Complicating difficult heritage and the politics of institutionalized memory in post-Accord Colombia

ABSTRACT

The Colombian peace process with the insurgent group FARC-EP has been characterized by a lack of compliance and the politicization of peace and memory including the work of sites of memory and peace. Through complicating the European-focused concept of difficult heritage, this article presents the interventions of three museum curators and/or directors of the country’s key centralized memory and peace institutions: the Memory House Museum in Medellin, the Memory Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in Bogotá and the National Centre for Historical Memory in Bogotá. Based on interviews undertaken between late 2019 and early 2020, this article reveals how those in charge of these institutions negotiate the lines between the politicization of memory and the ‘alive memories’ of civil society, due to the ongoing conflict. Bringing together key debates on difficult heritage and Latin American memory studies, this article seeks to contribute to Southern understandings of critical heritage and museum studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Difficult heritage
• memory
• conflict
• Colombia
• Latin America
• historical memory

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Lorena, José and Cathalina whose interventions appear in this article for your time and important work towards peace and memory-making in our country. I also want to thank Professor Andrea Witcomb for your insightful comments on earlier versions of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 On May 2, 2002 a cylinder bomb exploded inside of a church killing more than 70 people in a confrontation to gain territory between the FARC–EP and the paramilitary United Self-Defence Forces (AUC).

2 Griffith University ethics reference number: 2019/889.

3 Voces was opened from 17 April to 2 May 2018 in Bogotá’s International Book Fair (FilBo) and further iterations were presented in cities such as Cali, Medellin and Villavicencio in 2019 and 2020.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Australian Academy of the Humanities Travelling Fellowship of 2019.

Notes on contributors

Laura Rodriguez Castro

Dr Laura Rodriguez Castro is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute of Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. Her research focuses on decolonial feminisms, critical heritage, memory and rurality. Laura's book with Palgrave Decolonial Feminisms, Power and Place: Sentipensando with Rural Women in Colombia (2021) explores how rural women enact and imagine decolonial feminist worlds.