Finding facts and constructing memory: the creation and custody of human rights records in South America

Abstract

Gabriela Andaur Gómez is currently a student in the Master of Archival Studies at the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies at The University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada. Her interest in Human Rights records arose from her experience as the Coordinator of the Archives of the Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile (FECH), the repository responsible for safeguarding the records produced by the student Federation from the dictatorship period to the present, and for documenting the Chilean student movement. Ms Andaur Gomez holds a BA in History from the Universidad de Chile (2010) and is a scholarship holder of the Becas Chile program of the Government of Chile. She will soon start work as a Graduate Research Assistant for the Records in the Cloud project at UBC. Human rights records have been characterised as those created during the reign of repressive governments or in a transitional context, produced by the state or non-governmental organisations and whose content is related to, or is evidence of, the occurrence of human rights violations. This paper examines three major types of human rights records produced in South America during the second half of the twentieth century, with the aim of identifying their characteristics, the functions that they have served and the challenges that have emerged in relation to their preservation and custody.