10.11. Vernacular voices included and excluded [ES/EN]

This paper contextualizes the events that took place in the CAI in the Ayacucho region between 1980 and 1995 from the perspective of the actors themselves. In this sense, it moves away from the hegemonic view or official memory to give an account of the “other” memories that are part of the history of thousands of Ayacucho residents. The research is in line with qualitative phenomenological studies, as it seeks to reflect the participation of indigenous populations in the CADs in order to offer a comprehensive view of the chosen field of study. I conducted this research between 2018 and 2021 in the district of Vinchos (province of Huamanga) and Totos (province of Cangallo), where a military base was installed. It was one of the least studied scenarios, unlike the Cabitos barracks, located in the city of Huamanga. The information gathered on the army's strategies regarding indigenous participation in the CAD between 1982 and 1994 is based mainly on in-depth interviews and life stories that have allowed me to reconstruct history from the voices of its participants. Finally, the study reaches the following conclusion:· During the CAI, the CADs became (1982, the year of official implementation of the CADs) the logistical machinery of the armed forces and guides for military incursions, as well as perpetrators and accomplices of the excessive actions of the armed forces.

This paper describes the main characteristics of the military detention centers that operated in Uruguay during the last civil-military dictatorship. It presents their similarities and differences in order to identify various exposure factors that could pose risks for the prevalence and lethality of cancer, based on the demands of organizations working in the field of memory and human rights in the country. It is interesting to reflect on the political imprisonment to which those prosecuted by the military justice system (1972-1985) were subjected, focusing on the long term effects on the body that could lead to the development of cancer. This perspective draws on various international precedents linked to social catastrophes and aims to show little-explored aspects of the effects of state violence in the country. The results presented are the product of the interdisciplinary research project “Is cancer an epidemic? An interdisciplinary study of the effects of stress caused by torture and political imprisonment in Uruguay (1972-1985)” (CSIC, University of the Republic) and draw on contributions from history, medicine (particularly epidemiology), and anthropology. It is important to highlight the need to expand our interdisciplinary research agendas in order to dismantle impunity and promote comprehensive reparation policies focused on collective rights.

This research project investigates the historical participation of children in Colombia’s Thousand Days War (1899–1902), a topic largely absent from traditional war historiography. By focusing on child soldiers, it challenges the dominant narratives that render children invisible in political and military history, contributing to the growing field of childhood studies. Drawing on the works of Carlos Eduardo Jaramillo and Carlos Arturo Reina Rodríguez, the study repositions children not merely as passive victims but as active agents shaped by cultural norms, militarism, and social conditions. Methodologically, the project adopts a multidisciplinary approach that combines institutional and legal histories with micro-historical analysis. Primary sources, such as military rosters, judicial records, newspapers, and memoirs, are examined to trace the lives and roles of identifiable children in the conflict. The study also interrogates late 19th-century Colombian legal and social definitions of childhood to establish historically grounded age thresholds, avoiding the imposition of contemporary norms. Inspired by historiographies of other marginalized groups—such as women and enslaved people—the project adapts alternative research strategies to recover children's experiences and agency. This research is particularly relevant to memory studies as it explores how historical narratives have selectively remembered or erased children's roles in war. By analyzing the Thousand Days War as a test case, the project reveals how children’s visibility in history is shaped by legal frameworks, archival practices, and cultural perceptions. It contributes to understanding the interplay between historical memory and the evolution of children's rights, offering insights into how societies construct and reconstruct the past. Ultimately, the study aims to expand the historical record and challenge methodological limitations in writing histories of those who left few traces behind.

In present-day Estonia, the country's Russian-speaking minority is regularly considered to be a peril for social cohesion and sometimes even national security. As a result, the government has implemented far-reaching assimilation policies which include reforms in the education sector as well as the close monitoring of Russian-speaking populations and the media. It is the expectation of the government, that these efforts will lead to an integration of the minority into the Estonian society overall. However, assimilation pressure might very well lead to the contrary and the awakening of an ethnic identity. Through such policies, the identity in question becomes more salient and considered as something that is to be protected. I argue, however, that such a reactive identity does not seem to be the defining characteristic among young Russian-background Estonians when looking at their attitudes on history. This paper looks at the extent to which Russian background Estonians differ from ethnic Estonians with regard to their understanding of history. I argue that by 2025, young Russian background Estonians are in large ways similar in their attitudes to their age peers without such a background. The gap is particularly strong when compared to the parental generation of Russian-Estonians, with implications for family dynamics. The paper uses an intergenerational survey conducted in 2024 as well as a large-scale cross-sectional survey conducted in 2025 in Estonia by the author in the context of the ERC-funded research project MoveMeRU.

The postcolonial memoryscape of India is commonly centred around grand narratives of unity and solidarity while relegating the memories of northeastern cities to the periphery, which are marked by complex layers of state excesses and indigenous resilience. Official narratives often reflect a singular hegemonic voice of state actors that fail to accommodate vernacular memories in favour of the metanarrative of nationalism. Such is the incidence of the 1966 Mizo independence struggle against the Indian Nation-State, which is often underrepresented in Indian literary narratives. The article foregrounds indigenous perspectives by examining narratives of struggle in two novels, Zorami: A Redemption Song (2015) and When Blackbirds Fly (2022), which are set against the backdrop of the Mizo insurgency in Aizawl city of Northeast India. The study takes recourse to John Bodnar’s vernacular memory and Michel Foucault’s counter-memory frameworks to interrogate issues such as- how does fiction challenge the existing teleological metanarratives about a city from an indigenous perspective, and how a place is reconstituted through vernacular memories of the periphery as opposed to dominant narratives of privileged centre? Furthermore, the study examines fiction as a form of vernacular counter-memory archive that contests centre-periphery dynamics to challenge institutional amnesia reflected in official narratives of Indian postcolonial discourse, and resituates the peripheral city and its memories from an endemic perspective. The Study delineates the reclamation of Aizawl’s memoryscape as represented in fiction, which reframes dominant national narratives by foregrounding the Mizo people as witnesses to the war and subsequent national silence. Finally, with a particular emphasis on the politics of memory and vernacular remembering, the article addresses the issue of mnemonic inequality sustained by uneven hierarchies of remembrance in national literary articulations.