Memory, Activism and Social Justice NUBS 3.13
Jul 04, 2023 11:30 - 13:00(Europe/London)
20230704T1130 20230704T1300 Europe/London 1.13. Indigenous memory activism in Latin America NUBS 3.13 MSA Conference Newcastle 2023 conference@memorystudiesassociation.org
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Lima, the Invented City
Individual paperMemory, Activism and Social Justice 00:00 Midnight - 11:00 PM (Europe/London) 2023/07/03 23:00:00 UTC - 2023/07/04 22:00:00 UTC
This presentation describes a citizen's campaign launched by the author in 2010, with the aim of rewriting the foundational narrative of the city of Lima, Peru, and rehabilitating its indigenous origin, identity and memory. It was active until 2020. Its starting point was a 450-year silence. A time in which a legacy of more than four millennia of pre-Hispanic indigenous memory and active presence in the landscape had been excluded from most official narratives. It was a time when South America's former Spanish capital focused on its colonial heritage alone. Although there are more than 400 adobe structures in the city, people learned not to see them. While this indigenous DNA of the territory is what enabled the Spanish foundation in 1535, this was made invisible. In the absence of any narrative explaining the existence of these structures, locally called 'huacas', they ceased to exist and to have meaning for most people. 
Over time, these structures were considered "too indigenous", an obstacle to urban growth and worthless, except for the three sites that were open to tourists, mostly foreigners. In 2010, the author launched the Lima Milenaria campaign as a trigger for change.  Along with the plan to rewrite the narrative of the Peruvian capital, on a more immediate level, official recognition of this legacy was sought from the Municipality of Lima. Seeking the rehabilitation of this indigenous legacy was also a way to strengthen citizenship and combat racism. The campaign was successful on several levels. In 2012, the Municipality of Lima made an official recognition of the city's millennial legacy; the Ministry of Culture's budget for monument restoration increased by 50%; the theme was chosen in 2018 to represent Peru at the Venice Architecture Biennale. However, alongside this, there were a number of setbacks. 
In 2014, a more conservative metropolitan administration came to power, which set aside the progress made to refocus on the colonial legacy; the ministry backed away from its drive to support archaeological work, and to date, there is no substantial production of contents to support this change in perspective. Even so, the legacy of the campaign can be seen in the growing citizen participation and in the increasing number of academic works that seek to understand this legacy from different perspectives. In this talk, the author will share the key ideas that led this campaign; the formats, messages and strategies put in place; the role of a decolonising perspective in a highly conservative society; the need to reframe the indigenous legacy to strengthen social inclusion; and the impact the campaign had on the city at large.
Presenters Javier Lizarzaburu
Heritage And Communications Specialist, Independent Researcher
‘Sustaining la lucha’—Intercultural day-care centres and the articulations of Indigenous futures
Individual paperMemory, Activism and Social Justice 00:00 Midnight - 11:00 PM (Europe/London) 2023/07/03 23:00:00 UTC - 2023/07/04 22:00:00 UTC
In Chile, intercultural day-care centres have become key spaces that sustain the project of mapuchización-efforts among Mapuche communities that strive to reverse assimilation processes and revitalize ancestral knowledges. These efforts exemplify the many ways in which Mapuche caregivers and educators enact new dynamic opportunities to create a sense of diverse belonging within Santiago de Chile's urban areas. Accordingly, this paper studies the case of Antü Mahuida, an urban intercultural day-care in Santiago, where caregivers' educational practices articulate alternative futures in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous Chileans can live justly and sustainably. The overall research questions of this paper are: What types of futures do caregivers articulate within Antü Mahuida? How does the articulation of these futures interact with Chile's current political moment?
The analysis will consider how hopes for a more just society weaved throughout caregivers', educator's, and activists' projections of a Plurinational and sustainable Chile. Specifically, these hopes illuminate active engagements with ancestral practices and knowledges. Specifically, these engagements articulate futures in which Mapuche ideals-the preservation of their culture and ancestral land-continue to challenge dominant Chilean citizenship ideals that inflict violence among minoritized communities and the environment. Lastly, the paper calls for the consideration of intercultural day-cares as socio-political spaces. This consideration can unveil the articulation of analogous futures among caregivers and educators, illuminating how resistance is performed within educational settings. 
 
Presenters Sarah Chocano Barboza
PhD Student, University Of Toronto
Haunting the Archive: Decolonizing Memory in Ingrid Rojas Contreras' The Man Who Could Move Clouds
Individual paperMemory, Activism and Social Justice 00:00 Midnight - 11:00 PM (Europe/London) 2023/07/03 23:00:00 UTC - 2023/07/04 22:00:00 UTC
"Haunting the Archive: Decolonizing Memory in Ingrid Rojas Contreras' The Man Who Could Move Clouds"
In her memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds Colombian-born Ingrid Rojas Contreras is haunted by what she calls the "politics of the archive" and the historical specter of the past. Following a head injury that leaves her with a bout of amnesia, she undertakes the task of reconstructing her past. Born into a family of curanderos her life has always been marked by the presence of the magical. Driven by a collective dream the women in her family keep having she returns to Colombia with her mother to disinter her grandfather's remains and make sense of her family's legacy. As she figuratively and literally unearths the past she claims a second chance at becoming.
Her oeuvre examines the relationship between memoir and memory as she privileges Indigenous epistemologies by embracing the supernatural "gifts" of her family. What Western doctors classify as an anxiety disorder her family recognizes as a spiritual sickness. She pieces together her past via a family archive of photos, oral history, and her training as a journalist to contest the erasure left in the wake of Colombia's colonial history marked by violence and war. This paper thus answers the conference call to investigate the way memories are shaped through the generations and are constantly shaped and reshaped in community. In her journey, Contreras examines the ways her life echoes her mother's and grandfather's while coming to terms with the fact that she does not have a singular experience of herself but is instead always refracted and reflected as part of a larger collective memory. By validating new ways of thinking about the past she decolonizes memory to put forth a new story that does not simply reconcile the past but imagines a new future. 
Presenters C. Christina Lam
Associate Professor, Borough Of Manhattan Community College
Heritage and communications specialist
,
Independent Researcher
PhD Student
,
University of Toronto
Associate Professor
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Borough of Manhattan Community College
Professor
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Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
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