Schools as Sites of Memory: The musealization of the armed conflict by students and teachers in Colombia

Abstract

While in Colombia the armed conflict remains active and its legacies remain unsolved, the schools are asserting their role as sites of memory where meanings about the past and its importance for the present and the future are actively constructed and contested. Teachers and students from different regions of the country have ventured into the creation of Memory School Museums. In this chapter, we recognize such practices of popular musealization as an emergent social phenomenon. To advance the study of these practices, we adopted an integrated multilevel framework of historical culture. This analytical choice allowed us to recognize not only the singularities of the presented examples but their affinity with the global boom of memory resulted from major transformations of prevailing ideas about history and temporality. Our exploratory approach to this type of memorial museum highlights how they defy heritage conventions because they offer opportunities for formal and informal history education. Finally, we suggested that more research is needed to understand the processes behind the creation of these new museums and their consequences for those who experience them in developing historical consciousness.