Peru: Part of Lugar de la memoria about to open

Peru's memorial project, the Lugar de la Memoria, Tolerancia y la Inclusión Social (LUM), is to open its first phase on June 4. The auditorium and two public esplanades will be opened, featuring the photographic exhibition "Chungui" by Max Cabello and other cultural events. The opening celebration will be held over three days and entrance is free.

The director of the project, Denise Ledgard, explains to Caretas that she conceives it not just as a museum but as a space for debate, education, and exchange of experiences.

Here she is as well discussing the plans in more detail on the programme "Buenas noches":

Both Ledgard and Diego García-Sayan, president of the LUM commission, stress the plurality of the space and García-Sayan told Caretas it is "not a museum about the violence of the 1980s". Predictably, this does not please everyone - with the blog Genocidio Ayacucho, for example, asking "then what's the point?" and calling it a disgrace. Ledgard also talks about her desire for "objectivity" which I think is always a difficult thing. You don't expect a site of atrocity like Auschwitz to be "objective" and present the views of Nazis as equally valid, do you? Equally, however, I understand the point about bringing together different groups. This is tricky and I will be watching to see what the content of the space looks like when it is open.

Deconstruyendo la Memoria (Caretas)

LUGAR DE LA MEMORIA: UN MUSEO DESCAFEINADO (Genocidio Ayacucho)

Madres reconciliadoras (La Republica)

Argentina: More on museum project for ESMA

Pagina/12 provides more information on the memory museum project for the ESMA site in Buenos Aires.

The curators of the place of memory will be Alejandra Naftal - herself a former detained-disappeared person - and Hernán Bisman. Naftal was one of the founders of the Memoria Abierta archive. She explains that the museum project will draw on documentary evidence as well as legal, academic, artistic, journalistic and audiovisual sources, plus testimoney from the victims and relatives. The members of the navy "never talked and never told the truth", she said.

For Naftal, sites of memory are different to articles, books or films, because they are places of "authorised" truth. "You can argue, what is the truth, right? But we are determined enough to back up what we know with documentary sources. We use the testimonies from the courts, the trial of the Juntas in 1985 and the various trials of the ESMA from recent years".

In reply to the question of who the museum is for, Naftal replies "For many people. For millions. For those outside. For young people, old people, children, Argentinians, foreigners."

Daniel Tarnopolsky, of the Instituto Espacio de la Memoria who lost numerous relatives during the dictatorship, explains that the intention is not to "reconstruct" a detention centre in the ESMA. There will be no recreating torture equipment, for example. However it may be that, for example, the photos of Víctor Basterra can be shown in the places where they were taken.

Naftal says:The ESMA is the symbolic centre for Latin America and needs to have international exhibition standards.

Tarnopolsky says:
The ESMA is the Auschwitz of the [Argentine] dictatorship.

More detail in the full article:
“El museo será para millones” (Pagina/12)

Guatemala: New memory museum opens

A new museum called La Casa de la Memoria Kaji Tulam has opened in Guatemala. Kaji Tulam means "so as not to forget" in the Quiché language, apparently. It deals with the country's history from the arrival of the Spanish, but with a particular emphasis on the civil war of 1960-1996 and its aftermath.

AP notes that there are two other museums dealing with the period in the country already, but they are very small and poorly funded.

The design of this one sounds interesting, with spaces for reflection and visitor response, use of images, furniture, and a wall with names of the disappeared. It also includes military plans, victims' testimonies and information from reports from the Catholic Church and UN.

Museo en Guatemala honra a víctimas de la guerra civil (Elnuevoherald.com)
Inauguran museo de la memoria (Prensalibre.com)

Read more here: http://www.elnuevoherald.com/2014/02/07/1674032_museo-en-guatemala-honra-a-victimas.html#storylink=cpy

Peru: Yuyanapaq exhibition to stay open until 2026

The Yuyanapaq photo exhibition will remain part of the permanent exhibition of the Museo de la Nación in Lima until 2026, according to the terms of the renovation agreement signed by the Peruvian govenment ombudsman and the culture ministry. The exhibition has already been seen by over 240,000 people in the last seven years and is part of the legacy of Peru's truth commission. It contains more than 200 photographs from various sources depicting the armed conflict of 1980-2000. It can be viewed for free on the sixth floor of the museum, every day of the week except Monday.

Very pleased to read that the immediate future of Yuyanapaq is secure: it's such an important exhibition for the country.

Exposición fotográfica “Yuyanapaq: para recordar” se quedará en Museo de la Nación hasta 2026 (Idehpucp)

Places of memory in Chile: Casa de los derechos humanos, Punta Arenas

This is the Casa de los derechos humanos, situated on Avenida Colón 636, Punta Arenas. The plaque next to the door states that it was a detention and torture centre during the dictatorship.

As far as the history of the site is concerned, memoriacolectiva.com informs us that the building was the principal site of interrogation and torture in the province of Magallanes and that "hundreds" of prisoners passed through there. It was known as "Palacio de las Sonrisas" (Palace of Smiles) and had previously functioned as a naval hospital. The building is three storeys high and, according to memoriaviva.com, contained both offices and rooms used for torture, including electric shocks.

It's worth noting that this building in right in the centre of Punta Arenas, just off the main shopping street. It's not hidden or in an isolated position at all.

This place was closed up when I went past, but it is apparently used for human rights-related activities such as this one and these. I did a little research and it seems that last year there was talk of the Chilean ministry of national assets taking back the building and changing its use. This was met with protests and as far as I can tell, it was resolved that the building would continue to be used for community activites and even become the site of a memory museum. At the end of 2012, Patagonian paper El Pinguino described the building's future as "uncertain", but this June it reported in brief on the approval of a museum project. Good news, if accurate.

EL PALACIO DE LAS SONRISAS (memoriacolectiva.com)
Antiguo Hospital Naval, Punta Arenas (memoriaviva.com)

Places of memory in Santiago: Memory museum

Where better to start a tour of memory places in Chile than at the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos? It's a large and striking site:

Alright, so in one sense it's a green, glass box but I don't mean that as a criticism at all. You walk down towards the entrance and it's impressive.

 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights features on an external wall:

The museum declares that it is "a school" and one positive thing I noticed while I was there was the many school groups. The first one I saw, the kids were quite young (pre-teens) and the teacher made them all sit on the floor and dictated a long lecture to them, telling them off when they asked her to repeat difficult words. They were perhaps too young, at least for that kind of visit. But there were groups of older teenagers who seemed very engaged.

There was also an external exhibition comparing the situation in many different countries:

Sadly you're not allowed to take photographs inside, which is a real shame, because the most striking feature for me is the huge wall of photographs of the disappeared reaching up across the entire space. There is also a point where you can stand and look out at it and locate individual names and faces.

On the ground floor various terminals show footage of the 1973 coup and its aftermath. As you move upstairs, different areas cover aspects like exiles and international solidarity, media coverage, and torture - including, chillingly, an electric shock device (made by General Electric - not suggesting they intended it to be used for that purpose!). There are also items made by prisoners and photographs of memorial sites throughout Chile.

The museum was quite busy when I was there on a Friday morning, which is really not always the case in Latin American museums. It was fascinating to see people engaging with the material. One guy was so absorbed in the video of the return to democracy and the "No" campaign (roughly the period covered in the recent film "No" starring Gael García Bernal), he was watching it when I started looking round the floor and still there when I had finished.

The memory museum is free to enter and it is a large, slick site which must have been extremely expensive to build. While this is laudable, when I discussed the museum with Steven in Santiago, he expressed the opinion that it could be a bit more forthright in asking for donations and I completely agree. Many visitors could afford to give something and it is not mentioned or even really obvious how to do this (there's a slot in the front desk, or you can buy a catalogue for CLP 10,000 and this includes a donation; there should be catalogues in the shop but I had to ask for one to be brought up for me). It's one thing making your museum accessible and it's another not even gently directing people to the opportunity to support it.

Anyway, I think Chile really sets a standard here to which it will be interesting to compare, for example, the Lugar de la Memoria in Peru. One thing to note is that this is explicitly not a space where you will get some sort of pseudo-neutrality or weighing up of the pro- and anti-Pinochet factions as equal. As it states in the catalogue,

the task of building a memory must be guided by a moral compass; we must build a reading of the collective trauma that goes above and beyond what is evident, a history of victims and criminals, guilty and innocent. The goal in the museum's construction of memory is to become a space that assists the culture of human rights and democratic values in becoming the share ethical basis of our present and future coexistence. Only in this way can we empower our claim of NEVER AGAIN.

Colombia: Bogotá's memory museum

Despite the fact that in Colombia, perhaps even more than other countries in the Americas, its period of violence is by no means "over", memory efforts occur alongside current events. One commemorative space is the Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación in Bogotá.

It's a striking building. As "thecitypaperbogota.com" describes, its "four walls encourage peace, promote a culture of democracy and demonstrate the importance of human rights in a society skewed by violence. There are sunlit corridors and glass enclosed conference rooms for art exhibitions and as a public space, the centre looks to promote a collective dialogue around the causes and consequences of political violence."

The 'Memory' museum (The city paper)
The official website of the site is down, but they are quite active on Twitter. 

Thank to Mike for drawing my attention to this. Image credit: Pedro Felipe at Wikicommons.

Its four walls encourage peace, promote a culture of democracy and demonstrate the importance of human rights in a society skewed by violence. There are sunlit corridors and glass enclosed conference rooms for art exhibitions and as a public space, the centre looks to promote a collective dialogue around the causes and consequences of political violence. - See more at: http://thecitypaperbogota.com/city/building-for-remembrance/#sthash.kCaFx2sv.dpuf

Its four walls encourage peace, promote a culture of democracy and demonstrate the importance of human rights in a society skewed by violence. There are sunlit corridors and glass enclosed conference rooms for art exhibitions and as a public space, the centre looks to promote a collective dialogue around the causes and consequences of political violence. - See more at: http://thecitypaperbogota.com/city/building-for-remembrance/#sthash.kCaFx2sv.dpuf

Its four walls encourage peace, promote a culture of democracy and demonstrate the importance of human rights in a society skewed by violence. There are sunlit corridors and glass enclosed conference rooms for art exhibitions and as a public space, the centre looks to promote a collective dialogue around the causes and consequences of political violence. - See more at: http://thecitypaperbogota.com/city/building-for-remembrance/#sthash.kCaFx2sv.dpuf

Its four walls encourage peace, promote a culture of democracy and demonstrate the importance of human rights in a society skewed by violence. There are sunlit corridors and glass enclosed conference rooms for art exhibitions and as a public space, the centre looks to promote a collective dialogue around the causes and consequences of political violence. - See more at: http://thecitypaperbogota.com/city/building-for-remembrance/#sthash.kCaFx2sv.dpuf

Its four walls encourage peace, promote a culture of democracy and demonstrate the importance of human rights in a society skewed by violence. There are sunlit corridors and glass enclosed conference rooms for art exhibitions and as a public space, the centre looks to promote a collective dialogue around the causes and consequences of political violence. - See more at: http://thecitypaperbogota.com/city/building-for-remembrance/#sthash.kCaFx2sv.dpuf

Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación

Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación

Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación

Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación

Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación

Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación

Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación

Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación

Nicaragua: Proposal to turn Chipote prison into museum

Nicaragua's opposition BDN party wants the notorious Chipote prison, where inmates were tortured during the Somoza dictatorship and Sandinista government, to be converted into a museum. 

The Nicaragua Dispatch notes that there have been previous unsuccessful attempts to do this and that there is no guarantee that the ruling Sandinista Front will accept the bill. But you never know. I find it interesting that the prison is still a working one so it would first need to be closed before it could be renovated and its use changed. In examples like that of Argentina's ESMA, there was a significant gap between the use of the site as a clandestine detention centre and its re-opening as a cultural site. 

Human rights organisations want the prison closed in any case because of its extremely poor conditions.

Thanks to Mike at Central American Politics for drawing my attention to this story.

Prisons to peace centers following civil wars (Central American Politics)
Nicaragua's opposition wants to turn jail into torture museum (Nicaragua Dispatch)
Oposición pide declarar museo a un centro de tortura de la dictadura Somoza (elconfidencial.com)

Exigen a la Asamblea Nacional cerrar "El Chipote"

Exigen a la Asamblea Nacional cerrar "El Chipote"

Exigen a la Asamblea Nacional cerrar "El Chipote" (confidencial.com.ni)
ONG respalda el cierre de un centro de tortura de la dictadura de los Somoza (eldiario.es)
El Chipote, una historia macabra (laprensa.com.ni - this is an older article providing background info)

Exigen a la Asamblea Nacional cerrar "El Chipote"

Exigen a la Asamblea Nacional cerrar "El Chipote"

Exigen a la Asamblea Nacional cerrar "El Chipote"

Dominican Republic: Memory Museum (2)

Back in June, I mentioned that the Dominican Republic had opened a museum of memory. The New York Times now goes into more detail about the museum and the idea behind it, and it's worth a read. "This museum all but shouts for the era’s pain to be heard", writes the paper.

“We are rescuing the memory,” said Luisa de Peña Díaz, the director of the museum and one of its founders, whose father was killed in 1967 as he plotted an insurrection against the president at the time, Joaquín Balaguer.

Meanwhile, however, this version of history is facing a new challenge from a virtual competitor to the museum: the Museo Generalisimo Trujillo.

The counter-museum is the brainchild of L. Ramfis Domínguez-Trujillo, grandson of the dictator, who acknowledges his forebear was a “military dictator who did not tolerate freedom of speech” but believes that the death toll ascribed to him is inflated and includes killings by collaborators he was unaware of.
[...] “Did he commit a number of excesses? Absolutely. He was human. Was he a monster? Absolutely not,” Mr. Domínguez-Trujillo said in a telephone interview from Miami, where he lives.

It's an odd website, I have to say, with chirpy Dominican music and a layout more suited to a video game than a serious academic endeavour - not particularly user-friendly and takes a while to load even on my super-fast internet. A video clip explains that the memory of Trujillo and his rule has become "distorted" and the museum - currently only online, but with ambitions to become an actual place - wants to set the record straight. Well.

The "official" museum sounds like a well thought-out exhibition which will be useful, particularly for the younger generations who might not otherwise learn a great deal about their country's recent history.

A museum of repression aims to shock the conscience (New York Times)

Peru: Humala meets De Szyszlo on Memory Museum

Peru's president-elect Ollanta Humala met with the head of the commission in charge of the memory museum (Lugar de la Memoria), Fernando de Szyszlo, this week. Humala expressed his commitment to the project and de Szyszlo reported that the future president had made "a good impression" on him.

Humala y De Szyszlo se reunieron y hablaron del Lugar de la Memoria (El Comercio)
Humala, De Szyszlo meet to discuss Memory Museum (Peruvian Times)

Dominican Republic opens museum of memory

Here's a first for me: I don't think I've blogged about the Dominican Republic before, and it's a positive post as well, so that's even better.

The island republic has inaugurated a museum dealing with its history under dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.

"The Haitian genocide was the greatest crime against humanity of Trujillo's tyranny," said Luisa De Pena, director of the Dominican Resistance Memorial Museum. "Dominican society has to face the crimes that occurred and make them part of its public conscience so that way it can move forward."

Hear, hear. The Associated Press reports that the museum "will feature a re-creation of a prison torture chamber, along with audio of some of the actual torture sessions" - sounds pretty gruesome, but could be very effective if sensitively done. The museum has a website here.

DomRep museum to honor victims of dictatorship (AP)
Inauguration of Memorial Museum of Dominican Resistance (UNESCO)
Memorial Museum of Dominican Resistance inauguration (Colonial Zone News Blog)

Latin America: Memory Museums

At their best, these museums are an attempt to inoculate societies against their basest inclinations. "We must consolidate a democratic culture that can save us from fanaticism and drive home [the idea] that terror cannot be combated with terror," says Mario Vargas Llosa, the novelist who heads the planning group for the Peruvian museum. The danger is that remembering turns into a political banner, reviving historical animosities and institutionalizing an ideological battle over who controls memory. "In Latin America this is not a disinterested process, much less an effort to work at forgiveness," says Brazilian political analyst Amaury de Souza. "It's a struggle over who gets to write history."

Newsweek has a comparative article on the various commemorative museum projects underway in Latin America. I could quibble on a few points (plus the word 'memoria' is sporting an additional accent!), but it's good to see a piece like this, and with a nice photo too.

The Politics of Memory Museums (Newsweek)

Argentina: Museo de Arte y Memoria

The Museo de Arte y Memoria in La Plata now has an excellent website.

Chile: Museum of Memory

Via Dirty Wars and Democracy, I was pleased to find a first-hand account of a visit to Santiago's new museum of memory, complete with pictures.

I find the walls of photos of the disappeared particularly striking, and I'm not the only one.

Peru: Germany Happy with Museum of Memory

The German ambassador in Peru, Christoph Müller, said that his country, which is financing the museum of memory, welcomes the consensus which is developing to make the project a reality.

He emphasised the results of the recent meeting between Commander General of the Army, Otto Guibovich, and author Mario Vargas Llosa, who is heading the project. He was also pleased by the appointment between the Defense Minister Rafael Rey and Vargas Llosa. "I'm thrilled that a consensus is finally being formed within Peruvian society with regard to the museum of memory. This consensus seems to be going in the right direction," noted Müller.

"We are happy about the move towards a consensus because obviously, we were aware of the previous controversy. It's clear that to overcome such a sensitive topic there's a need for a basic consensus from all the sectors of society involved to achieve reconciliation," added the diplomat, who then said that the German government had not been involved in the initial concepts for the site; however, he remarked that "as observers we are delighted that a shared concept for the museum is now being discussed."

(Alemania contenta con Museo de la Memoria, La Primera, 15/02/2010, trans mine)

Peru: Museum of Memory Update

The 'Museo de la Memoria' will now, apparently, be named 'Lugar de la Memoria' (place or site of memory).

"The word museum is associated with an institution that preserves the past and we want the "Site of Memory" to be a reconstruction of the violence in Peru, giving a more worthy, fairer, more accurate view of the historical facts", said Vargas Llosa in a press conference.
(trans mine from El Museo de la Memoria en Peru cambia de nombre por Lugar de la Memoria)

The term is, of course, familiar to those interested in memory studies, coined as it was by French historian Pierre Nora. Nora's lieux de memoire are not necessarily actual places, but can be objects or ideas. According to Nora, however, these sites of commemoration are only needed because 'true' memory has been lost.

Modern memory is, above all, archival. It relies entirely on the materiality of the trace, the immediacy of the recording, the visibility of the image. What began as writing ends as high fidelity and tape recording. The less memory is experienced from the inside the more it exists only through its exterior scaffolding and outward signs-hence the obsession with the archive that marks our age, attempting at once the complete conservation of the present as well as the total preservation of the past.
(Nora, 'Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire', 1989, p. 13)

One can somehow sympathise with this view when thinking about the setting up of memorial exhibitions. But I can only assume that Vargas Llosa and his fellow commissioners do not regard the act of collecting and displaying material about the past with quite the same suspicion that Nora does, or they would hardly be bothering in the first place. It remains to be seen, however, how the new museum will engage with the thorny business of memory and official history in a post-conflict society.

Vargas Llosa is making a start by meeting with the commanding general of the Peruvian army, Otto Guibovich, today. Guibovich, naturally, wants to promote military interests in the potential contents of the museum. The meeting is strictly behind closed doors, and it remains to be seen what will come of such discussions.

Vargas Llosa se reune este jueves con general Guibovich (La Republica)

Argentina: Death Flight Planes on Display

Adolfo Scilingo's confessions, published in the book El vuelo/The Flight, really burned into public memory the fact that in Argentina, disappeared people were drugged, bundled into planes, and pushed out into the ocean to drown.

Yet I, and doubtless many others, had never really given a thought to the planes themselves. Now I learn from Pagina/12 that one of them (a Lockheed L-188 AF Electra for those of you for whom that means something) is on display in an airforce museum on the base Comandante Espora. As you might expect, I have nothing against preserving the plane as a teaching aid to show people what happened during the dictatorship... but I'm thinking that a museum run by the armed forces is probably not the ideal place for it.

Aviones de la muerte (Pagina/12)

Peru: Museum of Memory Update

Apparently, Peru's future Museum of Memory, which will be built to commemorate the political violence of the past decades, now has a definite site: the Campo de Marte in Lima. Living in Peru is reporting that it will be situated underground so as not to change significantly the outward appearance of the area.


This will make the district of Jesus Maria, and in particular the park Campo de Marte, something of a focal point for memory issues in Peru. The memorial El ojo que llora is also located there (it's marked by a cross in the image above), and several human rights organisations have their offices nearby. It's also within easy reach of central Lima. On the other hand, the park is also overshadowed by the military centre known as El pentagonito. I suspect that a legitimate concern about centralism will be raised when discussing the site. It's a fair point: the majority of victims of both Shining Path and the armed forces were not from Lima, but from Ayacucho, primarily, and the other poor, highland provinces. These areas need places for commemoration too. At the same time, I believe that the country needs a representative museum and I see little alternative to the capital city to maximise visitor numbers. Plus, Lima ignored what was happening in the countryside for long enough - I think it needs to keep its eyes open.

According to El Comercio, the museum could now be ready by 2011.

Speaking to El Pais, head of the museum commission Mario Vargas Llosa welcomed the news about the Campo de Marte and spoke of his inspirations, including the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in Rwanda.

Peru's Museum of Memory to be Built under a Park in Lima (Living in Peru)
Museo de la memoria estara listo en el 2011 (El Comercio)
MVLl: Museo de la Memoria estara listo antes del 2011 (CNDDHH)
Peru consagra su memoria historica (El Pais)

Chile: Museum of Memory

Although these news articles are now a couple of weeks old, I think it's worth pointing out that progress continues on Chile's representative Museum of Memory and Human Rights.

“No one can deny, fail to recognize, play down, or trivialize the tragedy of human rights violations in Chile,” said Bachelet at the ceremony. “Every person needs to examine the past themselves and reflect on the need to improve our coexistence so a similar tragedy never again occurs in our country.”

And she knows what she's talking about.

Bachelet Receives Donations for Human Rights Museum (Santiago Times)

Chile's Rights Museum to Honor Dirty War Victims (AP)

Blog Round-Up/On Visiting Memory Sites

A post on Tim's El Salvador blog about 'war tourism' really got me thinking. I always have a niggling feeling that there is something vaguely unethical about revisiting sites of particular national trauma - especially those which are recent enough to be still memorable and painful to large sections of the population. Whether it's the Shankill Road or Auschwitz, there seems to be an aspect of voyeurism in such trips. Hey guys, let's go shopping in the morning, and then check out where loads of people were horrifically murdered in the afternoon. Do they have a gift shop?

This, of course, makes me the biggest hypocrite in history, since I seek out sites of significant events, memorials, and memorial museums wherever I go - including Dachau, the ESMA, Ayacucho, and others. I may have read more on memory issues than the average person (I think I can guarantee that), but I still sometimes stand and eat my lunch next to the memorial to murdered Jews in my city. I try and do it mindfully. I do not sit on the memorial while I eat - I recently saw a photo of a woman sunbathing on the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, and if you ask me that is a step too far.

I guess the outcome of this musing that I think that 1) there is a difference between delibarately-created commemorative sites, ie museums and memorials - even if they are situated in particularly significant locations - and places where people still just live. It might still be very interesting to visit those places, but you have to bear in mind that the inhabitants are not animals at the zoo. And 2) there probably is a certain amount of ghoulishness in some people's motives for visiting historical sites (and studying historical periods). You can regard this with a pinch of suspicion, but on balance, they are still opportunities to learn, and grow, and remember.

Apart from that meandering aside from me, I've also been reading Mr. Trend on coverage of the Brazilian dictatorship in the local press, and watching a trailer of documentary Oblivion (dir. Heddy Honigmann). I'd seen a clip of this before but the trailer - Spanish with English subtitles - is very interesting and led me to seek out a review of the film.