Memory, Truth, and Justice in Contemporary Latin America

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As new social actors have emerged in Latin America, the process of dealing with the legacy of still-unresolved human rights abuses has been significantly reinvigorated. This powerful text provides the first systematic analysis of the second wave of memory and justice mobilization throughout the region. A multidisciplinary group of authors, many from the global south, consider the changed political, economic, and social conditions that have led to new forms of social action. They trace the growth of human rights groups as fundamental political organizations in the post-dictatorship era, the participation of public authorities in the investigation and persecution of human rights abusers, and the implementation of national and international human rights legislation. Pairing clear explanations of concepts and debates with cases studies, the book offers a unique opportunity for students to understand and interpret the history and politics of a range of Latin American countries.

Reviews

An invaluable contribution to our understanding of the ways memory intersects with the political search for justice. By attending not only to institutional practices but also to vernacular rhetorics, the case studies in this volume expand our understanding of the kind of memory work necessary to seek a just and sustainable resolution to conflict. The contributors to this volume provide detailed and compelling studies of memory practices in various countries within Latin America. Taken together, the collected essays open up a dialogue that will be useful for students of the region but also for any who are interested in the way public memory is involved in efforts toward achieving social justice. -- Kendall R. Phillips, Syracuse University
This invaluable textoffers a nuanced and multifaceted view of the second wave of memory politics in Latin America.Spanning the varied yet aligned contexts from Argentina to Chile and Guatemala to Uruguay, among others, the book is an enormously useful introduction to the contradictory, complex, and intersecting mobilizations of memory, human rights, reconciliation, and social justice that have defined Latin Americas relationship to its history of violence and state terror. -- Marita Sturken, New York University

Author Bio

Roberta Villaln is a Fulbright scholar, associate professor of sociology, and the chairperson of the Sociology and Anthropology Department at St. Johns University, New York City.