From the individual memory to the reasoned and inclusive historical memory

Abstract

In spite of multiple contributions to theoretical and methodological and vastness of the memory research, reflection on this topic is current. The atrocities of the war and the terror of the power still present in the global reality. This is so, because the memory is not devoid of ideology, but it can be manipulated in a conscious or unconscious way through censorship and handling inappropriate affection and inhibition. Because the memory can be functional to the power, or to resistance, in society there is a contest of memories, and prevailing political power makes efforts to establish an official memory, wich seeks as established both that wich is remembered, like the social marks around those who remember. As Jaques Le Goff says, "To size of the memory and oblivion is one of the maximum concerns in the sectors of power. The omissions, silences of history are revealing of these mechanisms of manipulation of the collective memory" (Le Goff, 1991, p. 134). The ideological, political and cultural frameworks that establish the conditions of remembrance are reinforced by socially accepted speeches, public commemorations, silence and oblivion policies and "leave their mark in the processes of" negotiation, in the permissions and the silences, in what can and cannot be said, in public speeches and private narratives disjunctions"(Jelin, 2002, p. 27). Because of this, we recognize the need for a permanent construction of memory and a constant reflection on what to understand by memory and how and why to build it. In Colombia, it is remembered in the middle of the armed conflict but the past is also memorialize of facts that not all political currents wish to qualify as negative. The mode of the memory  has touched many spaces for reflection and in my case the approach to our reality makes imperative study, because the large mobilizations of the civil society, nor the political inclusion of new social groups, nor the budget for economic advancement projects for institutional reform introduced by the Constitution of 1991, nor the knowledge about the existence of eight million victims, nor the recent dialogues and peace agreements, have achieved reverse the dynamics of violence. In the circumstances of the country, the construction of the historical memory becomes a matter of relevance, either from a historiographic perspective, or from policy. In addition, I feel a deep commitment to provide to the acknowledgment of the tragedy lived, in order that the society as a whole can engage in the construction of a conscious country, which assumes its responsibilities with regard to the conflict and open paths of peace building.

While the Centro Nacional de Memoria Historica has assumed the task of memory given by the law, I believe that other critical and parallel exercises that go beyond the so-called cases are important along with this story that tends to become the officer, emblematic. Fortunately, the memory has become more and more a work of non-governmental initiatives, and the construction of memory that the memory of the victims, Amovi - UIS, Oral file is one among many of them.

 In this text will take the step of the concept of individual memory collective memory, historical memory, the struggle of memories and the proposal of Amovi-UIS by a reasoned and inclusive historical memory.