Memory, Performance, and the Politics of Urban Space in Postwar Guatemala

Memory, Performance, and the Politics of Urban Space in Postwar Guatemala 

A talk by Andrew Bentley, Indiana University

In Guatemala, as in other post-conflict Latin American countries, memory has emerged as a main tenet of culture. Yet, performing memory is no simple act. From 1960 to 1996, the country suffered one of the longest periods of internal armed conflicts in Latin American history, resulting in the deaths, disappearances, or displacement of over half a million people. In the postwar era, memory is the focal point of cultural production about urban space as people stage creative interventions to make representational sense of violence. Following recent Latin American cultural criticism about memory and performance (Taylor 2016, Lazzara 2017, Murphy 2018), this presentation will move through different urban registers—the street performances of Regina José Galindo and H.I.J.O.S. photographs of disappeared persons in downtown Guatemala City—to understand memory as an everyday life enactment of social justice.

Sponsored by Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, Program on Latin America and the Caribbean (PLACA), and Latino-Latin American Studies Program (LLAS) 

Contact Havva Karakas-Keles for more information: hkarakas@syr.edu