In recent decades, movements to reconstruct the historical memory of social groups affected by processes of invisibility, such as women, African Americans, and people from indigenous peoples, have gained importance.

, colonized cultures, workers, politically persecuted people, etc.

The reconstruction of memory affected by the processes of invisibilization does not constitute a mere research effort, but also and fundamentally requires social activism aimed at demystifying stereotypes and given truths, deeply rooted in the dominant culture. Elites rationalize and revise that memory in light of their ideology and interests. But there is a difference between official memory, which is elaborated and imposed by the State or public organizations to glorify, mythologize and hide events and maintain national identity, and public memory, which is characterized as the will or desire on the part of some social group or the propensity of power to select and organize representations of the past so that they can be assumed by individuals as their own.[9]​.

In many parts of the world forums for memory have emerged as spaces, not only for research but also political and cultural, in order to serve as a platform for the construction of social identities.[10]​.

Historical memory in Argentina

In Argentina, after the military dictatorship known as the National Reorganization Process (1976-1983), the concept of "memory" acquired an important cultural and political value thanks to the struggles of the population and, in particular, human rights organizations.

The systematic policy of disappearances, clandestine repression and suppression of the identity of children of opponents led democracy to promote an active policy of "reconstruction of memory" and discovery of "the truth", fundamentally alluding to the fate of the disappeared. The basic structure of the state terrorism regime in Argentina was to destroy the memory of the activities and the very identity of the opponents.

Human rights organizations, and especially the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, have played a decisive role since 1977 in preserving the memory of the disappeared, in the first case, and of the children of the kidnapped disappeared, whose identity was suppressed and many times raised by substitute parents complicit in the murder of the biological parents.

A fundamental step in the reconstruction of historical memory in Argentina was the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons CONADEP, created in 1983 by President Raúl Alfonsín, which deeply investigated the way in which the clandestine repression was carried out to produce, in 1985, a famous report known as the Never Again Report, a central piece of evidence in the Trial of the Juntas that condemned the military who carried out the repression and made massively known the criminal acts of state terrorism.

In the reconstruction of historical memory, the initiative of the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo to organize the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), led by the American Clyde Snow, played an important role, which developed new techniques for the exhumation of collective graves, recognition of corpses and DNA studies. These techniques were later used in other Latin American countries where this type of disappearances also occurred.

Due to a series of military insurrections between 1986 and 1990, a series of impunity laws "Laws of Impunity (Argentina)") were passed that closed investigations into crimes against humanity committed in Argentina between 1976 and 1983. This led human rights organizations to promote the so-called Truth Trials, which could not condemn the guilty but could find out what had really happened to them. each missing. In 2003, Congress repealed laws that had closed the investigations. Shortly afterward, the cases for crimes against humanity closed in the 1980s were reopened. On August 3, 2006, 959 criminal cases had been reopened in which 211 defendants were in preventive detention.[11]​.

In 2010, the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, Navy Pillay, said that Argentina is the country "with the highest number of human rights trials in the world" and praised Argentina's policy on the matter, saying that the country "has demonstrated that knowing the truth is a right without limits, it is a right that no one can deny." "The UN position on amnesties is very clear: they are not admissible if they prevent the trial of people who may be criminally responsible for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity or serious violations of human rights" indicated Navy Pillay.[12]​.

A special case of historical memory are missing-kidnapped children, delivered to families who validated the identity theft, and who in some cases were complicit in the murder of their parents. It is certain that the majority of these children are still alive. To find these children, a group of grandmothers and grandfathers of detained-disappeared people created the organization Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, directed by Estela de Carlotto. Since democracy was established in 1983, and February 2010, the Grandmothers had found 101 of those children.[13] The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo estimate that around 500 children were kidnapped and deprived of their identity.

The recovery of grandchildren additionally requires an unprecedented challenge of reconstructing family, personal and historical memories related to the true identity of the detained-kidnapped children. Today these children are already young and their situation worsens if one takes into account that the people whom they considered their parents, whom they naturally trusted, had denied them their identity and origin, and in some cases they were accomplices or knew the murderers of their biological parents.

The well-known Argentine rock band, Bersuit Vergarabat, performed a song at the request of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo that reflects the drama of these young people. The song is called Victoria Clara, it has no copyright and can be freely downloaded from the band's site: Victoria Clara.mp3.

In Argentina, human rights organizations have been demanding and obtaining that the clandestine detention centers "Centro clandestino de detention (Argentina)"), where thousands of opponents were tortured and disappeared, be preserved as Spaces of Memory in order to investigate, recover, preserve and disseminate the memory of the disappeared. Probably the best known, although not the only one, is the Memory Space that has been decided to establish at the Navy Mechanics School.

The so-called Memory Forums have also existed since 1997 in the southern neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, created with the purpose of recreating the memory and identity of those neighborhoods. The Parque de los Patricios, the Pompeya and the Mataderos stand out.

In the City of Buenos Aires it has also been decided to build the Memory Park that will include the Memorial of the Disappeared designed as a ramp over the Río de la Plata with all their names.

In Colombia, through Law 1448 of 2011, better known as the Victims Law, the National Center for Historical Memory was created and assigned functions through Decree 4803 of the same year. There are also local initiatives, such as the Center for Memory, Peace and Reconciliation in Bogotá and multiple memory initiatives throughout the country.

Historical memory in Spain

• - Wikinews has news related to historical memory.

The overlap between history and memory has been a dominant debate in Spain since the 2000s. A pioneering work stood out, with important contributions from several CSIC researchers.[14]​.

Subsequently, since the government of Rodríguez Zapatero proposed the Law of Historical Memory, with the intention of compensating for the oblivion of the victims of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, the debate on the defeated of the civil war without a dignified burial has expanded the repercussions of the concept of memory beyond the academic boundaries. Specifically, non-conventional burial places, such as those indicated above, are the mass graves and gutters where many of those shot in the Spanish Civil War ended up, whose location and destination are one of the main objects of debate in historical memory in Spain in recent years,[15]​ a particularly publicized case being that of Federico García Lorca; Even on the occasion of the 70th anniversary (2006) a "war of obituaries" has broken out. Previously, there had been some controversy with the removal of the equestrian statue of General Franco that remained in front of the New Ministries in Madrid. The fate of the Valley of the Fallen has also been called into question.

As a result of the application of the concept of historical memory, converted into an instrument of intellectual and social mobilization by Emilio Silva and the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory[16], a very lively historiographic debate has arisen about the opportunity of the concept of historical memory itself, which is rejected by some. Thus, for example, Stanley Payne, author of Repression during the civil war and under Francoism: history and historical memory, 'sentenced' in 2006, in an interview for ABC:.

For his part, Santos Juliá, that same 2006, asked himself from the pages of the newspaper El País:

From another perspective, that same year of 2006, the coroner Francisco Etxeberria, who has exhumed more than 500 people shot during the Civil War, reported in the aforementioned newspaper El País that:

On July 18, 2007, various associations of relatives of those missing from the so-called National Uprising, filed criminal complaints for crimes against humanity at the National Court. A little more than a year later, the head of court number 5 of said headquarters, Baltasar Garzón, sent an order to various state institutions and the Catholic Church requesting information in this regard. A few days later, he expanded this ruling with a new one where information was requested not only about missing people from the so-called republican side, but also from the rebel side; and the Catholic Church was urged to ask for its collaboration in the investigations. It has been argued, from a legal point of view, that these rulings suffer from defects;[20]​ and Judge Garzón himself, after initiating (November 2008) proceedings for crimes against humanity and claiming the death certificate of those allegedly responsible (including that of Franco) declared himself incompetent and referred possible subsequent proceedings to local courts. Shortly before, the prosecution had requested the annulment of the process.

Historical memory in Europe

Some authors and institutions designate Memories and places of Memory of Europe, among which would be the extermination camps of the Holocaust.[30]​ For the philosopher Reyes Mate, the complex of concentration camps and extermination camps called Auschwitz marks a milestone in human history that forces us to rethink thought and action without forgetting the victims, in need of presence and redemption, of memory, but of a moral memory, and who have usually been forgotten. and erased in history.[31]​.

Starting in January 2005, the UN General Assembly declared January 27 as International Day of Remembrance of Holocaust Victims, the same date that Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration camp, was liberated in 1945. The UN holds a Holocaust memorial dedicating each year to a different theme. In 2012, children were victims of the Holocaust.[32]​.

Historical memory in Colombia

After Law 975 of 2005 (Justice and Peace Law) the national government of Colombia creates the National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation (CNRR), which includes the preservation of historical memory within the right of reparation:

For this purpose, the CNRR created the National Center for Historical Memory, CNMH, directed by historian Gonzalo Sánchez Gómez, which focuses on the victims of paramilitarism in Colombia seeking to identify "the reasons for the emergence and evolution of illegal armed groups", which includes guerrillas, especially the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army "Ejército de Liberación Nacional (Colombia)"). (ELN); as well as the different truths and memories of violence, with a differentiated approach and a preferential option for the voices of victims who have been suppressed or silenced.

The CMH carries out research along the following lines: regional reports, reports by type of violence and armed actor, reports on driving factors of the armed conflict, reports by victimized sector, as well as conceptual and methodological documents. To date, this department has prepared, developed and published around 50 research documents and reports, which have been delivered to social organizations, libraries, academics, students and society in general. All these publications are publicly accessible and available on the CNMH website.

Historical memory in Peru

In Peru, one of the most circumstantial and relevant projects that reconstruct a relevant stage of the country's historical memory is represented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission "Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Peru)") (CVR). This was a Peruvian commission mainly in charge of preparing a report on the terrorism experienced in Peru during the period between 1980 and 2000. It was created in June 2001 by provisional president Valentín Paniagua, bringing together different members of civil society. It was chaired by Salomón Lerner Febres, then rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. In addition to the investigation of the terrorist violence of the Shining Path and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), it attempted to delve into the causes of this violence and the military repression against these terrorist movements, which claimed mainly civilian victims in this crossfire. To this end, it collected the testimony of 16,985 people and organized 21 hearings with victims of violence, which were attended by more than 9,500 people. The Final Report was made public on August 28, 2003, before the Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo Manrique.

In December 2000, the Transitional Government established an inter-institutional working group, made up of representatives of the Ministries of Justice, Defense, Interior and the Promotion of Women and Human Development; the Ombudsman's Office, the Peruvian Episcopal Conference, the Evangelical Council and the National Human Rights Coordinator. This group's objective was to explore a mechanism for investigating the events that occurred during terrorism, a proposal of tasks for the judicial system and a reparations policy.

On June 4, 2001, by Supreme Decree No. 065-2001-PCM, the Truth Commission was created, in charge of clarifying the process, the facts and responsibilities of the terrorist violence and the violation of human rights that occurred from May 1980 to November 2000, attributable to both terrorist organizations and State agents, as well as proposing initiatives aimed at affirming peace and harmony. among Peruvians.

• - Historical memory in 'Dialnet' (more than 650 documents -articles and books-, many of them full text and downloadable).

• - Juan Sisinio Pérez Garzón and Eduardo Manzano, Historical Memory, Madrid, CSIC-La Catarata, 2010. ISBN 978-84-00-09147-7.

• - Archive, War and Exile Association.

• - Lost children of Franco's regime.

• - Symbolism of Francoism.

• - Political repression in Spain.

• - Opposition to Francoism.

• - Places of memory of Franco's repression.

• - National Movement.

• - Archaeological and artistic looting.

• - Justice and Peace Law.

• - Paramilitarism in Colombia.

In recent decades, movements to reconstruct the historical memory of social groups affected by processes of invisibility, such as women, African Americans, and people from indigenous peoples, have gained importance.

, colonized cultures, workers, politically persecuted people, etc.

The reconstruction of memory affected by the processes of invisibilization does not constitute a mere research effort, but also and fundamentally requires social activism aimed at demystifying stereotypes and given truths, deeply rooted in the dominant culture. Elites rationalize and revise that memory in light of their ideology and interests. But there is a difference between official memory, which is elaborated and imposed by the State or public organizations to glorify, mythologize and hide events and maintain national identity, and public memory, which is characterized as the will or desire on the part of some social group or the propensity of power to select and organize representations of the past so that they can be assumed by individuals as their own.[9]​.

In many parts of the world forums for memory have emerged as spaces, not only for research but also political and cultural, in order to serve as a platform for the construction of social identities.[10]​.

Historical memory in Argentina

In Argentina, after the military dictatorship known as the National Reorganization Process (1976-1983), the concept of "memory" acquired an important cultural and political value thanks to the struggles of the population and, in particular, human rights organizations.

The systematic policy of disappearances, clandestine repression and suppression of the identity of children of opponents led democracy to promote an active policy of "reconstruction of memory" and discovery of "the truth", fundamentally alluding to the fate of the disappeared. The basic structure of the state terrorism regime in Argentina was to destroy the memory of the activities and the very identity of the opponents.

Human rights organizations, and especially the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, have played a decisive role since 1977 in preserving the memory of the disappeared, in the first case, and of the children of the kidnapped disappeared, whose identity was suppressed and many times raised by substitute parents complicit in the murder of the biological parents.

A fundamental step in the reconstruction of historical memory in Argentina was the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons CONADEP, created in 1983 by President Raúl Alfonsín, which deeply investigated the way in which the clandestine repression was carried out to produce, in 1985, a famous report known as the Never Again Report, a central piece of evidence in the Trial of the Juntas that condemned the military who carried out the repression and made massively known the criminal acts of state terrorism.

In the reconstruction of historical memory, the initiative of the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo to organize the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), led by the American Clyde Snow, played an important role, which developed new techniques for the exhumation of collective graves, recognition of corpses and DNA studies. These techniques were later used in other Latin American countries where this type of disappearances also occurred.

Due to a series of military insurrections between 1986 and 1990, a series of impunity laws "Laws of Impunity (Argentina)") were passed that closed investigations into crimes against humanity committed in Argentina between 1976 and 1983. This led human rights organizations to promote the so-called Truth Trials, which could not condemn the guilty but could find out what had really happened to them. each missing. In 2003, Congress repealed laws that had closed the investigations. Shortly afterward, the cases for crimes against humanity closed in the 1980s were reopened. On August 3, 2006, 959 criminal cases had been reopened in which 211 defendants were in preventive detention.[11]​.

In 2010, the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, Navy Pillay, said that Argentina is the country "with the highest number of human rights trials in the world" and praised Argentina's policy on the matter, saying that the country "has demonstrated that knowing the truth is a right without limits, it is a right that no one can deny." "The UN position on amnesties is very clear: they are not admissible if they prevent the trial of people who may be criminally responsible for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity or serious violations of human rights" indicated Navy Pillay.[12]​.

A special case of historical memory are missing-kidnapped children, delivered to families who validated the identity theft, and who in some cases were complicit in the murder of their parents. It is certain that the majority of these children are still alive. To find these children, a group of grandmothers and grandfathers of detained-disappeared people created the organization Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, directed by Estela de Carlotto. Since democracy was established in 1983, and February 2010, the Grandmothers had found 101 of those children.[13] The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo estimate that around 500 children were kidnapped and deprived of their identity.

The recovery of grandchildren additionally requires an unprecedented challenge of reconstructing family, personal and historical memories related to the true identity of the detained-kidnapped children. Today these children are already young and their situation worsens if one takes into account that the people whom they considered their parents, whom they naturally trusted, had denied them their identity and origin, and in some cases they were accomplices or knew the murderers of their biological parents.

The well-known Argentine rock band, Bersuit Vergarabat, performed a song at the request of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo that reflects the drama of these young people. The song is called Victoria Clara, it has no copyright and can be freely downloaded from the band's site: Victoria Clara.mp3.

In Argentina, human rights organizations have been demanding and obtaining that the clandestine detention centers "Centro clandestino de detention (Argentina)"), where thousands of opponents were tortured and disappeared, be preserved as Spaces of Memory in order to investigate, recover, preserve and disseminate the memory of the disappeared. Probably the best known, although not the only one, is the Memory Space that has been decided to establish at the Navy Mechanics School.

The so-called Memory Forums have also existed since 1997 in the southern neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, created with the purpose of recreating the memory and identity of those neighborhoods. The Parque de los Patricios, the Pompeya and the Mataderos stand out.

In the City of Buenos Aires it has also been decided to build the Memory Park that will include the Memorial of the Disappeared designed as a ramp over the Río de la Plata with all their names.

In Colombia, through Law 1448 of 2011, better known as the Victims Law, the National Center for Historical Memory was created and assigned functions through Decree 4803 of the same year. There are also local initiatives, such as the Center for Memory, Peace and Reconciliation in Bogotá and multiple memory initiatives throughout the country.

Historical memory in Spain

• - Wikinews has news related to historical memory.

The overlap between history and memory has been a dominant debate in Spain since the 2000s. A pioneering work stood out, with important contributions from several CSIC researchers.[14]​.

Subsequently, since the government of Rodríguez Zapatero proposed the Law of Historical Memory, with the intention of compensating for the oblivion of the victims of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, the debate on the defeated of the civil war without a dignified burial has expanded the repercussions of the concept of memory beyond the academic boundaries. Specifically, non-conventional burial places, such as those indicated above, are the mass graves and gutters where many of those shot in the Spanish Civil War ended up, whose location and destination are one of the main objects of debate in historical memory in Spain in recent years,[15]​ a particularly publicized case being that of Federico García Lorca; Even on the occasion of the 70th anniversary (2006) a "war of obituaries" has broken out. Previously, there had been some controversy with the removal of the equestrian statue of General Franco that remained in front of the New Ministries in Madrid. The fate of the Valley of the Fallen has also been called into question.

As a result of the application of the concept of historical memory, converted into an instrument of intellectual and social mobilization by Emilio Silva and the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory[16], a very lively historiographic debate has arisen about the opportunity of the concept of historical memory itself, which is rejected by some. Thus, for example, Stanley Payne, author of Repression during the civil war and under Francoism: history and historical memory, 'sentenced' in 2006, in an interview for ABC:.

For his part, Santos Juliá, that same 2006, asked himself from the pages of the newspaper El País:

From another perspective, that same year of 2006, the coroner Francisco Etxeberria, who has exhumed more than 500 people shot during the Civil War, reported in the aforementioned newspaper El País that:

On July 18, 2007, various associations of relatives of those missing from the so-called National Uprising, filed criminal complaints for crimes against humanity at the National Court. A little more than a year later, the head of court number 5 of said headquarters, Baltasar Garzón, sent an order to various state institutions and the Catholic Church requesting information in this regard. A few days later, he expanded this ruling with a new one where information was requested not only about missing people from the so-called republican side, but also from the rebel side; and the Catholic Church was urged to ask for its collaboration in the investigations. It has been argued, from a legal point of view, that these rulings suffer from defects;[20]​ and Judge Garzón himself, after initiating (November 2008) proceedings for crimes against humanity and claiming the death certificate of those allegedly responsible (including that of Franco) declared himself incompetent and referred possible subsequent proceedings to local courts. Shortly before, the prosecution had requested the annulment of the process.

Historical memory in Europe

Some authors and institutions designate Memories and places of Memory of Europe, among which would be the extermination camps of the Holocaust.[30]​ For the philosopher Reyes Mate, the complex of concentration camps and extermination camps called Auschwitz marks a milestone in human history that forces us to rethink thought and action without forgetting the victims, in need of presence and redemption, of memory, but of a moral memory, and who have usually been forgotten. and erased in history.[31]​.

Starting in January 2005, the UN General Assembly declared January 27 as International Day of Remembrance of Holocaust Victims, the same date that Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration camp, was liberated in 1945. The UN holds a Holocaust memorial dedicating each year to a different theme. In 2012, children were victims of the Holocaust.[32]​.

Historical memory in Colombia

After Law 975 of 2005 (Justice and Peace Law) the national government of Colombia creates the National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation (CNRR), which includes the preservation of historical memory within the right of reparation:

For this purpose, the CNRR created the National Center for Historical Memory, CNMH, directed by historian Gonzalo Sánchez Gómez, which focuses on the victims of paramilitarism in Colombia seeking to identify "the reasons for the emergence and evolution of illegal armed groups", which includes guerrillas, especially the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army "Ejército de Liberación Nacional (Colombia)"). (ELN); as well as the different truths and memories of violence, with a differentiated approach and a preferential option for the voices of victims who have been suppressed or silenced.

The CMH carries out research along the following lines: regional reports, reports by type of violence and armed actor, reports on driving factors of the armed conflict, reports by victimized sector, as well as conceptual and methodological documents. To date, this department has prepared, developed and published around 50 research documents and reports, which have been delivered to social organizations, libraries, academics, students and society in general. All these publications are publicly accessible and available on the CNMH website.

Historical memory in Peru

In Peru, one of the most circumstantial and relevant projects that reconstruct a relevant stage of the country's historical memory is represented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission "Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Peru)") (CVR). This was a Peruvian commission mainly in charge of preparing a report on the terrorism experienced in Peru during the period between 1980 and 2000. It was created in June 2001 by provisional president Valentín Paniagua, bringing together different members of civil society. It was chaired by Salomón Lerner Febres, then rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. In addition to the investigation of the terrorist violence of the Shining Path and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), it attempted to delve into the causes of this violence and the military repression against these terrorist movements, which claimed mainly civilian victims in this crossfire. To this end, it collected the testimony of 16,985 people and organized 21 hearings with victims of violence, which were attended by more than 9,500 people. The Final Report was made public on August 28, 2003, before the Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo Manrique.

In December 2000, the Transitional Government established an inter-institutional working group, made up of representatives of the Ministries of Justice, Defense, Interior and the Promotion of Women and Human Development; the Ombudsman's Office, the Peruvian Episcopal Conference, the Evangelical Council and the National Human Rights Coordinator. This group's objective was to explore a mechanism for investigating the events that occurred during terrorism, a proposal of tasks for the judicial system and a reparations policy.

On June 4, 2001, by Supreme Decree No. 065-2001-PCM, the Truth Commission was created, in charge of clarifying the process, the facts and responsibilities of the terrorist violence and the violation of human rights that occurred from May 1980 to November 2000, attributable to both terrorist organizations and State agents, as well as proposing initiatives aimed at affirming peace and harmony. among Peruvians.

• - Historical memory in 'Dialnet' (more than 650 documents -articles and books-, many of them full text and downloadable).

• - Juan Sisinio Pérez Garzón and Eduardo Manzano, Historical Memory, Madrid, CSIC-La Catarata, 2010. ISBN 978-84-00-09147-7.

• - Archive, War and Exile Association.

• - Lost children of Franco's regime.

• - Symbolism of Francoism.

• - Political repression in Spain.

• - Opposition to Francoism.

• - Places of memory of Franco's repression.

• - National Movement.

• - Archaeological and artistic looting.

• - Justice and Peace Law.

• - Paramilitarism in Colombia.