Sites of Memory in Spain and Latin America : Trauma, Politics, and Resistance

Sites of Memory in Spain and Latin America is a collection of essays that explores historical memory at the intersection of political, cultural, social, and economic forces in the contexts of Spain and Latin America. The essays here focus on a variety of forms of memory—from the most concrete to the performative—that resist forgetting and unite individuals against hegemonic memory. The volume comprises four thematic sections that focus on Chile, Spain, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, and the Dominican Republic. Keeping in line with the concept informing this collection, that the past returns politically to haunt the present, the four sections move from the contemporary context to the colonial and pre-Columbian eras in Latin America. For all its diversity, the researchers’ interdisciplinary methodology displayed in this collection brings to light processes that would otherwise have remained illegible under a more narrow interpretative approach to historical memory. This volume focuses on the processes of remembering in geographies that have been transformed by violence and conflict in Spain and Latin America. In the cases investigated witnessing, trauma, and testimony speak to the urgency of truth and justice; historical memory, therefore, is ultimately a political act. Part I. Introduction The politics of the past and the fragmentary present : locating memory in Spain and Latin America / Aída Díaz de León Part II. From the repertoire to the archive : memory in Chile after Pinochet Performing memory and democracy in Chile / Liliana Trevizán Memory in Chile : a conversation on democracy : interview [of] Ricardo Brodsky Baudet, executive director of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile (December 3, 2013) / Oscar D. Sarmiento and Liliana Trevizán Part III. Literature as media of memory in Spain and Latin America Everything is coming to light : re-appearance of lost history in Carmen Martín-Gaite's El Cuarto de Atrás / Marcella Salvi Exile and erasure : a poetic reconstruction of the Spanish past in Antonio Crespo Massieu's Elegía en Portbou / Marina Llorente Translation as a means of preserving historical memory in Spain, Nicaragua, and Chile / Steven F. White Narrativa e ilusión : Argentine historical memory in Una Sombra Ya Pronto Serás, by Osvaldo Soriano / Mallory N. Craig-Kuhn Part IV. The struggles of memory in the global market : Venezuela and Mexico The children of 1989 : resurrecting the Venezuelan dead / George Ciccariello-Maher Depoliticization, historical memory, and resistance to obliviousness : the case of feminicide and the Cotton Field Memorial in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico / Martha I. Chew Sánchez and Alfredo Limas Hernández Part V. The palimpsest of memory : reconstructing race, culture, and religion from colonial times to the present in Peru, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic Mystic ringing of stone bells : a case of annihilation of cultural memory in Peru / Beatriz Carolina Peña The memory of Black womanhood in Mexico : la Mulata de Córdoba / Selfa A. Chew Casting traitors and villains : the historiographical memory of the 1605 depopulations of Hispaniola / Juan José Ponce-Vázquez. "Informed by the interdisciplinary methodology of cultural studies, Sites of Memory in Spain and Latin America is a significant addition to the growing corpus of studies in historical memory, particularly those reflecting issues concerning processes of historical memory in Hispanic societies. This collection is one of the few that covers a heterogeneous body of cultural products and social movements emerging in contemporary Spain and in the Latin American context spanning the pre-Columbian and colonial eras to the present"--Provided by publisher. "Informed by the interdisciplinary methodology of cultural studies, Sites of Memory in Spain and Latin America is a significant addition to the growing corpus of studies in historical memory, particularly those reflecting issues concerning processes of historical memory in Hispanic societies. This collection is one of the few that covers a heterogeneous body of cultural products and social movements emerging in contemporary Spain and in the Latin American context spanning the pre-Columbian and colonial eras to the present"-- Résumé de l'éditeur