Memory is a space of conflict, crossed and striated by controversies surrounding the events of the past and how these explain our present. On the contrary, memory policies have often tended to nullify conflict by forcibly imposing a single and incontestable memory that sutures controversies or by invoking a neutrality that aborts debate.
We remember by generating spaces for dialogue, participation, and restitution around diverse memories, beyond the custodial paradigm. There are no perfectly horizontal and democratic spaces for conversation, at least not initially, because the power positions of the different participants are not symmetrical. Therefore, it is necessary to promote spaces for dialogue that compensate for these inequalities and foster the voices, ways of narrating, and knowledge of those subalternized subjects.
We remember to activate memory in the present, that is, to link memorial practices and discourses to the current needs of self-representation and recognition of social movements and citizens; to serve as a tool for thinking about present conditions of existence and as a point of articulation of social bonds (using memory not as a fixed point of identity reference, but as a pretext capable of catalyzing conversations and encounters between diverse individuals and groups).
