Women and Historical Memory, Activism Instead of Silence: Two Emblematic Country Cases in South America

Abstract

The studies of historical memory in South America were initially treated in the context of the struggle for human rights without paying attention to the gender issue. Nowadays, women groups, holders of the experience gained in the last few decades have entered this field, claiming their right to convey the past to the present from their own perspectives. Policies of memory applied in the region today seek a narrative that facilitates the encounter of different voices that coexist to reinterpret the past. The women’s perspective in this domain allows for the differentiation of the types of violence against them in authoritarian regimes and internal armed conflicts. This paper examines some elements of analysis to understand the particularity of this perspective and highlights the specific dynamics and results thus generated theoretically and practically. The central argument considers that the various acts of violence against women in a time of repression and/or domestic war in South America are an extension of the discrimination and marginalization that they have historically and socially experienced; hence, the new practices of memory try to overcome these circumstances. To illustrate this situation better, it presents two emblematic “country cases” in South America: Argentina and Colombia.