Memory Matters in Transitional Peru

In 2003 the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported that 70,000 people had been killed in the country during the conflict between the Shining Path, the Peruvian Armed Forces, and other terrorist organizations. The precept of the Commission became: 'A country that forgets its history is condemned to repeat it.' The idea of making a country 'remember' guided many of their initiatives including a ground-breaking photo exhibit entitled Yuyanapaq, a Quechua word translated as 'In order to remember.' But, what does it mean for a country to remember? How do we remember (collectively)?

Margarita Saona examines the mechanisms activated by art and memorials built to commemorate traumatic events at the social level. By examining images, metonymic invocations, the use of proper names, auratic crime scenes, built environments, and digital outreach interventions, Memory Matters in Transitional Peru seeks to establish some of the cognitive and emotional responses that make us incorporate the past suffering of others as a painful legacy of our own.

Margarita Saona is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA. She is the author of Novelas Familiares: Figuraciones de la nacion en la novela latinoamericana contemporanea and numerous articles on gender, memory, and national identity in Latin American culture.