Andrés Alvarado

From left: Professor Charles Hale, Professor Beatriz Manz and Professor Elizabeth Jelin

Elizabeth Jelin and Charles Hale led a discussion that analyzed the shaping and transmission of collective memory. Jelin initiated the dialogue by arguing that during and after the repressive periods carried out under dictatorships in some Latin American countries in the 1970s and 1980s, the winners were able to dictate history. Their hegemonic histories invariably obscured counter-memories that were hidden and struggles that were oppressed. Not until democracies were reestablished were spaces opened up to allow for transitions and the plurality of memories to emerge. Under these democratic circumstances, memory may be challenged and contested, and the resulting struggle may lead to a new phase in the development of a collective memory. In Argentina, she explained, the human rights movement proved critical to this process at a time when Alfonsin attempted to restrain mobilization regarding the past. In the movement's efforts to spur the government to more action, the issue of memory became central to the human rights' agenda. An ingenious campaign was crafted around the slogan of 'Nunca Mas' (Never Again), which forced society to revisit its recent history in order to fulfill the campaign's basic premise of forever preventing a repetition of the horrors of the past. Since 1995, increased activity to open an even greater space for the discussion of memory has produced a surge in commemorations, books and other memory-related activities.

Jelin and Hale both agreed that these processes usually require 'distance' to develop and to allow for memory to 'come out'. Fear is still the most important factor impeding the transmission of memory; many argue that 'true testimony is still that one that does not come out'. Nonetheless, Hale pointed out that recently books revealing "counter-memories" have emerged independent of the support of the human rights movement. Also, former armed actors are now analyzing and writing about their past projects. Hale believes that there is an important window of opportunity of about 5 to 10 years during which this process will intensify and then will consolidate an alternative memory of the recent past.