ABSTRACT
Memory processes, the construction of testimonials on trauma, the association of victims united by state violence: all of these have emerged, in large part, from the domestic space and refuge from external danger. They are born as immediate means for processing inexplicable suffering as well as incomprehensible and extreme situations, such as the disappearance of people, torture, mass murder, clandestine kidnapping, child abduction, exile, terrorist attacks, and ethnic cleansing. Memory politics, in the South and Central American context, comprise a series of actions developed over time through demands by different groups and activists for recognition and accountability of state violence. Unlike in Central and South America, memory politics in the United States has not often centered around traumatic experiences resulting from state violence, even though the state has been responsible for carrying out or allowing trauma-inducing violence at various points in the nation’s history.
