Re-narrating militarisms in the Colombian conflict: Medellín's Museo Casa de la Memoria
Date
2021
Authors
Hynes Bishop, L.
Editors
West, B.
Crosbie, T.
Crosbie, T.
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Book chapter
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Source details - Title: Militarization and the Global Rise of Paramilitary Culture: Post-Heroic Reimaginings of the Warrior, 2021 / West, B., Crosbie, T. (ed./s), Ch.7, pp.123-146
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Abstract
The chapter focuses on the museum Casa de la Memoria (House of Memory) in Medellin and its permanent exhibit Medellin: Violence and Resistance Memories. In doing so, it expands understandings of the different narrations of paramilitary organizations by examining a particular government memory initiative around the civil war in Colombia. The Colombian Armed Conflict, occurring principally between the government, right-wing paramilitaries and Marxist guerrillas since 1964, constitutes the longest armed conflict in the western hemisphere. While the presence of armed violence in Colombia have been traditionally explained in relation to material and economic factors such as the nation’s illegal narcotics trade, government corruption, the lack of a strong state or foreign interests, the chapter points to the importance of cultural and identity variables as they feed into militarism and peace building. Although there are numerous studies on museums curating memories of war and armed conflict, this typically involves the portrayal of a past conflict. In contrast this chapter examines the museum Casa de la Memoria which emerged amidst the ongoing violence and explores how this memory initiative sought to re-narrate the continued conflict in ways that might influence the concluding of hostilities. To this end, the museum exhibit challenges the dominant militant heroic understandings of the Colombian conflict by re-narrating the war in which the focus turns to victims on both sides of the conflict.
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Copyright 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore