to proceed with construction. dent who had been minister of defense it recalls the arrival of paramilitary and located across the street from the At the same time, it was discovered during some of the most violent years forces; or the hushed cries of those Ministry of Defense. From its begin- that between ten to thirty thousand of the conflict, a vice president who was who search for their relatives disap- nings, the grounds of the monument people had been buried in thousands of a former union leader and former vice peared in the whirling river. have been used as a staging area for mili- mass graves around the country in recent president of the leftist Unión Patriótica, Today, in the midst of the general tary parades and other commemorative years. They were the victims of selective and a mayor who was a former member clamor for peace that accompanies events organized by the armed forces. killings, massacres, and extrajudicial of the M-19 guerrilla movement. Togeth- the negotiations between the Colom- Over the course of his eight years as pres- executions carried out by paramilitaries, er they planted a tree of peace in the bian government and the FARC guer- ident (2002-2010), Uribe insisted that guerrillas and the armed forces. cemetery where anonymous victims of rilla group, we still imagine hearing the main problem in Colombia was that Terror at the horrific discoveries coex- the Bogotazo lay buried. This remarkable voices of men and women that can- Prospects of Peace groups of criminals, outlaws, and terror- isted with the all too common indiffer- event received the backing of the inter- not be identified because they do not ists held the great majority of good people ence, and in this climate it was decided national community, the blessings of the form part of the national narrative. Sharing Historical Memory in Colombia hostage, hindering the country’s social that unearthing the largest mass grave high command of the ELN (National Lib- They are voices without a body; they progress and economic development, in the capital city’s oldest cemetery could eration Army guerrillas) and the approval are the No-Names, the disappeared By Paolo Vignolo and that only the courage and dedication not be treated as a routine administra- of the FARC negotiating team in Havana. whose faces watch us without ask- of the armed forces could bring about the tive problem. Construction of the Center The date chosen by the organizers ing questions. Voices that belong to revival of the fatherland. was delayed while 3,000 sets of remains marked the first-ever official commemo- those who are invisible to the society, A publicity campaign was launched, dating from 1827-1970 were carefully ration of the April 9, 1948, assassination whose bodies disappeared and whose On April 9, 2013, tens of thousands of citi- the militarization of daily life— had been proclaiming that “Yes, there are heroes in processed. It turned out to be Latin of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a traumatic event remains lie piled up on the bottom of zens filled the streets of Bogotá in a mobilized by a coalition of the govern- Colombia,” initially referring not only to America’s largest archeological project which had led to a spontaneous insurrec- the rivers. massive demonstration “for peace, de- ment, labor unions and some leftist poli- the police and military, but also implic- involving modern urban history. tion called the Bogotazo and a civil war mocracy, and the defense of the public ticians. Among them could be found the itly to Uribe, the strongman who would Thus, the site of the memorial was until known as La Violencia, leaving gaping María Victoria Uribe is an anthro- good.” Many of them had traveled from invisible and marginalized face of the pacify the country at whatever cost by recently but a large hole in the ground wounds that remain unhealed to this day. pologist at the Universidad del the farthest reaches of rural Colombia to country: settlers from the agricultural implementing the hardline anti-insur- where engineers and laborers toiled Until a few months ago it seemed that Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia. Her march with poor, working, and middle frontiers, indigenous people defending gent policy called “Democratic Security.” alongside forensic anthropologists work- the Colombian state had nothing to say current research involves a compara- class city-dwellers in support of the ne- their traditional form of property, repre- Paradoxically, those who supported this ing to restore dignity to the anonymous with respect to the day that had funda- tive analysis of political violence in gotiations being held between the gov- sentatives of black communities on the aggressive approach also denied the dead of Bogotá, just as their colleagues mentally changed the country’s destiny. Sri Lanka, Colombia, and Northern ernment and the FARC (Revolutionary Pacific coast with their own collective existence of the armed conflict, since were doing with the remains of victims of For decades there were no public com- Ireland. She is the author of Anthro- Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas. property rights, and campesinos from to have acknowledged its reality would the conflict hastily buried in isolated rural memorations or military parades, not pologie de l’Inhumanité (2004). These demonstrators—fed up with every part of the country. have required them to recognize that the fields all around the country. even symbolic acts. A systematic policy

20 ReVista fall 2013 photo: Fabio López de la Roche drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 21 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY colombia

of forgetting sought to erase any memory eye to its current political interests. The ended in an exterminationist campaign unacknowledged in official versions of of historical memory tends to memo- made of historical memory when a con- of these events from the public sphere. opposition also hoped to gain political whose perpetrators enjoy impunity to history now has a role in influencing the rialize victims and reify the past. Each flict is dominated by criminal organiza- Grass-roots organizations, however, space by pointing to unresolved crimes this day. Peace with the guerrillas will course of present-day struggles. operation highlights the rescue of certain tions and illegal armed groups? tried to keep the collective memory alive. committed against it. Some sectors of the be possible only if the state can provide The most noteworthy aspect of the legacies to be bequeathed to future gen- A third characteristic also makes On the 60th anniversary of the Bogotazo left under the leadership of Liberal Party guaranties that this macabre history will April 9 march was the unexpected con- erations, at the same time running the Colombia a unique theoretical and prac- in 2008, for example, they undertook a activist Piedad Córdoba came together not be repeated. vergence of antithetical ways of remem- risk—if no form of dialogue and accom- tical laboratory for historical memory. multiplicity of independent initiatives, in a new organization called the Marcha On April 9, 2013, the Marcha bering the past, interpreting the present, modation between the two is found—of For decades, the struggle against forget- including street theater, mural painting, Patriótica (Patriotic March). Patriótica took its impressive political and imagining the future. Two very dif- undermining the potential for the active ting and impunity has been conducted musical performances and flash-mobs. The new organization’s name clearly and electoral potential to Bogotá streets. ferent narratives underlie these visions of citizenship and cultural agency required from below by victims’ associations and This situation took an unexpected evokes the Unión Patriótica (Patriotic Long-deceased victims of unpunished national life. to produce a collective, durable reinter- other grass roots organizations, often at turn when Juan Manuel Santos became Union), the electoral party that emerged atrocities were vicariously endowed One describes a country full of happy, pretation of the past. the cost of violent repression. president. In order to promote large-scale decades ago from a previous set of peace with legal standing and embodied by the hardworking people who live at peace in By participating in the mass march on Only in the last three years have these mining, agricultural exports, and infra- negotiations with the FARC and other demonstrators, raising their voices to a paradise of natural beauty and great April 9 Santos hoped to conciliate antag- movements been supported by public structural development, the new govern- guerrilla groups. The Unión Patriótica demand an end to hostilities. natural wealth, defying the vile misdeeds onistic anniversaries, spaces and narra- institutions, and this has frequently led ing coalition led by Santos decided to seek was virtually exterminated in the 1980s On the very day of its 65th anniver- of a handful of criminals. This is the vision tives and to conciliate these two uses of to cooptation. The participatory practic- a peace agreement with the FARC. and 1990s when more than 3,000 party sary, a tragic and forgotten but pivotal promoted by populist neo-nationalists, memory. Hopefully his gesture will help es necessary for decentralized grass roots After all, the ravages of an ongoing candidates and other members were sys- event became a reference point for the best encapsulated in the advertising slo- bring into being the much-yearned-for decision-making must be institutional- war would preclude capitalist invest- tematically gunned down. memory of its immolated victims in a gan and exercise in national branding ceasefire with the FARC. If the govern- ized in order to make the distribution of ment in the many rural areas battered The message is clear: the reference to conflict whose existence was officially Colombia es Pasión (Colombia is Passion). ment fails to come to terms with the powers more equitable. over the previous 20 years by the forced the Unión Patriótica calls public atten- denied just a few months before. The An alternative narrative emphasizes many unresolved problems that contrib- A possible solution is to think of the displacement of more than four million tion to the specter of a peace process that phantasmagorical presence of a past the pervasive violence, insecurity and ute to the Colombian predicament, on past as a common good that cannot be people through death threats, selective corruption that have marked the lives of the other hand, the president’s participa- reduced to an official public history prof- killings and massacres; the illegal seizure generations of Colombians: an entirely tion may turn out to have been nothing fered by the state, nor to a collection of of more than 12 million acres of land by different kind of passion that recalls more than a short term maneuver to fur- private, fragmented, and unconnected drug traffickers and paramilitaries; polit- Jesus’s suffering on the Vía Dolorosa ther his prospects for reelection. personal stories. ical or for-profit kidnappings; the indis- before his inevitable resurrection. The Colombian situation is one of a Given the extraordinary social energy criminate use of anti-personnel mines by These alternate visions reflect the two kind. First, unlike the Nazi Holocaust, displayed in massive citizen mobiliza- the guerrillas, and a chaotic land titling mechanisms used in Colombia today for the democratic transition in the South- tions against forgetting, it is possible to regime. All these obstacles to develop- the public use of history, presenting con- ern Cone or post-apartheid South Africa, imagine the construction of a collective ment had been caused or exacerbated by tending poetics and political orientations. the dispute over memory in Colombia is memory that allows for the agency of the armed conflict. One of these mechanisms makes use pri- taking place in the middle of an armed subjects previously relegated to the mar- Indeed, the new government’s 2011 marily of the country’s cultural patrimony conflict with no negotiated solution yet gins of national life, in the process reduc- Law on Victims and Land Restitution and the other its historical memory. in sight. Any eventual FARC demobili- ing the armed actors’ room for maneuver. was passed as an important tool to bring Those who prioritize cultural pat- zation would not in itself be sufficient to This would also require the state’s about an overall reorganization of rural rimony seek to produce least common bring about peace, since armed criminal repressive apparatus to accede to the rule territory and determine the fate of the multipliers, focusing exclusively on frag- gangs, drug traffickers and ELN guerril- of law, allowing for the viability of a par- beleaguered rural population. ments of the past that generate consen- las also operate at this time. ticipatory government based on a shared As minister of defense under Uribe, sus based on what are assumed to be uni- If policies to generate a culture of past. In this sense the struggle for memo- Santos had denied the existence of an versal values. Any reference to class, race, memory and to turn the page on decades ry establishes the conditions for a negoti- armed conflict, despite glaring evidence or gender-based conflict is suppressed or of systemic violence are to bring about ated peace and a consensual future. This to the contrary. As president he was relegated to a distant place and time. true national reconciliation, they must is an enormous challenge, but the events forced to alter this position, given the In contrast, the mnemonic technique also confront the country’s generalized of April 9 allow us to discern it taking need to implement transitional justice. engaged by historical memory stresses the impunity and its social inequality, which shape on the horizon—as a possibility. Remarkably, Colombia transitioned from greatest common divisors of social life: are among the highest in the world and a non-conflict to a post-conflict scenario unameliorated offenses, unresolved con- reflect deeply ingrained social oppres- Paolo Vignolo, PhD in History and without ever coming to terms with the flicts and dreams deferred. This approach sions based on race, class and sex. Civilization at the E.H.E.E.S of Paris, conflict itself. In addition to economic emphasizes making conflicts visible but A second factor that makes Colombia is Associate Professor at the Center of reparation, the need for visible acts of hinders an appreciation of life-affirming sui generis is that a process of transition- Social Studies of the National University symbolic reparation led to the proclama- projects and the texture of daily life. al justice cannot be limited to a repara- of Colombia, Bogotá. He was a DRCLAS tion of April 9 as National Victims Day, The mechanism of cultural patrimony tive act by the state to compensate for its 2012-13 Julio M. Santo Domingo Visit- to mention just one example. tends to evoke the everlasting glory of the own criminal acts, since the state is only ing Scholar. Andy Klatt translated this The government was not alone in A marcher holds up a sign reading “Never Forget” in the Patriotic March of April 23, 2012, idealized nation and relegate the exotic one of the actors that have systemati- article. .

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dent Belisario Betancur’s peace process, A Search for Justice later published in the reputable French newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique. After the Colombian Holocaust By Ana María Bidegaín None of this seemed to matter to moder- ate the hostility. To add fuel to the fire, a person who claimed to be an Army official kept show- Dear June, my husband’s death had been a homicide ing up at my office at the University of with the involvement of the Colombian Los Andes, inviting me to give lectures at In 2004, when I left Harvard and last saw Armed Forces. But the public told me that the War School. When I said I wouldn’t you, I thought I would never learn the the statute of limitations for homicides do it, this person began to tell me that truth of what exactly happened to Carlos in Colombia is 20 years. The time had I should leave the country with my four Horacio in the horrendous holocaust of passed. I was devastated. I felt that the daughters because “rivers of blood were the Palace of Justice in Bogotá. Yet fate prosecutor’s office had returned Carlos going to flow in Colombia.” I panicked. was holding a tremendous surprise for my Horacio’s remains to me, to then leave me In December 1987, I made the dif- daughters and me, filled with pain and fu- with no place where to deposit them. ficult decision to go into exile with my ture challenges, which would uncover an I knew that Carlos Horacio was only family, taking advantage of a generous important part of the story. one of many victims, but pursuing justice invitation from Duke University in Dur- More than twenty years after the for one meant memory for all. The out- ham, North Carolina. After 18 months attacks on November 6 and 7, 1985, the come of the fateful M-19 subversive guer- there, we left for the Universidad de Supreme Court embarked on a great rilla attacks, followed by the Army’s reck- Alcalá de Henares in Madrid, Spain, effort to reconstruct the events. At the less retaking of the Palace, using tanks and until 1992. Things seemed to be chang- same time, it began a judicial process to bombs inside the facilities, was frightful. ing in Colombia with the enactment of discover what happened to the 11 people Almost one hundred people died, among the 1991 Constitution and the establish- who disappeared from the conflagration. them most of the Supreme Court and ment of an amnesty for the M-19 group. [Court magistrate Carlos Horacio Urán, Council of State justices of the time, includ- I decided to return and resume teaching Ana María’s husband, perished during the ing my husband, as well as other govern- at Los Andes and at the National Univer- events of the Palace of Justice takeover by ment officials and workers. Eleven people In July 2007, Colombian artist Doris Salcedo the guerrillas, I thought. In the midst of Carlos Horacio’s ardent Christianity, sity in Bogotá. What had actually hap- the M-19 guerrillas and the subsequent disappeared and have never been found. created an installation “Acción de Duelo”— my pain, I accepted this version of Carlos closely tied to early Liberation Theol- pened at the Palace of Justice was still Army siege of the palace.] Carlos Horacio also disappeared for ”Action of Grieving”— with 25,000 candles Horacio’s death, which became the offi- ogy (of the 1960s-1970s) and his defense a mystery, and the families of the eleven placed in the Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá. In 2007, agents of Bogota’s prosecutor’s more than 48 hours. From the very begin- cial version. of democratic political participation people who had disappeared continued office discovered a safe deposit box hid- ning, there were conflicting stories about Carlos Horacio’s lifeless body was found A lingering doubt remained in my through social movements, were inter- fighting to find out the whereabouts of den in a Colombian military compound, his death. When the attack was over, in the morgue. mind, however: the journalist’s version, preted in the most negative light. How- their loved ones. The ghosts of the events which would change our lives. The box— I got a call from a journalist I did not Confusion reigned over his death and someone I had never met, coincided ever, the facts speak for themselves. Car- reappeared constantly in the memory of kept by the Colombian Army for more know, urging me to look for my husband. the autopsy results revealed no clear indi- with the images in the video. Could Car- los Horacio was not only a lawyer, and a many Colombians, and finally a Truth than 20 years—contained my husband’s She had seen Carlos Horacio leaving the cations of how he had died. I was given los Horacio have survived the guerrilla member of Colombia’s Highest Adminis- Commission was established in 2005 to wallet with a bullet hole, and other per- building alive; “He has an injured foot, many versions of the last moments of his attack? But at that point, whom could I trative Court; he was also a young legal unveil the true story. My daughters and sonal effects: documents; photographs but he is alive,” she said. We couldn’t find life, but one became the official version: a turn to? scholar with interdisciplinary training. At I had made every effort to continue with of our family, four religious scapular him anywhere, however, no matter how surviving magistrate told me that Carlos Like many, we were not sure what the time of the attack, he was completing our lives, albeit with great difficulty. medallions—I assume for our four daugh- much we looked. Horacio had been killed by Army cross- had happened to our loved one, and like his doctoral dissertation in political sci- Then the discovery of the secret box in ters—his Kellogg Institute carnet and his At 7:30 p.m., a local news station fire. According to his account, together many victims, we and our dead were ence on the participation of the Colom- 2007 sent our lives into a spiral. After the driving license from the state of Indiana, showed a series of images of the last hos- with magistrate Manuel Gaona and Dr. stigmatized by the victimizers. In addi- bian Army in the Korean War at the Prosecutor had called me to inform me where we had lived for some time. tages leaving the Palace. Among them, Luz Estela Bernal, my husband had been tion to finding out what happened to my University of Paris-I, Sorbonne. He had of this discovery and explained the diffi- There was also a typed list in the box we glimpsed Carlos Horacio limping on gunned down by the Army as they tried to husband, I had to defend his honor. After previously completed masters’ degrees culties we faced to commence a criminal with the names of the guerrilla members one foot and escorted by two uniformed rescue hostages holed up in the bathroom; the attack, a right-wing journalist, Darío in Philosophy of Law and Administra- proceeding in Colombia, I profoundly who had been killed in the attack. The men. With the help of some other jour- he had perished on the staircase. Silva Silva, tried to tie Carlos Horacio to tive Law, respectively and worked briefly felt the need to get to the bottom of Car- names of magistrates Manuel Gaona and nalist friends, I got a copy of the tape. At that point, I thought that my the M-19, the guerrilla group that origi- at the French Conseil d’Etat. Just before los’ death. I had to do it, not only for me Carlos Horacio Urán had been scrawled in The next day I brought the newsreel to source, a magistrate of Colombia’s High- nated the attack on the Palace of Justice. the tragedy, we’d spent time at the Kel- and for my daughters, but for the country pencil and added to the list. the Defense Ministry. I could not find est Administrative Court, a public figure, This was so hard on me and my logg Institute at Notre Dame and in the as a whole. The discovery of the box reinforced my husband without their help. Yet the and someone I knew, had no reason to lie daughters; it was hard to grieve when Washington DC National Archive, in I began desperately searching the the results of the autopsy performed after Ministry Officials dismissed me, stating to me. The magistrate, who held a right- we were constantly on the defensive and order for him to continue his doctoral videos of the surviving hostages, with- his death. There was little doubt that, that they had no information. The Army wing ideology and was close to the Army, uncertain about the events leading up to research. One of his most recent publica- out success. Then, in August 2007, both unbeknownst to my daughters and me, nevertheless kept the tape. Hours later, had absolutely no reason not to blame his death. tions had been a working paper on Presi- the prosecutor’s office and I separately,

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found two different versions. The pros- nothing but weaken the evidence. It took As you can see my friend, the truth ecutor’s tape had been found in the house 18 months, and several petitions, for the about the facts themselves and their Displacement and of the colonel who had directed part of body to be returned to us after being historical significance has still not been the Army’s retake of the Palace of Justice exhumed—even more pain. clarified. At the present time, the Colom- Community Organizing in 1985; he was being investigated for his With these investigations, we believe bian executive is making renewed efforts actions in such events. It contained images we have established the truth—as tough to put an end to the armed conflict. In Shifting Memories and Identities Around a similar to the video I had found just a day as it is—but we are lacking justice. order for the current peace process to By Julieta Lemaitre before meeting the prosecutor. By coinci- The Colombian courts have sen- prosper, it is fundamental to satisfy the Mocoa Kitchen Table dence, the day after our meeting, a well- tenced two of the officials who led the demands for truth, justice and repara- known journalist contacted me; he had operations relating to the disappear- tion. The case of the Palace of Justice is found yet another video. The search was ance of the 11 people. However, shortly an emblematic one, fixed in the heart of We were having lunch at María’s house in Mocoa, a town of approximately 45,000 finally paying off. In addition, the report after the sentences were handed down, Colombians. Thus it calls out, perhaps Mocoa, Colombia, when it struck me how people, nestles in the Andes as they slope issued by the Colombian Truth Commis- both Presidents Álvaro Uribe and Juan more than any other case, for an end to much the story of her past was shaped down to the Amazonian basin. It is the cap- sion acknowledged subsequently that Manuel Santos have publicly announced the impunity and the lack of truthfulness by the legal framework that defines her ital of Putumayo, a frontier state of inten- Carlos Horacio had left the Palace alive in their disapproval of the decisions, clearly about what happened. Since that day in today as a victim, and when I first met sive coca fields and the bloody exploits of company of members of the Armed Forc- affecting and infringing on the judiciary’s 1985, Colombians have watched as the her, in 2011, as an internally displaced various armies. Mocoa itself, however, is es and that he was later found dead. This decisions. Carlos Horacio’s case is still system of justice grows weaker by the day woman. Over the extended year of our relatively peaceful. Thus its population has time, we were closer to finding out the pending before the Colombian criminal while militarism is strengthened. collaboration, I witnessed Maria’s subtle almost doubled over the last ten years, with truth. Months had gone by, though, and justice with little or no progress. Without truth, there is no justice and transformation to fit the shifting legal men, women and children fleeing the war no legal proceedings had been initiated. I In 2011, the Inter-American Com- without justice, there can be no peace, frame. However, that lunch illuminated in the south, a multitude called, since the thought I was going to go crazy. mission on Human Rights found the well-being or economic prosperity. With- the extent of the weight of law, and its si- adoption of a 1997 law, internally displaced I approached the families of those Colombian State responsible under out truth, there is no strengthening of lences, on memory and identity. people or IDP. eleven people who had disappeared from international law for these events, and a legitimate state and accompanying the Palace of Justice. They had more submitted the case before the Inter- democracy. experience than I had, and they gave me American Court on Human Rights. The importance of seeking the truth some new tips. Their search had never In this latter proceeding, Colombia, of the Palace of Justice conflagration was ceased and they had brought a petition represented by an allegedly indepen- even underlined in U.S. Department of before the Inter-American Commission dent inter-ministerial agency created State reports presented to the Congress on Human Rights, and had initiated to defend the state in these and other in 2010 and 2011, in which the failure to criminal proceedings in Colombia. Final- legal proceedings (ANDJE for its Span- clarify these events was held up as proof ly, at the beginning of 2009, the public ish acronym), is now denying that the of Colombia’s continuing human rights prosecutor’s office opened the case: the disappearance and executions ever challenges. statute of limitations could not apply took place. Even more importantly, cur- The Inter-American Court on Human because Carlos Horacio’s extrajudicial rent or former members of the Colom- Rights has called for a hearing in Octo- execution by the Colombian Army quali- bian Army appear to be controlling ber 2013. Let’s see what that court rules, fies as a crime against humanity. the ANDJE (by, among other mecha- and whether the Colombian state choos- With our authorization, the prosecu- nisms, imposing the line of arguments es to abide by those decisions. The videos tor in charge of the case exhumed Carlos and vetoing which counsel shall be and the secret box have changed my life Horacio’s body and performed forensic retained). This is of great concern to us since I last saw you. Let’s see if they can studies, including ballistics testing. In as a family and as citizens. work for justice. June 2010, suspicions became certainty: By permitting the intervention of the he had been executed, presumably by the Armed Forces to cover up grave viola- Ana María Bidegaín is the research Colombian Army, after being tortured tions of human rights, the ANDJE, and director of the Latin American and and subsequently brought back to the Pal- thereby the Colombian State, is not only Caribbean Studies Center at Florida ace of Justice to cover the homicide. compromising the agency’s institutional International University and a pro- The case’s lead prosecutor, Ángela integrity and failing its mission of pro- fessor in the Department of Religious María Buitrago, a brave woman, sum- tecting the state as a whole, but it is also Studies. Bidegaín founded the History moned the three generals who had attempting to cover up crimes against Department at the University of Los directed the counterattack for question- humanity and ensuring the impunity Andes in Bogotá and opened the field ing. The next day, she was removed from of those responsible for the death of my of Religious Studies at the National her post, ironically on grounds of inef- husband and for other crimes commit- University. She was a Visiting Professor ficiency. A new, lower-ranking prosecu- ted as a result of this painful and contro- at the Center for Women in Religion at tor was appointed. To date he has done versial episode in Colombian history. Harvard Divinity School in 2003-2004.

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Money for projects have all this, but if you look in our pan- ing hands, from mine to hers, underlin- However, when I got to “San Lázaro,” priest murmured the man’s name and Community organizing is like María and I first met in the context of an tries, there is nothing.” That, it seemed, ing the unfairness of a situation where I, I found out that only one cocalero leader, address, and María lied and said she women’s work academic research project on internally was also true: like most IDP, no one in who needed her help, had a steady pay- Martín, and his college-educated new knew him, saving his life, endanger- Near the end of the lunch Martín admon- displaced women leaders. From the start, her family had formal employment or the check and she didn’t. wife, had accepted the invitation. Once ing her own. Mario placed her thus in ished María to give up community orga- I was intrigued by her. She constantly likelihood of finding one, and they were Martín told me his own story of the the ambiguous role of caretaker, trust- nizing and concentrate on her family, as took notes, as we researchers did, asked cash-strapped and often hungry. And now a victim marches, and the repression that fol- ing her and threatening her at the same he had done. “You need to look out for us questions right back, and asked us for During our collaboration, Colombia lowed, María filled an uncomfortable time. She tells of the horror of retriev- yourself,” he insisted. “Community orga- money and “projects.” She understood the “Being somebody” adopted the Victims’ Law, Law 1448 of silence saying she wanted to tell him ing mangled corpses after Mario told her nizing is ungrateful work (muy desagra- legal framework well, moving comfort- Over repeated visits María went further 2011. New institutions and new partici- what had happened in Puerto X after where they were; of returning the bodies decida.) It’s like women’s work (como el ably among the dense network of regula- into her complaint—the issue was not so patory spaces, and of course, new oppor- he fled. As she related them, her mem- to grieving families. The final encoun- trabajo de las mujeres),” he adds. “You tions and Constitutional Court decisions much the present difficulties, but how tunities emerged. María’s story now ories of paramilitary control seemed ter, and reason for her displacement, are always starting over. And no one that gave IDP special rights. She also much they had lost through displace- included more of the circumstances of aimed at establishing her own political is also framed by her role as mother/ thanks you for it.” understood NGOs and research projects, ment. She remarked bitterly, “We used her displacement, a story she had told credentials, namely, that she had not caretaker. In her telling, the real rea- María nods to this. I think of all the and the possibility of her benefiting from to be somebody.” “Being somebody” before, but which now took a new depth been a collaborator. In fact María, like son Mario expelled her from Puerto X trouble I know she’s had with the families them. Her insistence on working with our went beyond a respectable domestic life: and moral weight. some of the other women we worked was that he had not been invited to her of “San Lázaro,” including the almost vio- project resulted in a year-long collabora- María had also been the President of the María had not only been the Presi- with, managed to negotiate with the eldest daughter’s fifteenth birthday par- lent confrontation with the man who runs tion in which, with a group of graduate Association of Rural Community Devel- dent of the Juntas de Acción Comunal; warlords not only for her life, but her ty (quinceañero). the fish farm. Her constant community students, we helped the Municipal Com- opment Boards (Juntas de Acción Comu- she had also taken an active part in the work as a leader, using gender as a I had heard this story before, but work is not only “like women’s work,” it mittee for Displaced People design and nal Veredal). She ran meetings in her cocalero marches in the mid-nineties. shield. As a woman in her forties, and a Martín’s presence gave it a new weight, is in fact “women’s work,” woven around conduct a survey of IDP in Mocoa. home, organized long work days, march- These marches, which paralyzed south- a deeply gendered identity of mother, The survey provided a way for us to es, community meals, elections and bud- ern Putumayo, demanded that the gov- non-combatant and caretaker, resonant better understand grassroots organizing, gets. She held her own with the 32nd ernment stop fumigating coca and start in those of displaced woman and victim. and for María a way to gain greater legiti- Front of the FARC, which was active in investing in the region. Stigmatized as There is no apparent structure to give collective However, in her self-presentation macy for the committee. The Municipal the region and often applied rough jus- FARC guerrilla collaborators, many of social— and moral—meaning to civilian collaboration within the categories of the law, María Committee had started out as a govern- tice. Well known as a Junta leader, she the cocalero leaders were murdered in insists that the circumstances that make ment-organized network of IDP settle- was one of the few women in this frontier the years that followed (1999 to 2006) which is an ordinary part of war. her a person deserving of special state ment organizations, but she aspired to region who held such a post. when the paramilitaries, often in alliance attention do not destroy her pride and her more: she wanted the group to collect its However, her life before displace- with the Army, took over the towns in sense of self, of competency. Her identity own data and to have its own office and ment was not part of her official identity southern Putumayo. mother, María insisted on the distance grounded in María’s family disgrace. is deeply rooted in her past and her vari- computer. She insisted it was the commit- when we first met. She was in a sense “all Because María and her husband had between her and the war, adopting the María’s youngest child, now in his twen- ous community leaderships. Whatever tee’s job to learn the number of internally IDP,” and her reference to the past was participated in the marches, when the apolitical, and hence legitimate, role ties, was in jail, condemned for kidnap- identity laws ask her to assume, whatev- displaced people and to understand their of wealth lost, woven in with demands paramilitaries arrived to her municipal- of caretaker of her family and her com- ping in collaboration with paramilitar- er memories middle-class professionals actual situation. She added references for restitution. She repeated that before ity, which we’ll call Puerto X, she was munity. ies. The family had varying versions of now want to hear, she remains in charge to women, indigenous people and Afro- the war, they had asked nothing of the signaled as a guerrillera. In a context of As told by María, the paramilitaries in this, and it was unclear to me whether of the performance of her past, guarding Colombians, seeing that we were inter- government and even paid taxes; and brutal massacres, she faced up to Mario, their first encounter threatened her with he was recruited or forced to collaborate. the secret of her son’s, and possibly her ested by what she, like the Constitutional that now, all the government offered was the local commander. The story of her death because “people” had told Mario In any case her son was in jail, and María own, political identity. She remains in Court, called “the differential approach.” meager “assistance” (puros programas resistance in the months she stayed on that she was a guerrillera. She faced her called this situation being “dead in life” charge, taking on the state as yet another With the same persistence she had asistenciales). We heard from a feminist became the hallmark of her new identity, death to her full five-foot stature, and (muerta en vida). guest in the kitchen where she has asked exerted to convince us to help her with non-governmental organization that ran one that gives her legitimacy both in the convinced Mario to hear her out alone This central fact of her past troubles so many people for lunch or coffee in the the survey, she had helped construct healing workshops in Mocoa that María new Municipal Victim’s Committee and in her kitchen while she made coffee for her victim identity, and memory. There years before—and after—Mario showed “San Lázaro,” a model refugee settlement had led resistance among local women in other transitional justice spaces. him, leaving his weapons outside. She is no corresponding structure to give up at her door; before, and after, I and where each house has a large garden, to these workshops, demanding business explained the nature of her leadership, collective social, and moral, meaning other “doctoras” did the same. shares a communal fish farm and sugar skills training instead: “We are not crazy,” Stories of death and survival convinced him of her non-partisanship, to the civilian collaboration which is cane fields, a communal sand mine, a she allegedly said “all we need is work.” After the survey was over, I hired Maria and got him to promise her not to mas- an ordinary part of war. Both identifica- Julieta Lemaitre (M.A., SJD 07) is community house that doubles as a child- María refers to herself as “almost a as a field assistant for another project. sacre local peasants. tion as an IDP and as a victim assume Associate Professor at Universidad de care center, running water (although not lawyer,” and after calling me “doctor” (the Overtly, the project concerned low-inten- It seems Mario grew to like her or that, as so many human rights NGOs los Andes’ Law School. This text is based drinking water), latrines and electricity. honorary title for lawyers), one day start- sity coca cultivation, but it was really to respect her, refusing to believe the many insist, for ordinary people the war is on research funded by the Norwegian Each of the 22 families in the settlement ed calling me by my given name, inform- finance a way for me to go back to field- rumors which “gave him a constant “not our war.” Hence, the available legal Research Council, in collaboration with received first a temporary wooden house ing me that she always called “doctor” work in Mocoa, where I still had unan- headache.” Trust came with a price. identities erase the grey zone where PRIO at Oslo, and by the CESED (Center and then a two-bedroom house in brick people who needed everything done for swered questions. She gladly assumed Once she was asked to identify wheth- victims become informants and collabo- for Security and Drug Policy) at Los and mortar complete with a bathroom. them. The sudden surge of empathy did the (paid) task, and organized a series of er or not a man belonged to one of the rators, as well as the existence of politi- Andes. Names and identifying informa- Noticing my admiration at the end of our not hide that I was a potential source of interviews and a lunch in her house with Juntas, and the man, tied up and tor- cal sympathy with paramilitaries and tion have been modified to protect María first tour, María remarked: “You see we work. Work of course meant cash chang- fivecocalero leaders. tured, was placed before her. The local guerrillas. and Martín’s privacy.

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The Alchemy of Narrative

Estaba la pájara pinta sentada en el verde limón By Francisco Ortega

Six-year-old Ana peeks out of a keyhole The author spurned prevailing realis- order to its readers as its most outstand- onto her middle-class Bogotá street even tic conventions and appealed to avant- ing formal feature. Its formal governing though her parents had forbidden her to garde strategies—such as the alternation force is made up of a stream of voices do so. It is Friday, April 9, 1948, and pop- of multiple perspectives and narrative interrupting each other, the absence of ular presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer voices, the use of flashbacks and non- chronological linearity and the mundane Gaitán has been assassinated, an event sequential narrative time—to produce a character of many of the text’s anecdotes. that triggered an era of unprecedented text that is difficult and recalcitrant; that But why would anybody write a narrative collective fury and intense social vio- stutters; that does not find its thread; about social violence that—instead of lence in Colombia known as La Violen- that does not disclose the causes and the seeking coherence—stages disarray? Is cia (1948-66). Ana witnesses the police meaning of so much violence and terror. there a lesson here for historians, politi- murder a man in cold blood. She stares Historians and social analysts of Ana’s cal analysts and other social scientists at the bludgeoned body and sees a police- generation shared her difficulty in grasp- who want to explore the scene of social man pick up the dead man’s cap, an im- ing the logic and consequences of La devastation? age that haunts her for the rest of her life. Violencia. In the preface to the landmark Readers soon discover that the nov- Even though Ana leads a sheltered study La violencia en Colombia (1962), el’s style is a thoughtful—if challeng- life, she is a victim of excessive fam- the authors—Germán Guzmán Campos, ing—response to the dislocating effects ily control censorship, rape, aggres- Orlando Fals Borda and Eduardo Umaña of intense social violence. Writing bends sion and even state intimidation. As a Luna—wrote that under the weight of brutality; it demands young woman she discovers that her careful rethinking of the available forms best friend, Valeria, a political activist, … [Colombia] lacks the exact notion of reporting in order to grasp the eluding has been murdered, and later learns that of what this violence is: neither it has logic of destruction. The idea is rehearsed her own boyfriend, Lorenzo, has been understood it in all its aberrant brutal- throughout the novel: imprisoned and tortured. Twenty years ity, nor does it have evidence of its dis- after the Bogotazo Ana tells us that 1948 solvent effects on the structures, nor its Very difficult, I tell you. Because to “was the same year in which [she] lost etiology, nor its impact within the social understand, just like that, so suddenly, her first tooth and they killed Gaitán, dynamics, nor its meaning as a social so many things, is like wanting to crash the year she made her First Communion phenomenon, much less its importance through the sound barrier with a bicycle. and that her grandfather died from dia- in the peasantry’s collective psychol- It’s not a given. One has to remain alert, betes.” Ana’s intellectual and emotional ogy(23). always looking up at the universe, with awakening is bound up with the origins one’s skin and eyes wide open, spying of national history. Shared perplexity is surprising, espe- the vibration of the colors; the aura of Ana is ideally poised to provide an cially if we consider the obvious differ- the birds; the movement of the wind; account of the events, but she chose not ences between a modernist novel and a the swaying of the trees; the flow of to write a history or an illuminating testi- sociological analysis: while social scien- the water; the dynamism of the clouds; mony. Unlike Joaquín Estrada Monsalve, tists are driven to identify variables with the rotation of the sun, which keeps on the country’s Minister of Education precision to provide a coherent narra- burning while your pores dilate and during the Bogotazo, who wrote a recol- tive, avant-garde novelists—or at least everything in you is as if it were born lection so that the youth of the country this one in particular—resist coherence anew, as if one has finally, finally found could comprehend “the greatness and and stage disorientation. The authors of the form of all things.… (173). miseries of the darkest night of [our] La violencia en Colombia characterized country,” Ana does not write an instruc- their lack of knowledge as the disorga- Ana’s claim is not only that the scenari- tive memoir. Instead, she is the fictional nized proliferation of subjective impres- os of social destruction are highly complex narrator and protagonist of Alba Lucía sions and the absence of an organizing and must be described in depth. She also Ángel’s novel, Estaba la pájara pinta principle for an analysis of social decom- sentada en el verde limón [The Speckled position. Estaba la pájara pinta…, on the The murder of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán led to Bird Was Sitting in a Lemon Tree] (1975). other hand, artfully offers narrative dis- the uprising known as El Bogotazo.

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impugns realism—the belief that reality possesses its own narrative—as the most suitable discursive form for the represen- tation of social experience. “The memo- ries of childhood have no order and no end,” says Ángel, quoting Dylan Thomas, at the beginning of the novel. When cop- ing with intense social conflict, realism might be an ideological straitjacket that obfuscates and impoverishes interpreta- tion. In such cases, narrative order is no more than organized social disorder. Finding the appropriate form, as the quote implies, is tantamount to com- prehending. That is the reason why Ana remained ambivalent about Tina, her childhood friend and only successful sto- ryteller in the novel. On the one hand, she was enthralled by Tina’s inventive talents, her apparently endless imagina- tion and her ability to “[find] words and [let them] fall as they will, not matter- ing if the public captures them” (79). But although Tina’s stories were quite clever and unexpected, they follow the classical conventions of popular tales, always returning to the word of princes, monsters and fantasies. Ana’s turbulent world, however, required an unyielding form of narration, one that transformed unmalleable truths and exploded tradi- tional discursive forms. Knowledge is not just information, Ana would say if asked: it is information in a certain form. In the case of intense social conflict, conven- tionally sanctioned forms of reporting might be a hindrance. Literary forms imbue stories with expectations and values, even if their objective is to defy them. Thus, Estaba the text suggests at several points that social chaos or organize traumatic mem- Left: A view of the Central Cemetery on the Avenida El Dorado, also known as the Avenue of Memory; the Center for Memory, Peace and Rec- la pájara pinta… invokes the traditional what we read is Ana’s own attempt to give ories and convert them in a coherent his- onciliation is built on its grounds, where many victims of political violence are buried (see the article by Paolo Vignolo on p. 20 of this issue). Bildungsroman or the coming-of-age sto- meaning to her life. The discursive frame tory of progress and development. Not Right: An image of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán is painted onto a present-day Bogotá wall. ry in which Ana, the young sensitive art- usually invoked by this type of narrative that the narrative does not gesture in ist, seeks to overcome social obstacles in makes the elements available with which that direction. It draws from memoirs or Athens, as it was proudly hailed, the lamented the invasion and violent dis- nesses, such as Sabina (who works in order to find her place in the world. Ana the story constructs a moral and social and other documents providing com- aristocratic seat of a refined and cultured placement of the cultured city by the Ana’s house), Don Anselmo, a displaced demonstrates her vocation early on, as universe. That the novel resists such con- posed and conclusive interpretation of civic tradition. “The destruction of the chusma, the dregs of society, and showed peasant who lost all his family, and Fla- she expresses her fascination with words, ventions—instead of fulfilling its expec- the tragedy. These are historical docu- most civic-minded, most spiritual and a topsy-turvy world in which social hier- co Bejarano, or the story of Flower, the copying in her diary those with the most tations—shatters all the more effectively ments authored by the political elite, intelligent city in all of Latin America,” archies were suspended and both moral striptease dancer shot to death during beautiful sounds. Language becomes a our readerly expectations. such as Doña Bertha, President Maria- writes Monsalve, “caused great bitter- and political authority ceased to exist. the Bogotazo. Their accounts ridicule utopian refuge, a space for mourning, In Ana’s account there is no knowl- no Ospina Pérez’s wife, and the already ness.” In this narrative, the Bogotazo and Authorial voices appear as obstacles to elite composure, but they do not con- desire, difference and even rebellion. She edgeable authoritative subject to guar- mentioned Minister Estrada Monsalve. its aftermath were barbaric interrup- understanding. verge in an authoritative interpretation. makes friends who, like Valeria, also a antee growth and learning; no one can Their interpretation hinges on the view tions by morally debased people lacking In contrast, the text inscribes vivid They permeate the narrative with moral writer, become mentors and models, and uncover the structuring logic behind of Bogotá as South America’s “Atenas” in education and civility. These accounts accounts of non-elite first-hand wit- indignation and contribute to the sensa-

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show it or point it to someone else. Fur- tion that makes empathy possible, the tion and the bipartisan agreement that thermore, by isolating Anselmo’s suffer- attribute that knowledge lacks in order put an end to La Violencia. ing, the scene highlights the absence of to arrive at true comprehension. Tell- All of this makes the novel relevant technical languages that can commu- ing and listening, therefore, are integral for social researchers today, as the coun- nicate its nature, that can alert us to its parts of understanding. They are related try moves towards a peace agreement insidious effects, the modes in which it to three important and clearly differenti- and faces massive demobilizations, truth works in memory and construes daily life. ated functions: they name the violences; commissions and the reparation of vic- But pain is also a beckoning, a desperate they are the means by which victims re- tims. Much as what happened in the call soliciting recognition, and testimony establish a relation with others; and they aftermath of La Violencia, when Liber- is our precarious but precious mode for make possible mourning. als and Conservatives, the two parties apprehending it. It is the vehicle through It is not surprising that such knowl- responsible for instigating fratricidal vio- which learning about the pain of others edge is deemed dangerous. Ana is for- lence, reached a peace agreement in 1957, is possible. To receive somebody’s tes- bidden to get near the door during the contemporary political figures stake out timony, that is, to be a witness to his or Bogotazo; she is not allowed to listen to their claims on the past and saturate her suffering, demands we understand the stories about the violence at the fam- public discourse with their view of the with intellect and emotions. Testimonies ily farm or to read newspapers during the conflict. Most of the country greeted the make evident how people absorb painful student massacres. Her mother scolds cessation of the conflict, but grew weary memories and root them into their every- her when Ana begins to express inter- of a National Front that harked back to day, use them to their advantage, or sim- est in books. As part of a middle-class the civilist myth of the South American ply evade them by coexisting with them. respected family she is kept from seeing, Athens and shut off most non-elite from Anselmo’s testimony bears their imprint: hearing and knowing—from becoming a political dialogue. The following years the ways he suffers, perceives, persists witness. The novel reproduces—and par- saw the birth of the two main guerrilla and resists such violence; remembers odies—this need for control: an image of groups, FARC and ELN, and the sowing and mourns his losses. Knowledge of President General Gustavo Rojas Pini- of the seed of the conflict that still grips what happened —what happened to lla’s ban on any report or editorial about the country today. Don Anselmo and to others, but also the the student massacres of June 8 and 9, Contemporary researchers might role others played in what happened to 1954, appears on the front page of El want to look back at the creative ways in him—silently structures social relations. Tiempo, the country’s main opposition which the country responded to La Vio- The graffiti announces the Patriotic March of April 9, 2013, and calls for a political solution to the armed conflict in Colombia. His knowledge is poisonous, but his tes- newspaper. The repeated figuration of lencia. Like Estaba la pájara pinta…, timony affirms the will to live. writing as transgression, such as Loren- other works, such as Arturo Alape’s El tion of uncontrollable chaos and despair. ing, the process of subjective reconstitu- hear her. ... Ana saw Don Anselmo with Clearly, silences are not lacunae zo’s letters from jail or Valeria’s writing Bogotazo (1983) and Alfredo Molano’s Upon learning of Gaitán’s assassination tion and the re-elaboration of a collective his arms folded across his chest, praying of information. Most frequently they and her death at the hands of the police, Los años del tropel (1985)— sought to one of his sympathizers evinces a shat- sense of belonging. Empathy, the rela- on his knees while tears were hanging, inscribe a resistance to yielding; they suggests that narrating history is danger- testify and record the silences and night- tered sense of hope: tional connection between the inquirer cradled in his wrinkles. insist on the difficulty of comprehending ous, even fatal. mares of the Anselmos, Flowers, Sabinas, and the subject whose experience consti- and the labor of recognition; they chal- Estaba la pájara pinta … is a medita- and thousands more, who remain at the …I began to shout furiously, like every- tutes the field of investigation, can thus Our intellectual and creative pursuits lenge and return to the unreason of suf- tion about apprehending, comprehend- margin of history. Today, once again, one else…and I sobbed, crying out for take place and be part of comprehending. are located between these two impulses: fering; they set up interpretative limits ing and representing difficult, poisonous arts, literature and social sciences are my God. It was as if they had killed The novel alternates between the pro- telling or mournful reconstitution and to the voraciousness of scientific inquiry. knowledge in the midst of social conflict. called forth to play an important role in my mother and my father and all of liferation of testimonies and the reluc- withholding or melancholic remem- Most evidently, they speak of the inci- Its starting point is that Ana’s social expe- the recovery of languages and memories my family altogether, such anger, such tance to inform; between an impulse to brance. Ana’s implied argument is that dence of the violent past in the present. rience—as the experience of those who of pain, true laboratories to construct to impotence, brother. Here is what has to give account and the disinclination or interpretations might further the work But they never represent a renunciation lived through La Violencia—demands a conviviality of the future, one in which be done: to go all out; there’s no other incompetence to speak. As a child, Ana of mourning or constitute a disavowal of of the telling. The novel might be teem- type of inquiry and reporting that takes death is no longer the structuring center remedy. often found herself with a “horrible urge the other’s pain. In all cases, our lack of ing with silences, but they are all con- into account its intense nature. Eschew- of social life. We cannot renounce such an to cry and did not know why.” Don Ansel- attention and imagination in the recep- tained in the act of telling; and the telling ing received notions of fiction and history, urgent task. Telling and listening to stories—a mo survived possessed by the kind of tion and processing of testimonies denies inscribes silences as part of the story. its stylistic choices and notorious difficulty multitude of diverse and often contradic- extreme vivid images that characterizes pain and constitutes a double act of vio- Listening to testimony requires embody this meditation for the reader. It Francisco Ortega was a Visiting Schol- tory stories—is related to comprehend- traumatic experiences. Exhausted from lence. Overall, it ​​inevitably becomes a imagination. If the language of science insists on apprehending the way memory ar and Teaching Assistant at Harvard’s ing. Only when listening to those we those images, Don Anselmo generator of new violence. remains impervious before the scene of works and thus seeks to transform infor- Department of Romance Languages and hastily label “victims” does the possibility Anselmo’s scene elaborates what social devastation, those who speak sci- mation into testimony, while nameless Literatures from 1995 to 1999 and one of of true understanding emerge. These tes- … completed the porridge and remained might be the most serious challenge to entifically will have to borrow, steal, con- victims become human subjects. The nov- the founders of the Colombian Colloqui- timonies not only provide multiple points silent, thinking of all the bodies floating researchers of social conflict: the intran- coct words, insinuate and modulate in el seeks to give testimony on the devasta- um at Harvard in 1997. He is an Associ- of view to satisfy our intellectual curiosity. in the rivers. Of the elderly and children sitive character of emotional pain, the order to break up the silence. Like Ana. tion that took place in the country during ate Professor of History at the National Most importantly, they allow for mourn- who had been shot. The old man did not fact that I can feel my pain but cannot After all, it is such exercise of imagina- the ten years between Gaitán’s assassina- University of Colombia in Bogotá.

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its contribution to the historic construc- Democracy, Citizenship and tion of truth about the conflict. Although these testimonies are important insofar Commemoration in Colombia as they communicate a history outside themselves and recount a “truth,” the Performance of “Plural and Exceptional Memories” By Maite Yie Garzón actors’ own experience as paramilitar- ies or guerrillas is partially or completely excluded. Of course, there are exceptions. A few years back, the Bogotá Mayor’s Military detachments costumed in the ory. This included the creation of local In fact, the Local Centers for Memory Office spearheaded a project called Tes- historical uniforms of the patriotic army centers in several towns throughout the have as their slogan “All of us are mem- timonial Conversations about the Armed journeyed on foot, by mule and on horse- country, designed to “recuperate, regis- ory,” another way of saying that all of us Conflict and Peace. In the same setting, back on a long journey promoted as the ter and save the common local memory.” are a nation. However, this recognition former combatants from the guerrilla Liberty Route to celebrate Colombia’s bi- The local centers were led by cultural of the diverse nature of the Colombian movements and the AUC, as well as rep- centennial. The media showed the inhab- agents known as “keepers of memory.” In memory creates dilemmas that limit resentatives of victims’ organizations, told itants of different towns of the country the same spirit, another linchpin of the this goal of inclusivity. The three docu- their life histories. These conversations celebrating the arrival of the marchers, bicentennial program named Pluralities mentaries grew out of state recognition took place in neighborhoods where these fulfilling their own role in this polemic of Memory presented three documen- of the plurality of independences. Nev- former combatants live, and they sought recreation of the official stories about na- taries entitled Memorias de la Libertad. ertheless, different social struggles are to help create acceptance among their tional independence. Against the back- These films recreated the emancipatory included under the same umbrella (“lib- neighbors and to prevent the recruit- drop of a politically polarized country struggles of Colombia’s ethnic minori- eration movements”), assuming that A memorial to memory and to Colombia’s thousands of victims on the Avenida El Dorado. ing of minors by telling them “the truth deeply affected by the armed conflict, this ties: the Ika tribe from the Sierra Nevada all are part of the same process. So, the about the war.” The Defense Ministry game with fragments of history sought to of Santa Marta, the Nasa group from the contradictions between different stories ernment signed an agreement with the la, Bahía Portete, among others—that also used the strategy of these conversa- associate President Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s southwest Andean region and a collec- are unknown—and the profound histori- United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia reveal them as emblems of the violence tions as part of its campaign to stimulate polemical Democratic Security policy tive of Afro-Colombian women from the cal inequalities that they show us can be (AUC). a paramilitary umbrella group, to and suffering experienced in the context the individual demobilization of guerrilla with the 1819 Campaign for Liberation. Cauca Valley, all of whom rose up against evaded. When memories are treated as adhere to the Law of Justice and Peace of the armed conflict. But the work of the members. Going in a different direction This act was part of a 2010 program “distinguished agents” of the nation. an expression of diversity and not also of (Law 975, 2005). This law provides legal CMH has not consisted in just register- from the state use of these testimonies, known as the Bicentennial of the Inde- Such programs promoted the notion inequality, they are permitted to coexist incentives to indict paramilitary chief- ing “preexisting memories,” but also in the Collective of Former Women Com- pendences. This included the so-called that local and ethnic communities made unquestioned “in a lighter fashion,” each tains involved in crimes against human- promoting and orienting the production batants demanded the right to memory Bicentennial Routes, which took visitors up specific varieties of national memo- kept in its own place. Thus, it is possible ity and supplemented already existing of these memories and their public diffu- of combatants, giving new meanings to along four historic circuits—including ry—something similar to the national to evade the tension between a history norms that favored the demobilization sion. Just like Culture Ministry officials their own role in the insurgency as part of the Liberty Route—each one associated industry of “typical” artifacts. The basic that tells us about national indepen- of paramilitary and guerrilla groups and in charge of the Local Centers of Mem- a broader life project aimed at achieving with some military or scientific endeavor idea is that memory itself is a richness, a dence and others that assert that not all individuals. ory program, the CMH members tend to peace with social justice. that would have given life to the Colom- patrimony, whose worth derives from its social groups were emancipated, some The Law of Peace and Justice cre- give workshops and produce manuals to Both the multicultural and transition- bian nation. Colombian citizens were diverse nature—as happens with the bio- of which carried out their own heroic ated institutions such as the National guide the work done in local communi- al strategies seek to make national and encouraged to pay homage to their roots logical, ethnic and cultural wealth. Thus, deeds, even against the project of nation Commission for Reparation and Recon- ties. Although this effort has positioned public the memories of social groups that and also to experience the immense cul- not only the state but also the citizens are that emerged from Independence. ciliation (CNRR) with its Group for His- victims themselves as agents of national have occupied a marginal or opposition tural and geographic diversity of their considered responsible for the recupera- This patrimonial concept of memory toric Memory (GMH) that performed memories, it also implies that their voic- position, and whose citizenship has been national territory. “Live the Colombian tion, recording and rescue of memories. does not coverall its current meanings— a double task: to undertake “historic es are filtered and modulated. restricted in practice. Both ethnic minor- history and explore the country’s geog- It is clear that this patrimonial concept the memory is being linked in many ways reconstruction” of the causes and effects CMH is also collecting testimonies of ities and the victims and perpetrators are raphy,” said one of the campaign slogans. of memory is closely linked to the two and by different actors to democratic of the recent armed Colombian con- former paramilitary soldiers who were considered subjects of the nation—but But the stories included in the cel- decades-long emphasis on multicultur- practice. Today, in Colombia, it is com- flict, and to identify “the distinct truths not involved in crimes against humanity, exceptional rather than the norm. Both ebration were more than the ones found alism in Latin America. Indeed, in the mon to talk about memory as a right and and memories of the violence, with a as a result of “an agreement to contribute represent something that—in theory—is in school history textbooks. They includ- Colombian case, multiculturalism had to “make memory” (“hacer memoria”) as differentiated focus and a preferential to authentic history and reparation” in not typical of the majority of Colombi- ed the different memories of Colombians been elevated to a constitutional prin- an exercise in citizenship. Together with option for the voices of victims who have exchange for legal benefits, according to a ans. The two projects, with apparently especially those ordinarily excluded from ciple in 1991, obliging the state and its ethnic and local memories, the memo- been suppressed or silenced.” (See the law (1424) enacted the same year as the different concepts and aims, would both official history. The state called upon citizens to protect cultural and ethnic ries of the victims of social and armed GMH website, http://www.memori- bicentennial. Until now, these testimonies be ways to incorporate silenced voices Colombians to go beyond the mere cel- diversity conceived as part of our cultural conflict have come into play in the last ahistorica-cnrr.org.co/s-home/). Fulfill- have occupied a marginal place in CMH into the process of the construction of ebration of the past of the nation, and patrimony. decade, spurred on by human rights ing this double function, GMH, which as compared to testimonies containing a national memory which, one suppos- to honor those multiple memories tak- From the viewpoint of the state, this activists and transitional justice policies. is now called the Center for Historic the “memories of victims.” While the tes- es, will this time be integrative and not ing root throughout the land. Indeed, nationalization of the memories of ethnic An entire legal and institutional appara- Memory (CMH) has produced several timonies of victims are usually valuable excluding. one of the linchpins of the bicentennial groups and local communities could be tus has been created to carry out these reports on small municipalities—such as memories, the intrinsic value of the However, the democratic creation of program was called Diversities of Mem- seen as a way to achieve social inclusion. policies. In 2005, the Uribe Vélez gov- as Trujillo, El Salado, Bojayá, La Roche- testimonies of perpetrators depends on a public platform for memories carries

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important risks to democracy itself. On the one hand, there is the risk that the The Language of memories of the sectors that have been historically marginalized can be dis- Public Memory placed by their own memories in the exercising of democracy. On the other La Asociación Minga and the Authentic Image hand, ethnic and local memories, as well by J. Luke Pizzato as those of the victims and perpetrators, of the Victim run the risk of being “purified”—cleaned up—of their disturbing content, los- ing their critical and creative potential A green midsized Renault sedan sits on a 1448 of 2011, popularly known as the before becoming available to the public. ramp lifting the car´s open hood and Law of Victims, which has energized a We Colombians thus are in danger of revealing an engine stuffed with palm process that intends to “establish judi- contemplating an antiseptic exhibition seeds. Entitled Renault 12, the piece cial measures, administrative, social, of our memories of the type one might is part of an exhibit Somos Tierra de- economic, individual and collective for find in a museum display of some objects veloped as a result of a large group the benefit of victims that they might from the Independence period. dialogue. In a series of workshops that enjoy their right to truth, justice and Going against this current, some discussed the death of young taxi driv- reparations” (Ley de Víctimas y Resti- organizations and social movements ers, the arrival of the palm cultivation tución de Tierras, June, 2011). Pivotal have been combining acts of social pro- in the region, and massacres, the ex- within the social aspect of this project test with commemorative acts. Such is hibit came into being as the brain child has been the development of a pub- the case of the social movement Marcha of Asociación Minga, a human rights lic history of the conflict, specifically Patriótica (Patriotic March), an umbrella organization that has turned to art to the memorialization of these victims’ group for several social organizations, preserve and transmit victims’ stories. recent experiences. mainly leftist. Its first public act was a Minga co-founder and artistic direc- Minga emerged in response to the march against the neoliberal policies of tor Francisco Bustamante described “necessity to protect and accompany Uribe Vélez on July 20, 2010, the date of how the image of the car emerged after communities from far away territories the historic “Cry of Independence.” More “smaller group sessions developed a forgotten by the state that had begun recently, on April 9, 2013, in commemo- series of ideas, histories, memories, to suffer the impacts of the conflict in a ration of the assassination of popular lib- stories and drawings.” Ultimately, the very significant way.” The political real- eral leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, the same group decided the image of the car ity of memory, therefore, has provided movement convoked a march in memory would be an apt representation of the profoundly important work for human of the victims of the armed conflict. Both young taxi drivers they hoped to memo- rights organizations like La Asociación activist organizations and even President rialize, many of whom had been killed Minga as they fight to ensure that the Juan Manuel Santos participated in the as they were forced to transport para- victims’ authentic accounts are com- march. Nevertheless, the social organiza- militaries and guerillas after the palm municated. tions paid homage to their own “fallen oil industry entered the region and Although the Law of Victims explic- heroes” with symbolic funerals, but also exacerbated the violence there. itly states that memory should be raised banners with economic, social and The scope of the problem in Colom- allowed to develop openly without the political demands. Indeed, some people bia is enormous. According to statistics bias of an official State Memory, Article who used the public space as a site of collected by the Colombian newsmaga- 143 “On the Duty of State Memory” mourning claimed the right to truth— zine Semana, 5,405,629 Colombians seeks the ideal of a free economy of and not only to memory. Beyond a doubt, have been direct victims of the Colom- memory wherein “society, through its memory is never “collective memory.” this dynamic is found in the Colombian Renault 12 is part of an art exhibit Somos it is a time in which diverse memories bia armed conflict since 1985 Semana( , different expressions such as those of It is rather, “shared memory, superim- false positives scandal of the past 10 years Tierra, developed as a result of a group can coexist without touching in the same June 10, 2013). Think about it: nearly victims… just as those of state organi- posed, the product of multiple interac- in which politically uninvolved civilians dialogue in a series of workshops. space. A commitment to the truth could five and a half million have suffered tor- zations, can give account with compe- tions, framings in social contexts and in were killed by the Colombian Army and be a way of turning on its head the iso- ture, sexual assault, homicide, forced tency, autonomy and resources” (Ley de relations of power” (Los Trabajos de la “subsequently presented as guerrilla over their loved ones’ remains, but also as lating and paralyzing effect of the state displacement, and injury from shrapnel Víctimas y Restitución de Tierras, June, Memoria, 2001). casualties to inflate the combat ‘body part of semantic contest over the mem- treatment of memory. and crossfire. Driven by this impossible 2011). Such an inclusive ideal, however, Public memory is only ever developed count’” in the war against the FARC and ory of a victim. Their perspectives have reality various recent national and local has proven problematic. Elizabeth within a contest of interacting perspec- other guerilla groups (The US National only recently developed a forceful voice. Maite Yie Garzón is a professor of governmental initiatives have sought Jelin, a Spanish academic in memory tives, all with various arsenals of power Security Archive, www.gwu.edu, January Minga has dedicated the past 20 years anthropology at the Pontificia Universi- formal reparations for this incredible studies, asserts that though memory and therefore varying degrees of agency 2009). Mothers of victims have had to to the task of effectively and authenti- dad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. number of victims. These include Law is necessarily public and social, public in the debate. An excellent example of fight the state, not only in a legal battle cally communicating the perspectives

38 ReVista fall 2013 Photo by J. Luke pizzato drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 39 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY

of the victims themselves. Originally a Foundation were reunited in Colombia ized communities, they have applied group of artists, activists, psychologists in 2004, they developed a new exhibi- Orlando Fals Borda’s Participatory and sociologists working on a volunteer tion with these same communities that Action Research (PAR) method which basis with victimized communities in they named Recuérdame, which toured seeks to empower communities to act for Catatumbo, Asociación Minga, by 1990, the United States. With Recuérdame’s self-improvement by teaching systematic was formally registered as a human success, they were then able to develop research methods that allow locals to rights protection organization, offering a fourth gallery of memory, an exhibi- lead data collection projects themselves primarily pro bono legal assessments, tion they named Somos Tierra, this time and formally discuss their communities’ casework and representation, and long- informed by work with communities in development interests. Minga led a proj- term community involvement. As Minga Catatumbo and Montes de Maria, which ect under this methodology with a group continued to grow, it began to parallel is currently on tour in Bogotá. of women in Cauca to discuss food dis- its traditional human rights advocacy According to Bustamante, these exhi- tribution and health care provision along with a series of art projects dedicated bitions have been the product of a com- with a contracted researcher. Busta- to enhancing the public visibility of the mon goal between Minga and the Manu- mante says these women were able to use communities with which it had worked. el Cepeda Foundation to find “alternative their “conclusions to discuss their case Given a public that director Bustamante languages that can generate more soli- with authorities, and they could then says was “indifferent, asleep, anesthe- darity” between the victimized commu- begin to make their own proposals that tized”, he says they were “left with no nities and the general public. As their agreed with their reality.” In parallel with alternative but to evidence their reality, galleries of memory present victims’ sto- PAR, Minga’s art-making process makes sure that communities with which they work are directly involved in the forma- tion of the reality presented. Minga devotes itself to the inclusive development of With projects like Somos Tierra, artwork through a collective dialogue with individuals Bustamante says that Minga hopes to foster a greater sensibility for dialogue who have been affected by Colombia’s violence. that might “permit an understanding, a comprehensions that would translate, Journalism in the future, to the reconciliation of our to make it known, to bring it to light for ries to audiences in Europe, the United country.” It’s for this reason, Bustamante the public.” Art had become a necessary States and in Colombia, Bustamante continues, that they use “a language of Journalism—as the saying goes—is the rough draft of history. tool in this mission. says that the role of his organization is symbols and images. Because we believe At its best, it uncovers official lies. At its worst, it perpetuates Minga is most recognized for a series only that of an intermediary. This pas- symbols and images are less biased that them. Journalism forms the archives of tomorrow and poses of projects they’ve called “Galleries of sive attitude in project development is a words.” The goal would seem to be a lan- Memory.” Beginning with a project that critical element of Minga’s work, as all of guage of memory that escapes the power questions about the past. emerged from work with war-torn com- their projects seeks to function through play of political discourse and merely munities in Putumayo and San Onofre, what Bustamante calls “horizontal dia- delivers the reality of the victim’s expe- n Keeping the Silence, Breaking the Silence 42 a traveling exhibition called Nunca Más logue.” He says Minga isn’t interested rience as explicitly and authentically as toured libraries in Bogotá from 1994 to in their artists working as the “enlight- possible. Although the complex network n Covering Central America in the 1980s 44 1996. The tour was realized in collabora- ened minds” who consult the community of superimpositions present in any sys- n The First Draft of History 52 tion with a long time partner organiza- but then design projects independently. tem of public memory make such a goal tion, the Manuel Cepeda Foundation. Minga is dedicated, rather, to the inclu- hugely difficult, Minga’s dedication to Nunca Más was followed by another sive development of the artwork. “In a the support of the victim’s self-represen- collaborative project at the end of the collective dialogue with the affected indi- tation is an earnest attempt to achieve decade which they called the Buceo de viduals, they tell their stories and we ask such an ideal. la Memoria. This project brought vari- questions,” and on the basis of images ous art exhibits to sites around Bogotá, and symbols that emerge from conversa- J. Luke Pizzato is a sophomore at Har- public squares, schools and the national tion, plans for the pieces take shape vard College. He spent two months this university. When members of the Man- This unique artistic methodology has past summer working in Bogotá at the uel Cepeda Foundation received a series been in part affected by Minga’s use of a Center for Memory, Peace and Recon- of threats that forced them to leave the similar research paradigm in their more ciliation through the DRCLAS summer country, they continued to put their exhi- classical human rights work. In various internship program in Colombia. His bition on tour in France and Switzerland. projects wherein Minga has sought to academic interests include psychology, When Minga and the Manuel Cepeda develop local infrastructure for victim- epistemology, and memory studies.

40 ReVista FALL 2013 artist credit name and url memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY journalism

yet another military takeover in a country was serving several life sentences and circles close to the military, he is still Brazil and is a professor of philosophy at accustomed to frequent periods of mili- knew that the re-election of President admired by people who believe the mili- the federal university of Santa Catarina, tary rule since 1930. The commanders of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2010 tary “did what was necessary.” said he regretted entering the public forum. the three armed forces announced that meant that he that he would never be par- I discovered that there is residual sup- There have been other notable incur- they were launching a Process of National doned again (as he was by President Car- port for the military dictatorship when I sions into the no man’s land of reconcili- Reorganization to save the nation from los Menem) or released from prison. wrote a Sunday column from November ation, which suggest that Leís, who fol- atheistic communism, which began with a So he admitted his deeds in what was 2011 until May 26, 2013, for the Buenos lowed in the footsteps of former militants pre-arranged plan to exterminate people the opposite of a confession. He acknowl- Aires Herald, where I was editor from Héctor Schmucler, Oscar del Barco, Pilar the military considered to be “subversive.” edged that under his orders “7,000 to 1968 to the end of 1979. Calveiro and a few other intellectuals, is But anyone who questioned the military, 8,000” people were murdered. He did not In response to my columns, the news- not alone in seeking to restore that part not just the armed members of revolu- admit that they were held in clandestine paper received and published a number of national memory that relates to actions tionary organizations, was at risk, and prisons and their bodies secretly disposed of letters that expressed veiled admira- in the 1970s of the many guerrilla groups thousands of people were abducted from of by cremation or burial in unmarked tion for the military. In messages to my that were termed “subversive terrorists” in their homes to be tortured and killed. mass graves, or were thrown, drugged but own e-mail account I encountered utter- the lexicon of the dictatorship. The Proceso proved to be the most bru- alive, from military transport planes into ly vile statements in open support of the Effectively, Leís acknowledges that the tal dictatorship in Argentine history. the waters of the estuary of the La Plata dictatorship. Montoneros, in which he was a combatant Despite the evidence of their own eyes, river or the South Atlantic. I do not think there is any danger today unil he escaped to Brazil in 1976, were ter- most Argentines managed to pretend that Last year Videla broke a silence of that the military will return to power. rorists, almost as bad as “state terrorists.” all was well, apart from the ever-present almost three decades when he gave a While there are still people who deny the In an interview with Astrid Pikielny threat of so-called subversion, which series of interviews in his comfortable horrors committed during the “Dirty War,” in La Nación, he asked for “forgiveness could only be imagined, and terrorism, for the suffering caused by my actions. which was very real. This extraordinary Our madness led to an encounter with apathy in the face of what philosophers madness. In this sense I understand the term “radical evil” has yet to be accounted Memory has been restored. Those who lived during the ill named ‘theory of the two demons’ for, let alone explained. Notably, however, horror of the ‘70s and ‘80s cannot convincingly claim expressed in Nunca Más by Ernesto Sába- in an article on the death of Jorge Rafael to: the two sides of the conflict in the ‘70s Videla, the nominal dictator of Argentina they did not know what was going on. were equally blind and mad.” from March 24, 1976 to March 29, 1981, Leís’ new book, Un testamento de los the essayist Beatriz Sarlo tackled this años 70: Terrorismo. Política y verdad painful subject. Sarlo, who describes her- quarters at a military prison at the Campo the trials initiated under the administra- en Argentina, has two prologues, one by self as “a Social-Democrat, former Marxist de Mayo garrison to author and journal- tion of the late Nestor Kirchner, follow- Sarlo and the other by Graciela Fernández and ex-Maoist,” breached a taboo in a May ist Ceferino Reato. The title of Reato’s ing a ruling by the Supreme Court that Meijide, who was a member of the Perma- 18, 2013, column in La Nación, which was book, echoing in Argentine Spanish the declared the Menem blanket amnesty nent Assembly for Human Rights during Keeping the Silence, openly and still unapologetically support- Nazi’s “Final Solution,” is Final Disposi- unconstitutional, have established beyond the dictatorship and who served as secre- ive of the military. tion (Disposición Final, published by any reasonable doubt that massive and tary of the The National Commission on Breaking the Silence How, she asked, was it possible that Sudamerica, 2012). horrendous crimes against humanity were the Disappeared. millions of Argentines could go along One of the consequences of Videla’s committed during the dictatorship. Fernández Meijide is also the author of The Role of the Published Word by Robert J. Cox with the military in the first years of the claim of total responsibility for mass mur- Memory has been restored. Those who a recently published book Eran humanos, dictatorship? Where were the press, the der was that he was punished by being were alive during the horror of the ’70s no héroes (Sudamericana), which looks at politicians, and the few who resisted; how moved to a cell in a civilian-run prison, and ’80s cannot convincingly claim that the “Dirty War” through a different lens. was it that they changed their attitudes where he died aged 87 on May 17 of this they did not know what was going on. It is Referring to Leís and other self-critical As editor of the English-language Buenos their sinister unmarked cars, usually Ford and altered their positions? year. His admission that he ordered the encouraging too, to see that there is finally former guerrillas, also in an interview with Aires Herald, I lived through the worst Falcons, through the streets of Buenos Ai- She noted that Videla “never repented murder of those 7,000 to 8,000 people “in some movement toward reconciliation Astrid Pikielny, Fernández Meijide empha- years (1976 to the end of 1979) of the res, threatening anyone who got in their his actions, never publicly considered order to defeat subversion” was spurious through forgiveness. In an article in La sized that “every one of them was a mili- dictatorship in Argentina, and I was con- way with their machine guns. Daylight them a fatal error.” In my opinion, his because he was never fully in charge of Nación, Hector Leís, a former Montonero tant with direct participation in the armed stantly astonished by the way the general abductions were also a familiar sight, belated admission, before he was sen- the Army, let alone the Navy, which under guerrilla, wrote: “[We] Argentines lost the organizations. I wasn’t.” Pikielny said that population accepted military rule. It is and word of mouth when a neighbor was tenced to life imprisonment at a trial its commander Emilio Massera not only opportunity to do ourselves a good turn Fernández doesn’t accept the Kirchner true that the media silenced themselves in taken away spread the terrifying reports in Córdoba in 2008, that he was a mass set up its own torture centers and death by not knowing how to forgive old man government’s “epic vision” of the ‘70s guer- complicity with, or out of fear of, the spe- about the “Dirty War” far and wide. murderer was an act of false bravado. He camps but also targeted civilian members Videla so that he could die in peace at his rillas. Fernández doesn’t believe that “the cial task forces that resembled the Nazi The coup on March 24, 1976, that over- of Videla’s cabinet for assassination. home with his family.” The column carried best of the best” died in the struggle. She

Einsatzgruppen. However, ordinary citi- threw the elected government of President Laura Conte is the mother of Augusto Conte The aged dictator’s statements did the headline: “The task of pardoning the argues that both “good and bad” died and zens denied what they could see with their Estela Martinez de Perón, widow of Juan Mac Donell, arrested and disappeared in prompt a public outcry and general con- unpardonable.” It aroused such a vitriolic “good and bad” survived. Her view has par- own eyes as leather-jacketed thugs drove Domingo Perón, appeared at first to be Argentina on July 7, 1976. demnation of Videla, but privately, in furor against him that Leís, who lives in ticular force because her 17-year-old son,

42 ReVista fall 2013 photo by marcos adandia drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 43 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY

Pablo, was abducted on Oct. 23, 1976, and remains one of the Argentina’s ten Covering Central America thousand to thirty thousand “desapare- cidos.” It is significant that there is not in the 1980s even a generally accepted rough esti- mate of the number of people seized, A Memoir in Words and Photos By Scott Wallace tortured, murdered by the military and whose bodies remain unrecovered. A third book that seeks to restore memory is by Norma Morandini, a The wipers slapped across the rain- vive in a war zone. For myself and a whole senator who ran as a center-left vice- smeared windshield as we sped through generation of young journalists arriving presidential candidate in the 2010 downtown San Salvador. Nelson Ayala in Central America in the early 1980s, the elections. From Guilt to Forgiveness clutched the steering wheel to keep us on armed conflicts in El Salvador and Nica- (De la culpa al perdón, Sudamericana) the road through the torrential downpour. ragua–and to a lesser extent Guatemala— is a passionate appeal for reconcilia- It was already two hours past dark, and it were to become the crucible where we tion and for a national commitment to felt way too late to be out on the streets in learned our trade and forged our careers. rebuild democratic society. this part of town. Many of us arrived as idealists, with pas- “I lived in dark times” she told Suddenly, a body appeared in the head- sionate conviction that our work could Cadena 3, a television station in her lights just ahead of us, sprawled on the make a difference. home city of Córdoba, “and saw my pavement. Nelson swerved to avoid it and We’d grown up with images of Viet- two brothers disappear and how my kept going. “Shouldn’t we stop to help?” nam on the nightly news, and we saw mother overcame this huge blow. I I asked. “It’s not convenient,” he replied, another Vietnam in the making in Central took with me into exile a generational wagging a finger. “You don’t know who America. Perhaps through our reporting cemetery: friends, colleagues, neigh- that person might be or why he is there. we could help stop a catastrophe before bors, family members, lovers. It was We’ll call an ambulance from the house.” it happened. Public opinion mattered to a banishment that sent me into the It was my first day in El Salvador, my U.S. officials. But as the conflicts through- depths of suffering, but also allowed first day as a professional reporter. I’d out the isthmus intensified, we came to me to see more profoundly.” arrived that afternoon as a freelancer understand that reality wasn’t as black The blindness of the general popu- fresh out of journalism school, and with and white as we’d initially thought; it was lation to the horrors of the dictator- only $50 in my pocket, I’d made a bee- far more nuanced. ship is a malady that has passed. But line from the airport to the Camino Real Thirty years from my arrival in El today in Argentina there is willful Hotel, headquarters for the foreign press Salvador in 1983, it seems an opportune blindness to the danger facing democ- agencies covering the civil war. Most moment to look back on those times and racy as another government, elected importantly, I had credentials from CBS reconstruct how I—together with my but scornful of the rights of minori- News, and Nelson, the CBS driver whom colleagues—came to perceive the many ties, seeks to use its power to change I met in the network’s bureau, offered shades of gray in the people, policies and society in its own image. The failure of to put me up while I saved money and events we covered. Indeed, what has hap- the press to report what was happen- looked for a place of my own. pened in Central America in the ensuing ing during the dictatorship gave the Nelson steered his Land Cruiser years has confounded any predictions we military carte blanche. While almost through a gate and into his garage just could have made at the time. totally polarized into pro- and anti- down the street from the motionless body. I eventually found a small apartment government blocs, the media today He made the call from an upstairs room in upper-class El Escalón, where inter- have not been silenced and the voices and turned out the lights. Twenty minutes spersed among smaller middle-class that call for tolerance and reconcilia- later, an ambulance silently approached, homes were the walled mansions of cof- tion are being heard. sirens off, its red strobe flashing in the fee barons, factory owners, army gener- rain. Two silhouetted figures stepped als and government ministers. These Robert J. Cox was the editor of the out, loaded the body into the vehicle, and were impenetrable fortresses topped Buenos Aires Herald from 1968-1979. drove off. “You have to be careful,” Nel- with guard towers, flood lights, barbed He was awarded the Maria Moors son said didactically, like a grade-school Cabot Prize in 1978. After receiving teacher. “That person is dead for a reason. Top: FMLN guerrillas on New Year’s Day, Tenancingo, El Salvador, 1985; Bottom: multiple death threats, he left Argen- You stay away from dead people if you Government soldier applies camouflage tina and became a 1981 Nieman don’t want to end up dead yourself.” paint at start of army sweep, San Miguel Fellow at Harvard. This was my first lesson in how to sur- Province, El Salvador, 1984.

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I am haunted when I look back through my photographs of Central America. In an instant, calm could be shattered by flying bullets. wire—the last lines of defense in a joint- investigation is underway.” venture of public and private capital and Whatever prowess might have existed U.S. aid that stretched all the way out to among El Salvador’s detectives was direct- the search-and-destroy units combing ed toward facilitating the extra-legal war the hills of Morazán for the guerrillas of effort. The investigators just signed the the Farabundo Martí National Liberation death papers; they didn’t want to know Front, or FMLN. the details. Their reports were remark- Across the narrow street from my place ably meticulous when it came to describ- was a towering, garrison-style wall, with ing the wounds, the caliber of the bullets gun slits and peep slots through which that produced them, and from what dis- a pair of eyes studied my comings and tance the weapons were fired. Most often, goings. I never met those neighbors. In it was a quemarropa—point-blank range. fact, I never even saw them. They entered The reports were equally remarkable for and exited through a steel gate in a bullet- their failure to identify the perpetrators. proof Cherokee jeep with smoked win- It was as though you’d entered a world of dows, attended by a small army of men Hitchcock’s creation, where black sorcery in aviator sunglasses and polyester suits had staged a coup d’etat, and M-16s were bulging with Uzis, pistols and ammuni- invested with magical powers to appear tion belts. Getting to know the neighbors at the location of their targets, aim them- was no easy feat in El Escalón. I had no selves, and pull their own triggers. idea that an academic lived on my block Just being journalists made us sus- until he was already dead. I heard the pect in the eyes of many. A full-page ad report of guns in the night, not the burst of from the Secret Anti-Communist Army, an automatic weapon, but the punctuated a renowned death squad, denounced the and deliberate single shots that betrayed a U.S. press as “agents more dangerous and fatal intentionality. The following day my sympathetic to the terrorists than anyone housekeeper told me that a professor two in Moscow.” I smirked at the time, but I doors down had been found slumped over came to appreciate the logic behind such his desk. His live-in maid and gardener subliminal threats and how right those had also been executed. faceless people were, in their twisted way, Mostly I read about the unfortunates in how little Moscow really had to do with the next day’s newspapers. Barefoot boys El Salvador; and how much we U.S. jour- would thrust them through the car win- nalists did. The Soviets may have helped dow at the intersections. I’d toss the kid a arrange some arms shipments from few grimy bills and speed off, horns blar- Hanoi or Tripoli via Cuba that eventu- ing behind me, no time to wait for change. ally found their way to Chalatenango, What caught my eye were the brief, tersely but it was hardly the Ho Chi Minh Trail. worded captions beneath the photos— In El Salvador, the Russians were totally black-and-white head-shots of extin- peripheral to the conflict. But the govern- guished life, streams of blood across their ment was completely dependent on U.S. faces. The captions never changed; only aid, and our reports represented the only the names: “Juan Perez, laborer, resident real counterweight to the flow of propa- of Ilopango, ultimado —literally, “finished ganda that helped sustain it. off” —last night in his home by uniden- Clockwise from top: Child FMLN guerrilla tified men, heavily-armed and dressed fighters, Usulután, El Salvador, 1989; militia- as civilians, whereabouts unknown. The man, Chalatenango, El Salvador, 1984; day authorities remain ignorant of motive. An laborers, Chalatenango, El Salvador, 1984.

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The newly appointed defense minister, ahead. I had no chance to turn back, no General Eugenio Vides Casanova, told his time to reach around and hide the map. troops that the battle for American opin- The men were wearing black uniforms, ion was one of the war’s major fronts— “as with no insignias or shoulder patches, important as San Vicente or Morazán.” and they were waving me to a halt. Some The U.S. reporters covering El Salvador of them had beards, not normal army straddled both fronts. We found ourselves protocol. But I’d heard that government at the intersection where the war on the soldiers had begun to operate in such a ground and the one back home con- fashion, to confuse and intimidate. verged. We were in its crosshairs. I saluted them through the windshield, A huge topographic map of El Salva- presented my army press credentials. I dor, 1:100,000 scale, sprawled across an preemptively grabbed the map, spread entire wall at the CBS office in the Camino it over the hood of the car, and said: “So Real. Every bureau on the second floor tell me, brothers, what’s going on in the had one, covered by clear plastic overlays zone?” It caught them off-guard. “We’re smeared with grease pencils showing the on a sweep through here,” their evident zones controlled by the five rebel armies leader said. “But what are you doing— of the Farabundo Martí, zones that were looking for the terrorists?” It was no time up for grabs, Army garrisons, the alleged for equivocation. “Not at all,” I replied with routes of arms smugglers. I would park a touch of indignation. “My Colonel Cruz myself in front of that map with its brown told me the army had regained control of and green contours suggesting steep hol- the area, so I’ve come to have a look.” They lows and meandering brooks. There were let me pass, but I stuffed the maps under countless hamlets with exotic names— the seat and vowed never to get caught Anamorós, Santa Clara, Yamabál—places with them out in the open again. where few, if any, reporters on the second Over time, alone and in the company floor had ever reached, places where I of other reporters, I came to know the knew I’d find the war in all its living color back roads and back towns of El Salva- and intensity. dor better any comparably sized piece No other country in Central America, of real estate in the world. I knew where much less any others locked in guerrilla to find the guerrillas, where there was a war, made maps of such detail available high probability of running into an army to the public. They came in six separate sweep, which hamlets were ruled by jack- pieces, and we began to carry them with booted paramilitaries and which towns us on forays into the countryside, a critical lived in a perpetual twilight zone— where guide for exploring the war zones. But we neither the government nor the rebels had to keep them under wraps, not strewn had the strength to maintain a permanent out on the backseat. Being caught with presence. I liked to think that this knowl- them at a roadblock of either the army edge enabled me to offer my readers more soldiers or the rebels was bound to spell compelling and thorough reports than I trouble. could have otherwise provided. One afternoon, driving alone in bril- The task of distilling and interpreting liant sunlight, I turned off on to a back information was challenging enough for road toward the mountain-ringed vil- journalists covering a single country. But lage of Anamorós in far-eastern El Sal- it was all the more complicated for those vador. The rebels had overwhelmed the who covered the rest of Central America, army garrison there days before, and I particularly the Contra War in neighbor- expected to run into them somewhere ing Nicaragua. along that road. After consulting the map at the turnoff, I tossed it on the backseat Clockwise from top: Preacher blesses Contra fighters, Yamales, Honduras, 1989; Contra and forgot it there, until a half-hour later, rebel, Nicaragua, 1987; Miskito rebel leader when I rounded a bend and saw a dozen and Comandante Tomás Borge, Puerto Ca- or so armed men blocking the dirt road up bezas, Nicaragua, 1987.

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El Salvador’s civil war cut right across mosaic that I was constantly construct- Clockwise from top: Sandinista coffee har- vester brigade, Matagalpa, Nicaragua, 1985; the country and into even the most well ing in my head. First-hand experience is Honor Guard, San Salvador, 1983; Air-mobile protected redoubts of the privileged. The always the only real way to distinguish Sandinista troops, Jinotega, Nicaragua, 1987. conflict was everywhere. But in Nicara- between information and its opposite. gua, the war unfolded deep in the back- In the midst of claims and counter- woods. Unlike the FMLN in El Salvador, claims from so many different sides, the Contras never managed to establish a that ever-changing mosaic was my only serious urban presence. The main cities guide toward an approximation of the along the Pacific coastal plain, including truth. You had to keep in mind that your Managua, were thus free from the war’s understanding was always tentative: at direct impacts. Under a trade embargo any turn it could be thrown off in a new imposed by the U.S., there were severe direction if the next piece in your mental shortages of goods, and funerals aplenty jigsaw puzzle didn’t fit where you were for officials and conscripts killed in the expecting it to. far-off battle zones. But Managua felt Today the international reporters cov- remarkably safe for the capital of a coun- ering those distant wars are long gone. try in the midst of a war that was exact- Daniel Ortega has returned to govern ing a terrible toll in lives and treasure. Nicaragua as head of a fractured Sand- To cover the shooting war there, inista National Liberation Front, FSLN, journalists had to venture deep into the after losing national elections three countryside, often far beyond any settle- times. Throughout the 1980s, the nine- ments. Back roads were often sealed off member FSLN directorate led by Ortega by Sandinista Popular Army checkpoints, found wide sympathy for resisting Presi- and it could take a measure of bluff to get dent Ronald Reagan’s efforts to drive past. Such was the case one July afternoon them from power by arming the Contra when Newsweek photographer Bill Gen- rebels and turning them loose in the tile and I persuaded some young recruits Nicaraguan backwoods. Many of Orte- to let us pass down a dirt road that snaked ga’s former comrades-in-arms are now back into the mountains of northern Jino- his most vociferous opponents, alleging tega. Several hours later we found our- that he has subordinated Sandinista ide- selves in Bill’s jeep wedged into a 40-truck als to a self-serving quest for power. military column ferrying an entire battal- The former guerrillas of the FMLN ion of the Sandinista army into battle. have attained power in El Salvador At dusk two evenings later, we wit- through the ballot box, embracing a far nessed the Sandinistas rake a Contra less radical approach than their Marx- encampment with rockets and machine- ist forebears of the previous generation. gun fire. When the operation resumed But it will take years, perhaps decades, at dawn, the Contras had fled, leaving before Central America recovers from behind two dead and two wounded. The the intense violence that undid much of wounded sniped at the advancing troops its social fabric. from the brush, the Sandinistas scream- We left a great deal of ourselves ing all the while for them to surrender. behind in covering these conflicts. And Neither of them did. It took more than we left behind a highly skilled genera- a half-hour for the Sandinistas to over- tion of Central American journalists to whelm and subdue the two Contras. report on the ongoing aftershocks. Their refusal to give in seemed to fly in the face of Sandinista propaganda: if the Scott Wallace covered Central America Contras were merely mercenaries in the in the 1980s for CBS News, Cox Newspa- pay of the U.S., as the Sandinistas con- pers, Newsweek, and the Guardian. He is tended, why would they fight to the finish a frequent contributor to National Geo- as those two did? graphic and the author of The Uncon- The events that played out that morn- quered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last ing added one more piece to the broader Uncontacted Tribes.

50 ReVista FALL 2013 PHOTOS © SCOTT WALLACE WWW.SCOTTWALLACE.COM drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 51 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY journalism

The First Draft of History On May 30, 1984, a bomb explosion at the press conference at La Penca in southern Nicara- The Best and the Worst by Juan O. Tamayo gua took the lives of three journalists and injured many more.

When an assassin’s bomb tore through democratic elections in 1990. Frazier, the Associated Press correspon- a “journalist” using a stolen Danish pass- Soon after the blast, a couple of leftist orange farmer in northern Costa Rica the La Penca guerrilla base in southern Pastora was therefore a legitimate dent in Costa Rica; and Costa Rican TV port in the name of Per Anker Hansen. American freelancers in Costa Rica—Tony who supported Pastora; and Felipe Vidal, Nicaragua three decades ago, it cast a military target of the May 30, 1984, crewmen Jorge Quirós Piedra and Evelio He was not injured, was evacuated to Avirgan, who was wounded at La Penca, a Cuba-born CIA asset who trained and spotlight on some of the worst and some assassination attempt. But the way in Sequeira Jiménez. Costa Rica with the other survivors and and his wife, Martha Honey—began advised Pastora’s guerrillas. They fled to of the best of journalism. which the assassination attempt was car- That the bomb went off during a immediately vanished. reporting that the CIA had ordered the the United States, but Hull lost control of The blast was meant to kill Eden Pas- ried out was an outrage to the tenets of news conference was a vicious violation And then it got even worse. Horribly, bombing because Pastora was disobeying his farm and Vidal could not get a legiti- tora, who had broken with the Marxist journalism. of the neutrality that journalists should horribly worse. U.S. orders on the war. mate job for years because of the pending Sandinista government and launched a The bomb exploded as Pastora started enjoy to be able to report on all sides of a Their evidence was so flimsy that when charges. war against it along the southern border a news conference, spewing a deadly fan conflict. Al Qaida violated it in the same Peter Torbiornsson, a Swedish journalist Avirgan filed a $23 million lawsuit in And for the first nine years after the with Costa Rica while other “contras” of peanut-sized steel balls that scythed way in 2001, when “journalists” assassi- who was at La Penca, began confessing in Miami against 29 contra, CIA and other blast, the “CIA-did-it” version was the pushed in along the northern border with through a dozen journalists who had nated anti-Taliban Afghan leader Ahmad 2009 that he had cooperated with Sand- U.S. officials, U.S. Judge Lawrence King one that most U.S. and other journal- Honduras. slipped into La Penca from Costa Rica Shah Massoud with a bomb hidden in inista intelligence to introduce “Hansen,” threw it out and dunned the plaintiffs $1 ists in Central America believed or sus- The Reagan administration and Cen- across the muddy San Juan River. their TV camera. whom he knew to be a Sandinista agent, million in court fees. pected was true. Even the Newseum in tral Intelligence Agency backed the contras He survived, but three journalists But it got worse. into Pastora’s camp. Torbiornsson filmed Yet the Avirgan-Honey reporting led Washington D.C. for years indicated in in a war that claimed tens of thousands of were killed: American Linda Frazier, a documentary claiming that he did not Costa Rican prosecutors to file murder its displays that Linda Frazier had died lives, sparked the Iran-Contra scandal and 38, a reporter for the English-language It turned out that the bomb had been know “Hansen” was packing a bomb or charges against two U.S. citizens for the in a “contra” bombing—creating a false eventually led to the Sandinistas’ defeat in Tico Times newspaper and wife of Joe brought into La Penca and detonated by planning to kill Pastora. La Penca bombing: John Hull, an elderly historical memory.

52 ReVista FALL 2013 photos courtesy of the tico times drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 53 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY

And then in 1993 the La Penca tale I contacted Argentine journalists got better. Much better. Juan Salinas and Julio Villalonga in Buenos Aires, who had written about An unprecedented collaboration between Gorriarán, and they provided one of the six journalists in three countries identi- final pieces of the puzzle: “Martín the fied “Hansen” as the bomber beyond any Englishman” was a Gorriarán follower doubt. named Vital Roberto Gaguine. A Miami Herald correspondent who Gaguine’s parents confirmed that the knew of my interest in La Penca, Andrés man in the “Hansen” photo was their Oppenheimer, was interviewing a fellow son. And a fingerprint expert hired by Argentine who had worked for Cuban the Miami Herald matched prints also intelligence and asked about the bomb- found by Vaughan with a set provided ing. The source replied that he knew the by Argentine authorities to Salinas and assassin. Villalonga. Oppenheimer alerted me and I Gaguine was reported killed in 1989, immediately flew to Paris to interview at the age of 35, while leading one of the man. But he knew the bomber only the four squads of Gorriarán fighters as an Argentine who worked for Sand- that staged a virtually suicidal attack on inista intelligence and was nicknamed Argentine army barracks at La Tablada “Martín the Englishman” because of his in Buenos Aires. Linda Frazier, reporting for The Tico Times, fluent English. Felipe Vidal and John Hull remain was killed by the bomb at La Penca. I showed the source a passport-type under murder indictments in Costa photo of “Hansen” that investigative Rica. Hull is now farming in southeast- That version tended to be accepted journalist Doug Vaughan had found in ern Mexico, and Vidal lived in Miami for because it matched the prevailing biases Panamanian migration files. Although a while but now lives abroad. of the journalists who covered the wars Vaughan worked for the Avirgan law- Gorriarán died of a heart attack in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatema- suit, he had shared the photo with me as in 2006 at the age of 64. Montero creating la at the time: Reagan was a warmonger, part of an agreement to cooperate in the is believed to have died of cancer in the CIA murdered people and the San- search for the killer. Havana around 2008. And after I com- dinistas were driven into the arms of “That’s Martín the Englishman,” the plained to the Newseum, its listing on Moscow and Havana by unwarranted source confirmed. Linda Frazier now reads as follows: Citizenship U.S. hostility. The source explained that after the “Killed May 30 by a bomb blast at But the La Penca bombing made me Sandinista guerrillas, most of them poor a press conference called by a Nicara- angry. And I felt a special debt to Linda, peasants, toppled the Somoza dictator- guan rebel leader just inside the border Joe and their young son Chris. ship in 1979, they lacked anyone who with Costa Rica. Three others were also To remember the past is to participate in the present. It is a Joe and I had been transferred from could run complex counter-intelligence killed, including two journalists. Other way of reconstructing history, searching for democracy and New York to Mexico City at about the operations. Most could not even hold a rebel factions initially were blamed, but creating citizenship. Schools and museums are an integral part same time in 1979, he by the AP and I fork properly, he added. So the Sand- several years later, a journalistic inves- by UPI, and we covered the same Central inistas decided to essentially outsource tigation said that the evidence points to of this process. American turf. We lived near each other, their foreign operations. an Argentine who worked for Nicara- our wives were good friends and stayed A colonel in Cuba’s elite Interior Min- gua’s Sandinista government.” n The Rub 56 so after Joe was transferred to Costa Rica istry Special Forces who used the name That passport photo of “Hansen” still and I joined the Miami Herald in 1982. of Renan Montero was seconded to the hangs in my office cubicle, a reminder of n Memoryscape 58 For years, I made it a point of asking Nicaraguan Interior Ministry as head of both the shortcomings and the power of n Historical Footprints 62 anyone I could about La Penca—espe- its counter-intelligence unit. journalism. n Educating the “Good Citizen” 64 cially when I became the Herald’s Euro- And some of the unit’s operations were pean bureau chief, based in Berlin and assigned to members of a Marxist Argen- Juan O. Tamayo has been a Herald n A New Museum for Independence 67 covering the Sandinistas’ former allies tine guerrilla known as the Revolutionary correspondent in Central America, the in Russia and East Germany. My friend Peoples Army, headed by Enrique Gorri- Middle East, Europe and the Andean Mark Rosenberg, now president of Flor- arán Merlo. His men killed a contra chief region. A Harvard Nieman Fellow class ida International University, made fun in Honduras in late 1979, and Gorriarán of ’90, he now covers Cuba for El Nuevo of my “obsession” with La Penca every himself led the squad that assassinated Herald. time we met. Anastasio Somoza in 1980 in Paraguay.

54 ReVista FALL 2013 photos courtesy of the tico times artist credit name and url memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY creating citizenship

can be, but a one-way, top-down, scourge The University of Chile in 1842, under apparently choose not to visit the muse- of civilians by brute military power. the leadership of Andrés Bello (that mas- um, alleging its one-sidedness about The bunker-like museum building is ter of conciliation), the state established history. That can hardly be helped in an a monument to the recent past, erected a training center for a modern citizenry institution designed precisely to uncover during Michelle Bachelet’s presidency. (see Iván Jaksic’s Academic Rebels in the shameful events and dynamics of a Her legacy here is a relentless reminder Chile: The Role of Philosophy in Higher dictatorship that had conveniently hid- that the wages of authoritarianism far Education and Politics [Albany: SUNY den or misconstrued the facts of repres- exceeded the alleged establishment of Press, 1989], especially pp. 21-34). sion. But the laser focus on shame— order and decency after Chile freely There were, to be sure, armed con- without framing the longer view—has elected a socialist president. Pinochet’s flicts between Liberals and Conserva- the unfortunate effect of cutting out the crusade against communism and any- tives while civil wars raged throughout public’s cause for pride, the reason why thing else that came in his way cost Chile the hemisphere. In 1851 and again in Chile’s citizens might be invited to care even more than the vibrant lives of social 1859 Liberals and Conservatives were so intimately about democracy. reformers along with those of unsuspect- literally at each others’ throats. But the During my May 2013 visit to the ing neighbors. His crack-down crushed traditionalist bankers and the free- museum, I walked in along with a local the collective confidence and hopes that thinking miners learned to make up father and his 8 or 9-year-old son. The came with a particularly Chilean sense of quickly, before broad-based rebellions unhappy child heard his father explain political pride and dignity. challenged the legislative systems that that he may well be in a group photo of a Chile, you see, has a distinguished Bello helped to put in place. A Liberal- crowd being broken up by armed forces, political history which surely framed the Conservative conciliation and the con- urging the boy to help locate the image. violent 1973 Coup as a shock, an unbe- sequent political continuity came to But their visit lasted only a few minutes, lievable aberration. By the 1830s, while seem inevitable. The country achieved probably ending just after we entered other Latin American countries were distinction as a “democracy of the oli- the loop of obscenely detailed testimo- busy fighting civil wars, the popular and garchy.” (John Crow, The Epic of Latin nies about sexual abuse. I wondered factional struggles that followed inde- America 3rd ed. expanded and updated. then how long they might have lasted in pendence movements throughout the [Berkeley, University of California Press, the museum if there were also galleries continent had been contained through 1980] The quote is his title for chapter of Chilean glory to visit, along with the O’Higgins’ government. What’s more, the 48 of this once popular text, about Chile horror, even if the stamina for pain and successful democratizing experiments in the second half of the 19th century: pp. fear remained finite. Could an expanded launched by Liberals (beginning in the 640-648). Museum of Memory include a long view 1820s) gave Chile the enviable reputa- After a century and a half of depend- to urge citizens to remember national tion as the only stable democracy in all able democracy—however limited the accomplishments alongside national of Latin America (and most of Europe). access to power and whatever the in- shame? The combined effect might even The Rub In 1852 Juan Bautista Alberdi spoke for equalities in the distribution of resourc- heighten the horror, given the political all the Argentine refugees from Rosas’ es—Chileans must have been astonished dimensions of the loss along with all the Against the Proud Grain of Chile’s History By Doris Sommer government when he proposed a toast to at the sudden loss of liberties and legality. rest. But a side effect might be a welcom- this haven from anarchy, “the honourable They were bereft of familiar paradigms. ing embrace of inclusion. The pleasure exception in South America.” (Simon Repression of this blunt and brutal vari- and pride in this particular patriotism Collier, “Chile from Independence to ety was the experience of other countries, wouldn’t have to distinguish between Brace yourself as you enter the Museum viewing rooms run endless loops of tes- The museum substantiates the hor- the War of the Pacific,” The Cambridge countries such as the Argentina remem- sides of a conflict. It would share a heri- of Memory and Human Rights in San- timonies by victims, including women ror of Pinochet’s assault on citizens, in History of Latin America: Vol III, From bered in Alberdi’s toast. Political exiles tage worthy of the struggle against for- tiago de Chile. Galleries of missing peo- who report the insertion of rats into case anyone is in doubt. It commemo- Independence to c. 1870 [Cambridge: from elsewhere had historically fled to getfulness. ple will glare back at your glance, from their vaginas after routine rapes. Hall- rates their lost lives, lost to the ultimate Cambridge University Press, 1985] pp. the safe and neutral sanctuary that Chile a wall so enormous the collective calam- ways host more videos of footage from blow of death but also lost in trickles, by 583-614). represented. Doris Sommer teaches Latin American ity exceeds the span of your vision. The the long period of repression: footage, dispirited survivors. Citizens who lived Already a worldwide banking center The Museum of Memory makes no Literature at Harvard. She is author of photographed faces float over funerary for example, of public beatings in broad through those years are haunted by the in the 1850s, Chile had built the first mention of the country’s admirable heri- several books including Foundation Fic- candles in the above ground altar, and daylight, and also of admirable protests. horror of a national army that ravaged major railroad in South America, and tage. It has nothing to remind visitors tions: The National Romances of Latin another subterranean crypt designed by There are maps that document the des- compatriots. This was no civil war of was exploiting coal and copper mines for of the positive reasons to take pride in America, Bilingual Aesthetics, and The Alfredo Jaar shows an eerie nothing at potism, poignantly personal artifacts brother against equal brother, ugly and domestic industries as well as for export. the country as a collective political pat- Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency first. Then the slow illumination lights that once belonged to eliminated per- desperate though that kind of conflict Chile continued to constrain the disinte- rimony, one that could help to rebuild and Public Humanities (forthcoming). up a repeated emptiness outlined by sons, statistics that confirm the enormi- gration of an elite consensus, making the a common sense (in Kant’s meaning of Sommer directs the Cultural Agency rows and rows of head-shot silhouettes. ty of officially sanctioned crimes against Parque O’Higgins, Santiago, Chile, Novem- country an enduring model of stability shared subjectivity). The museum misses Initiative to develop arts and humani- Throughout the main building video Chileans. ber 18, 1982 and productivity. With the founding of a cue for inclusion, I fear. Many Chileans ties as social resources.

56 ReVista fall 2013 photo by marco ugarte, Photo courtesy of museo de la memoria y los derechos humanos, chile drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 57 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY section header

Left, top: Pamela Yates filming in the Peruvian Andes with Ramiro Niño de Guzmán for State of Fear: The Truth About Terrorism. Left, below Memoryscape from left to right: From State of Fear: The Truth About Terrorism. Woman in Ayacucho searching for her disappeared husband, Asháninka militia on patrol in their territory against Shining Path insurgents; Child soldier, Ayacucho. Above: In 2007, when former President Alberto Fujimori was extradited to Peru to be tried on charges of human rights crimes and corruption, vandals defaced the Eye That Cries (El Ojo Que A Documentary Film Explores Memory by Pamela Yates Llora) memorial throwing orange paint—the color of Fujimori’s party—everywhere.

Walking up to 12,000 feet in the Peruvian the villagers the documentary film he ciliation Commission discovered about ment for the massive death toll. They Our premise for the new film is that society have conflicting narratives and Andes took two entire days. With Ramiro was featured in and that I had directed what had really happened during Peru’s called both for specific military members memory is fundamental to our human- framing of past events, vested interests Niño de Guzmán, a Quechua-speaking called State of Fear: The Truth About Ter- 20-year war from 1980 to 2000. The to be prosecuted, and for a change in the ity. For most of recorded time, history manipulate the present political environ- human rights leader, I set out for his rorism. Ramiro wanted to have State of Commission contested the official ver- conditions of poverty and exclusion that was written primarily by those in power ment to try to ensure that their version of childhood home in Checcasa, along Fear create a village-wide dialogue about sion that President Fujimori had promul- set the stage for the rise of Shining Path. to serve their own interests. Today, the events is accepted. In countries like Peru the same path that the army had taken their memories of the war, and, steeped gated, saying he had created economic My experience of being on the inside establishment of historical memory is with violent and painful pasts, unresolved when it attacked his village in 1988, ac- in that painful memory, have them de- prosperity and saved the country from filming during the Truth Commission’s more likely to at least involve debate— memory issues can have a toxic effect in cusing his family of being Shining Path mand action from the local government terrorism. It replaced that narrative and investigation inspired the making of a film and in the best cases negotiation—among the present—perpetuating a societal trau- insurgents. His brothers were tortured to provide promised reparations. rewrote that chapter of Peruvian history, about historical memory, now in pre-pro- competing groups and social forces. ma that needs to find resolution. and killed, his sisters raped and dismem- State of Fear is a film that looks back- giving voice to those most affected by duction, titled Memoryscape. Of course I Indeed, a society’s shared memories are Today we strive for a process of bered. But this was 2006 and Ramiro wards as well as forward. It tells the story the violence. The Commission’s findings would have to include Peru’s ongoing con- constructed under specific political cir- remembering that is increasingly demo- and I were returning to Checcasa to show of what the Peruvian Truth and Recon- indict both Shining Path and the govern- tested memory in this new documentary. cumstances. When different sectors of cratic, collective, exciting and contested.

58 ReVista fall 2013 Above (top): http://skylight.is; (bottom), Vera Lentz Photo: Gam Klutier drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 59 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY creating citizenship

Portraits of members of MOVADEF who are, in their words, followers of “Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, Gonzalo Thought”. Gonzalo is the nom de guerre of Abimael Guzmán, the founder of Shining Path. From the film Memoryscape

When a nation engages in debate over properly bury its dead with the sacred and civilians caught in the crossfire —in ity of Abimael Guzmán and Shining Path modern memory movement, and poetic of indigenous Andean villagers, Fujimori how to memorialize its past in public rituals of remembering, to grieve deeply, an effort to unite Peruvians. Yet the sim- is a thing of the past, and are calling for cinematography that describes the pan- supporters and family members of those spaces, the road to consensus is usually to survive the pain and move forward. ple question of who is a victim and who an amnesty, thereby seeking to normal- orama of different experiences, will try killed by the Shining Path, individual fraught with fiercely opposed points of Since the release of the Peruvian is a perpetrator, who should be remem- ize the past by creating a narrative that to inspire new thinking in the viewers’ artists creating memoryscapes, youths in view coming from all segments of soci- Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s bered and who deserves to be forgotten, says violence is part of what happens consciousness. Our trajectory as human the MOVADEF movement, and commis- ety, from the heights of academia and Final Report in 2003, and its cinematic remains contested and has wreaked hav- in war, and should simply be accepted. rights filmmakers will build the narrative sioners of Peru’s Truth Commission. state agencies to grassroots movements. reflection in State of Fear, Peruvian soci- oc upon this memorial, bringing violence While MOVADEF is attempting to be a on the notion that truth, memory and A hallmark of all my films is the In countries around the world, compet- ety has been embroiled in a dramatic and into a place intended for healing. It is a part of the political process by forming a justice must powerfully work together. understanding that the geography in the ing groups now have a voice—though often violent battle over how to under- fraught political and moral controversy: political party, it has not renounced the Moving through time and space, closeup of the human face is the most often only through fierce struggle—in stand and remember the 20-year “war for example, should the Shining Path nihilist ideology rooted in violence that Memoryscape will evoke the profound beautiful panorama of cinema. We con- constructing the physical, narrative, and on terror” with the Shining Path. Was ex- prisoners who were killed extra-judi- guided the original emergence of Shining emotions associated with memory: fear, nect visually with the eyes on the screen, emotional landscape of shared memory. President Alberto Fujimori a hero who cially by the governments of Alan García Path in 1980. Through interviews with anger, grief, nostalgia and reverie. View- and the emotion and memory connected and Alberto Fujimori be named victims? these youth, Memoryscape will show the ers will be part of a journey of discov- to our limbic brain kick in. Through interviews with Peruvians from tragic myopia of historical memory in ery through architectural spaces, sites Film is also unique in its ability to across the political spectrum, Memo- Peru. In a recent New York Times article, of conscience, monuments, and public explore the dimension of time with the The simple question of who is a victim and who is ryscape will show how victims were not Francisco Soberón, executive director of art works that can illuminate historical non-linear nature and construction of a perpetrator, who should be remembered and who simply those killed by the Shining Path Peru’s leading human rights organiza- and collective memory. At times I will memory. Legendary Russian Director and armed forces, but the many people tion Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos, employ a straightforward chronologi- Andrei Tarkovsky considered filmmak- deserves to be forgotten, remains contested and has who continue to live, haunted by physical described historical memory as a “vac- cal approach mirroring the linear and ing to be “sculpting in time.” The abil- wreaked havoc on The Eye That Cries memorial. torture and psychological nightmares of cine” helping Peru to “prevent the rise of mechanical way of how memory is con- ity to expand and compress time in the the armed groups from two decades ago. projects that can bring us back down that structed, with each unique event trig- film medium makes it a perfect vehicle Our film will dramatize how El Ojo Que road of terror and violence.” gering the next. At other times the pre- for the exploration of historical memory. Llora stands for the potential of a memo- In conceiving Memoryscape, I recog- sentation of images will represent a very Memoryscape will be a part of the mod- These memoryscapes—made up of ele- vanquished terrorism or a criminal who rial to be a space for reflection and re- nize the inherent challenges and risks of different understanding of the structure ern movement to reflect historic memory ments ranging from memorials and trampled human rights and used fear of humanization, and how when such living drawing comparisons across very differ- of memory, as when past events burst in physical spaces, bringing the audience museums to street signs—and the pro- terrorism to undermine democracy? Was memory is reconstructed individually ent places, yet am convinced that only a into a person’s present life reflecting a into an intellectual and emotional rela- cess of creating them are the subject of it necessary to forfeit civil liberties to and collectively, it can generate condi- cross-cultural examination of this sub- moment when we experience the impor- tionship with contested issues. In this our film. A global trend is afoot with achieve security? Instead of definitively tions for people to demand justice. ject will reveal the essential human need tance of remembering as an engine for way, we will stimulate the desire to be the evolution of historical memory into answering those questions, Fujimori’s In the absence of a productive engage- to link together past, present, and future. decision-making in the present. Finally, part of the quest to make historical mem- physical places embodied by sites of con- recent trial, conviction, and sentence ment with the past, the reemergence of Our overarching goal in the film is to there will be sequences that are more of ory an integral component of human science and public memorials. to 25 years in prison for human rights the Shining Path under the Movimiento tell a universal story while illuminating a reflection of our memory that has no rights and the quest for democracy. Memoryscape’s journey in Peru will crimes has sparked a new wave of debate Por Amnistía y Derechos Fundamen- the specific histories and cultural con- boundary of time, so that the events of focus on why a society must properly and polarization over Peru’s history. tales (MOVADEF) banner is possible. texts in Peru (contested memory), Spain one period may be examined in tandem Pamela Yates is a documentary film remember in order to progress—a pro- In Lima, for example, some Fujimori MOVADEF is a political movement made (repressed memory), Germany (embed- with those of a much different historic director and co-founder of Skylight. cess of consensus that seeks to integrate supporters vandalized El Ojo Que Llora up of young people from the lower middle ded memory) and the United States moment. Her film State of Fear was translated painful memories into a shared historical (The Eye That Cries), a memorial that class who have attended university and (mythologized memory). Viewers will engage with our shared into 47 languages and broadcast in 154 narrative. In Peru, despite an exhaustive seeks to commemorate a wide swath of are outraged by overwhelming economic The visual storytelling in Memo- humanity at the core of each story countries. Her latest film is Granito: truth commission and high visibility tri- those who died in the conflict—the mili- inequality, lack of access to education, ryscape will come from a place of pro- through the people we follow who play How to Nail a Dictator. She is now als, entrenched political forces have made tary; government-backed citizen militias; and other human rights abuses in Peru. found contemplation. The combination essential roles in the film. For example, working on the sequel 500 Years, about it extremely difficult for the country to imprisoned Shining Path insurgents; These youths are saying that the brutal- of innovative actors that motivate the in Peru we will weave together the stories the Ríos Montt genocide trial.

60 ReVista FALL 2013 photos: http://skylight.is drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 61 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY creating citizenship

a similar notion but in terms of how we Historical Footprints impact history. Therefore, the heart of this proposal is Changing How We Teach Colombia’s Violent Past to create new pedagogical methodologies to gauge how everyday life actions deter- by Laura Barragán Montaña mine the course of history. By calculat- ing the Historical Footprints of others in the past, students and teachers can more easily understand how ordinary people George Santayana’s well-known dictum, ly personal and relatable to too many. have positively and negatively influenced “Those who don’t remember the past Ever since I can remember, my grand- a specific moment in time. It is about are condemned to repeat it,” reminds mother had been losing her memory. It all learning the past not only through what us why it is important to learn history. started with little details, often inconspic- politicians, heroes, or a few others have But what does this really mean? What uous. But over the years, these sporadic done, but by studying how even the worst aspects of the past must we remember? slip-ups eventually invaded her everyday of atrocities are possible through the Who chooses them? How do we remem- life. Coming closer to the end of her days multiple actions or inactions many of us ber them? Can this understanding really and carrying with her the weight of a have taken. change our attitudes and behaviors? Are foreign word like Alzheimer’s, my grand- Our curriculum is a three-step process. we truly capable of avoiding the mistakes mother helped me understand the havoc Inspired by the already successful model of the past? wreaked by oblivion. It is not as simple as of Facing History and Ourselves, the cur- In a country like mine, Colombia, these saying that those who lose their memory riculum begins by analyzing an interna- questions are very significant as the coun- only lose their short-term or long-term Author Laura Barragán Montaña as a child tional case study. Whether it is through try is involved in an intensive peace pro- past. What is more terrifying to see is how with her grandmother Remembering the 2000 massacre by paramilitary forces of civilians in El Salado, Colombia. examples from the Holocaust, South cess. On July 24, 2013, the National Center this elusive past takes with it the present Africa, Northern Ireland, Peru or Guate- of Historical Memory officially presented and future of people with this disease. History, memory, and the conflict schizophrenia we are living in Historical Footprints: mala, this distancing effect is important a 434-page long report entitled “¡Basta How it blurs all of time… because when classroom requires fundamental changes. How can Your story is history in as a first step. It is not about neglecting ya! Colombia: Memorias de guerra y dig- we lose the ability to talk about ourselves Although recent years have seen impor- we bring into our classrooms the many the making our own history. It is about starting with nidad” (Enough Already: Memories of in retrospect, it becomes almost impos- tant steps in terms of education reform, narratives that the National Center of It is with this in mind that I and some a mirror that can allow us to face many War and Dignity). No longer can we hide sible to reflect on and recognize oneself most of the social science lessons seem Historical Memory has produced? It is colleagues have created a nonprofit of the issues that we may not be able to under the excuse that it is too soon or that in this moment and, even more difficult, to have remained the same. Many class- not as simple as just printing and ship- called Historical Footprints (HF)™. articulate if we were to begin with the too little is known. We must embrace this to project oneself into the future. rooms are still teaching history the way ping copies of the reports or battling for Through one of our main programs, we massacre that happened next door. context and really consider how we, as And it was through this new under- my parents or grandparents learned the the inclusion of a new chapter in a text- seek to provide a rigorous teacher train- After using primary and secondary Colombians, are going to face what seems standing—probably familiar to anyone subject. Textbooks and curricula (chosen book. We cannot fall prey to the danger of ing and support system through which sources to measure the Historical Foot- to be an unbearable past. A past that still who has lived with someone who has this by the schools) tend to reinforce and per- replacing one “truth” with another. The social science teachers can ask them- prints of different people in these past tarnishes much of our present. disease—that my role as a historian in petuate traditional pedagogies: content- solution lies somewhere else. We must selves all these questions, reflect about international events, the teachers will Out of all the possible paths, I have Colombia finally made sense. Could this driven, instructional, and centered on find a way to face what we are teaching, their practice, and learn new and old repeat the process but with a national chosen to focus on the role education can small, private, intimate experience be the actions of few tarnished heroes. as well as why we are teaching it and how methodologies that can counteract the case study linked to our recent violence. play in such a challenge—specifically, on similar to what was, to what is, happen- One of my more pressing concerns is we are teaching. charge that we are teaching an inevitable The narratives published by the National changing how we are teaching and learn- ing to my country? that the narrative we are teaching our I believe that it all begins with the and irrelevant history. Center of Historical Memory will be fun- ing about our own history in classrooms We commonly hear that Colombia children is one that hardly fosters any teachers. We must understand that no The principle behind the HF model is damental to study how ordinary people across the country. is suffering from amnesia. But if we agency—both in pedagogical and histori- epistemological claim of objectivity can that we all have our own Historical Foot- have caused, suffered and/or endured are looking for parallels, I believe that cal terms. On the one hand, we are reduc- counteract the fact that we are not teaching print. This term is inspired by the idea our violence. The back story of oblivion Alzheimer’s would be closer. Alzheimer’s ing the role of the student to a passive this history as outsiders. It is the history of of the “carbon footprint” that has done The final step will invite teachers (and Like the stories of most Colombians, is a progressive and fatal disease. It gets recipient of content-delivery, rather than our families. The history of our neighbors. so much to bring environmental con- through implementation, their students) parts of my own story could bear witness worse with the passage of time. It goes an inquiring and critical mind who can The history of our dead. The history of our cerns into public consciousness. It has to gauge their own Historical Footprint. as to how our overwhelming and yet quo- beyond oblivion of the past, as my grand- understand that history is a construc- lives. The story of our present. done this because it illustrates, in clear To think about their own history and try tidian violence has shaped our lives. But mother taught me. It encompasses the tion. On the other, we seem to be repli- However, what we may need as adults, and simple terms, how much our habits to assess the effects their own choices none of it could begin to compare to the loss of an already furtive future. So how cating the belief that we are so deep into as teachers, is different than what stu- impact the environment. Thus, “helping” and actions have had. This will not only extreme suffering experienced by victims can we stop Colombia from suffering our conflict, into decades of corruption, dents need. We must process the mean- the environment is no longer something allow us to have the cathartic effect of who probably do not have the opportuni- from this endemic case of Alzheimer’s. I and into mounds of unfulfilled promises, ing of this context as victims, bystanders, that only governments or big corpora- storytelling, but will spark a projection ty to write an article for a publication like am proposing that one powerful tool is that nothing will ever change. participants, even perpetrators, before tions can do, but an action that any one into the future. this one. And yet, the core of my convic- through a closer examination of how we A teaching of history for this brave we decide how we can teach this history of us can accomplish by being mindful of Yes, Colombia needs bold and sig- tion came from an experience both utter- are teaching history to our students. new world of the conflict and post- in our classrooms. everyday actions. We want to establish nificant top-down policies to guide us

62 ReVista fall 2013 photo courtesy of laura barragán Montaña photo by jesús Abad colorado; courtesy of the centro de memoría histórica, drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 63 Bogotá, Colombia memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY creating citizenship

through this post-conflict path. But we also need bottom-up actions that can, Educating the once and for all, prove that changing our history is not something they have to do, “Good Citizen” but that I, that we, can start to do too. The actions each of us takes vary depending Memory in postwar Guatemala By Michelle J. Bellino on where and who is reflecting on his or her own Historical Footprint. It may be as small or big as striving to stay in school, creating a more participative classroom, On my many field trips, I tell Guatemalan that erupted between “two devils,” the forgiving someone who has wronged us, teens I’m interested in how they learn state and guerrilla armies. Presumably learning about the reality of rural areas, or about the 36-year conflicto armado developed as “compromise” narrative actively choosing the hard path of honest (armed conflict). I then study their fac- in other Latin American countries con- work. After all, the metaphor of Histori- es. If not baffled, they avert their eyes tending with their own histories of state cal Footprints is only useful if we harness and share refrains passed on by many repression, the portrayal of mass vio- the ripple effect of our actions to begin to adults in their lives: “We have no histor- lence taking place between “two devils” make small changes, small steps that can ical memory,” or “In Guatemala, there (or “two fires”) functions as a significant bring us closer to a peaceful future. is no historical consciousness.” School equalizer of accountability. Rather than teachers say, occasionally with concern, explore asymmetrical power dynamics The urgency of now “We don’t talk about that here,” or with between the two groups and the par- It is still hard to imagine if we will ever more worry, “Young people don’t care ticular responsibility borne by the state find the right words, images, even silences about the past. There are too many to uphold human rights under all condi- to properly express the violence we have problems today.” tions, conflict between two devils serves been through. The violence we are still Guatemalan youth are equally pes- to nullify culpability, constructing a net- going through. However, it is equally simistic about their lack of educational zero sum. There is no moral account- important to ask ourselves what words opportunities. They shake their heads ability or unfulfilled justice; because we shall use to describe what the future and tell me, “Our education here is the everyone was accountable, no one is can look like. To envision what we can worst.” With sunken eyes, they describe accountable. become. Perhaps Historical Footprints how education has become privatized, The second narrative locates the can be part of such a new vocabulary. A exclusionary, and yet remains mediocre. conflicto armado in a dark past, a tragic vocabulary where we can indeed find new Youth perceptions of Guatemala’s event from which Guatemala has recov- and old paths to combat the Colombian deficiencies are intertwined with their ered in its march toward peace and Alzheimer’s by remembering the past and impressions of the unresolved past and progress. The horrors of the war have defying our condemnation to repeat it. the way a history of violence resonates been collectively addressed and swiftly in democracy’s failures. There is a long archived, so that they only require a Ixil women sit in their traditional clothes and hold flowers during the Efraín Ríos Montt trial in Guatemala. Laura Barragán Montaña, who recent- list of what Guatemala lacks. single paragraph in many texts, sur- ly completed a Masters in Education Collectively acknowledging historical rounded by lengthy sections devoted rural schools, teachers represent the con- classrooms. Incorporating these accounts level of their civic participation, even at Harvard, is co-founder and CEO of injustice is central to the project of tran- to the peace process, peace values, and flicto armado and its relationship to the chances merging two devils into one. while they are uncertain what the war Historical Footprints in Bogotá, Colom- sitioning democracies. But the violent human rights principles. Although the current fragile democracy in strikingly For the most part, educators, parents, was for. Young people may not know the bia. During her years in the Colombian past is not easily examined in “postwar” war encompassed the “suffering of all diverse ways. Sometimes they take great and community leaders face uncertainty historical details of this past, but they feel Ministry of Education, she worked in Guatemala, where contemporary crime Guatemalans,” the conflict was resolved, care to balance the “two devils.” Sometimes about how to teach new generations its presence in their lives. the Citizenship Competencies Program seems to eclipse decades of military bru- and today’s Guatemala has learned from they offer subtle or explicit cues that one about the past, when it seems to remain Curricular materials strongly rely on and was the creator and project man- tality, even while today’s political repres- its past. The narrative of historical prog- side was actually more in the right than the affixed to the present. Interpreting a his- the passive voice, obscuring the agency ager of “History Today,” a nationwide sion of popular movements echoes and ress conjures the hoped-for but ulti- other. Teachers themselves have survived tory of massive human rights violations of historical actors who caused harm, program to commemorate Colombia’s entangles past and present violence. mately elusive postwar reality, wherein the conflict or inherited its legacy; they committed by the state, even when state endured suffering, or risked their lives Bicentennial of Independence. Barragán The past is indeed taught in the young citizens ostensibly inherited a are invested in its memory or its omission. power changes hands, continues to influ- to create a more just society. Erasing the earned a Summa Cum Laude in History schools, but for many survivors its moral peaceful and pluricultural democracy The inaccessibility of primary historical ence citizens’ attitudes toward democ- political agency of historical actors, nota- and Literature from Los Andes Uni- and political erasures are so substan- where all people are equal. Importantly, resources situates testimonio (testimony racy, especially when democratic systems bly the guerrilla, long cast as criminals versity. She has just finished a summer tial that it is rendered invisible. Social this imagined future requires looking or witness accounts) as a useful historical are relatively new political arrangements whose “involvement” threatened national consultancy for Facing History and studies curriculum in Guatemala relies forward toward shared goals, rather source—often the sole source—of histori- and lack a record of stability. Memories of security, creates an impression that little Ourselves, in Brookline, MA. She can be heavily on two narrative “templates” than backwards at shared suffering. cal knowledge. Meanwhile, primary his- the violent past are continually accessed, was at stake during the protracted vio- reached at laura.barragan@historical- for interpreting the conflicto armado. Although the national curriculum torical sources such as truth commission performed, and disputed as citizens make lence. Though the rebel movement’s turn footprints.org The first presents an account of a war applies to public and private, urban and findings, are almost never discussed in everyday decisions about the nature and to violence was not without its own excess-

64 ReVista fall 2013 photo by mary jo mcconahay drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 65 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY

es, it grew from wide-reaching popular believe that knowledge of historical injus- Educational policymakers in the “post- movements, and began with nonviolent tice comprises essential civic knowledge, war” years have significantly restructured demonstrations repressed by an increas- others frown upon historical memory as primary school curriculum and increased ingly authoritarian government. The a source of social division and political access to early childhood education. Cur- goals that joined diverse people in insur- polarization, and others view discussions rent efforts to improve the quality of gent movements centered on social justice of the past as impractical distractions from schools have prompted the Ministry of in the form of social, economic, and cul- current challenges facing the country. Education to professionalize teacher prep- tural rights. Depoliticizing the conflicto Good intentions (in most cases) underlie aration, an important step (though highly armado portrays decades of conflict as yet these diverse approaches, but impressions disputed among teachers-in-training) in another bad thing that “just happened” of civic responsibilities remain as polar- transforming the educational sector. Yet in the succession of colonialism, natu- ized as the past itself. Traces of the past amidst these changes, little has been done ral disasters, and the infiltration of the and detections of historical continuity at the level of secondary schools, where global drug trade. Suffering—whether in breed their own hopes, expectations, and nearly half of Guatemalan youth drop out extreme poverty, direct combat, or habit- fears about Guatemala’s future, namely, to pursue jobs in the informal sector, at ual fear of riding the city bus—is conveyed whether it will remain a democracy or high risk for criminal pathways. Efforts as inevitable, while those who intervene return to a military regime. While former to revise curricular representations of the to change the status quo are cast as crimi- head of State General Efraín Rios Montt conflicto armado are continually “in pro- nals, killed as martyrs, or become some stood trial for genocide, incipient hopes of cess,” meet with various forms of opposi- tormented amalgamation. justice for the past were couched within tion, and remain a challenge at the central What space does this leave for the everyday concerns over remilitarization. policy level. The uncertainty about how “good citizen” in a weak democracy, espe- Young people question whether the fact to move forward permeates all sectors of cially when one is situated on the mar- that the current president is himself a for- civil society: is historical memory a hin- gins? Amidst pervasive refrains that “we mer wartime general constitutes a “mili- drance to shared hopes for peace; is its learn the past so as not to repeat it,” one of tary government,” and whether there is a critical acknowledgement central to the postwar future; or has it lost relevance entirely in the post-postwar? It remains uncertain how Guate- Young people in Guatemala may not actually know the mala’s secondary school curriculum will be revised, especially given the ups and historical details of the violent past, but they feel its downs of the Ríos Montt trial. While the presence in their everyday lives. guilty sentence, its overturn, and subse- quent uncertainty might significantly A New Museum for Independence alter the historical narrative, it will also the most salient lessons of the two devils legitimate threat to Guatemala’s tenuous undoubtedly breed new counter-nar- Renovating Memories By Daniel Castro and Camilo Sánchez representation seems to be the rigid and peace. Democracy hovers over the list of ratives and efforts to reclaim the past. autocratic relationship forged between what we lack. “Postwar” generations will determine citizens and the state during times of tur- Despite promises made in the Peace whether these democratic gaps and his- moil. The persistence of blame placed on Accords to transform the educational torical silences are filled in. The flawed This is a very short story of how a small um, a memorial for the veneration of the questions came to mind: How to involve activists today (characterized as agitators sector, Guatemala’s school system con- democracy young people inhabit is the museum in Colombia underwent a pro- country’s heroes, not only was anachro- visitors actively, (not just as survey num- and even terrorists) reinforces a myth tinues to reflect a highly divided and one they inherited, with deep and unre- found process of change and renovation, nistic but really boring for visitors at the bers)? How to challenge historical pre- that loyal citizenship resides in “nonin- unequal society. These conditions can- solved authoritarian legacies. It is up to tackling sensitive and controversial issues beginning of the 21st century. A change conceptions? How to defy the sanctity of volvement.” Accordingly, the criminal- not be overlooked when analyzing what them to renew their parents’ dreams for of memory in recent Colombian history. was necessary. the museum? As it is the birthplace of the ization of civic action is a strong indica- young people learn in schools about their peace and justice. The independence of Colombia is cel- However, real change (not just the cos- nation, change might feel like sacrilege. tor of an unexamined legacy of the war, civic roles—some seated at modern desks ebrated every July 20, because on that metic change in display cases and graphic The museum had also evolved as a place of one that remains a significant challenge with glossy textbooks and others staring Michelle J. Bellino is completing her day in 1810, a group of creoles (children design that most museums dream of) is memory; it had been the staging ground to democracy. Youth themselves are often out broken windows and with no books doctoral studies at Harvard Graduate of Spaniards born in America) started hard to achieve. It takes a lot of time and for the Army during the horrific Palace of scapegoated for much that is wrong in at all. Despite efforts at civic education, School of Education. She has been selected a fight with a Spaniard who refused to resources, but also demands a change of Justice siege in 1985 that left half of the the country, blamed for their alleged dis- Guatemalan youth reveal one of the low- as a Peace Scholar by the United States lend them a flower vase. That initial fight attitude, both in the way the museum Supreme Court justices dead. We wanted regard for the past, absence of moral val- est levels of trust for their government in Institute of Peace and a John H. Coat- sparked a riot that eventually ended in a views the visitors, and most difficult, the to honor old memories, but we were not ues, and failure to embrace their roles as the Latin American region. In this sense, sworth Fellow by the David Rockefeller declaration of independence. way visitors see the museum. sure about incorporating the newer ones. citizens in a democracy. strong knowledge of democracy’s ideals Center for Latin American Studies for In 1960, 150 years later, the house In 2002, we (one of us the director and Historical interpretations manifest cannot guard against everyday experience her research on Guatemalan youth civic where the fight started was restored and another a close advisor) started to think The new Museum for Independence honors as civic intentions. While some teachers with Guatemala’s democratic failures. development. made into a museum. This house-muse- about how to make that change. Several victims of the conflict in its hot spot project.

66 ReVista FALL 2013 photo courtesy of Museo de la independencia-casa del florero drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 67 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY creating citizenship

The first initiatives were of course front of the museum. The Army— using based on the old exhibition design. We the museum as its operation center — started to ask visitors about the very entered the Palace by force, killing sev- essence of the museum, the concept eral employees. After a couple of hours, of independence (understood as a the Army takeover became a slaughter. concept and not as a historical fact). To make a long story short, the result Visitors were invited to write their own was: around 117 people killed, 12 people independence declaration, to sit on a still disappeared and the building burnt sofa from the collection and “feel” inde- down to the ground. pendent (it was a play on words, as in After the massacre, the museum went Spanish the word “seat” [sentarse] is back to its normal life, avoiding the issue very similar to the word “feel” [sen- as a subject of its exhibitions, as if noth- tirse]), to “break” the historical flower ing had happened. We knew we had to vase (at least a jigsaw puzzle of it) and change this in our renovation, but there then reconstruct it. were several considerations. A survey even consulted the public The case is not closed yet and investi- about changing the name of the muse- gations are still ongoing. um (it used to be called the “Museum The museum is a National Museum, of July 20, 1810”). People agreed with operating under the Ministry of Cul- us that it should be called “The Museum ture, and hence everything the museum of Independence.” Based on the sur- offers is basically an official message; vey, we developed a new plan following in a way, it is the government speaking. a participative, interdisciplinary and Most of the accused (for using unneces- inclusive model, trying to bring in as sary force) are members of the Colom- many points of view as possible (archi- bian Army, and because of that, there is tects, museum professionals, anthro- a feeling that the government does not pologists, historians, politicians, art- agree with the accusations made against ists, journalists, conservators and many them.The guerrilla group signed a peace others). The result was then presented, treaty in 1990 and most of its militants evaluated and approved by experts in were pardoned. However, at the time Colombia and abroad. We finally had a of the museum reopening (2010), they plan for change. faced open opposition from then-Presi- Magnetoscopio, an internationally dent Álvaro Uribe, who accused them of renowned exhibition design firm, was being “terrorists.” hired to materialize the concepts of the In 2009, at the Reykjavik annual plan, and finally ideas started to take a ICOM/CECA (International Council of physical shape. Colombians would have Museums/Committee for Education and an innovative space to think about new Cultural Action) Conference, a Swedish ways of understanding the concepts of museum gave a presentation that related autonomy, liberty and independence. its experience with a project called “Hot However, one question still had no Spot: Awareness-Making on Contempo- answer... rary Issues in Museums.” That concept That was what to do about the rela- was exactly what we were looking for. tionship of the museum to the Palace We contacted the people responsible for of Justice siege 28 years ago. To make a the Hot Spot project in order to get their political statement, a group of the M-19 permission to duplicate their initiative. guerrilla took over, in 1985, the building Their reply went even further: housing the Supreme Court directly in “I [the project director] believe that the museum can play an enormously impor- From top, clockwise: Children learn about Colombian history in the Flower Vase Room; tant role to mediate burning issues activity bustles in the independent actions and invite the surrounding society and hall; a view of Llorente’s shop hall. open up for debates. To connect a hot

68 ReVista FALL 2013 photos courtesy of Museo de la independencia-casa del florero drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 69 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY

spot exhibition to the more ‘traditional’ Would such a person break something time, a simple explanation of why we exhibition is a very good idea. I recom- in the museum, or damage the exhibi- did things the way we did suffices to mend you invite people, collect their tion? Would people complain to the diffuse angry feelings. And at the end stories, invite experts that have unique press or directly to the Ministry of Cul- of the day, it is great to see that people experiences about the issues. Try to take ture? And most importantly: Would actually read what is displayed, and some risks, use strong photos, films, and people even care? get touched by it. The museum made objects.” Since the museum reopened, we had people active. We would rather have a had more than 500,000 visitors. Only legal complaint every week than have Now we had a strategy that we could about a hundred have complained they no reactions at all. follow. We thought of some ideas for the do not like the change. They miss the Finally, we think that participation display, and we brought in some objects old museum. Some don’t like the fact (and most importantly, involvement) of from the Palace of Justice; a video show- that there is not guide (they seem to our public is a key element in everything ing news from the time; an introductory reject independence!). However, there the museum does. Given that participa- text with four kinds of information (the had been just five complaints about the tion is one of the principles of the new facts or “cold figures,” the motivation Hot Spot. Visitors actively participate 1991 Colombian Constitution, we delib- of the guerrillas, the motivation of the by answering the questions (which are erately want to be consequent and take action as a result. It was not something we did just for the renovation. We keep asking our visitors about their feelings The new Museum of Independence in Bogotá seeks for future exhibitions: What would you to create a dialogue with a multiplicity of Colombia’s want to know?, What would you like to see? What do you think? How does pasts. Its motto is “a place where history is built by something make you feel? your own history.” It is not just a way of giving them the false illusion of participation; it is the way the museum wants to be, a place army and a plea for a truce made by a then exhibited, along with pieces from for dialogue. That is why our motto is “a unearthing magistrate caught in the crossfire); a list newspapers that come up virtually every place where history is built by your own of all the people killed; images of the day with judiciary decisions about the history.” people who are still “disappeared” and incident). Indeed, many even say that It may sound like a utopia, but it is we provided a mechanism for visitors this is their favorite part of the museum. certainly one we would like to involve the past to record and display their feelings and Maybe the most interesting com- our visitors in, at least two ways: poeti- opinions about the issues. plaints come from people that were cally and politically. Poetry implies the Although it was a very sensitive involved in the 1985 events. We have way in which we share knowledge and topic, most of the elements listed above received a couple of “rights to petition” experience, and politics is seen as the Sometimes unearthing the past is literal: digging up remains were easy to find. However, the problem from the lawyers handling the cases compromise we have to accomplish as to find the truth. And sometimes it is a figurative unearthing was how to pose the question to the of the people disappeared in the Pal- active citizens. of the past, the exploration of childhood experiences, adoption public. We did not want people to just ace of Justice and more recently, one read the information given and “take from the lawyer of the family of one of Daniel Castro is an artist, musician and exile to reconstruct painful histories. a side.” We wanted to, somehow, make the coronels that has been sentenced to and educator with an MA in His- visitors realize that there were several jail for misuse of power. In both cases tory from the National University of n In Search of Miss Esme 72 motivations for each side to do what we have had to seek legal counsel and Colombia. He is director of two historical they did. We aspired to activate critical reply to their claims with museological museums of the Ministry of Culture of n Discovering Dominga 74 thinking, rather than polarize opinion. arguments. Colombia (the Museo de la Independen- n Notes from Exile 76 After long discussions, we ended up When you get reactions like these cia-Casa del Florero and the Casa Museo n Unearthing the Past 79 formulating five questions that we hope (when both parts affected feel that the Quinta de Bolívar). can trigger critical opinions: To forget? other part should not be displayed, n Neruda and the Chilean Open Graves 83 To remember? To forgive? To condemn? with arguments like “those who for- Camilo Sánchez is an Industrial To repair? get their history are bound to repeat it”), Designer and MA in Museology from the Then the real challenge began. How the first reaction is often an angry one. University of East Anglia. He is current- would people react to the exhibition? There are of course many arguments ly the museological advisor of the Museo Would they be annoyed? Would some- to defend the presentation of all the de la Independencia-Casa del Florero one feel attacked or just indignant? actors involved. But then, most of the and the Casa Museo Quinta de Bolívar.

70 ReVista FALL 2013 artist credit name and url memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY unearthing the past

ers union. We lived there for almost a the center of town had not changed. I servative MP from Scotland. He drove a In Search of Miss Esme year; no one seemed to speak Spanish, even found the Café du Teatre where truck from Valencia to Madrid, bring- there were no other refugees and moth- my father had met for years with other ing supplies to the capital and returning Memories and History of the Spanish Civil War by Marysa Navarro er did not speak a word of French. As refugees every Sunday, but I could not with children. While in Spain, he met she told me once, it was a sad and very find the back road to Le Boucau—things two Englishmen, John Langdon-Davies solitary time for her. She had no news had changed too much, too many new and Eric Muggeridge, who in April of Dorita and did not know whether my streets and too many houses. 1937, with the support of the Spanish As a historian I have never worked on the the Republican government reforms, Commander of the Army of the North, father was dead or alive. “I cried myself I went back on two other trips and government, founded an organization Spanish Civil War. My concerns were especially those in the field of education. ordered an offensive against the Basque to sleep every night, hoping not to wake failed. I was even told that there had which they named the Foster Parents Argentine History and women in Latin On the morning of Saturday July 18, region. His forces took Irún and push- up in the morning, but since I did not been no colonies in Bayonne. How- Scheme for Children in Spain. They America. Yet the Spanish Civil War has as three planes flew low over the city, ing to the west, entered San Sebastián die during the night, I had to try to live ever, I persisted and did find the road, created colonies for children who were been central to my life and that of my Pamplona was invaded by an army of on the 15th. In March 1937 they began one more day.” part of the estate wall and a small gate. evacuated during the siege of Madrid family. Falangists and right-wing monarchist the assault on Bilbao, this time with the My father also left Spain from I also learned that the house had been or other cities, had lost their parents The war years left deep scars in all of militias known as Carlistas. In the after- support of the German Condor Legion. Gijón but he returned once again to destroyed and a Youth Center had been or were separated from them. Barton us, scars that bled profusely as soon as noon, the Commander of the Guar- Dorita still remembers the siren calls the Republican zone, this time going built on the grounds as well as houses joined them and shortly after, so did we began to speak about certain topics. dia Civil who refused to support the as the planes approached and despite to Valencia where the government had with gardens. Miss Esme Odgers, a young Australian Although we lived through two wars, coup was assassinated. The following her fear, taking Alberto’s hand and fol- moved. By late 1938, he joined the last My search for Miss Esme proved woman with a radiant smile, member “The War” was the Spanish Civil War, day, General Mola proclaimed Navar- lowing our mother who held me in her wave of Spaniards escaping Franco’s harder. In 2007 I googled both her and of the Young Communist League. She it was everything that had happened ra under the State of War; his troops arms, all of us running towards the ref- troops. This time he left Spain never to the Foster Parent organization without went to Spain with the Secretary Gen- to us, including our exile. Any attempt occupied all government buildings and uge we were assigned, a railroad tunnel return. He crossed the border in Catalu- success. There was a “Plan” but no infor- eral of the Australian Communist Par- to engage my parents in a conversation arrests began. My parents decided that near the station. After the destruction ña and was put in a concentration camp mation about the 1930s and neither a ty, with whom she had an affair. Once about a specific event or decision affect- my father was not safe and should try to of Gernika on April 15, 1937, the Basque by French authorities. We were reunited Foster Parents Plan founded for Spanish there, she left him to work with Barton, ing any or all of us was useless. They slip into France, which he did, helped by government decided to evacuate the with him after he was released, but to the children nor colonies. On one occasion, Langdon- Davies and Muggeridge. That just refused to answer my questions or my mother’s brother. He left the after- children. Some 20,000 children were despair of my parents, Dorita remained after giving a lecture at Swarthmore, I was not all, Nancy also discovered that explain what I wanted to understand or noon of Tuesday, July 21, but returned sent to several countries, among them in the Soviet Union. World War II began went to the Society of Friends Archives the University of Rhode Island held the simply know. the following day by Irún into Basque France, England, Mexico, Belgium and before she was able to leave, so we wait- in Philadelphia to see if they had any papers of the Foster Parents Scheme. As my retirement was approaching, I territory loyal to the Republic. the Soviet Union. My sister, the only ed for her ten long years. She joined us information about Le Bridon and/or It had changed its name when WWII decided to write a long essay or a book A few days later, as arrests and kill- one among the three of us who could in France in 1948, thanks to the efforts Miss Esme but found absolutely noth- began and is presently called Plan. In about the trials, tribulations and mean- ings multiplied and cadavers appeared travel because my brother was men- of the Basque government in exile. ing. During a three-month teaching vis- the summer of 2009, I was able to see derings of my family from the moment on the sides of the roads, my mother, my tally retarded and I was too little, left We never had the intimate, wrench- it to University College London, I spent my brother’s name and my own on the the Spanish Civil War began on July 18, siblings and I were detained for nearly a in a group of some 3,000 children that ing conversation I thought we should all many days in the Quaker Reading Room list of children in the Le Bridon colony. 1936. We—my parents, my 8-year-old month. We were released and eventually boarded the Sontay for the Soviet Union have wanted. In time I began to toy with looking for Miss Esme, again without The real shock was to learn that Miss brother Alberto, my 7-year-old sister, exchanged for children and adults who on June 13, 1937. the idea of writing about us to see if I success. When several books appeared Esme was a Communist and not a Quak- Dorita, and my toddler self—were living could begin to understand everyone and in Spain about the Civil War children er. I could not believe that my father had in Pamplona, the capital of Navarra. An especially myself. I did not know wheth- and the colonies, once again Le Bridon made such a mistake. If his informa- ultra-conservative province on the west- er I would write a historical narrative or and Miss Esme were absent. tion on Miss Esme was so wrong, how ern border with France, it was fanati- The years of the Spanish Civil War left deep scars on a personal memoir. The first thing I did Quite by chance I met Nancy Clough, could I rely on his memory, my moth- cally opposed to the new Republic, born all of my family, scars that bled profusely as soon as we was to go to France and visit the place who approached me after a panel on er’s, Dorita’s or my own? On the other of the municipal elections of April 1931. we had lived after my father left the children and the civil war at Williams hand, I kept telling myself that if I had Its Military Governor, General Emilio began to speak about certain topics. In time, I began concentration camp and became the co- College four years ago. She wanted to not insisted, trusting my memory (and Mola was one of the leaders of the July to toy with the idea of writing about us to see if I could director of a colony of Spanish refugee write a book about her uncle, Barton the old pictures I had) when people kept 1936 coup. Having failed to topple the children. I knew that it was supported Carter, a handsome and charismatic telling me that there was no Le Bridon, government, they found enough sup- begin to understand everyone and especially myself. by “cuáqueros” (Quakers) as he said, young man who died fighting in Spain I would have never found its traces. So I port in several provinces to transform it and that the person in charge was a Miss at age 23. She generously gave me access concluded that the thing to do is to trust into a civil war, “a crusade” in the words Esme. My parents did not know whether to an incredible amount of information my family’s memory, but anchor it in of General Francisco Franco. Navarra were caught by the war vacationing in Six days later, on June 19, 1937 it was a name or a surname, she was just and documents, including the solution documents, anchor it in history and that was one of its most reliable strongholds. San Sebastián and wanted to return to Franco’s troops entered Bilbao. The day Miss Esme, and the name of her orga- to the Esme mystery. is what I am doing. My father, who was 41 at the time, Navarra. My mother’s fear subsided only before, my mother, Alberto and I were nization was something like “The Foster Barton’s story belongs to Nancy, was a teacher who loved his profession when we reached the Republican zone. evacuated to Santander. We left Spain Parents.” I remembered that we lived in but suffice to say that the summer of Marysa Navarro is the Charles and Elf- and had risen to the rank of Inspector of We then went to Bilbao where we were for France before the city fell to Franco’s an enormous estate, that it was called 1936 the young Williams College stu- riede Collis Professor of History Emerita Primary Education recently. A member reunited with my father who was work- troops on August 26, 1937. We arrived Chateau Le Bridon or so I thought, dent went to Spain where he became at Dartmouth College and Resident of Izquierda Republicana (Left Republi- ing with the Basque government. in St. Nazaire and were sent to a village and that it was on the back road to Le involved with an English Aid group Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center can Party) he enthusiastically supported On September 5, 1936, Mola, by then near Lyon with the support of a teach- Boucau. When I returned to Bayonne, headed by the Duchess of Athol, a Con- for Latin American Studies.

72 ReVista fall 2013 drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 73 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY unearthing the past

Discovering Dominga

Adoptions and Tangled Truths by Mary Jo McConahay

In the open central market one morning in gle individuals, had come to Honduras Rabinal, Guatemala, 28-year-old Denese not to live, but to adopt. Becker picked up a bolt of corte cloth, When conflict, displacement and woven fabric used by Achi Maya women extreme poverty were national condi- to make their skirts, and brought it to her tions in the 1980s and 1990s in Central face. She closed her eyes. “My mother,” America, “orphans” was a term used she said. “This smells like my mother.” I indiscriminately for youngsters sepa- knew which one she was talking about. rated from their families, whether they That was more than a decade ago; had a living parent or close relatives or we were in Rabinal to shoot the PBS not. Reasons were myriad: both parents documentary Discovering Dominga, the might indeed be dead, killed in the vio- story of an Iowa housewife—Denese—a lence, as in Denese’s case, although close survivor of the 1982 Rio Negro massacre relatives said later they had searched for in which both her parents died. Denese, her fruitlessly in Guatemala; soldiers the former Dominga Sic, was returning and other armed authorities took chil- to look for the bones of her father and to dren after families were killed; in many untangle the truth of a lifetime of night- cases desperately poor single mothers, mares. On that journey she also discov- pregnant again, gave away newborns or ered a world of memory that might have sold them to enganchadores, front men remained hidden in small-town Iowa, for corrupt lawyers connected to ostensi- where she arrived at age eleven, adopted bly legitimate operations that can only be by an evangelical pastor and his wife. Her called “the baby trade.” In Honduras, and adoptive parents were loving and atten- sometimes in Guatemala, newspapers tive to her, their only daughter. However, periodically ran stories about the latest as I watched Denese Becker in the Gua- discovery of a casa cuna, houses where temala highlands, among trees and flow- multiple infants were fattened up from ers once familiar to her, I couldn’t help low birth weights before presentation to own toddler, covering post-earthquake Left above: A couple in In El Salvador. Here too, journalists and academics often overlooked stories about adoption because of time pressures. thinking how much this young woman prospective adoptive parents. events daily, I never investigated, and the Right: Denese Becker/Dominga Sic holds a portrait of her biological father in Rabinal, Guatemala, during the filming of Discovering Dominga. had lost by being taken from her roots to We will never know the true answer moment slipped away. At a holding camp live in a strange land. to the endless question, “Weren’t those for civilians “rescued” by the army from There are reasons why journalists, ator lords, keeping the Maya calendar what has come before. How much of “What is this tree called?” she would children better off raised elsewhere?” We Guazapa, a rebel stronghold, an elderly academic researchers and others do and performing ceremony. “What does the memory of the homelands is carried ask. “I know you can eat its leaves.” Or, simply won’t know. What we can sug- woman said her grandson had been not investigate such stories at the time, his red kerchief mean?” she asked me in the minds of children, now adults, as “I think I recognize that flower. It’s bad. gest in the wake of those terrible spasms taken by an officer; she feared he would including the urgency of other coverage later. “My grandfather wore one.” Now they live far from where they were born? Don’t touch it.” of violence in Central America, at least, raise him as his own. In mountainous and the general confusion of war. Some an evangelical Christian, she seemed Should adoptions during time of war be Like Denese, thousands of children is that those of us who were meant to Las Vueltas, known as territory sympa- feel that any child removed from the risk to struggle with the knowledge that forbidden, or truncated in any way? They during the Central American conflict be watching events so closely did not thetic to rebels, a man showed me where of war or life of poverty is indeed better her grandfather had been a guardian are questions we might consider before were adopted by foreigners, mostly from track the region’s youngest and most vul- he had lain in tall grass as his seven-year off, and questions ought to stop there for of Maya spirituality, so inimical to the we are forced, should the occasion arise, the United States and Europe. When my nerable inhabitants to the degree they old was taken away in a helicopter dur- the good of all. beliefs of her extended adoptive family. to answer them again. husband and I arrived in Tegucigalpa deserved. ing an army sweep, while she cried out, During the weeks we filmedDiscover - In the film Denese says that as a child in from San Francisco with our 8-month Their stories are many. In 1980s El “Papi!” He wept to recall he could not ing Dominga in 2001 and 2002, Denese Iowa she never “fit in”; but off camera in Mary Jo McConahay is the author of old in 1987, the hotel clerk glanced at the Salvador, for instance, a six-year old reach out to her without endangering could not bring herself to accept invita- Rabinal, it seemed clear that neither did Maya Roads, One Woman’s Journey infant slung across my chest and said, “I being adopted by a blind Italian man others who hid around him. tions to sleep in the dirt-floor houses Denese Becker/Dominga Sic “fit in” any Among the People of the Rainforest assume you want the adopting parents’ and his wife at our hotel approached “Do you think they will know that she of her relatives; their lives and living longer among the people to whom she (Chicago Review Press). She wrote the rate.” During the week it took us to find me to say her mother sold grilled meat is not an orphan?” he asked. “That I am conditions were too foreign to her. One was born. original story for the PBS documentary a rental house, we learned that a dozen near the Parque Libertad. She wanted to her father and I am alive? Will she know day, we met an ajq’ij, a spiritual guide An advantage of peace is the gift of Discovering Dominga and co-produced U.S. couples at the hotel, and several sin- return to her mother. Engaged with my that wherever she is?” charged with giving thanks to the Cre- space and time to ask questions about it with producer Pat Flynn.

74 ReVista fall 2013 photos by mary jo mcconahay drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 75 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY unearthing the past

Notes from Exile

Horizons of Democracy by Iván Jaksic

It certainly sounded glamorous at the tina, where I managed to stay for a year of the country was still an open-ended time—and even might sound so today. working as a machinist, and where the question, and that she clearly under- In October 1981, I flew from Berkeley, political situation soon deteriorated. I stood that intellectuals, both inside and California, where I had been visiting, to returned to Chile briefly, but was again outside of the country, could play a role attend an academic conference at Yale forced to leave the country, this time in in it. She saved me from cutting off all University on political scenarios under defiance of the draft. I thought I could ties to Chile, though I did not know it at the Chilean dictatorship. I had an airline claim an amnesty a few years later, and the time, when I was still searching for a ticket in my pocket to take me, after the in fact went back to Chile to claim it, but place to live. conference, to Lund, Sweden. So far so instead I was tried and sentenced for vio- Giving up on Sweden for the time good, except that the student visa I had lations of military law. A return to the being, I returned to the United States received upon entering the United States country under the circumstances would thanks to an invitation from historian in 1976 had just expired. have been foolhardy, and surely a route Tulio Halperín Donghi, which allowed At that point I was considering Swe- to further trouble. Sweden, where I had me to settle in Berkeley briefly in 1982, den as a potential place of residence after friends and an academic purpose, sound- and for a longer time beginning in 1983. receiving an invitation to present a paper ed like the best prospect at the time. My job as a researcher and then as pro- there on Chilean Marxist philosophy, a This is what was in my mind when I gram coordinator in the Center for Latin topic I had analyzed in my dissertation. listened to the presentations on Chile at American Studies at UC-Berkeley was The Swedish conference was a gathering Yale, analyzing the impact of eight years to put together activities relating to Left: The poster demands freedom for political prisoners; hemispheric issues. At the time, Central Right: “Chile, 2,500 disappeared. Pinochet, where are they?” America, with the Nicaraguan revolution and the Contra War, was at the center Intellectuals—inside and outside the country— played of public attention. But so was Argen- a role in the struggle for democracy of Chile, both tina, with the fall of the military govern- ment and the rise of Raúl Alfonsín, who Chile was also present in some of like this where issues were laid out and although I certainly did not idealize the during the dictatorship and in the reconstruction of became president of the country and was the lectures I helped organize, and very subsequent policies developed. Many of 19th century. The excessively long expe- post-dictatorship institutions. later honored at Berkeley for his role in much so when the time of the plebi- the participants in our conference, which rience of dictatorship made me, and I leading the country back to democracy. scite approached in 1988. It was in that took place in San Diego, and many of the dare say my generation, appreciate what I had meanwhile become involved in context that I contacted Paul W. Drake, authors in our The Struggle for Democ- had been taken for granted in previous of mainly Latin American exiles seeking of dictatorship. I felt somewhat detached, human rights issues through the Latin who generously accepted a proposal to racy in Chile, became leading figures in decades. Democracy was now certainly to address the increasingly agonizing experiencing what I now recognize as American Studies Association (LASA), collaborate, institutionally and person- the Concertación government that rein- more than a set of procedures for elect- question whether Marxism was still rel- symptoms of denial. My horizon was no writing a report on the Mapuche of ally, on a project that brought leading stated democracy in 1990. ing representative governments; indeed evant in the early 1980s, when workers longer Chile, but rather any place where southern Chile, whose lands had been scholars of Chile to analyze the pros- What became very clear to me, both it was a political philosophy that involved in Poland, just across the Baltic Sea, were I might be able to live. Among the Chil- privatized under Pinochet, disrupting pects for a transition to democracy. Such in my own work and in the coordination a commitment to fundamental values rebelling against their Marxist masters. I eans at that meeting was Sol Serrano, a and rupturing their communities. And a transition had been contemplated in of academic conferences and workshops, such as human rights. was on my way to lots of questions and historian like myself. We had a brief con- under the guidance of Lars Schoultz, the 1980 Constitution, but there were was that the times required a revision of And yet, the achievement of democ- uncertainties about the future. versation about issues that were rather who was then the head of the Task Force doubts about the sincerity of the govern- the standard understanding of how our racy in Chile in 1990 was not the trium- My host at Yale had been Daniel incongruous in that particular setting: on Human Rights and Academic Free- ment in implementing it. The response nations became nations, and how politi- phant end to an odd chapter in our histo- C. Levy, a specialist in Latin Ameri- the decade of the 1840s, when a sort of dom, I was also able to submit and pass from Chilean academics was extraordi- cal systems evolved into what they had ry. For those of us who remained abroad, can higher education, who’d told me cultural and political renaissance had a resolution condemning the assassina- nary, partly because the space for pub- become at the time: in most cases a sad distance allowed us to be perhaps less that there would be several Chileans occurred after a long authoritarian expe- tion of three human rights workers in lic discussion had become very limited trajectory from formal democracy to celebratory, and certainly more critical at the U.S. conference. I was starved rience. Sol had been a journalist in one Santiago in March 1985. I thus found in Chile after the failed assassination authoritarian rule. It became important than Chileans at home. Because of the for Chilean company, so I was grateful of the opposition journals, and was now a way to break out of my selfish denial attempt against Augusto Pinochet in to me to return to the roots of our his- peculiar nature of the transition, with for the opportunity to attend and catch at Yale pursuing an M.A. in history. It and collaborate with colleagues commit- 1986. Although we organizers of the tory in order to look more deeply into a tight civil-military coalition that had up with compatriots. I had given up on was a short conversation, but it lingered ted to alleviating in some fashion, or at event strongly believed that Chileans institutional designs, historically bound been only partly defeated, the work of ever returning to Chile. In 1974 I had in my mind when I arrived in Sweden. It least, denouncing egregious violations of would orchestrate their own transition political decisions, and fundamental democratization was not done. Although barely escaped arrest and fled to Argen- became clear to me that for Sol the future human rights. to democracy, it was in academic venues values that had been lost along the way, there might have been some timidity on

76 ReVista fall 2013 poster art courtesy of museo de la memoria y los derechos humanos, chile drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 77 memory: IN SEARCH OF HISTORY AND DEMOCRACY unearthing the past

the worst examples of income disparities tional policy agenda in a different direc- in the region and beyond. Another issue tion. But something important did take Unearthing the Past was human rights. This was dramatically place. Felipe had been there alone with corroborated when we met in San Diego his memory to confront many years of The Exhumation of Icons and Historical Memory in Chile by Jedrek Mularski with several scholars and human rights silence and denial. Now he could sum- advocates in October 1998. Just a couple mon the support of people who, albeit of days into our discussions the news slowly at first, agreed that his testimony arrived that Augusto Pinochet had been was far more valid than anything that his In 2010, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Chávez and his critics fetishized Bolívar’s in Where Memory Dwells, these debates arrested in London. The late Patricia Ver- tormentors could muster. He won the ordered the exhumation of Simón remains as they competed to attach their are often driven by state-led initiatives dugo and others present at the gathering specifics of the case, but in the process he Bolívar, the most renowned leader of own values and versions of history to a that utilize symbolic events and objects had lost family members or loved ones also revealed that there was much work, Latin America’s 19th century indepen- powerful symbol as a means of advanc- related to the past in order to “assist in during the fierce repression of the Pino- and there still is, to be done to get to the dence movements, to determine whether ing their political agendas. the process of smoothing over painful chet regime. The outcome of the arrest bottom of the injustices committed dur- Bolívar had been poisoned. Venezuelan Attempting to cultivate in Bolívar memories on the path toward national attested to the persistence of memory, ing the dictatorship. Full democratiza- state television subsequently broadcast a deep symbolic meaning that was not unity.” and to the sense of justice that inspired tion will not happen until such situations the event to the public, blending images about smoothing over the past, but about At their root, such initiatives to the fight for democracy. Clearly, it had are openly addressed and the appropri- of Bolívar, Chávez, and Bolívar’s remains revisiting old conflicts and reorienting smooth over the past form a pragmatic not been enough to return to democratic ate mechanisms are fully developed to with the sound of Venezuela’s national official state history, Chávez played a approach to dealing with a difficult his- elections in 1989. Democracy required prevent them. anthem in a presentation designed to role generally filled by opposition groups tory. They facilitate a process of selective justice, and justice could only be served if I am back in Chile now, since 2006, link Chávez to Bolívar’s legacy. In re- that embrace alternative, often-subver- remembering and forgetting as a means after nearly four decades since I first sponse, Chávez’s critics bristled at the sive versions of mainstream histories. to cultivate a collective national memory left the country. The issues mobilizing idea of Chávez exhuming an “indepen- These actions added another chapter to that recognizes selected events through people are different these days, but the dence hero” in an effort to cast himself a long history of Latin American govern- commemorations, monuments, truth Memory increases our chances of building the forty years that have passed since the as “Bolívar, reincarnated.” They called ments and oppositional groups clashing commission reports, and human rights military coup of September 11, 1973, the exhumation a “macabre parody” and over the manner in which the remains trials, while simultaneously emphasiz- democratic procedures that will prevent the recurrence serve as a reminder that memory, pain- a “freak show.” of icons, from Cuauhtémoc to Túpac ing the need for populations to unify by of another breakdown of civilian rule. ful though it might be, allows people Chávez was not the first politician Amaru to Santa Anna to Eva Perón, are letting go of past traumas. The prem- like me to retain and process the per- to manipulate the past in the service of memorialized. ise that underlies this approach is that sonal and emotional immediacy that is nationalist objectives, so it might appear The practice of exhuming historical populations cannot dwell on the past the part of the government to push for a people like our guests retained the mem- necessary to move on, both individually peculiar that the exhumation of Bolívar’s icons has increasingly begun to overlap because doing so would only prevent a more stern policy on human rights, or for ories of repression, and persevered in and collectively. Memory also increases remains would evoke such strong back- with debates over the value of revisit- nation from moving forward towards a further democratization, governing with their quest for redress despite the efforts our chances of building the democratic lash. However, as historian Lyman John- ing the human rights violations of Latin better future, which states often define Pinochet at the helm of the army was not of the first Concertación governments to procedures that will prevent the recur- son has noted, governments “exercise America’s Cold War era. This process has as a path rooted in national harmony an easy matter. That is why it was still settle the issue. The arrest of Pinochet rence of another breakdown of civilian great care to conserve and protect the been particularly prominent in Chile, and an embrace of neoliberalism. Those important to observe developments and changed everything. Memory would live rule with all its consequences. We will reputations of heroes regarded as essen- where a right-wing military coup over- who oppose this manner of dealing with promote an understanding of the gains on and kept pushing the boundaries of be the stronger for it. the past argue that it has the potential to and limitations of the transition era. This the politically prudent. reshape historical memory in ways that meant organizing new panels at LASA Extremely significant for me personal- Iván Jaksic is director of the Stanford undermine justice, democracy and civil and other venues, and embarking on a ly was the case of Felipe Agüero, a friend University Program in Santiago. A The exhumations of Chilean icons such as Pablo liberties in the present and future. new project with Paul Drake, supported and colleague of many years, who came DRCLAS Visiting Scholar (Fall 1997), Neruda and Víctor Jara have represented a movement The question of whether or not to by the Ford Foundation, analyzing the out publicly to reveal the identity of his he is author of The Hispanic World and exhume icons has taken on an increas- first decade of democratically elected torturer at the Estadio Nacional in 1973. American Intellectual Life, 1820-1880 against smoothing over the past to achieve national ing role in this debate during the last governments. What was eventually pub- The case resonated strongly in Chile, and (Palgrave Macmillan, January 2007), reconciliation. few years, and not unlike Chávez’s exhu- lished under the title El modelo chileno: also in the United States, where it was Andrés Bello: Scholarship and Nation- mation of Bolívar, the exhumation of democracia y desarrollo en los noventa covered extensively by The Chronicle of Building in Nineteenth-Century Latin Chilean icons has represented a move- (1999) was an attempt to critically assess Higher Education and by The New York America (Cambridge Latin American tial to the development and defense of threw democratically elected Socialist ment against smoothing over the past to what had been accomplished and what Times. I expressed my opinion in both Studies, 2001), and Academic Rebels in the nation. As a result, school curricula, President Salvador Allende in 1973 and achieve national reconciliation. In 2004, remained as blind spots in the search for venues that the case spoke directly to the Chile: The Role of Philosophy in Higher textbooks, speeches delivered on patri- established a nearly two-decades-long a Chilean court agreed to a request by deeper democratization. unresolved questions in Chile’s transi- Education and Politics (SUNY Press, otic holidays and other forms of public dictatorship in which thousands of Chil- the family of Eduardo Frei Montalva to One of the central issues was inequali- tion to democracy. But before the issue 1989). The author wishes to acknowledge memory are routinely scrutinized by eans were tortured, exiled, and killed. In exhume the body of the former president, ty. We pointed to the successes of the Con- could gain much traction in the United with gratitude the careful and insightful bureaucrats and politicians to defend the aftermath of this period, Chile has who initially had supported Chile’s right certación, especially in terms of reducing States, just a few months later, 9/11 reading of this article by Paul W. Drake, the official versions of these remem- struggled with the question of how this wing military coup in 1973, but eventu- poverty, but also to the shortcomings, as happened, understandably moving the Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Karen Kramer, bered lives from criticism or dismissal.” past should be remembered. As sociolo- ally became a leader of its centrist oppo- Chile was increasingly becoming one of public preoccupations and the interna- Katherine Roberts-Hite and Sol Serrano. In the case of Bolívar’s exhumation, both gist Macarena Gómez-Barris has argued sition. This investigation, challenged by

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the Chilean right, revealed evidence that political goal that will benefit the living, problematic because their exhumation pointed to members of the military gov- such as ending uncertainty for friends may cause the public to fetishize them. ernment having secretly poisoned Frei in and families of missing or deceased per- For example, as anthropologist Carleen 1982. In 2009, some two decades after sons, prosecuting war criminals or con- Sanchez has argued in her article, “The the end of military rule in Chile, Chilean tributing to political stability. Rosenblatt Apotheosis of Frida and Ché,” the tragic authorities agreed to exhume the body of has argued that dead bodies accordingly death of Ché Guevara and life of Frida leftist musician Víctor Jara after his fam- are viewed as objects of study, objects of Kahlo have contributed to a process in ily presented new evidence surrounding mourning, or objects of political nego- which both individuals have transformed Jara’s 1973 death. Forensic analysis of tiation, but rarely as a direct beneficiary from historical figures into fetishized Jara’s remains confirmed that military of forensic investigations. Therefore, commodities among audiences that have officers assassinated Jara and led to the while we might assume that most indi- little interest in understanding the com- arrest of several implicated officers. In viduals would want to have their remains plexities of their ideologies, desires, and 2011, the family of Salvador Allende, exhumed for forensic analysis if they agendas. This reality is particularly true despite believing that the former Presi- believed that doing so would help their in a neoliberal environment where states, dent took his own life during the 1973 friends and family find closure or bring commercial industries, and political par- coup that overthrew him, agreed to allow war criminals to justice, strong evidence ties work to appropriate icons and har- the exhumation of Allende’s remains in of public good must be provided in order ness their meanings for consumption by order to determine whether or not the to ethically or legally violate the rights of the public. military assassinated him. Most recently, the deceased. Despite the potential drawbacks to a Chilean court has ordered the exhuma- In response to the ruling to exhume investigating the deaths of icons, post- tion of former Communist Party politi- Neruda’s remains, the New York Times humous investigations into their deaths cian and Nobel Prize winning poet Pablo published in April 2013 an op-ed piece should not be viewed simply as efforts Neruda at the behest of Chile’s Commu- by Amherst College Professor Ilan to provide false senses of resolution or nist Party. The April 2013 ruling in favor Stavans entitled “Disturbing Pablo Ner- vindication. In his argument against the of this exhumation was based on testimo- uda’s Rest.” In his essay, Stavans con- exhumation of Neruda, Stavans cited ny from Neruda’s former chauffeur, who tended that Neruda’s exhumation is a the recently released Pablo Larraín film, believed that doctors poisoned Neruda “pointless” endeavor, an “act of expiation” “No,” as evidence that Pinochet is already at the same clinic where Frei appears to that is unlikely to lead to convictions and being sufficiently demonized without an have been poisoned nearly a decade later. has little historical value. Stavans made investigation into Neruda’s death. The Exhumations raise ethical questions a legitimate point about convictions. film illustrates a sharp tension between about what rights dead bodies have and Efforts to bring Frei’s assassins to jus- the main character, a Chilean exile who returns to Chile to create an ad cam- paign against Pinochet that focuses on a bright future, in contrast to anti-Pino- Exhumations raise ethical questions about what rights chet political leaders, who lived through dead bodies have and when exhumations are justified. the dictatorship and seek to expose the atrocities that the military government Strong evidence of public good must be provided. committed. Ultimately, the positive ad campaign wins out. The Pinochet regime is undoubtedly the villain in this film, but when exhumations are justified. Societ- tice have yet to yield significant results; the film ends with the electorate voting ies often afford certain legal rights to forensic analysis appears to have con- Pinochet out of office and the main char- deceased bodies, such as the right not to firmed that Allende took his own life; acter moving forward into a high-profile be trafficked, not to be dissected with- and Jara’s accused assassins have not job with a much-hyped, glamorous soap out consent, and not to be used sexu- yet been convicted. Furthermore, those opera about Chilean jet setters. In a con- ally. These legal rights, however, must accused of dictatorship-era crimes— clusion that dramatizes state efforts to be weighed against the value that an including Augusto Pinochet, the leader smooth over the past and move forward exhumation would provide. According to of Chile’s military government—often into a unified, neoliberal future, the film human rights scholar Adam Rosenblatt, are themselves deceased or able to hide poignantly never returns to the issue of the standard justification among inter- behind claims of being unfit to stand trial how those who suffered under the dicta- national forensic scientists for exhuming due to old age or failing health. torship would cope in this new era with and analyzing remains is that an inves- Compounding these difficulties, the tigation will contribute to an ethical or value of exhuming icons can also be Pisagua 1990, an exhumation site in Chile.

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their forgotten demands for justice, truth knots stir up, collect, and concentrate the process of learning from this past and and full disclosure. memories, “thereby ‘projecting’ memory coping with the trauma that it caused. Neruda and the Chilean Open Graves Facts about the lives and deaths of and polemics about memory into pub- But the dictatorship era brought about historical icons have the potential to pre- lic space or imagination.” The fact that the torture and deaths of thousands of Windows of Hope by Paula Molina serve and expand historical memories Jara died at the hands of the dictatorship individuals whose plights must likewise that run counter to official histories that gives both Jara and his music an added be investigated and humanized. Stud- seek to smooth over painful pasts in the significance that reminds all generations ies have revealed that knowing the facts interest of national unity. The exhuma- of the atrocities that can be unleashed by about tragedies and gaining closure is Chilean graves have been opening during any artificial limit as they go on for gen- with despair when the inquiry into the tion of Neruda has captured the world’s authoritarian regimes and those who are part of the healing process for many the last years. Remains of poet Pablo erations? death of the musician was closed in attention because the poet was an inter- complicit with them. people who endure traumas; yet many Neruda were removed last May from his It is significant that most of these 2008 with no conclusive results. But national icon, whose life and death car- The meaning that individuals derive relatives of individuals who were “dis- tomb facing the Pacific in the small Chil- exhumations took place under the she managed to keep hope and courage, ries tremendous symbolic power that from poems is shaped not only by the appeared” during the dictatorship have ean coastal town of Isla Negra. Before administration of President Sebastián and renewed her public call for infor- extends beyond his artistic composi- words that emerge from an author’s become worn-down by years of pain, Neruda, in May 2011, remains of former Piñera without any real public concern mation to any of the 6,000 persons, sol- tions. Regardless of whether an indi- pen, but also by what readers know frustration, and failures by the state to President Salvador Allende were also for democratic stability. In 2009, Piñera’s diers and detainees alike, who were part vidual knew Pablo Neruda or Víctor Jara about the author. The loss of life due to resolve cases pertaining to the deaths of unburied, to fully determine if he in fact election was widely seen as marking of the detention center where Jara was personally, Neruda’s poems and Jara’s political convictions generates strong their loved ones. Those who experienced committed suicide while military forces the end of Chilean political transition killed. And finally, former conscripts songs do continue to speak to people in public emotions, and evidence that the such traumas deserve any information— bombarded the presidential palace. and the healing of wounds that some began to talk: “They had been seriously universal ways that make them “current military murdered Neruda would irre- from identification of remains to cause Víctor Jara, one of Chile’s best musi- described as “from the past.” threatened over the years and they had and vital” to many generations. vocably link the poet’s image and words of death to identities of those respon- cians, founding father of local New Song been living in fear,” said Joan Jara, who Víctor Jara’s music has not been for- with the brazen atrocities of Chile’s mili- sible for deaths—that might help them movement, was also exhumed in June The advantages of waiting collected enough information to reopen gotten in Chile, where thousands of tary regime. If assassination is proven, find solace. They also deserve a broader, 2009, after judicial authorities reopened Human rights cases are kept alive thanks the case that led to Víctor’s exhumation. people took to the streets to honor him Neruda and his poems would become a ongoing effort that does not seek simply the investigation into his death. Exams to the tireless persistence and the per- Time passes for judges too and, in when his remains were reburied after more vivid reminder of what can happen to “smooth over” the past in the name revealed that Jara received 44 bul- manent sense of urgency on the part of another effect described by Roht-Arri- the recent investigation into his mur- when democracy and civil liberties are of national unity, but that strives more let wounds, and that he had been tor- relatives of the victims. They know that aza, new magistrates may “have less of der. Their actions demonstrated their upended. Given the propensity of state deeply to understand and remember tured and his wrists were broken while mothers, families and friends of victims a personal stake in trying the crimes of strong emotional attachment to the sing- forces to “smooth over” the past through the violence of the dictatorship era as a detained in the stadium now bearing may get old and die not knowing the truth the past” decades after repression. New, er and intense sorrow or trauma about actions such as the Chilean government’s means of preventing its reoccurrence. his name. The Chilean justice system or receiving justice. There is no excuse for younger judges, “who don´t feel the guilt his death. Jara, in this sense, represents recent changing of historical vocabulary The exhumations of icons can serve ordered the arrest of eight former army the slow pace of justice; but there must be pangs from their inaction in desperate what historian Steve Stern has referred in elementary classrooms from “dictator- as valuable starting points in these pro- officers—including a demand for the at least hope in certain cases. times “are (more) willing to follow the to in Remembering Pinochet’s Chile as a ship” to “military period,” such reminders cesses, but they are valuable only so far as extradition of Pedro Pablo Barrientos “It may be that at least some aspects evidence wherever it goes.” “memory knot,” or an entity that forces play a critical role in keeping alternative they serve as a launching point for culti- Núñez from the United States. “There of justice prove easier to attain after When special judge Miguel Vásquez “charged issues of memory and forget- versions of the past alive in Chile’s collec- vating a deeper awareness of the experi- has been a slight window of hope since time has distanced the actors and the issued indictments and arrest war- fulness into a public domain”; memory tive memory. ences and interactions among individu- the exhumation” said the widow of the society from the events in question” rants against eight former military offi- Revealing the tragic stories of fallen als at all levels of society that led to the artist, Joan Jara. writes Naomi Roth-Arriaza in The Pino- cials involved in Jara’s death, his widow icons plays an important role in learn- polarization and suffering of this era. Former Chilean President Eduardo chet Effect, a book that details the cir- observed “the interesting thing is that ing from this past. However, investiga- As Víctor Jara’s widow Joan stated after Frei Montalva, who preceded Allende cumstances of the Pinochet detention the new judge is not from a human rights tions into the deaths of icons should not the arrest of four of the military officers and died in the same clinic where Neruda in London and its unexpected effect in background; he is a criminal judge. This become the defining characteristic of the accused of his murder, “If Víctor’s case passed away, was also exhumed in 2006. Chile (the conversations it opened, the has produced different results.” dictatorship era. This period can only be serves as an example, we’re pushing for- Septicemia was the official cause of his truth that it revealed, the justice limits Allende was unburied on the first understood fully if investigations exam- ward in demanding justice for Víctor death, but his family suspected murder. it tested). The assertion seems particu- official investigation into his death. The ine on multiple levels the complex web with the hope that justice will follow for After forensic exams, a Chilean judge larly appropriate in the case of recent inquiry was part of new investigations of behaviors that caused it. The human everyone.” determined that the death of the former Chilean exhumations. into 726 human rights-related cases rights violations of this time were the president was homicide perpetrated by Roht-Arriaza has described “the where no investigations had been under- result of various behaviors and events, Jedrek Mularski received a master’s Pinochet agents. Six persons were arrest- advantages of waiting” in the cases of taken before. Filing the legal complaints ranging from the overt actions of the degree in education from the Harvard ed in a still ongoing judicial process. human rights crime trials, and at the on behalf of the victims, the judicial military leadership to the complicity of Graduate School of Education and a Allende, Jara and Neruda died in beginning of the 21st century those prosecutor said to the Chilean press: citizens who supported the authoritarian Ph.D. in Latin American History from 1973, Frei Montalva in 1982. They have advantages are seen in Chile. She “Justice will investigate what has not regime. the University of California, San Diego. been dead for 30, 40 years. Why are describes how, as time passed and been investigated yet, and it will reach Investigations into the death of icons He is an Assistant Professor of History their remains unburied now? Are they democracy grew stronger, witnesses lost the relating result. We may clarify some such as Neruda are an important act in at Saddleback College, and his scholar- the dead markers of a failed transition? their fear while those most implicated situations, some others we will not. But ship focuses on the relationship between Or do they represent living proofs of a in human rights crimes retired and lost judicial power will investigate, so that 10 Poster reads “No to Torture; Do Away with music, popular culture, and political stronger democracy and how universal their influence. years from now, no one may say: this is the Chilean Intelligence Directorate (CNI)” identities in Chile. demands for truth and justice may resist Víctor Jara’s widow Joan watched still pending.”

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New Forensics Trials and transition and politics and the calls for a constitu- The Neruda exhumation was covered Once democracy was recovered, Chil- tional reform, there is no space to repress globally not only from political perspec- ean democratic governments addressed some pending questions from the past. tives but also from criminal ones. It a traumatic past of torture, killing and That Neruda died of cancer, and may- Violent Legacies, Intimate Photos became a mystery to resolve, maybe a disappearances in the frame of a politi- be of grief in the aftermath of the coup political crime and an attractive challenge cal transition with Pinochet still posi- was a poetic, but also a politically useful A Review by Pablo Corral Vega for any judge. First forensic results—that tioned as a life Senator. In a long series answer to his death. His aide and driver, proved Neruda had cancer but did not of “tacit pacts,” Patricio Aylwin, the first Manuel Araya, spent years denouncing it rule out another cause of death—were elected president after the military dicta- as a political murder, but he was ignored dispatched in weeks. Amid public atten- torship, offered justice “to the extent pos- as a witness as the Neruda Foundation Unsettled/Desasosiego, tion and respect I have for These children have now tion and international interest, free from sible.” Three leaders of Pinochet’s secret and the poet’s survivors found their own Children in a World of Gangs DeCesare, I had some doubts ceased being children for a the imposed and self imposed political services were incarcerated, but in a spe- way to deal with the death. Araya may by Donna DeCesare when I heard that she had long time or perhaps are no complications of the 1990s, there are good cial prison facility, and many perpetra- not be right, but he sounded reasonable (University of Texas Press, published a book about the longer living. To survive in reasons to believe that the case will move tors of human rights crimes and abuses enough for Judge Mario Carroza who, Austin, 2013, 164 pages) children of violence. It is a this world is almost a miracle, as fast as possible in the following months. remained in a state of impunity or had after two years of investigation, ordered prejudice that I carry with and there are very few who Forty years after his death, the search wide access to penal benefits. the exhumation of Neruda’s remains. Unsettled/Desasosiego is an me after having seen innu- have found a path other than for answers in the remains of Neruda The Chilean Truth and Reconciliation Roht-Arriaza proposes to decouple honest book that recounts merable photos of children violence. Children are mes- and the bones of political or other victims Commission report, “Informe Rettig,” transition and trials. Even if there is a Donna DeCesare’s long rela- with their large and tender sengers who cross time and might also benefit for the developing of investigated repression between 1973 and transitional moment during which new tionship with Central America eyes, photo-hooks seeking to generations, who carry with new forensic techniques also being applied 1990. Endorsed by the state, the report authorities must use a temporary unity and its people in an intimate, entrap the readers, immers- them the residues of the hor- war—fratricidal war—that in countries dealing with similar challeng- brought truth and dignity to the memory and legitimacy to address human rights personal fashion. ing them in easy emotions. rors they experienced. tore through the social fabric es of justice, like Mexico or Guatemala. of more than 3,000 victims. Neverthe- violations, trials may extend for many The photograph on page It was encouraging to Unsettled/Desasosiego and produced countless In the Neruda case, the forensic team is less, in a 2005 Special Report for the decades beyond that time. 19 is highly revealing. It discover that the photos in is a book that hurts. Its deaths and thousands of composed of members of Chilean Forensic United States Institute of Peace, Judy This is good news for those who will captures the movement of this book, product of decades photographs are testimonies displaced people. The photos Medical Service, experts from the Univer- Barsalou described the Chilean commis- never stop demanding answers. Chilean people, the chaotic hubbub, of work, are the result of a of children whose child- from this period display the sity of Chile, United States and Spain and sion as “one of the clearest cases of a tran- relatives of victims value the advances in the ongoing life of the town dialogue, of an exchange, of hood was mutilated, whose euphoria, the worry, the observers from other countries with exper- sitional justice mechanism compromised truth, but resent the lack of justice. Exhu- and—finally—some armed shared personal experience. images are always made with fragility of civilians. DeCesare tise in medicine, anthropology and toxicol- by politics. Although its work was still of mations, even somber and sad, are seen men who seem entirely out Donna DeCesare, who is enormous respect, without avoids graphic or violent pho- ogy among others. Sweden, Switzerland great value, its mandate was limited in as an important part of keeping their of place. On the left, a little receiving Columbia Univer- affectation or sentimentality. tos; rather, her images bring and Canada also offered their help. three important aspects: it could investi- fight alive. Isabel Allende Bussi, daughter girl embraces a wooden pole. sity’s Maria Moors Cabot The text, written by DeCesare us closer to the humanity of But the benefits of new forensic tech- gate only deaths and disappearances...all of the socialist president, agreed to the She is the focal point of the Award for outstanding in a personal and committed those portrayed and to their niques do not mitigate the sort of unnatu- of its hearings were held in private; and it exhumation even if she and the rest of the image; she holds on to the journalism this fall, is a well voice, offers us a political and innermost emotions. ral process of removing human remains, was forbidden to name perpetrators.” family were convinced that her father had pole to keep herself from known photojournalist. The historic context that we need The second part of the even if the processes are conducted sensi- Historian of modern Latin America taken his own life: “We have to set the falling and at the same time most frequent error we pho- to understand the signifi- book discussed Central Amer- tively. When Neruda was “disturbed from Kirsten Weld, assistant professor at Har- example if we’re asking that other actors appears to be holding up the tographers make is to publish cance of the images. ica’s displaced people, how, his rest,” as The New York Times observed, vard, describes the effect of the Piñera provide complete cooperation”. world so that it will not be photos for other photogra- DeCesare’s writing tells as victims of the violence, classical musicians played a set based on government, the first government after The wounds from political repression swept away by the whirlwind. phers, complex photos that us how the counterinsur- they ended up living in the his works, adding solemnity to the cer- 1989 not made up of Pinochet opponents. are now part of Chilean identity; they It is an intimate photo —the demonstrate the sophistica- gency war of the 1980s in most violent neighborhoods emony. After the exhumation, Víctor Jara As Chile returned to democracy, former are not only scars but reminders of the girl is lost in her fantasies— tion of our gaze. DeCesare’s Central America, financed by of large American cities, was reburied in a massive funeral where military authorities were a real threat; the fractures of a resounding fall. It is not and DeCesare approaches book is not trying to impress the United States in blatant especially in Los Angeles. thousands paid homage and respect. Even vestiges of a drama of deaths, tortures and simply the past that is haunting; it is her with great respect and anyone. She shows poetic support of genocidal govern- The tragic destiny of many if they do not erase the pain, such gestures exile may have kept some politicians from the present shown in all its weaknesses delicacy. photos of enormous beauty ments, left an indelible mark of those who emigrated is and ceremonies may open public dialogues taking measures that could be perceived as and strengths, and the coming future There is something and sophistication, and she on these societies. And we that they found themselves that are part of a reconciliation process. too provocative by the military. A certain that need to take all this history into an dreamy, slightly incongruent also has simple photos, which come to understand that the immersed in a new war when Exhumations may be sad and disturb- sense of loyalty to the recovered democra- account, one that can always be seen in that photo. The contrast could be in a family album. rebels also committed terrible they sought a place that ing exercises. But they may also be unex- cy may have also discouraged the demands with new, courageous eyes. between the sweet and All are necessary to recount deeds. We learn that many of should have offered refuge pected parts of the “multitude of strate- for justice. Former opponents became the inward-turning experience of this history. today’s gang members were and protection. DeCesare gies” that Louis Bickford described in establishment. Once Piñera was elected, Paula Molina is a Chilean journalist, the girl and the presence of The book’s subtitle is yesterday’s victims. And we basically photographs the way Human Rights Quarterly in 2007, includ- relatives of victims and judges were not Harvard Nieman Fellow 2013. She is the the armed men is unsettling. “Children in a World of conclude that today’s children people relate to each other, ing truth commissions, criminal prosecu- afraid of rocking the boat anymore. anchor and editor of a daily program in It is evident that her fanci- Gangs.” Children are present will probably perpetuate this and tries at all cost to redeem tions, reparation policies and memorials In a country where a wave of students Radio Cooperativa, Chile’s leading news ful dreaming could easily be in almost all of the images. cycle of violence. them by demonstrating their as elements used “for dealing with past, protest has lead to a profound debate radio. She also is a collaborator with the turned into a nightmare. There are photos of children The first part of the book most human and tender human rights abuse, atrocity and conflict.” about the Pinochetian bases of economics BBC of London. In spite of the admira- taken in the 1980s and 1990s. discusses the 1980s civil aspects.

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The third section gives bestow identity, especially This is a memoir, not the fighting, the deaths, the at least for a while, placing the book its title. Unsettled/ to those who have lost it. Writing the Rough Draft academic analysis. As I read, armaments, or the intelli- pressure on the warring sides Desasosiego is the construc- Unsettled/Desasosiego is a I initially found myself some- gence that made widespread to significantly reduce the tion of a society that does not precious family album, a of Salvadoran History what frustrated at the flatness killing possible. And the massacre of civilians by the have a focal point, a society personal diary written with of the Salvadoran people greatest silence of all came second half of the war, and to of eternally displaced people. devotion and care. A Review by Jocelyn Viterna portrayed in the book. But from the bodies, the relent- help forge a peace agreement Gang members, the violent The crisis of photojour- soon I realized that this was lessly accumulating bodies, by 1992. actors in today’s society, nalism is due not only to the intentional. Frazier wants us whose appearance on busy Frazier is at his best when are citizens of violence, of radical democratization of to feel his frustration with the sidewalks, along highways, he is reflecting about the past. marginality. They are not photography. Certainly, now El Salvador Could Be Like be surprised by such offers. flatness of his own interac- or at the foot of the infamous This richness is developed Americans in spite of the there are millions of people That: A Memoir of War, We graciously accepted. tions with Salvadorans in a “Puerto del Diablo” cliffs was through interviews with many cultural references who have access to a camera Politics, and Journalism After dinner, our host’s situation where so many more so routine that they seldom hard-to-kill communist lead- they have constructed in and who use photography to from the Front Row of the story began to unfold. A uni- powerful emotions—outrage, caused passersby to slow their ers, gringo surfers and war the United States, but they communicate. Photojournal- Last Bloody Conflict of the versity student turned activ- anger, deep sadness—would pace. These bodies are regu- orphans. His discussion of are also not citizens of their ism is also losing relevance U.S.-Soviet Cold War ist turned rebel fighter in have seemed more appropri- larly remembered throughout the complicated relationship own countries because their because we photographers by Joseph B. Frazier (Karina the late 1970s, she had spent ate. For example, Frazier Frazier’s manuscript. between the Church, the state, memories and their tradi- have not understood that Library Press, 203 pages) 12 years fighting with the just?” To which she respond- recollects how well-meaning Reading this book helped art, and the people expertly tions were dynamited during we are not the owners of FMLN guerrillas in the rural ed: “There are no just wars. AP editors repeatedly asked me understand the magni- captured the complexity of a long confrontation without photographic language (in “There are no just wars. There war zones, and then elected There are only just causes.” him to get the opinions of the tude of the challenges faced political ideas, and the per- winners and a conflict that the same way that writers are only just causes.” to stay in the countryside Joe Frazier would have felt “regular” Salvadorans on the by journalists in war zones. vasiveness of old power, in El continues, seemingly without are not the owners of the I was sitting in the mod- after the Peace Accords were right at home in that conver- street, despite reminders that They are asked to write a Salvador. Frazier’s discussion a solution. The images taken language that all of us use). est home of a former FMLN signed in 1992. Her story sur- sation. “regular” Salvadorans were story, to define the sides of a of the present is understand- in Central America for the We have forgotten that our guerrilla woman in a rural prised me on two fronts. For Frazier’s book takes us far too smart to vocalize their conflict, to explain the bodies, ably less well-developed and last chapter are the most mission is not to save the village in the northeastern one thing, in my experience, back to El Salvador in the opinions to a U.S. reporter if to provide accurate accounts tinged with sadness. He draws disturbing in the book. Pain, world nor to redeem it—that corner of El Salvador. It was most urbanites had been early 1980s, where thousands they wanted to avoid torture of where arms came from striking comparisons between fear and lack of hope ema- is true arrogance—and that 2001, and I was nearing the only too happy to return to were killed, tortured and dis- and death. or which political alliances deaths caused by gang nate from the photos. no one has an obligation to end of my second year-long city comforts after the war’s appeared each month because By the book’s end, the were forming, in a situation violence today with those Unsettled/Desasosiego is listen to us. stint in this small Central end. For another, she made they expressed the wrong eclectic and dizzying col- where such information could caused by political violence a book that should be read Our task is much more American nation, interview- a number of statements sug- political beliefs, lived in the lection of recollected events (and did) get you killed. It in the 1980s. He laments the slowly. The text becomes a modest: to tell personal ing more than 200 Salva- gesting that she thought the wrong village, exchanged began to take on a rhythm is because of reporters like continued poverty and suf- revealing compass, a detailed stories —stories that are dorans, mostly from rural FMLN’s militant actions in pleasantries with the wrong fering of Salvadorans, as well testimony of encounters and important to us—and do areas, about their experiences the early 1980s might have friends, or just happened to as the state’s efforts to forget misencounters of aspirations so with honesty. We should during the civil conflict of the been a mistake. It wasn’t that be in the wrong place at the the past, including wiping the and frustrations. approach the lives of others 1980s. My host was not one of most of my respondents were wrong time. Frazier, a foreign Reading this book helped me nuances of the civil war out Fred Ritchin’s preface on tiptoe, with enormous my campesina respondents, knee-jerk FMLN supporters. correspondent for the Associ- understand the huge challenges faced of school children’s history is, as always, extraordinary. delicacy and respect, just as but rather a highly educated Most expressed frustration ated Press living and work- books. Mostly, he laments Ritchin is one of the most Donna DeCesare has done in woman with urban, middle- with at least some aspect of ing in wartorn El Salvador by journalists in war zone. how little the rest of the world lucid thinkers, a visionary Unsettled/Desasosiego. class roots. She was small party politics, even if they at recounts the war in a dizzying seems to care about the con- of the image. He makes but wiry; an aura of relaxed the end of the day preferred fashion. His writing is clear tinued poverty and violence an essential observation, Pablo Corral Vega is the self-assurance veiled, but the FMLN to other parties. and direct, slipping seamless- of its own, and the feel of El Frazier that the international that wracks El Salvador, after namely, that DeCesare’s pho- founder of nuestramirada. could not hide, the underly- But none—not one—had ly from anecdote to interview Salvador in the 1980s—an El community learned about paying so much lethal atten- tos accomplish a goal much org, the largest photojour- ing sinewy toughness of her ever questioned that war was to colorful jokes to political Salvador I’ve never experi- massacres like El Mozote and tion to it in the 1980s. more important than that nalist network in Latin personality. She had struck the FMLN’s only option in commentary, but often losing enced—began to emerge. This the Rio Sumpul. It is because Frazier never had the of a reporter who recounts America. He is the co-director up a friendly conversation 1980s El Salvador. The state track of dates, places or the was a time when Salvadorans of reporters like Frazier that luxury of getting to know a story to inform the world. of POY Latam, the most with my friend and me as we military was massacring significance of the reported survived by saying the exactly the international commu- Salvadorans’ opinions about These photos return memory respected photojournalis- wandered through her village. Salvadoran civilians, I was event. Indeed, Frazier seems right nothing. Where is your nity came to understand how the war like I did—through to the people who are being tic competition in Ibero- Within minutes of saying told. The FMLN had no to be nudging us to draw compañero? Working. Doing “democratic” elections can long, leisurely conversations photographed. America. His photographic hello, the former guerrillera choice but to pick up arms exactly this conclusion: that what? Working. Where are exist alongside antidemo- that lasted into the dark of the One of the most impor- work has been published in had invited us to spend the and defend them. After the events themselves were the other men in this village? cratic politics. It is because night. And yet he sacrificed tant uses of photography is National Geographic and night in her extra bed. After another such moment of insignificant; what mattered Working. This was a time of reporters like Frazier that so much to tell the story of to help construct a family other international media. two years of consistently gen- questioning the FMLN’s mili- were the lives lost in exchange when politicians offered the international human Central America. While in album, a kind of rosary of He was a 2011 Nieman Fel- erous hospitality from rural tant strategy, I asked, “But for the political posturings of platitudes and excuses, but rights community turned its El Salvador, Frazier’s friends memories and feelings that low at Harvard. Salvadorans, I had ceased to didn’t you think the war was the 1980s. no real information about attention to Central America, and fellow journalists were

86 ReVista FALL 2013 drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 87 book talk killed. His wife was killed. Transforming the Andes The book provides a guidepost for policies, institutions and Several people who granted Andeanists to develop a more expansive technologies, Rappaport and him interviews were killed Cummins give the reader shortly after speaking to A Review by Gary Urton perspective on colonial history. a “thick description” of the him. Yet he stayed on, daily lives of the local elites raising his young son. It and commoners in communi- is difficult to overstate his convincingly than did Rama and in many cases subverted ties throughout the Colom- commitment to the Salva- Beyond the Lettered City: focus on the central Andes, populations of the Andes in is the huge body of docu- the imposed institutions, bian and Ecuadorian Andes. doran people, despite the Indigenous Literacies in the with particular emphasis on the colonial era. The great ments produced by and on procedures and forms of As is true of all works, understated nature of his Andes by Joanne Rappaport Peru and (to a lesser extent) insight of Rappaport and behalf of Andean peoples in expression. This resulted in a with only a few excep- memoirs. and Tom Cummins (Duke Uni- Bolivia. The territory of the Cummins is that there is their confrontation with the range of indigenous-inspired tions (e.g., Michaelangelo’s Upon finishing the book, versity Press, 2012) latter two nation-states— no contradiction in this last imposed bureaucracies. This productions, such as paint- painting of the ceiling of the what most struck me was in the colonial era called, statement (“the importance of offering would be enough of ings in local churches; docu- Sistine Chapel, etc.), there are the difference between his In the spirit of full disclosure, respectively, Lower and literacy for the illiterate”). a contribution, particularly ments of various types (wills, a few things left wanting in Salvadoran experiences and I begin by stating that the Upper Peru—lay at the heart The key to Rappaport and given how extraordinarily land holding descriptions, Beyond the Lettered City. In my own. Journalists like co-authors of this award- of Tawantinsuyu: the Inka Cummins’s approach to the rich these sections of the book disputes over local lordships, this reviewer’s view, principal Frazier wrote the rough winning book* are both Empire. The northern Andes, topic not just of literacy but of tion built on an ideology of are. However, Rappaport etc.); and ritual performances among the things overlooked draft of Salvadoran history, close, long-time friends of the region from Colombia what they term “indigenous the primacy of the written and Cummins move beyond that combined Catholic (except for one exculpatory often at great personal risk. the author of this review. I down through Ecuador, literacies” is the centrality word; within this system, the it to indigenous actions in a and indigenous characters, footnote: pg. 264, note #6) Since then, forensic scien- attended graduate school in received less attention from of writing in the formation urban landscape was consti- number of “fields” not strictly images and themes, all of is the barest of attention to tists have uncovered bod- anthropology at the Univer- colonial historians. Rarer still of settled, urban spaces in tuted as a literate scenario for delimited by writing and which affords broader forms what was the subject mat- ies, former generals have sity of Illinois, Champaign- are works that meaningfully early colonial Latin America. indigenous conversion and reading. That is, the authors of “transculturation” from ter of the vast majority of begun to confess their war Urbana, with Joanne Rappa- draw together the peoples, The central theorist of this domination, structuring the take the performances of lit- those originally envisioned by colonial documentation: crimes under new amnesty port in the 1970s, and I have cultures, histories and perception was the great Uru- exercise of power by native eracy to be constituted as well Ángel Rama. Their extraor- numbers, numerical data, laws, and academics have been in close contact with environments of the north- guayan writer, academic and actors and Spaniards alike. by a whole range of practices dinarily rich exposition of the and administrative statistics. started putting flesh on the Tom Cummins ever since we ern and central Andes into a literary critic, Ángel Rama Legal documents functioned linked to the order, disciplin- latter forms of appropriation The term “alphabetic” is used skeleton of Salvadoran his- coincided on some of our ear- single work of deep histori- (1926-1983). In his book, The as prime vehicles for trans- ary practices and knowledge and production in Beyond the throughout this work to des- tory. I, like Frazier and my liest respective field research cal analysis; this is precisely Lettered City, Rama had laid forming native perceptions of that came along with the Lettered City is what carries ignate the script of these colo- Salvadoran host, agree that in Cusco, Peru, in 1981. what this extraordinary work out the principal tenets of time, space, and the discours- European technology and the project initiated by Rama nial documents, yet most of there are no just wars. But Cummins and I currently accomplishes. both modernism and trans- es of power…” (2012:3-4). arts of writing and reading. to its greatest heights of the texts illustrated and cited I could have never written co-teach a General Education The central significance culturation in relation to the The above description The latter involved native realization. In this regard, the in the book employ Hindu- about the devastation of the course at Harvard, “Pathways and major contributions Latin American experience of points to the initial, central consumption of and partici- work presents to the reader Arabic numeral cyphers. The Salvadoran war as did Fra- Through the Andes.” While I of this work are, first, that conquest and then the long (though not complete) set of pation in places (e.g., the new an almost ethnographic level written text on a page from zier, who actually lived it. will grouse about one aspect it provides a guidepost for era of colonialism, terminat- dynamics the authors exam- towns, known as reducciones of description and analysis of a visita (“town visit”) on pg. Nevertheless, the fact that or another of this book—as Andeanists to develop a ing (but only formally) in ine in their book. The dif- and/or resguardos), institu- the everyday lives of natives, 230 is literally framed within Salvadorans are now free to is perhaps inevitable, when more expansive, integrated the continental movements ference here is that whereas tions (tribute, censuses) from Bogotá to Latacunga cyphers. My use of the phrase fill in the details of Salva- evaluating the work of one’s perspective on the proper leading to independence Rama saw the primary and material productions and points south. I would “vast majority” to character- doran history with data almost-siblings—I first has- account of colonial history from the European overlords source of actions and creative (e.g., painting, music, etc.) argue that this represents the ize these types of documents from their own lives, either ten to state that Beyond the in the region. Unlike other (Spain and Portugal) in the transformations within the that were integral elements greatest and unique contribu- is no exaggeration. In his through their own writing Lettered City is an exception- works, the book does not 19th century. Rama’s book European administrative of the imposed systems of tion of this book. Historians study of the some 34,000 or through long interviews ally important, path-breaking solely concern the central has had a profound impact on and ecclesiastical bureaucra- power and knowledge. Most and social scientists of various legajos (bundles of docu- with visiting academics, contribution to the study of Andes, much less separate students of Andean literacies, cies acting on indigenous interesting and striking in stripes have long bemoaned ments) deriving from Spanish is, in my view, reason for the transformations of society accountings of the central partially inspiring the present communities, Rappaport this regard are the detailed the fact that the written administration in the New optimism. and culture in the northern and the northern Andes. work, as well as another book and Cummins offer a much discussions of the indigenous record of colonial adminis- World and preserved today and central Andes from the Second, it builds this new, published by Duke University more dynamic and reciprocal objects—keros (drinking trative regimes is principally in the Archivo de Indias in Jocelyn Viterna is Associ- time of the Iberian invasion integrated narrative through Press, Salomon and Niõ-Mur- account, in terms of foreign cups), mantas (shawls), produced by, and represents Seville, Gómez Cañedo in ate Professor of Sociology at until the early 18th century. a deeply anthropologi- cia’s, The Lettered Mountain and indigenous actors and and other precious items— the interests of, the foreign Los archivos de la historia Harvard University. Her The regional setting sets cally informed mode of the (2011). As taken up by Rap- forms of action. The latter appearing in church murals, (Peninsular) or criollo elites. de America: período colo- book, Women in War: The this work apart from the vast construction of history and, paport and Cummins, Rama’s is implied in the subtitle: wills, and other productions. By mining rich lodes of local nial español (Mexico, D.F., Micro-processes of Mobi- majority of works centering simultaneously, a recognition work opened scholars’ eyes “indigenous literacies in The authors show how documents, paintings, and 1961:12-13) found that, other lization in El Salvador will on Andean subject matter. of the centrality of writing to the fact that the Spanish the Andes.” In part, what native elites and, in many various other expressions than those labeled as Indife- be published in 2013 by the The majority of studies of and literacy in the histories American world was “…a ‘let- allows the authors to inves- cases, commoners as well, of native appropriations of rente (“miscellaneous/unclas- Oxford University Press. colonial Andean societies of the (largely) non-literate tered city,’ a social constella- tigate more insightfully and appropriated, innovated on, European-imposed, colonial sified”), the largest collections

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are those categorized under theory of history. I submit is the argument that the old might be more familiar with dressing a gap in the first edi- the headings Contadu- that if we were to examine The Optimist’s Colombia two-party system—rightfully Colombia. Those that have tion by providing an overview ría (‘accountancy;” 1953 these numerical records blamed for a period of unrest spent significant time in the of peace talks in the past six legajos) and Contratación more closely, with the sharp A Review by Laura Jaramillo-Bernal so vicious that it is known country will recognize in the decades. The authors walk (“trade contracts;” 5873 and critical eyes Rappaport simply as “La Violencia,” for book’s pages the quirky details the reader through myriad legajos). Spanish adminis- and Cummins apply to the political exclusion, and for of Colombian life that tell as negotiation efforts seeking trators were obsessive enu- texts, paintings, and new corrosive clientelism—was much about the country as the to demobilize various illegal merators, and they clearly towns of the colonial Andes, Colombia: A Concise Not surprisingly, the fact that also an important unify- goriest details of its civil war. armed actors since the presi- transmitted this preoccupa- we might identify therein a Contemporary History the country was “fourth in ing force in the construc- As I first skimmed over dency of General Gustavo tion to the Andean natives surprising, creative and sub- by Michael J. LaRosa and nickel production,” reason tion of the nation. Because the table of contents, I was Rojas in the early 1950s. (although central Andean versive record of indigenous Germán R. Mejía (Rowman 106, was not quite enough to their representation spread shocked to find a subsec- The ongoing Havana accountants had their own numeracy to equal that of and Littlefield, Maryland, 2012, derail our plans of emigration. throughout the broken terri- tion dedicated to beauty peace talks between the such records, in the form of the remarkable record of 265 pages) Michael LaRosa and tory, because they integrated pageants. Beauty pageants! FARC and the Santos knotted string records). indigenous literacies detailed Germán Mejía’s Colombia: Colombians of many classes, In a serious, academic book government are scheduled Now, I understand that in Rappaport and Cum- In 2008, as a Harvard college A Concise Contemporary and because they served as about Colombian history! to conclude in November, the authors are not interest- mins’s groundbreaking work, sophomore, I was getting History follows a more recent a gateway between ordinary As it turns out, the section, 2013. The expanded ver- ed in examining numerical Beyond the Lettered City. ready to go back to Colom- academic and journalistic and forth in time, occasion- citizens and the services of the no longer than a page, really sion of Colombia: A Concise data. That’s fine; we all have bia, my birthplace, for the trend to see Colombia in a ally confuses the reader, but state, the authors argue that stuck with me. After finishing Contemporary History will our particular interests and Gary Urton is Dumbarton first time since I left with my more nuanced light. It is seen a detailed timeline at the end the Liberal and Conservative the book, I couldn’t help but have gone to press by then, contributions to make. How- Oaks Professor of Pre- family as a 13-year-old. I read as a country that has suf- is helpful. parties were essential in creat- ask myself: how could anyone so this new chapter will be ever, I think I am raising an Columbian Studies and everything I could find, look- fered a catastrophic struggle The book’s second chapter, ing a national identity that write a book that could serve necessarily inconclusive and issue here about something Chairman of Harvard’s ing for a better understand- with armed violence and “The Colombian Nations,” transcends regional bounds. as an introduction to modern outdated when it gets to read- much more basic in docu- Department of Anthropol- ing of the country than my organized crime, but one that sets the stage by describing But political participation Colombia and not talk about ers. However, it will provide ment production practices. ogy. His research focuses on vague adolescent memories. I has proved economically and the country’s demographic is not all that holds Colom- that particular national essential historical context For instance, when a native pre-Columbian and early was disappointed to find only democratically resilient— and makeup. Divided by cultural bia together. Throughout obsession? Or without a men- for understanding the final cacique or cacica wrote, or colonial Andean intellec- opinions at two extremes. is blessed with incredible barriers of language, race, re- the book, LaRosa and Mejía tion of Betty la Fea, the tra- outcome, whatever it may had written for him/her, a tual history, drawing on On one hand, the academ- cultural richness. That is a ligion and geography, Colom- highlight other factors that ditional chicken stew ajiaco, be. By outlining the many date—e.g., 1615—that string materials and methods in ic literature and international welcome change. bia does not fit the common played a role. Some were or the ambivalent feelings of previous attempts at reaching of cyphers represented the archaeology, ethnohistory, press had only dark and Without engaging in perception of a nation-state inherited from the colonial many Colombians toward the a deal to end the conflict, the litigant’s buying into a com- and ethnology. He is the tragic things to say about my whitewashing or leaving as a “unified sociopolitical en- system: Spanish as a national celebrated and omnipresent new chapter reminds us that pletely different, alien theory author of many articles and fondly remembered home- behind academic rigor and tity.” The authors discuss the language and the Catholic Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Colombians have been seek- of history from an Andean editor of several volumes on land. It was a “near-failed meticulous historical detail, challenges of representation church, with its unified set of García Márquez? ing peace for a long time. one. For whoever writes Andean/Quechua cultures state.” It was “war-torn.” It the authors of Colombia have and survival of many ethnic beliefs and extensive territo- “Violence sells, but it also LaRosa and Mejía close on an “1615” (or any such date and Inka civilization. was unstable, bloody, violent maintained an engaging bal- groups like the 87 different rial presence, as well as its distorts,” declare the au- encouraging note: in the Gregorian calendar His books include At the and at the very best, it was a ance between the more tragic indigenous ethnicities, Afro- important role in education thors in the epilogue of their “Conflicts eventually conclude system) participates in a sys- Crossroads of the Earth “nation in spite of itself,” as aspects of Colombian history Colombians or very small and healthcare. The estab- upcoming paperback edition, through dialogue and negotia- tem of historical causation, and the Sky (1981), The the title of David Bushnell’s and its successes. They do not communities of gypsy and lishment of a central military while discussing the rise of tion. Modern, civilized nations teleology, and redemption History of a Myth (1990), go-to English language his- rely on the standard compar- Middle Eastern ancestry. in the early 1800s, elimina- violence-obsessed pop-culture negotiate. No society wages that is wholly grounded in The Social Life of Numbers tory of the country declared. ison-based theories of devel- However, having painted tion of internal barriers to in the country as seen in the war forever. And Colombia is European Christian theol- (1997), Inca Myths (1999), On the other, the national opment; instead, they seek to a picture of cultural frag- trade, consolidation of a wildly successful narconove- no exception.” I can only hope ogy and conceptualization and Signs of the Inka Khipu press, in an effort to counter understand why the country mentation and inequality, the national currency, and the las. That applies, too, to more that they are right. of history. In short, buying (2003). negative international percep- has been able to remain uni- authors go on to identify the building of infrastructure to academic reading. I applaud into—i.e., using—Hindu- tions, found a way to mix with fied on its own terms. forces that helped such a dis- connect the country marked Mejía and LaRosa for aban- Laura Jaramillo is a Arabic numerals was not an their more serious reporting Their narrative is present- parate mix of groups, divided an active effort by the central doning the seductive lure of Colombia optimist. Harvard innocent act of employing * Beyond The Lettered City near-propaganda stories that focused and organized the- by impossible geography, to government to facilitate unity. gore in Colombian history College 2011, she was a an alien form of notation; was recently awarded the were positive to the point of matically, rather than follow- develop a common national The book, written in and making an honest and political reporter for La Silla rather, it was to submit to a Latin American Studies absurdity. One I read when ing a standard chronology. It identity and to maintain a English as a collaboration be- serious effort to tell a more Vacía in Bogotá and is cur- Western disciplinary system Association’s Bryce Wood my family was getting ready explores in small, easily di- relatively stable territorial tween two historians from the complete and complex story. rently a writer and producer of power and knowledge Book Award for the out- to leave the country in 2001, gestible sections subjects like entity for two centuries. United States and Colombia, The new edition, sched- for the TV show Efecto Naím that bound the indigenous standing book in the social was a cover story by the demography, political culture, “The Cadence of Unity,” is intended for a foreign audi- uled for October 2013 publi- in Washington D.C. She subject ever more firmly sciences and the humani- respected weekly magazine infrastructure development the book’s fourth chapter, ence of non-experts. However, cation, will include a cleverly enjoys traveling and neglect- into the imposed, Western ties for books published in Semana. It promised “1000 and, of course, conflict. That takes a deeper look at some of it manages to engage, and titled epilogue, “Chronicle ing her blog, www.laurajara- European epistemology and English in 2012. reasons to stay in Colombia.” structure, which jumps back those forces. Most unexpected even surprise, readers that of a Peace Forestalled?”, ad- millo.com.

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anti-trust, policing, or judicial parents, I found this analysis local level across party lines. Mexico’s Great Transformation reforms with respect to Mex- particularly enlightened. This level of coordination on ico, do risk leaving the reader The Obama administration’s Mexico, except perhaps in and U.S.-Mexican Relations in despair. It is sometimes unprecedented and disgrace- extremis, is not in the cards difficult to reconcile the grave ful deportation policies have in the short run and perhaps A Review by Gabriel Aguilera challenges with the book’s been a cruel and needless never will be. cheerful optimism. Yet O’Neil blow to Mexican-American O’Neil correctly notes that bets that its vibrant civil soci- families on both sides of the Mexico will do most of the ety will, in the decades ahead, border. O’Neil dispels many heavy lifting with respect to Two Nations Indivisible: is also an excellent comple- grow the middle class, reduce when she considers the road defeat many of the troglodytic misconceptions that pass for state-building tasks. Perhaps Mexico, the United States, ment to in-depth scholarly poverty, and generate more ahead. After all, Mexico has forces in Mexican politics. I knowledge about immigra- the best that the United and the Road Ahead by examinations of Mexico’s consistent and faster growth. emerged in relatively good too am betting that Mexican tion’s economic and social States can do, given domestic Shannon O’Neil (New York: political and economic trans- The author provides a tren- shape from an economic lost political institutions will con- challenges. Immigration flows political constraints in both Oxford University Press, 2013) formation, such as Haber and chant analysis of how Mexico decade and a half between the tinue to evolve and adapt to north have now slowed to a countries, is to work quietly others, Mexico Since 1980 is attempting to untie several financial crises of 1982 and the rapid social changes and trickle as a function of demo- with the Mexican government As graduate students in Har- (2008, Cambridge University Gordian knots in key policy 1995. It is easy to underesti- demand for reforms. graphics, the costs of crossing and states as opportunities vard’s Department of Govern- Press) and Hamilton, Mexico: areas such as security, educa- mate the significance of this so in fact that there is room Two Nations Indivisible the border, and a growing manifest themselves. These ment, Shannon O’Neil and I Political, Social and Econom- tion, economic regulation, accomplishment and to forget for fiscal expansion to invest argues throughout that the Mexican economy. Still, U.S. two large and unwieldy read from the same inter- ic Evolution (2010, Oxford and criminal justice. The book that economic stability was more aggressively in educa- United States needs to do policymakers focus their federal democracies will minable Mexico reading list University Press). also gives valuable advice for finally achieved after democ- tion, poverty reduction, and more to improve the bilateral energy on deportations, walls, continue to tackle challenges handed to us by our mentor, In cheerful and vivid policymakers on both sides of ratization took root in 1998, state-building. relationship. It notes, though, and border patrolling rather piecemeal and in an ad hoc Professor Jorge Domínguez. prose, Two Nations Indivis- the border for leveraging the when the “official” political The Mexican government that the September 11, than other badly needed manner. Each contains pow- A few years later, in 2002, ible describes and explains benefits of integration. party lost control of congress and congress, however, need 2001, attacks derailed U.S.- improvements. erful nativist political forces we became good friends in how the two countries have Two Nations Indivis- for the first time. to agree on extracting more Mexican relations for nearly The book argues that get- that welcome walls. The Mexico City. Alejandro Poiré, become tightly integrated in ible, however, is not naïvely Two Nations Indivisible badly needed revenues from a a decade while the United ting policy towards Mexico main message of Two Nations a fellow Domínguez student, the last two and a half decades optimistic. O’Neil’s vision of points out that Mexico today woefully under-taxed society States waged its global war right is the most pressing and Indivisible is that the great was then Chair of the Political as a consequence of globaliza- Mexico’s future is rooted in has a sizable and growing that boasts some of the lowest on terror. At the same time, important U.S. foreign policy transformation in Mexico and Science Department at the tion, a closeness manifested in a scholar’s understanding middle class that boasts levels in the OECD. O’Neil diplomacy has been less priority. The potential impli- U.S.-Mexican relations can be Autonomous Technological booming immigration, trade, of democratization and the higher levels of education reminds us that policymakers prickly since the early 1990s, cations of China’s economic prodded constructively along Institute of Mexico (ITAM), and investment flows. O’Neil challenges of reforming state and consumption as well as need to open the internal mar- particularly in the wake of slowdown, the European if policymakers and citizens where I was a faculty mem- analyzes Mexico’s astonishing institutions in a political envi- smaller families. Though ket to domestic competition, NAFTA, the financial bailout banking and currency fiascos, become more aware of the ber. He provided Shannon political and economic trans- ronment where powerful vest- poverty levels remain unac- efforts that are resisted fiercely of 1995, and security coop- the Middle East turmoil, and opportunities for deeper with an office during her Ful- formation, its implications for ed interests—labor unions, ceptably high, progress in by modern Mexican robber eration under the Merida the Korean Peninsula remind integration. bright stint, and so ITAM fast the United States, and what corrupt politicos and bureau- reducing these rates has been barons that have cartelized Initiative. Mexican anti- us that this is debatable. became an ongoing seminar the United States can do to crats, monopolists, and, let real. The country continues markets and pay too few taxes. gringo nationalism thawed Mexico’s real achievements Gabriel Aguilera is Assistant for a gringa and this Mexi- help its neighbor prosper. It is it be said, narco-traffickers— on a trajectory of steady and The government also needs considerably, perhaps in part underscore that the risk stem- Professor of International can-American pocho to learn an inveterately optimistic and fight tooth and nail with modest economic growth to inject competition in key because many high officials ming from Mexican political Security Studies at the Air about Mexico’s great trans- forward-looking book about reformers to block progress thanks to economic open- labor markets—such as educa- have lived and gone to school and economic instability has War College, Maxwell Air formation from our chilango two nations that may often at every opportunity. Mexico’s ness and macroeconomic tion—where unions continue in the United States and most been mitigated significantly. Force Base, Montgomery, Ala- colleagues and friends, often have kept a distance from electoral system stacks the stabilization. Mexico joined to reign supreme. citizens have a friend or rela- It is not clear what the U.S. bama. He holds a PhD from over lunch and sometimes in one another but now find deck against citizens in favor the General Agreement on Two Nations Indivisible tive living up north. It is hard government can or should do the Harvard Government their smoke-filled offices. themselves in a marriage of of political parties and special Tariffs and Trade in 1987 and blends unflinching political to reject the proposition that to support Mexican progress Department. His research Now a Senior Fellow for convenience. interest groups through poli- the North American Free economy analysis with some U.S.-Mexican relations have beyond requested technical focuses primarily on Latin Latin American Studies at the In addition to its nuanced cies such as the prohibition of Trade Agreement in 1993. good old fashioned faith in never been better. and material assistance to aid America and international Council on Foreign Relations, portrait of Mexican-Amer- reelection, the lavish funding It threw its doors open to democratization, markets and Today the most urgent and with state capacity-building political economy. The views Shannon O’Neil has writ- ican interdependence, Two of political parties, and fiscal foreign direct investment civil society, all of which have immediate policy challenge efforts, such as the Merida expressed here belong solely ten an outstanding book on Nations Indivisible provides a transfers to states with lim- after decades of protection taken root in Mexico since for the bilateral relation- Initiative. The Mexican to the author and do not U.S.-Mexican relations, Two compelling narrative of Mex- ited electoral accountability. and heavy regulation. An the early 1980s. Its accounts ship, not to mention the fate Congress and the executive necessarily reflect the official Nations Indivisible. At pres- ico’s transition to democracy Political parties too often cut independent central bank of the challenges in specific of several million de facto would have to agree on broad policy of the U.S. Govern- ent this is the best book to and efforts to reform the state deals to protect their respec- and successive governments policy areas such as immi- Mexican-Americans and their outlines of a strategy for ment, Department of Defense, hand to anyone eager to learn to achieve a more dynamic tive vested allies. since the mid 1990s have gration reform or security children, is immigration more ambitious initiatives, or the Air War College. He about contemporary relations and less crisis-prone economy, O’Neil, though, does not managed monetary and fiscal cooperation with respect to reform. As a former undocu- and these would have to be can be reached at Gabriel. between the two countries. It one that can continue to get lost in this gloomy forest policies prudently, so much U.S.-Mexican relations, and mented child of immigrant coordinated at the state and [email protected].

92 ReVista FALL 2013 drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 93 book talk

Moors Cabot, replacing them as something of a golden producing one of the Ken- Beyond Mad Men: with more pliant officials. age at the C.I.A., Kinzer, a nedy Administration’s most Allen, meanwhile, picked former foreign correspondent embarrassing episodes. A Secret World War Tracy Barnes, a product of for The New York Times, President Kennedy forced Groton, Yale and Harvard compiles the places where Allen to resign after that A Review by Simon Romero Law School, to oversee the the C.I.A. director’s covert fiasco, saying, “I probably plot’s psychological warfare. operations produced failures, made a mistake keeping The C.I.A.’s “nerve war” including Vietnam, Taiwan, Allen Dulles.” Allen shifted included death threats made Laos, Tibet and Iraq. into after-dinner speaking, The Brothers: John Foster resigned as C.I.A. director in Allen’s other plots meticu- success, for instance, for the to Guatemalan army officers For his part, Foster, a man writing about espionage Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their 2012 over one extramarital lously described by Kinzer United States Navy to send and government officials who thought he held moral and editing collections of Secret World War By Stephen affair, with his biographer. in a thoroughly entertaining warships to Cuba to protect and character-assassination superiority in his dealings spy stories. Some of his top Kinzer (Times Books, 2013, Dulles maintained many and informative book. U.S. owners of sugar mills warnings issued in pre-dawn with political leaders around agents also drifted away from 416 pp.) of his flings without even Allen’s older brother, and railroads from protests telephone calls. the globe, saw nothing wrong the agency. Before he died in bothering to hide them, as John Foster Dulles, loomed shaking the Caribbean island. Predictably, Allen and in doing years of legal work 1969, the C.I.A.’s reputation At a time when so many view- Stephen Kinzer documents even larger in 1950s Wash- Commissioned as a captain Foster viewed Arbenz’ over- on behalf of corporate clients was already coming under ers are captivated or repelled in his new book, The Broth- ington, when he roamed the during World War I, he legalese, was known to some throw as a success. But the in Nazi Germany. Kinzer, increasing strain. In one by Mad Men’s portrayal of the ers: John Foster Dulles, Allen world as Dwight D. Eisen- worked as legal adviser for as “the most boring man in coup reinforced a pattern of a prolific author of books story collection, he included lascivious, liquor-drenched Dulles and Their Secret hower’s Secretary of State. the War Trade Board, helping America.” blatant disregard by some about U.S. international rela- an excerpt from Sir Comp- behavior which characterized World War. Pointing to how The brothers were born the Mumm Champagne Co., Such quips obscured in Washington for political tions, including the classic ton Mackenzie’s Water on Madison Avenue decades standards for public officials into privilege. Their father, a German-owned concern, to the way the Dulles brothers sovereignty in Latin America, Bitter Fruit about the Arbenz the Brain, a satirical 1933 ago, one remarkable true have evolved, one 1958 dalli- Allen Macy Dulles, the son avoid being seized by the U.S. deployed missionary zeal ushering in brutal military overthrow, deftly delves into novel about the British secret story in the United States ance, with Queen Frederika of a Presbyterian mission- government. More subdued over the role of the United rule in Guatemala and what these ties.He describes how service’s attempt to restore a during the Cold War trumps of Greece, was carried out in ary to India, became a than Allen in his personal States in world affairs and Kinzer calls a “cocoon of Foster wrote admiringly of king to the throne of Men- that fictional depiction: Don Allen’s own office at C.I.A. theologian and pastor of the life and something of a scold, made use of Cold War para- groupthink and overconfi- Hitler, even weeping when dacia, a fictitious nation in Draper’s behavior seems headquarters within earshot First Presbyterian Church employing a preacher’s tone noia in their games of brinks- dence” within the C.I.A., poi- Sullivan & Cromwell finally southeast Europe. Macken- genteel compared with that of of his aides. in Watertown, a bastion for in his public remarks, Foster manship against the Soviet soning sentiment toward the felt obliged to stop represent- zie, who drew from his own the man who ran the Central Such episodes, dutifully New York millionaires. Their evolved into an anti-Commu- Union. Working with British experiences as a spy in war- Intelligence Agency during not reported by journalists mother, Edith Foster, was nist zealot. spies, they engineered the time Greece, described how its frenetic expansion into at the time, did not pre- the daughter of a lawyer who By the time Foster was 1953 coup toppling Moham- the headquarters of Britain’s one of the largest espionage vent Allen from seizing on had served as U.S. minis- appointed Secretary of State med Mossadegh, the Iranian The errors of the Dulles brothers Directorate of Extraordinary enterprises assembled by any womanizing as a weakness ter to Czar Alexander II’s in the 1950s, he had emerged prime minister who had are vividly described in this highly Intelligence in London were nation in history. to exploit in others. For court in St. Petersburg. The as an undiplomatic symbol nationalized Iran’s oil indus- turned into an insane asylum Allen Welsh Dulles, the instance, he oversaw what Princeton-educated broth- of Washington’s browbeating try. The brothers collaborated entertaining book—perhaps a present- “for the servants of bureau- C.I.A.’s longest-serving may have been the C.I.A.’s ers benefitted from a web of and condescending approach again on the 1954 ouster of day warning of the consequences of cracy who have been driven director, (from 1953 to 1961), first foray into pornography, family connections at a time to enemies and allies alike. Jacobo Arbenz, Guatemala’s mad in the service of their had affairs which numbered a film called “Happy Days” when the United States was Prince Sihanouk of Cam- left-leaning democratically- wielding U.S. power abroad. country.” well into the dozens despite in which an actor in a latex on the rise as a superpower, bodia called him an “acidy, elected president. At the being married to the same mask made by the agency’s but their personalities were arrogant man” and Win- time, the Boston-based Simon Romero is the Brazil woman for most of his adult Technical Services Division remarkably different. ston Churchill said he was United Fruit Company, a United States in the region ing German concerns. For bureau chief for The New life. He carried out some of claimed an uncanny resem- Allen was an extroverted “the only case of a bull who prominent client of Sullivan for decades. The errors of the Allen, his biggest blunder York Times, based in Rio de his liaisons while he was the blance to Sukarno, Indo- diplomat, lawyer and partyer carries his own china shop & Cromwell which had pro- Dulles brothers are vividly arguably was in Cuba, when Janeiro. He joined The New preeminent spymaster of nesia’s founding president, who spent World War I in around with him.” Unde- vided both Allen and Foster described throughout the he oversaw the disastrous York Times in 1999, and the United States, oversee- whom the Dulles brothers Bern, the capital of neutral terred, he floated ideas like with legal fees over the years, book, offering, perhaps, a invasion by commandos of was previously the paper’s ing operations including the despised for not align- Switzerland, debriefing bombing China in 1954 with felt threatened by Arbenz’s present-day warning of the the island in April 1961, an Andean bureau chief, based overthrow of leaders in ing himself with the West. spies over glasses of cognac. nuclear weapons, only to be ambitious land reform proj- unforeseen consequences of effort aimed at overthrowing in Caracas, and a corre- Guatemala and Iran, secret The Sukarno lookalike was Around the same time, Foster told that such a plan could ect. Irritated by potential dip- wielding American power Fidel Castro. Poorly trained spondent covering the global wars in Indonesia and filmed in bed with a blonde was an ambitious lawyer with kill between 12 million to 14 lomatic obstacles to the coup, abroad in an age when the and over-budgeted, and with energy industry, based in Tibet and the spectacularly actress (playing an agent of Sullivan & Cromwell, the million people. Named Time Foster removed both the U.S. C.I.A. has grown accustomed details about their training Houston. Born and raised in botched invasion of Cuba’s the Soviet Union!), a scene powerful New York law firm. magazine’s “Man of the Year” ambassador to Guatemala, to carrying out so many camps reported by Tad Szulc New Mexico, he graduated Bay of Pigs in 1961. that aimed to damage the He cut his teeth by represent- in 1954, Dulles, a fixture Rudolf Schoenfeld, and the remote-control killings in of The New York Times, the from Harvard College in 1994 Times have changed. Indonesian leader’s reputa- ing clients with interests in of the foreign policy estab- assistant secretary of state for its covert drone wars. While invasion force was over- with a degree in History and David Petraeus, for example, tion. It flopped, like many of Latin America, lobbying with lishment who spoke fluent inter-American affairs, John Allen’s tenure is still viewed whelmed by Cuba’s military, Literature.

94 ReVista FALL 2013 drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline ReVista 95 making a difference DAVID ROCKEFELLER CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

need to generate employment Adams House and former VISITING SCHOLARS AND opportunities. The break- president of the American down of the local economies Society of Pediatrics, began caused by the disaster erased a comprehensive program FELLOWS PROGRAM most means of livelihood. For of child mental and physi- example, in Perales, a family cal health with colleagues at that depended on its lone Universidad de Concepción. cow—dead in the tsunami— MIT professor Miho Mazer- THE CENTER for the sale of milk to its eeuw set the stage for intro- neighbors had no resources ducing new technologies in Founded in 1994, the David Rockefeller to buy a new one. In Dichato, adobe construction to revive Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard the local entrepreneur who spaces attractive for tourists University works to increase knowledge of the managed a newsstand had as well as people from the cultures, economies, histories, environment, no working capital to replace community. and contemporary affairs of past and present it and pay for the publica- Two years have passed Latin America. tions lost in the tsunami. by now, and the program The owner of a small market has contributed enor- THE PROGRAM Recupera Chile saw her store smashed by the mously to the recovery of Each year the Center selects a number of earthquake. these three towns. Families distinguished academics (Visiting Scholars) and You Are the World Experts by Ned Strong Unemployment combined have been able to return to professionals (Fellows) who wish to spend one with inadequate temporary work, children are receiving or two semesters at Harvard working on their and overly crowded living professional help, teach- own research and writing projects. In February 2010, an 8.8 magni- most difficult aspects of the spaces in the refugee camps ers in the local schools are The Center offers nine fellowships that pro- tude earthquake and tsunami rebuilding process: reviving led to severe community being trained, entrepreneurs vide support for one semester. Applications devastated coastal towns in local economies, reestab- dysfunction— violence, alco- are starting new businesses, from those with their own resources Chile. Not much later, Har- lishing communities and holism and psychological small-scale farming is return- are also welcome. vard Kennedy School Profes- integrating new built spaces. problems, especially among ing, and construction plans His experience has led him to children. Formerly pictur- are in place. Looking toward sor Doug Ahlers traveled to Visiting Scholars and Fellows are provided Chile to explore how his uni- novel approaches to disaster esque coastal towns of houses the future, plans include shared office space, computers, library versity could assist in com- recovery. built with adobe were in re-establishing shellfish beds privileges, access to University facilities and munity recovery. DRCLAS In our first meetings ruins, eliminating the normal that had been wiped out by Regional Office staff member in Chile two years ago we tourist trade. the tsunami, and encouraging events, and opportunities to audit classes and Marcela Renteria and I ac- invited entire communities Based on our first meet- tourism with added attrac- attend seminars. The residential fellowships companied Ahlers on a trip to meet in Dichato, Cobque- ings, and help from a number tions such as ATM machines, cover round-trip travel expenses, health to the Bio Bio Region to meet cura and Perales, three towns of experts in Chile, including free Internet, and even a insurance, and a taxable $25,000 living stipend with authorities and disaster where badly needed assis- several Harvard alumni, a microbrewery. while at Harvard. Appointments are typically victims disaster to determine tance was needed. Ahlers’ plan took shape. By January Doug Ahler’s state- for one or two semesters. Recipients are the areas where we could be opening remarks in the first 2012, Doug was leading a ment, that the communities expected to be in residence at the University a helpful. His approach has led meeting in Cobquecura are team of faculty and students themselves are the world minimum of twelve weeks during the semester. to stunning results. indicative of his approach. to the area to begin the experts on their own towns, Ahlers had led teams “You are the world experts program. Students worked has been the blueprint for the APPLICATIONS DUE FEBRUARY 1ST of Harvard students and about Cobquecura, tell us in teams in the three com- program, resulting in suc- faculty in the now famous how we can help,” he said. munities helping to build cess after success as people THE APPLICATION DAVID ROCKEFELLER Broadmoor Project in New The reaction of the com- business plans, awarding 40 advance with the right kind CENTER FOR LATIN Applications should be submitted electronically to Orleans following Hurricane munities was enthusiastic. business development grants. of outside assistance. [email protected] AMERICAN STUDIES or via the online application form. For the form and further details please visit Katrina. One of the world’s They had been accustomed Through these efforts, addi- top experts on disasters, to international organiza- tional local entrepreneurs Ned Strong is the director http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/scholars . 1730 Cambridge Street he has provided advice on tions telling them what was received working capital of the DRCLAS Regional CGIS, South Building disaster recovery in places needed. They were finally from a special fund set up Office in Santiago de Chile. David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Cambridge, MA 02138 like Haiti, New Zealand and being asked. by the Chilean government. For more information, visit: Indonesia. He focuses on the There was an immediate Judy Palfrey, the Master of http://www.recuperachile.cl/ Phone: 617-496-1588 HARVARD UNIVERSITY [email protected]

96 ReVista FALL 2013 artist credit name and url non-profit org u.s. postage paid boston, ma permit no. 1636 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA 02138

contributors

92 Gabriel Aguilera, Harvard PhD in Government, is Assistant Department of Romance Languages and Literatures from 1995 to Professor of International Security Studies at the Air War College, 1999, is an Associate Professor of History at the National University of Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama. 12 Marjorie Agosín is Colombia, Bogotá. 38 J. Luke Pizzato, a Harvard College sophomore, Luella LaMer Slaner Professor in Latin American Studies and Professor worked at the Center for Memory, Peace and Reconciliation through the of Spanish at Wellesley College. 62 Laura Barragán Montaña, Harvard DRCLAS summer internship program in Colombia. 94 Simon Romero, Graduate School of Education ‘13, is the founder and CEO of Historical a graduate of Harvard College in History and Literature, is the Brazil Footprints in Bogotá, Colombia. 64 Michelle J. Bellino is completing bureau chief for The New York Times. 67 Camilo Sánchez is the museo- her doctoral studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. logical advisor of the Museo de la Independencia-Casa del Florero and 24 Ana María Bidegaín, a 2003-04 Visiting Professor at the Center the Casa Museo Quinta de Bolívar in Bogotá. 56 Doris Sommer is the for Women in Religion at Harvard Divinity School, is the research Ira Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures director of FIU’s Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center. at Harvard University. 96 Ned Strong is the director of the DRCLAS 67 Daniel Castro is director of two historical museums of the Ministry Regional Office, based in Santiago de Chile. 52 Juan O. Tamayo, Nie- of Culture of Colombia. 42 Robert J. Cox, Nieman Fellow 1981, was the man ‘90, covered Central America and the Andean region for the Miami editor of the Buenos Aires Herald from 1968-1979. 2 Merilee Grindle is Herald. 18 María Victoria Uribe is an anthropologist at the Universidad the director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia. 88 Gary Urton is Dumbarton Oaks (DRCLAS).90 Laura Jaramillo-Bernal, Harvard College 2011, is a writer Professor of Pre-Columbian Studies and Chairman of the Department of and producer for Efecto Naím in Washington DC. 76 Iván Jaksic, a Anthropology at Harvard University. 20 Paolo Vignolo, 2013 DRCLAS 1997 DRCLAS Visiting Scholar, is director of the Stanford University Visiting Scholar, is Associate Professor at the Center of Social Studies Program in Santiago. 27 Julieta Lemaitre (SJD ‘07) is Associate Profes- of the National University of Colombia, Bogotá. 86 Jocelyn Viterna is sor at Universidad de los Andes’ Law School. 74 Mary Jo McConahay Associate Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. 44 Scott Wal- is the author of Maya Roads, One Woman’s Journey Among the People lace is the author of The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last of the Rainforest. 85 Pablo Corral Vega, a 2011 Nieman Fellow, is the Uncontacted Tribes. 8 Kirsten Weld is Assistant Professor of History founder of nuestramirada.org, the largest photojournalist network in at Harvard University. 58 Pamela Yates is a documentary film director. Latin America. 15 Juan Mandelbaum is an Argentine documentary 36 Maite Yie Garzón is a professor of anthropology at the Pontificia filmmaker living in the United States. 83 Paula Molina is a Chilean Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. journalist, Harvard Nieman Fellow 2013. 79 Jedrek Mularski, Harvard Graduate School of Education 2004, is an Assistant Professor of History With Featured Photography by Marcos Adandia, Gustavo Germano, at Saddleback College. 72 Marysa Navarro, DRCLAS Resident Scholar, Mary Jo McConahay, Sylvia Percovich, Scott Wallace and Special is the Charles and Elfriede Collis Professorof History Emerita at Dart- Thanks to: Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, Chile and mouth College. 30 Francisco Ortega, a Visiting Scholar in Harvard’s Centro de Memoría Histórico, Bogotá, Colombia.