Introduction

Abstract

Violence is a constitutive element of the history of Latin America. Following the wars for independence and the civil wars of the nineteenth century that shaped the various national states, in the second half of the twentieth century the region experienced a new cycle of violence perpetrated in the context of the Cold War and under different frameworks: civil wars, military dictatorships, and authoritarian regimes. Because of their magnitude, the political, economic, and cultural transformations they gave way to, and the deep ruptures they caused in communities and subjectivities, the memories of these processes of violence still resonate strongly in Latin America’s present. Official and unofficial accounts have been produced to try to attribute meaning to these processes, they have been and are still the object of court proceedings, they are part of public discussions and political agendas, they have been portrayed in a wide range of cultural productions, and they have been evoked in urban spaces through archives, parks, monuments, and memory sites, and by way of public policies that seek to ensure that these pasts are conveyed to future generations. They are a recurring source of confrontations in the streets and of disputes in legal institutions, and they are covered by news featured in the media.