ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 considers one specific vector of memory work: the rise of museums addressing political violence through a combined memorial and human rights lens. With specific and comparative references to museographical endeavours in Paraguay and Colombia as countries that have suffered lengthy abuses of power and resorted to transitional justice mechanisms to restore or consolidate democracy, the chapter focuses on Latin America where memory work has specifically evolved as a contemporary political tool that challenges both current and historical human rights abuses, and ultimately, conventional historiography. Paying close attention to the nature of the collections, design and programming of three distinct human rights museums, the chapter analyses how historical memory of traumatic pasts is constructed and inscribed, in what forms, by whom and to what political, social and cultural ends.
