Cultural Heritage and Spaces of Memory in Latin America

Abstract

The Museums of Recent Memory, Sites of Conscience and Memorials that have been created in Latin America in recent years, are conceived as tools towards a hermeneutics of state terrorism, as well as towards a pedagogy of coexistence in diversity that contributes to the status of education for peace in a world threatened by globalized violence. This new institutionality introduces new parameters of ideological conflict in spaces dedicated to the building of collective memories and identities, promoting the construction of subjectivities that review the notion of heritage, of collective memory, and of the construction of history. This forms part of a new political philosophy of cultural identities. As a result, it also leads to considering alternatives to the traditional concept of heritage conservation (based on technological mediation), which prioritize the political aspects of the social practices enabled by the heritage instead of its physical integrity and its perpetuity.