糖心TV

Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Week 10: Transitional Justice and Memory

Content warning: The material for this section contains testimonies of torture, abuse and gendered violence.

Transitional Justice and Memory

How have ideas about rights been changed and shaped by processes of transitional justice?

What questions an issues arise in the process of transition?

What are the issues with truth commissions themselves?

Core readings:

Greg Grandin, 鈥,鈥 American Historical Review, 110:1, 2005, 46-67.

Paige Arthur, , Human Rights Quarterly 31:2 (2009), 321-367.

OR

Cath Collins, Jemima Garcia Godos and Erin Sarkar, Transitional Justice in Latin America: The Uneven Road toward Accountability. London: Routeledge, 2016. (Introduction, Conclusion and a chapter on the country that interests you.)

You can hear a recording of Cath Collins talking about the book when it was launched at UCL,

Primary Sources:

and

Torture in Brazil: A Shocking Report on the Pervasive Use of Torture by Brazilian Military Governments, 1964-1979 (ILAS Special Publication: Catholic Church Archdiocese of Sao Paulo et al, 1998)

Primary source activity:

Look at the MRC catalogue for the Amnesty archives on Guatemala and Argentina. Think about a potential essay title on the subject of transitional justice. How would you go about planning an archive visit to research for the essay?

Thinking about public history (Practical Written Assignment):

Watch the 2017 film about the . How effective is it as a piece of public history?

Researching Memory and Research Ethics:

What kind of ethical considerations do researchers need to take into account when working on past human rights abuses? Read the interview with Francesca Lesa. What does she say about this?

Further Reading:

Jelke Boesten & Helen Scanlon. Gender, Transitional Justice and Memorial Arts: Global Perspectives on Commemoration and Mobilisation (1st ed.). Routledge, 2021.

Roddy Brett. The Politics of Victimhood in Post-Conflict Societies. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Bueno-Hansen, Pascha. Feminist and Human Rights Struggles in Peru : Decolonizing Transitional Justice, University of Illinois Press, 2015. 

Cath Collins, Jemima Garcia Godos and Erin Sarkar, Transitional Justice in Latin America: The Uneven Road toward Accountability. London: Routeledge, 2016.

Cath Collins. Post-Transitional Justice: Legal Strategies and Human Rights Trials in Chile and El Salvador. (University Park: PA: Pennsylvania State University, 2010)

Nina Schneider and Marcia Esparza (eds.) Marcia Esparza, Lexington Books, 2015.

Rachel Sieder. Impunity in Latin America. 1996.

Podcast

Guatemala:

NACLA Report on the Americas, 3:1 1999, 6-10.

Lisa J. Laplante Quinnipiac Law Review (QLR), vol. 32, no. 3, 2014, pp. 621-674.

Colombia:

Monica Acosta Garc铆a, "Law and Globalization: the 鈥渕ulti-sited鈥 uses of Transitional Justice by Indigenous Peoples in Colombia (2005-2016)." O帽ati Socio-legal Series [online], 8 (5), 2018 760-787.

Fabio Andres D铆az Pab贸n (ed.). Truth, Justice and Reconciliation in Colombia: Transitioning from Violence. Routledge, 2018.

Mark Freeman and Iv谩n Orozco. Negotiating Transitional Justice: Firsthand Lessons from Colombia and Beyond. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

James Meernik et al.(eds.) As War Ends: What Colombia Can Tell Us About the Sustainability of Peace and Transitional Justice. Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Podcast:

The Southern Cone:

Rebecca Atencio, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014.

Naomi Roht Arriaza,  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

Leigh A. Payne. Unsettling Accounts: Neither Truth Nor Reconciliation in Confessions of State Violence. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Introduction and conclusion (Chapter Scan)

Roniger, Luis, and Mario Sznajder. The Legacy of Human-Rights Violations in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Steve J. Stern. Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Question in Democratic Chile 1989-2006. Duke University Press, 2010.

Jose Zalaquett. 鈥Balancing Ethical Imperatives and Political Constraints: The Dilemma of New Democracies Confronting Past Human Rights Violations.Hastings Law Journal, no. Issue 6, 1991, p. 1425.

Peru:

Francine A鈥檔ess, 鈥淩esisting Amnesia: Yuyachkani, Performance, and the Postwar Reconstruction of Peru,鈥 Theatre Journal 56 (2004): 395–414

Jelke Boesten. Sexual violence during war and peace : gender, power, and post-conflict justice in Peru. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Matthew Brown and Karen M. Tucker, 2017, 鈥楿nconsented Sterilisation, Participatory Story-Telling, and Digital Counter-Memory in Peru鈥. Antipode, vol 49., pp. 1186-1203.

Edward Chauca, 鈥淢ental Illness in Peruvian Narratives of Violence after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,鈥 Latin American Research Review 51, no. 2 (2016): 67–85.

Joseph P. Feldman, 鈥淓xhibiting Conflict: History and Politics at the Museo de la Memoria de ANFASEP in Ayacucho,鈥 Anthropological Quarterly 85, no. 2 (2012): 492-

Jocelyn Getgen, 鈥淯ntold Truths: The Exclusion of the Enforced Sterilizations from the Peruvian Truth Commission鈥檚 Final Report,鈥 Boston College Third World Law Journal 29, no. 1 (Winter 2009)

Eduardo Gonz谩lez Cueva, 鈥淭he Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Challenge of Impunity,鈥 in Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century, Beyond Truth Versus Justice, ed. Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Javier Mariezcurrena. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Anne Lambright,  Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2015.

Lisa Laplante, 鈥淭he Peruvian Truth Commission鈥檚 Historical Memory Project: Empowering Truth-Tellers to Confront Truth Deniers,鈥 Journal of Human Rights 6 (2007): 435.

Laplante, Lisa J., and Kimberly Theidon.Mirrors of Justice: Law and Power in the Post-Cold War Era, edited by Kamari Maxine Clarke and Mark Goodale, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009, pp. 291–315.

Cynthia Milton, 鈥淎t the Edge of the Peruvian Truth Commission: Alternative Paths to Recounting the Past,鈥Radical History Review 98 (Spring 2007): 14;

Cynthia Milton, 鈥淒efacing memory: (Un)tying Peru鈥檚 memory knots,鈥 Memory Studies 4, no. 2: 190–205.

Thomas Pegram, 鈥淎ccountability in Hostile Times: The Case of the Peruvian Human Rights Ombudsman 1996–2001,鈥 Journal of Latin American Studies 40, no. 1 (2008): 51–82

Rebecca Root. 2012.

Margarita Saona. Memory Matters in Transitional Peru. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014.

Hillel Sofier and Alberto Vergara. Politics after Violence: Legacies of the Shining Path Conflict in Peru, New York, USA: University of Texas Press, 2021.

Kimberly Theidon, Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.

Some films and podcasts:

The Secret in Their Eyes. Dir. Argentina, 2009.

Nostalgia for the Light. Dir. Patricio Guzm谩n. Chile, 2010.

Let us know you agree to cookies