ABSENCE AND PRESENCE OF THE CANYON OF THE BARRANCA COMMUNE: Pursuit of the monument, symbol of workers’ participation during popular force

Abstract

The places of memory as developments in the field of study of collective memory have gained relevance for understanding
violent conflicts and the way in which a community elaborates or manages its past. The events of April 9th, 1948 in Barrancabermeja,
where a Revolutionary Junta created a type of popular government, accounting for a strong organization that seemed to be based
on traditions and learned from the oil strikes. Some cannons made by the workers during the revolutionary experience were kept by
the National Army and one of these, placed for decades as a monument on the fac ade of the Nueva Granada Battalion, until it was
removed and replaced. In order to maintain the memory of the monument made by the workers, a search exercise is deployed which goes before military and judicial authorities, with the aim of investigating its whereabouts and highlighting its historical and cultural value, between the struggle of an official version and another memory collective, which opens the discussion around the convergence of History with Human Rights and the defense of these places, from the perspective of the right to the Truth and to the Historical Memory, that victims and societies that have suffered damage due to experiences of political violence have.