Study title

Data collection of interviews and photographs captured at key sites of memory for the political violence that took place in the 1970s and 1980s in Argentina and Chile. The data capture impressions at sites where the events of the last dictatorships of Argentina and Chile are presented, also called 'forums for telling'. Ten semi-structured qualitative interviews were held with lawyers, museum directors, artists, the President of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology team and two survivors of the Chacabuco detention centre in Chile. A collection of 1231 documentary photographs showing key 'sites of memory' and museums in Argentina and Chile that were visited for this project. This research project studies how - by what processes, according to what criteria, and subject to what kinds of verification? - truths emerge about the political violence that took place in the 1970s and 1980s in Argentina and Chile. Although that period of violence is now 'past', many facets of it are still unresolved. Beyond the legal mechanisms that continue to unearth truths about the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-83) and the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile (1973-1990), there are several sites at which these unresolved issues emerge for debate and verification. There is a need to address the unresolved and still controversial nature of many questions as the presentation of the story of what happened becomes a focus of new memorial spaces and Memory museums, as well as at other sites where truths are tested, including where biological identities are tested via DNA or where human or material remains require forensic testing. The research will take place at a range of diverse sites that we call 'forums for telling'. Its premise is that truths about the past are of different kinds because they have to pass through different processes of hypothesising, 'testing' and reflection before they are affirmed and allowed to emerge as true. Thus the production of truth at a museum of...