Depicting truth and transition at national memorial museums in Chile and Peru

Abstract

Comparative analysis of Peru’s Place of Memory, Tolerance, and Social Inclusion and Chile’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights reveals different perspectives on how to represent past truth commissions and processes of transitioning from violence in national memorial museums. Chile’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights displays a foundational truth about state violence established through the work of the country’s truth commissions. Peru’s Place of Memory, Tolerance, and Social Inclusion was conceived as a space for presenting locally situated experiences of the country’s internal war; it is also characterized by subtle efforts to distance the museum from the narrative of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Owing in part to such departures, Peru’s Place of Memory, Tolerance, and Social Inclusion offers material for questioning the country’s post-transition present that has generally been absent in the human rights-focused exhibition of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. An assessment of these contrasts, evident in the museums’ institutional histories and permanent exhibitions, potentially unsettles assumptions about the role of official memorialization in the aftermath of truth commissions.