Abstract

RIANO-ALCALA, Pilar  and  BAINES, Erin. WHEN THE FILE IS IN THE WITNESS: DOCUMENTATION IN SCENARIOS OF CHRONIC INSECURITY. anal.polit. [online]. 2012, vol.25, n.74, pp.49-70. ISSN 0121-4705.

Through an exchange between members of community organizations documenting human rights violations in northwest Colombia and northern Uganda, this article examines strategies for building memory where an individual or a group creates a safe social space to give testimony and re-story-telling acts of violence or resistance. In scenarios of chronic insecurity, such acts constitute a reservoir of living documents that preserve the memories, testify, reduce impunity and convey the sense or "veracity" of the survivors. The living file overturns conventional assumptions about what is a document or testimony in the field of transitional justice. It also introduces new interdisci plinary tools with which to learn from and listen to survivors in a different way.

Keywords : historical memory; documentation; filing; transitional justice.

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