ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Latin American activists and their mediation of symbols and experiences with a view to effecting political and social transformation. First, the chapter examines testimonial writing. Two texts are considered: Nunca Más, Argentine novelist Ernesto Sábato’s introduction and presentation of the testimony of survivors from the 30,000 ‘disappeared’ under the military dictatorships (1976–83), and Yo, Rigoberta, the life story of a Guatemalan Quiché, describing the making of an indigenous activist under the violent military regimes of the 1960s–80s. Second, the chapter looks at songs and how they translate both cognitive and non-cognitive modes of understanding the world into cultural resources that allow for a collective (re)interpretation of events. These processes are examined via two case studies: the songs of Mexican singer-songwriter Judith Reyes, which chronicled the Tlatelolco massacre of 1968, and the songs of Venezuelan singer/songwriter Alí Primera, which denounced the economic, cultural, political, racial and environmental impact of the oil industry on his country. We conclude by arguing that a focus on the translation of lived experiences across different modalities of expression—from experiences to words, and from symbols to songs—illuminates the unanticipated ways in which testimony and social activism intertwine.
