{"id":407,"date":"2020-07-17T23:54:15","date_gmt":"2020-07-18T06:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/transformativememory\/?p=407"},"modified":"2020-07-19T20:54:50","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T03:54:50","slug":"407","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/transformativememory\/2020\/07\/17\/407\/","title":{"rendered":"Chronicle of Colombian Exchange"},"content":{"rendered":"

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TRANSFORMATIVE MEMORY<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

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Constructing Knowledge from dialogue and in the territory<\/span><\/h2>\n

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The international exchange brought together artists, academics, and community leaders from 7 countries to Bogota and the Montes de Maria.<\/em><\/h5>\n

16-22 February 2020<\/em><\/p>\n

Versi\u00f3n en espa\u00f1ol aqu\u00ed<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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Participants of the Transformative Memory Exchange in the Museum House of San Basilio de Palenque.\u00a0Photo credit: Alit Ambara<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is an ancestral Embera-Cham\u00ed song that has been passed on from grandmother to granddaughter for decades. It speaks of the Embera-Cham\u00ed\u2019s philosophy of \u201cpensar en grande\u201d (to think big). Patricia Tob\u00f3n Yagari\u2019s grandmother taught her the song. An Embera-Cham\u00ed woman, lawyer and Commissioner of the Commission for Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition in Colombia, Patricia sang this song to acknowledge the territory and share her reflections in a public event on Transformative Memory. More than 200 people gathered on February 18th at the National University of Colombia in Bogota, Colombia for the event. \u201cPensar en grande\u201d<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 (think big) <\/em>for the Embera, Patricia explained, \u201c<\/strong>is not thinking with a friend or family. When we Emberas think big, we think with those who think differently. When we can reach an understanding with those who think differently, we have thought big. And that is how I want to invite the word into this space.<\/strong><\/em>\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Forty artists, activists, and academics from countries such as Indonesia, Canada, Peru, Uganda, Colombia, the USA, and Northern Ireland met for 6 days (February 16-22) in Bogot\u00e1 and in the Montes de Mar\u00eda region of Colombia. This was an international exchange to think big<\/em> about the concept of transformative memory.<\/p>\n

This initiative was organized by the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada, in partnership with the National University of Colombia and the Montes de Maria Communications Collective – Line 21, and with the support of the University of the Andes and the studio of visual artist Erika Diettes.<\/p>\n

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The first day of the exchange in Bogot\u00e1. Break-out groups.<\/em>
Seated here: Waira Jacanamijoy (Colombia), David MacDonald (Canada), Kamari M. Clarke (Canada\/USA\/Jamaica), Boniface Ojok (Uganda), Simon Child (Canada\/Colombia), Vanessa Tejedor (San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia), Julio Garc\u00eda (Montes de Mar\u00eda, Colombia), Eliana Suar\u00e9z (Peru\/Canada).
Photo Credit: Alejandra Gaviria-Serna<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The exchange began in Bogot\u00e1 with a reflection on the roads that led to the creation of the Transformative Memory Partnership<\/a> in 2018. As Co-Principal Investigators Erin Baines and Pilar Ria\u00f1o stated:\u00a0<\/em>\u201c<\/strong>Although each of us has different histories and praxis, the shared desire to think anew about the aftermaths and afterlives of violence and dispossession in our countries, territories and nations brings us here today.<\/em>\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The encounter\u2019s purpose was to reflect and explore how the experience of exchange, dialogue, and visiting territories, where various historical memory initiatives are being developed, can transform into a knowledge-building methodology. Throughout the exchange, we interrogated key questions: How does memory transform relations? Relations among ourselves, between the living and the dead, or between human beings, the territory, and other living beings? How does memory transform social contracts and state policies?<\/p>\n

For Professor Kamari Maxine Clarke -a legal anthropologist at the University of California- \u201c<\/strong>Transformative memory is not an endpoint. It is about struggle, engagement, vulnerability, doubt, faith, hope, love and compassion for ourselves and others as well as the ability to see larger conditions of inequality and work toward the reconfiguration of the problem and not the symptom. For ultimately, both victims and perpetrators as constructed categories emerge from similar conditions of inequality that disrupt our world.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

We examined these questions through diverse media and languages. We also reflected on transformative memory by meeting with historical memory initiatives and organizations, and through the unique experiences that each of the participants brought with them.<\/p>\n

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Participants in the first day of Exchange in the city of Bogot\u00e1, Colombia. Photo credit: Fernanda dos Santos.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The exchange in Colombia occurred at a crucial time for memory work in the country, with the implementation of the Integrated System of Truth, Justice, Reparations, and Non-Repetition, created as a result of the Peace Accord signed in 2016 between the Colombian state and the FARC guerrillas. Within the framework of the Transformative Memory initiative, we had the opportunity to meet with leading authorities of the transitional justice system: Patricia Linares, Chair of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, Luz Marina Monz\u00f3n, director of the Unit for the Search of Disappeared Persons, and Angela Salazar and Patricia Tob\u00f3n, Commissioners with the Commission for the Clarification of the Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition. \u201c<\/strong>I think the truth has to be heard. I think all truths have to be heard, but not all truths<\/em> are legitimate<\/em>,\u201d<\/strong> expressed Luz Marina Monz\u00f3n, who with the other panelists, shared the challenges, doubts, and threats to her work around memory, justice, and reparations for victims.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPossibilities and Obstacles for the Transformative Potential of Memory\u201d Panel.<\/em>
Seen here: Martha Nubia Bello, national coordinator of the Peace & Coexistence Initiative of the National University (Colombia). Patricia Linares, Chief Justice and Chair of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Colombia). Patricia Tob\u00f3n Yagar\u00ed, Embera-Chami lawyer and Commissioner with the Truth Commission (Colombia). Aim\u00e9 Craft, Indigenous lawyer (Anishinaabe-M\u00e9tis), Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa, former research director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. Kamari M. Clarke, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California – Los Angeles and expert on the International Criminal Court (USA-Canada). Photo Credit: Alejandra Gaviria-Serna<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The exchange in Colombia occurred at a crucial time for memory work in the country, with the implementation of the Integrated System of Truth, Justice, Reparations, and Non-Repetition, created as a result of the Peace Accord signed in 2016 between the Colombian state and the FARC guerrillas. Within the framework of the Transformative Memory initiative, we had the opportunity to meet with leading authorities of the transitional justice system: Patricia Linares, Chair of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, Luz Marina Monz\u00f3n, director of the Unit for the Search of Disappeared Persons, and Angela Salazar and Patricia Tob\u00f3n, Commissioners with the Commission for the Clarification of the Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition. \u201c<\/strong>I think the truth has to be heard. I think all truths have to be heard, but not all truths<\/em> are legitimate<\/em>,\u201d<\/strong> expressed Luz Marina Monz\u00f3n, who with the other panelists, shared the challenges, doubts, and threats to her work around memory, justice, and reparations for victims.<\/p>\n

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Amongst photos, objects, traces, and musical notes<\/strong><\/h5>\n

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Day of dialogue and a presentation of the work \u201cRelicarios\u201d in the studio of visual artist Erika Diettes. Photo Credit: Fernanda Barbosa dos Santos.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Art and collective and community-based experiences served as the basis of the dialogue. Photojournalist Jes\u00fas Abad Colorado gave us a personal tour of his exposition \u201cEl Testigo<\/a>\u201d (The Witness)<\/em>\u00a0and the histories behind each photograph. Visual artist Erika Diettes opened her studio\u2019s doors and through her work \u201cRelicarios<\/a>\u201d we had a significant discussion of her creative process of working with families of the disappeared and intimate objects that hold the victim\u2019s memories. This dialogue generated profound connections between practices employed by victims from Uganda and those from Colombia on how narrative and creativity transmit memory and pain.<\/p>\n

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Tour of Jes\u00fas Abad Colorado\u2019s Exhibit \u201cEl Testigo\u201d (The Witness).<\/em>
Pictured here: Rafael Posso, victim and artist in Las Brisas (Montes de Maria, Colombia), speaks with Jes\u00fas Abad of how this photo reminds him of the conflict in his region. Photo Credit: Alejandra Gaviria-Serna.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These visits provided exchange participants with a broad context on the Colombian conflict \u2013through visual representations, visual documentation and archival material – including diverse human, environmental, and cultural dimensions of war. In the words of Juliane Okot Bitek, poet and Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of British Columbia, these are forms of art used \u201c<\/strong>to bring the public together<\/em>\u201d<\/strong>, and \u201c<\/strong>to talk about their experiences. Art as empowerment to bring people together to express themselves.<\/em>\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The international and intercultural exchange through art materialized in performance, in a graphic exhibition, in the spontaneous singing of vallenatos and alabaos and in music and dance performances.<\/p>\n

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\u201cNigamowin and Tunai\u201d Performance by Waira Jacanamijoy and Emilie Monnet presented in the public event of the Transformative Memory Exchange 2020. Photo Credit: Alejandra Gaviria-Serna.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Waira Jacanamijoy is an Indigenous Inga woman from Yurayako in San Jose de la Fragua in the Colombian state of Caquet\u00e1, and \u00c9milie Monnet is Anishinaabe and French (Canada) performed \u201cNigamowin and Tunai\u201d -a combination of Anishnabemowin and Inga words meaning to sing-, use sounds, images, and of course, voice, to transport the audience to their most affective memories of water. Through performance, they showed how the exchange, in this case, between Indigenous communities in Canada and Colombia, generates collective processes of artistic expression.<\/p>\n

The exhibit \u201cStolen Dreams,\u201d currently in the Faculty of Sociology at the National University of Colombia, built a bridge between Indonesia, Colombia, and Uganda through the illustrations of Indonesian artist and member of the Indonesian Institute of Social History <\/a>(ISSI), Alit Ambara. Created as a result of the first international exchange of the Transformative Memory Partnership in 2019 in northern Uganda, Stolen Dreams wove together the threads of the different trips and visits to memory projects in the countries in which this partnership is based.<\/p>\n

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The artist Alit Ambara in the exhibition \u201cStolen Dreams\u201d that collects his work done during the Exchange in Uganda.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Photo credit: Erin Baines<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The music, the percussion, and the voice of singers of the group Echembelek, an initiative of Black displaced women from Colombia’s Pacific region, evoked the sound memory of their territory, but also the embraces of solidarity between survivors of the conflicts in Uganda and Colombia, the strength of collective dance and of a song for peace against violence:<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>Mire, mire, mire lo que esta pasando <\/em><\/p>\n

Hoy la madre tierra se encuentra llorando\u2026<\/em>\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

(alabado de mujeres de Echembelek)<\/p>\n

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\u201c<\/strong>Look, look, what’s happening<\/em><\/p>\n

Today mother earth is crying\u2026<\/em>\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

(alabado of the women of Echembelek)<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/transformativememory\/files\/2020\/07\/20200218-113315.m4a<\/a><\/audio>\n

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Jeff Korondo, an Acholi musician and peacebuilder, is the co-founder of the organization\u00a0Music for Peace <\/em>in northern Uganda. Music for Peace\u00a0<\/em>promotes the power of music for social change. Jeff played with the singers from Echembelek and, throughout the exchange, mixed his music with\u00a0vallenato\u00a0<\/em>rhythms, particularly the gaita flute and drums in the Montes de Mar\u00eda region.<\/em>\u00a0The Transformative Memory participants also visited the Lucho Bermudez Music School in the town of Carmen del Bolivar where songs, dances, and d\u00e9cimas<\/em> [ten-lines poetry stanza] shared the stage with the initiatives of the Communications Collective of Montes de Maria<\/a> – Line 21. Jos\u00e9 de la Cruz Valencia shared his and the Victims\u2019 Committee of Bojay\u00e1 <\/a> journey of searching for, exhuming, and burying the victims of violence in Bojay\u00e1, Choc\u00f3 (Colombia).<\/p>\n

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Presentation by Ugandan musician, Jeff Korondo from the collective \u201cMusic for Peace\u201d.
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Photo credit: Alejandra Gaviria-Serna<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Between Community and Institutional Museums<\/strong><\/h5>\n

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Different exchange participants highlighted the strength and breadth of memory projects carried out in Colombia, both within civil society and from the State. These reflections surrounding the history of the conflict can be seen in various practices: academic, community-driven, or cultural. They also materialize in museum narratives that vary according to their authors and the particular objectives of each memory-making act.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the different forms of memory work in Colombia, John Roosa, Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia, highlighted they are \u201can opening and an explosion of activity.\u201d But he also reflected on the disputes, the \u201centrenched positions\u201d of the different narratives and political factors which also may be obstacles to this work: \u201c<\/strong>As a historian, I ask: if I came to Colombia 10 years ago, how would that be [memory-building initiatives]? And, if I return in 10 years, how will it look then?<\/em> \u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The visit to the gallery “First Sergeant Libio Jose Martinez Estrada” in the Military Museum, exemplified how memory work is not limited to social organizations. The State and its institutions, including the Armed Forces, also develop memory initiatives. The exchange laid bare the current tensions, debates, disputes, and “battles” around naming and giving meaning to the experience of conflict in Colombia. As expressed by Maria Emma Wills, visiting professor at the Universidad de los Andes, \u201c<\/strong>participants can experience the curatorial choices behind the military’s official narrative. Such a narrative is important to understand the dynamics and battles going on in the memory field in Colombia.<\/strong><\/em>\u201d<\/strong> In this sense, the exchange in Colombia interpellated participants to think of memory not as an abstract concept or exercise, but as an open and dynamic field of power relations.<\/p>\n

This field, nevertheless, is also built from communities. In the town of San Jacinto, in Montes de Maria, we were able to visit two museums, which emerged from the work of civil society: The Community Museum of San Jacinto<\/a> and the Mobile Museum of El Mochuelo. The first was born from an archeological collection of artifacts organized in the Mayor’s office building in the 1980s, but it was forced to close its doors due to the armed conflict. Memory in this space ties back to pre-colonial times, with archeological artifacts from the ancestral inhabitants of this land, the Zenu and Malibu peoples, and local pieces of handicrafts, hammocks, and gaita flutes.<\/p>\n

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Soraya Bayuelo, Communications Collective of the Montes de Mar\u00eda \u2013 Line 21, giving a tour of the Mobile Museum El Mochuelo.
Photo Credit: Julio Garc\u00eda Montes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just across the street was the Mobile Museum of Memory and Identity of Montes de Maria<\/a>, also known as El Mochuelo. At the museum\u2019s entrance, Soraya Bayuelo, who led this initiative shared: \u201c<\/strong>This is a museum that is built and taken down and that goes from town to town bringing memory and leaving crystallized the memory of what happened here and what should never happen again.<\/em>\u201d<\/strong> This museum named after a bird, presents creative pieces about the armed conflict, such as the 12 drawings by Rafael Posso about the massacre in Las Brisas, the Sheet of Dreams from La Pelona, collectively created by local residents and \u201cthe tree of life\u201d from which 1,400 names of victims hang. The Museum\u2019s guides, called \u201cmochuelo-singers\u201d are young people from the region who are engaged in memory work.<\/p>\n

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Shared Reflections and Struggles<\/strong><\/h5>\n

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The collective and the community are at the heart of civil society organizations working with memory in Colombia. In the House of the Movement for the Victim\u2019s of State Crimes<\/a> or MOVICE -a platform constituted by more than 200 victims and human rights organizations in Colombia- participants engaged in dialogue with movement leaders on the relationship between memory, social mobilization, and political participation. MOVICE\u2019s leaders shared that memory is an exercise that is neither isolated nor exclusive to victims, but an exercise of political mobilization. Through collective action, MOVICE challenges social practices of indifference and complicity and strengthens rights threate ned by State criminality and political violence.<\/p>\n

Participants also had the opportunity to dialogue with collectives and artists like Beligerarte, Otras Voces, and Kabala Theatre, who create art (murals, graffiti, posters and performance) to fight against impunity and collective amnesia.<\/p>\n

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Discussion in the House of the of the Movement for the Victim\u2019s of State Crimes – MOVICE<\/em>
Pictured Here: Alit Ambara, graphic artist (Indonesia). Lucia Osorno, MOVICE member (Colombia). Iv\u00e1n C\u00e9peda, MOVICE member and Senator (Colombia). Paolo Vignolo, Director of the History Department at the National University of Colombia (Italy-Colombia). Juliane Okot Bitek, poet (Uganda-Canada). Erika Diettes, visual artist (Colombia), Kamari M. Clarke, legal anthropologist, Professor at UCLA (Canada – USA). Bronwyn Leebaw, political scientist, Professor at UC-Riverside (USA). Photo credit: Alejandra Gaviria-Serna.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Fernando Zarta, member of the MOVICE and the Association of Traditional Authorities of the Regional Indigenous Council of Tolima (Colombia), conducted an harmonization and asked permission to the dead and the ancestors for the dialogue journey. Photo credit: Alejandra Gaviria-Serna.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the village of Las Brisas<\/a>, in Montes de Mar\u00eda, participants met with local residents under the Tamarind Tree, the site of a massacre and now, of memory: \u201c<\/strong>When we returned, 10 years after the massacre, the Tamarind Tree was the same size, but its wound reached its roots. It was dying, with a terrible scar and with a lot to say. But the tree returned to sprout, and, after 16 years, to bear fruits again. Like us, it was stigmatized, and it gave us a lesson for life<\/em>\u201d<\/strong>, recounts memory singer and artist Rafael Posso.<\/p>\n

The Tamarind Tree is located in between the steep hills of Las Brisas, the heart of the community where members congregated to play sports, cultural activities, and markets filled with yams, cassava, maize, and plantains. In March of 2000, however, under the same tamarind tree, paramilitaries summoned peasants who they accused of collaborating with the guerrilla. In the massacre, 12 persons were murdered. The community was displaced.<\/p>\n

In their absence, the tree grew dry and stopped producing fruit until the community returned 16 years later. \u201c<\/strong>We held healing rituals to bring the tree to life<\/em>\u201d<\/strong>, Rafael told us. \u201c<\/strong>Playing here, living here is a wonder. The trees are part of ourselves.<\/em>\u201d<\/strong> Currently, the tree has reunited neighbors under its shade and it has also been transformed into a vital memory site. On February 21, 2020, the Tamarind Tree provided shade for participants to share their own experiences of working with memory, including Rosemberg Baron, peasant leader and coordinator of the Memory Narrators Collective and member of the Victim\u2019s Table of San Onofre, and Docus Atyeno, a researcher and advocate for gender justice at the Justice and Reconciliation Project<\/a> (JRP) in Gulu, Uganda.<\/p>\n

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Illustrations by Indonesian artist Alit Ambara inspired by the exchange\r\nwith the community in Las Brisas, Montes de Maria.<\/em><\/pre>\n
Listening to stories of what occurred under the Tamarind Tree, reminded participants of another memory site, thousands of kilometers away, in the community of Lukodi in Northern Uganda. In May 2019, participants gathered under the shade of a large mango tree to listen to survivors of the Lukodi massacre, where memories of this event are awoken every mango season. Trees are in such distant places, repositories, traces, and bodies of and for memory. In Acholi, northern Uganda, there is a reflection that when a tree is cut down, its roots remain in the earth, and so that tree will still grow, bear leaves and fruit again.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
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Journey in the Tamarindo Tree. Las Brisas, Montes de Mar\u00eda.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The exchange in Las Brisas, next to a tree and in a territory that bore witness to so much pain and violence, was profoundly emotional. \u00c9milie Monnet sang in her own language a song she created for her show Okinum<\/a>: \u201c<\/strong>For me, it’s a grieving song, but I also feel it’s a healing song when I sing it. It felt appropriate to share it at that moment. Words can be limiting at times and I was so full and raw from all that was shared with us that day: the horror, but also the resilience and the generosity of our hosts. And the importance to remember always<\/em>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n
For Paolo Vignolo, director of the History Department of the National University of Colombia, trees are a metaphor to thinking about transformative memory: they reveal structural violence and the claims of some actors to brutally transform the forms of production. They also allows us to reflect on the relation with the memory of the of the land and the re-making of the meaning of places. \u201c<\/strong>Transformative memory is an effort to establish equilibriums that have been broken between humans, and humans and the non-human which surrounds us and enables our life<\/em> [..] As we are reminded by playwright Bertold Brecht in his poem: \u201cto those born later\u201d written during the rise of Nazism and the Second World War:\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
What kind of times are these, when<\/em><\/p>\n
To talk about trees is almost a crime<\/em><\/p>\n
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?<\/em>\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n
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Remembering and Opening Spaces\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n
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Tour of the field where the El Salado massacre took place and conversation with community leader\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Elvia Badel Beltr\u00e1n.\u00a0Foto: Julio Garc\u00eda Montes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
In the township of El Salado, where one of the most atrocious massacres of the Colombian conflict occurred, there was a rich dialogue between different peace-building experiences. John Jairo Medina, peasant leader of ASODESBOL (Association of Displaced People Salado-Bolivar), spoke of memory construction processes in the region. At the same time, Isaac Okwir Odiya, the program coordinator of the Justice & Reconciliation Project (JRP), discussed their work in Gulu, Northern Uganda with peasants who were displaced during the more than two decade war there. Local residents, who participated in the event had many questions for the visitors from Uganda: Were they able to harvest crops when they returned home? What happened to the youth? The dialogue turned to issues such as the possibility of cultivation after the return to territories and the strategies of telling what happened to future generations. Born and raised in Peru and an Associate Professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, Eliana Suarez emphasized the regional and cultural pride as a source of the resilience and strength shown by communities through these expressions of memory.<\/p>\n
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Break-out groups. Seated here: Michael Otim (Uganda), \u00c9milie Monnet (Anishinaabe\/Francia-Canad\u00e1), Martha Nubia Bello (Colombia) Docus Atyeno (Uganda), Bronwyn Leebaw (Estados Unidos), Mar\u00eda Emma Wills (Colombia), Fernando Zarta (Colombia) y Rafael Posso (Colombia). Foto: Soraya Bayuelo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
These modes of encounter and being together for Evelyn Amony, are also moments in which a common experience is acknowledged. Evelyn is co-founder and President of the Women’s Advocacy Network-WAN<\/a>, a forum of more than 500 women who advocate for justice and reparations in Northern Uganda. Reflecting on her exchange with the displaced women of Echembelek or the Communications Collective in San Basilio de Palenque, Evelyn said she realized that many others, like herself, had lost a loved one and lived with the pain of not knowing whether they are alive or not. To search for the disappeared takes on many meanings. For Luz Marina Monz\u00f3n, the search for the disappeared is for the truth, to find someone who is missed but also, a reason as to why they went missing. For Evelyn, whose daughter disappeared during the war, the search for her daughter is an act of care, love and hope that someone, somewhere is raising her, just as Evelyn raised children who were orphaned during the war, their immediate relatives unknown. The experience of loss and wondering where their relatives are, their search using various means of tracking and identification is a journey shared by some of the people and organizations participating in the exchange, in Colombia, Uganda, and Peru.<\/p>\n
Other dialogues arose in the community of San Basilio de Palenque, where memory is represented in dance, in the use of traditional plants, and reflections on the history of violences and resistances that have been accumulating since the era of slavery and continue into the armed conflict.\u00a0\u201c<\/strong>We are the descendants of Africans. Palenque is a piece of Africa in Colombia…how wonderful it is to share with our friends who came from there,<\/em>\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>affirmed Vanessa Tejedor of the Kucha Suto Communications Collective<\/a>. Kucha Suto means \u201clisten to us\u201d in\u00a0Palenquero<\/em>, the local language of Palenque. The experiences shared by the Ugandan participants, and their work for transformation, inspired her to continue her local work with youth lead video and radio. \u201c<\/strong>In the community [of displaced persons], we are putting into practice an initiative with new technologies. We hope they will tell that history, not to feel like victims, but to look for options to move forward. We have to reinvent ourselves,<\/em>\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>she added.<\/p>\n
The six days of exchange enabled participants to interrogate new ways of thinking about memory and transformation. Affect was present from the very meaning of the word\u00a0remember<\/em>. Aim\u00e9e Craft, Anishinaabe-M\u00e9tis lawyer and Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa, reflected on the meaning in English of the verb, to remember,\u00a0<\/em> as \u201c<\/strong>putting people back together conceptually, spiritually and physically<\/em>\u201d<\/strong> and as the formation of a collective (re<\/em>: to be again \/member<\/em>). This interpretation of the term holds close those who are no longer with us, like the disappeared, but also the future, for the generations to follow. In Spanish, the word also carries weight and in particular affect:\u00a0Recordar\u00a0<\/em>comes from the Latin\u00a0recordis,\u00a0<\/em>which means \u2018to pass through the heart again\u2019<\/em>, as was explained by Pilar Ria\u00f1o Alcal\u00e1 of the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at UBC.<\/p>\n
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Meeting of Exchange participants with women from the Echembelek collective. Foto: Fernanda Barbosa dos Santos.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
While they traversed the memories or were \u201cwitnesses\u201d -in the words of David B. McDonald, Professor at the University of Guelph- of the memories of others, artists, activists, academics, and communities in their territories also shared their experiences in a spontaneous form. They walked through villages, they discussed with local residents, held moments of silence and felt the fatigue of long days and sweltering heat.\u00a0Transformative moments are found in these processes of relationship building through sharing of time, food and stories, as Michael Otim, co-founder of JRP, reflected, \u2018there has never been a moment when I did not learn something new when speaking with communities\u2019.<\/p>\n
These new spaces have transformative potential, according to Brandon Hamber, from Ulster University in Northern Ireland, \u201c<\/strong>If I think of what is transformative memory for me tonight, I’m feeling like it’s where you open space and that space can be contested, that space could just be free space, but it’s just allowing that discussion, those ideas to flow and be free. And that for me is where the transformation happens,<\/em>\u201d<\/strong> he remarked on the last day of the exchange.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TRANSFORMATIVE MEMORY Constructing Knowledge from dialogue and in the territory   The international exchange brought together artists, academics, and community leaders from 7 countries to Bogota and the Montes de Maria. 16-22 February 2020 Versi\u00f3n en espa\u00f1ol aqu\u00ed There is an ancestral Embera-Cham\u00ed song that has been passed on from grandmother to granddaughter for decades. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62305,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45091,45096,45095,45090,45093,45094,45089,45092],"class_list":["post-407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art-and-memory","tag-artivism","tag-colombia","tag-historical-memory","tag-international-exchange","tag-mass-violence","tag-memory","tag-transformative-memory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/transformativememory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/transformativememory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/transformativememory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/transformativememory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62305"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/transformativememory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407"}],"version-history":[{"count":111,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/transformativememory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":750,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/transformativememory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions\/750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/transformativememory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/transformativememory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/transformativememory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}