Heritage from below in Latin America: Urban protests and the struggle for Human Rights

Abstract

After the end of Latin American dictatorships, scholars closely analyzed the relationship between violence, memory and democracy. But these societies have continued to grapple not only with the legacy of authoritarian governments but with centuries of colonial power, with the result that many of the assumptions of earlier scholars are now being revisited. Intersectional questions of race, indigeneity and gender continue to refashion our understanding of memory and injustice. These questions frame this introductory article, in which we argue that Latin American contemporary social mobilisation that has denounced recent and long-term violence is constituted through intervention and creation of heritage from below. We propose that the interdisciplinary field of Critical Heritage Studies, that has burgeoned recently in the region, offers a means to understand how space, scale, and society interact to create meanings and work through violent pasts. The works of this Special Collection extend traditional conceptions of urban heritage as the mere conservation of cities' landscape, towards the study of the relation between cultural geographies and the production of social mobilizations in Latin America. These geographies enable unique formulations of protest for activists, creating new capacities to contest recent and long-term human rights abuse.