Abstract

ROMERO, Gabriel Ruiz. Close and distant memories: from the stories about the local experience of violence to the configuration of a commemorative narrative in Colombia. Etnográfica [online]. 2021, vol.25, n.2, pp.335-356.  Epub Nov 25, 2021. ISSN 0873-6561.  https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.9733.

The article analyzes the way in which the construction of an official account about the violent past requires specific narrative interpretation frameworks that make it possible to transform local stories about armed violence into a commemorated national memory. In this regard, the paper states that the official reports of memory are perceived as distant narrative devices by the local actors whose memory these reports seek to reflect. A tension is thus established between the local close memories that circulate within the communities themselves and the distant commemorative memory that is directed toward the external social and political space where the disputes for the national memory take place. The article is based on an extensive fieldwork carried out in the pile dwelling populations of the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta, an area that was the epicenter of two massacres executed by right-wing paramilitary armies in 2000, within the context of the Colombian armed conflict.

Keywords : memory; memory report; stories; narrative; commemoration; colombian armed conflict.

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