ABSTRACT
Despite fundamental differences, the major branches of oral history—topical and life history—have much in common. Oral life history constructs narratives around an individual's life and experiences in relation to larger historical forces, and topical oral history generally frames a study around a particular event, theme, process, or temporal period and only makes incidental reference to interviewees' personal life stories. The power and politics of oral history can be discerned in the stakes for determining which versions of the past become authoritative. Many agents who justified violence as a political means to eradicate perceived threats—communism, socialism, insurgency—suffer from the trauma of having tortured and executed people. Within Argentina's Communist Party, militants and Trotskyites understood and approached their political activism differently. In Chile, oral history research has revealed how urban groups became politicized. Oral history research also has revealed how heterosexual behavior has been reinforced.
