Abstract
This chapter discusses the meanings constructed by victims of State crimes in Colombia, about the recovery processes of collective memory in which they participate. This analysis, articulated from the perspective of the social psychology of liberation, includes a conceptual approach to the process of building social frameworks of memory (Halbwachs, Rev Esp Sociol Hist, 69:209–219, 1995), to the work of memory (Jelin, Los Trabajos de la Memoria, 2002), and to the sense that this work promotes resistance to social oblivion and the fight against impunity. Based on victims’ accounts, it also seeks to recognize what the strategies used to eradicate impunity were and to question the memories of atrocities. This analysis is developed from three conceptual axes: The use of direct violence, threats, and harassment as a form of terror and silencing exercise; the institutional lying articulated to selectivity, biased information, and media manipulation of social realities; and the polarizing and stigmatization exerted from official versions about the complaint processes, rights enforceability, and continual revictimization.
In memory of Olga Tony Vidales
Ella guardó acusiosa los ecos eternales
de pasos y de sueños que nunca fueron día
y tornó sinsabores en notas musicales
y a luchas sin laureles calor de melodía.
La caracola es de tiempo,
Neiva 1982
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Thesis for Masters in Social Policy, Faculty of Political Science and International Relations, Universidad Javeriana, May 2008.
- 2.
- 3.
Observatory of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. Coordination Colombia—Europe—United States.
- 4.
Information from the movement’s website http://www.movimientodevictimas.org/node/26.
- 5.
Such as torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, abductions, selective assassinations, massacres, rapes, expulsions and forced relocation, arbitrary arrests, imprisonment for political reasons and opinion, political persecution, arbitrary extradition, exile, and banishment.
- 6.
Practices of persecution, torture, abductions, assassinations, bombings, displacement or starvation of the civilian population, death or inhuman treatment inflicted on prisoners of war, plunder of public property, destruction of civilian property in military operations, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment exercised in combat or armed conflict.
- 7.
This took place in the Colombian town of Cienaga in December 6 of 1928, when a regiment of Colombia’s armed forces opened fire on demonstrators protesting the poor working conditions in the United Fruit Company, over a thousand people were killed.
- 8.
Committed between 16 and 19 February 2000 by the Northern Block of the Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) with the complicity of members of the Armed Forces of Colombia. In June 2008, the Attorney General’s Office determined that more than 100 people had been killed.
- 9.
It took place from 15 to July 20, 1997, in the homonymous municipality in the Meta department and cost the lives of an unknown number of citizens at the hands of paramilitary groups.
- 10.
Between March 4 and September 13, 1982 members of the Colombian state F2 detained and abducted more than 13 people, mostly students from the National and Local University.
- 11.
The Latin American Federation of Associations of Relatives of Detained-Disappeared (FEDEFAM), declared August 30 as International Day of the Disappeared.
- 12.
Act 975 of 2005. Omissions, systematic denial of State responsibility and the still practically zero progress on reparation establish this law, primarily as a means of impunity in the State crime and the alleged "demobilization" of paramilitary groups, which instead of a cessation of military action is a systematic concealment of it, by qualifying its exercise of social control towards absolute impunity and invisibility as regards public opinion; thus resulting in an escalation of the dirty war, in which victims have no guarantees whatsoever of restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and non-repetition.
- 13.
Key questions concern the scope of the political justifications, ideologies, and doctrines, and the psychological and moral field to explain how it was possible that humans have produced this range of cruelty and terror. The answer to this last question is not in the psychopathology of individuals or groups. It is the combination of political justifications of the conflicts of power and interests, the moral foundations for certain ideological definitions of the common good and collective personal emotions and other motivations have been strengthened, which has made it possible for these processes take place (Lira 2000. p. 148).
- 14.
Concept coined by Ricoeur (2000) in Memory, history, forgetting.
- 15.
Third National Movement of Victims of State Crimes. Bogota, D.C., July 9, 2006.
References
Becerra, C. (2006). Los Derechos De Las Victimas, La memoria y la resistencia al olvido. http://www.ilsa.org.co/IMG/pdf/PONENCIA_UJ.pdf. Accessed 2 June 2007.
Blondel, C. (1945). Psicología Colectiva. México, D.F.: Compañía Editora Nacional.
Boleso, H. (2008). Verdad, violencia y prácticas sociales de exterminio en America Latina. http://www.newsmatic.e-pol.com.ar. Accessed 2 Mar 2009.
Campos, Y. (2003). Memoria de los silenciados: El Baile Rojo. Bogotá: Grafiq Editores.
Carretero, A. (2008). Maurice Halbwachs: Oficialidad y clandestinidad de la memoria. Athenea Digital, 33. http://psicologiasocial.uab.es/athenea/index.php/atheneaDigital/article/view/419. Accessed 12 June 2009.
Cepeda, I., & Girón, C. (2005). La segregación de las víctimas de la violencia política. Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes.
Cepeda, I. (2008). Fundación comité de solidaridad con presos políticos. http://www.comitedesolidaridad.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=34. Accessed 21 June 2009.
Colombia Nunca Más. (2008). Crímenes de lesa humanidad en la zona quinta. Bogotá: CAJAR.
Comité de solidaridad con presos políticos. (2008). Interview with Ivan Cepeda, February 28, 2008. http://psicologiasocial.uab.es/athenea/index.php/atheneaDigital/article/view/419. Accessed 12 June 2009.
Cruz, M. (2007). Acerca de la dificultad de vivir juntos: La prioridad de la política sobre la historia. Barcelona: Gedisa.
Desroche, H. (1976). Sociología de la esperanza. Barcelona: Herder.
Fernández, P. (1991). El Espíritu de la Calle. Psicología Política de la Cultura Cotidiana. México, D.F.: Universidad de Guadalajara.
Rosa María Doménech, Beatriz Molina Rueda, María Garcia-Miguel, (Eds.). (2008). La importancia del pasado en una cultura de paz. In Memoria y reconstrucción de la paz: Enfoques multidisciplinarios en contextos mundiales. Madrid: Batarata.
Gaborit, M. (2005). Memoria histórica: Relato desde las víctimas. In N. Portillo, M. Gaborit, & J. M. Cruz (Eds.), Psicología social en la posguerra: Teoría y applicaciones desde El Salvador. San Salvador: UCA Editores.
Giraldo, J. (2003). Miradas desveladas sobre la guerra interna. http://www.javiergiraldo.org/spip.php?article17. Accessed 21 Nov 2007.
Giraldo, J. (2004). Aproximaciones al valor de la verdad. http://www.javiergiraldo.org/spip.php?article80. Accessed 21 Nov 2007.
Halbwachs, M. (1995). Memoria colectiva y memoria histórica. Revista Española de Sociología Histórica, 69, 209–219.
Halbwachs, M. (2004a). Los Marcos Sociales de la Memoria. Barcelona: Anthropos.
Halbwachs, M. (2004b). La memoria colectiva. Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza.
Ibáñez, T. (Ed.). (1989). El conocimiento de la realidad social. Barcelona: Sendai.
Jelin, E. (2002).Los trabajos de la memoria. Barcelona: Siglo Veintiuno.
Lira, E. (2000).Verdad, justicia e impunidad. Memoria, perdón y olvido. In Vásquez J.(Ed.), Psicología Social y Liberación en América Latina. México, D.F: UAM Iztapalapa.
Martín-Baró, I. (1990). Psicología social de la guerra: trauma y terapia. San Salvador: UCA editores.
Mendoza, J. (2004). Las Formas Del Recuerdo. La Memoria Narrativa. Athenea Digital, 006. Barcelona: Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/pdf/537/53700616.pdf. Accessed 2 Apr 2009.
Mendoza, J. (2007). Reconstruyendo la guerra sucia en México: del olvido social a la memoria colectiva. Revista Electrónica de Psicología Política, 5(15). http://pepsic.bvs-psi.org.br/scielo.php. Accessed 22 June 2009.
Montero, A. (2000). En torno a la idea de delito político. Anales De Derecho. Universidad de Murcia. no. 18.
MOVICE. (2008). Centro Cultural para la Memoria y la Dignidad. Internal working document.
Ricoeur, P. (1999). La lectura del tiempo pasado: memoria y olvido. Madrid: Arrecife.
Ricoeur, P. (2000) La memoria, la historia, el olvido. Madrid: Trota.
Sanchez A. (2008). El convoy republicano, crónica de un viaje. In Andaluces en los campos de Mauthausen. Sevilla: Centros de estudios andaluces.
Spinellis, D. (2001). Criminalidad estatal, criminalidad del sistema y derecho penal. In Arroyo, L. A. & Berdugo, I. (Eds.), Homenaje al Dr. Marino Barbero Santos (pp. 683–698). La Mancha: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla.
Todorov, T. (2000). Los Abusos de la memoria, Barcelona: Paidós.
Vásquez, F. (2005). Construyendo el pasado, la memoria como práctica social.In N. Portillo, M. Gaborit, & J. M. Cruz (Eds.), Psicología social en la posguerra: Teoría y applicaciones desde El Salvador. San Salvador: UCA editores.
Vidales, R. (2005). Análisis de la recuperación de la memoria colectiva de las victimas de crímenes de Estado como una lucha política y como un problema para la política social. Unpublished Master’s degree dissertation, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Vidales, R. (2014). Memory, Narrative, and the Social Transformation of Reality. In: Sacipa-Rodriguez, S., Montero, M. (eds) Psychosocial Approaches to Peace-Building in Colombia. Peace Psychology Book Series, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04549-8_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04549-8_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-04548-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-04549-8
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)