Remembering the Fragmented

The South American nation of Colombia has been beset by decades of state, guerrilla, and paramilitary violence, creating deep and long-lasting impacts. Many scholars have investigated not only the atrocious events themselves but also the various truth and memory processes that have sought to address this troubling past. Here, Pilar Riaño-Alcalá takes a new approach by applying Black, Indigenous, and memory studies to two emblematic sites of mass violence: Bahia Portete, a Wayuu Indigenous territory in Upper Guajira; and Bojayá, a Black and Embera Indigenous territory in Chocó. By bringing human and nonhuman actors to bear on the ongoing acts of remembering and by centering Indigenous and Black ontologies, Riaño-Alcalá uncovers how these communities repair themselves—how they understand, restore, sustain, and reimagine themselves despite the constant uncertainties of war and racial capitalism. Contributing to human rights studies, memory studies, Indigenous studies, Latin American studies, and anthropologies of social repair, this book offers critical new interventions in a long-studied history.