Dictaduras y violencia política en América Latina: aproximaciones interdisciplinarias para la construcción de memorias y reparación

Abstract

Latin America experienced the systematic capture of democratically elected governments by civil-military forces during the 1960s and 1970s. Dictatorships spread across the continent in the name of "saving the nation" or against the " internal enemy" and brutal repression was carried out against thousands of citizens who were labeled as terrorists and subversives. Since the 1980s, the social, political and human sciences have configured a field of study seeking to understand the ways in which this past of repression and political violence is remembered and its implications in the establishment of a certain political order. Since then, this field has questioned the democratic processes of these countries in the post-dictatorial period, the social struggles, structured on the axis of human rights and the management of traumas as an effect of State violence. Memory studies have been mainly concerned with analyzing the ways of elaborating the memory of a past of violations and the imperative of human rights movements: to remember in order to never repeat and to contribute to the development of reparation, justice and truth. This issue of Psicoperspectivas  seeks to contribute to interdisciplinary efforts to understand the sociocultural and psychological effects of state repression in the present, problematizing the scenarios, policies, subjects and discourses involved in the interpretation of dictatorial pasts and political violence in Latin America.