Reflections on History as a Reparations Project: Insights from Colombia
Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
Center for Human Rights and International Justice
The participation of history in transitional justice processes has tended to rely on conventional notions of history as linear and progressive, that assume a clean break between past and present (violent past/present of peace) and leave unquestioned the embeddedness of violence in long processes or state formation. This talk showcases Historias para lo que viene, a public history project in Colombia that draws from critical studies of transitional justice, decoloniality, and a radical tradition of public history to suggest that history can do much more than that: it can be a tool for reparations of past and present injustice that combines critical inquiry with radical action to remake our world.
Catalina Muñoz (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is an associate professor of history at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. She is a Visiting Research Scholar in the Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS) at Princeton University in the Spring 2023 and held a Membership at the Institute for Advanced Study in the fall of 2022. Her publications include A Fervent Crusade for the National Soul: Cultural Politics in Colombia, 1930-1946 (Lexington Books, 2022) and articles in the Hispanic American Historical Review, Ethnohistory, and the Journal of Urban Affairs, among others.