El Salvador’s postwar has been marked by official discourses of “forgiveness and forgetting” first established by a general amnesty law (1993). More than thirty years after the signing of peace, survivor communities continue to navigate regimes of truth that curtail their calls for truth, memory, and justice for the 70,000 documented cases of serious human rights violations that occurred during the conflict (1970-1992). In this dangerous reality, the power of memory work and its resignification are maintained primarily in rural and peasant survivor communities. The Surviving Memory Project, to which the presenters of this roundtable belong, contributes to empowering the work of memory through sustained practices of solidarity.
This roundtable creates dialogue around an innovative methodological approach we call "Memory-Action" or "memoria-acción" through four community co-authored books: 1) a photographic archive of postwar transition and the memories evoked; 2) music and memory; 3) the dignification of unrecovered bodies; and 4) the co-design and co-construction of a memorial commemorating an historic massacre. These works emerge through practices of consultative dialogue and radical reciprocity between communities (survivors and intergenerational survivors), academics, architects, artists, volunteers, and grassroots organizations to create collective, horizontal, and reflexive memory in action. A commitment to building trust in a society where fear persists animates these projects, invites us to construct more democratic relationships by giving voice to each participant, and opens spaces for collective knowledge production, intergenerational exchange, and collective healing. A focus on El Salvador provides interventions to advance the study of memory in other postwar contexts through inclusive practices that reimagine democratic spaces in authoritarian turns.
Our multidisciplinary roundtable is composed of two intergenerational survivors of the Salvadoran conflict (Lidice Michelle Melara Minero, Surviving Memory, and Adriana Alas, Western University), as well as academics in solidarity (Irina Carlota Silber, City University of New York; Joel Martínez-Lorenzana, Western University; and Thomas Montulet, UCLouvain).
Harold Fallon Evelia Macal Lourdes Calero Amanda Grzyb Comité de Memoria Histórica de Arcatao; Asociación Sumpul
20260731T110020260731T1230America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires8.6. Community Consultation: Building Memory-Action in Postwar ContextsSV401 (ART)MSA Buenos Aires 2026buenosairesconference@memorystudiesassociation.org
