Childhoods and Collective Memory in Latin America

Abstract

The end of the Cold War influenced the fall of military dictatorships and authoritarian regimes throughout Latin America. In tandem with democratization, victims’ rights groups advocating for justice and reparations for the gross violations and state crimes that plagued the region during the twentieth century became critical political actors. These grassroots organizations emerged in the search for redressing and restoring dignity and human rights while undertaking efforts to preserve and transmit collective memory, an ideological process known now as “the memory turn.” This shift highlights how Latin American activism and scholarship center the study of memory as a locus for the revindication of rights and a route for the consolidation of democracy. This “memory turn” has also been considered a catalyst for the numerous estallidos sociales (social protests in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Puerto Rico, and Peru, to name a few) that have swept the continent since 2019. Any understanding of the interconnections between these troubling pasts and the fragile, transitional presents the region faces must include children and young people as crucial participants in the co-narration and transfer of history. Although, in most traditional collective trauma and memory studies, children and youth are solely discussed as victims of human rights violations, critical work centering their active participation in collective memorialization is also being developed in the region. This entry focuses on how Latin Americanists, memory scholars, and childhood scholars have approached the study of children’s and youth’s participation in collective memory. Examples include the reconstruction of fractured family histories by the post-dictatorship generations in the Southern Cone, exile stories across the continent, the recognition of the destruction of racialized collective identities due to political violence in Peru and Guatemala and anti-blackness in Brazil, the memorialization of the “lost generation” in Colombia, and the analysis of literary works for children created under the banners of “never forget” and “never again.” Children’s and youth’s participation in collective memory has served a dual purpose: first, to construct ideal future political subjects responsible for the democratization project; second, as the cure to end the systemic cycles of violence that have constituted the region’s history. These works also show that when one seeks to center children’s and youth’s participation in collective memory work, we must look for children between the lines, as they tend to be overlooked as political agents.