Memories from Darkness

By: Andres Zarankin and Melissa Salerno and Pedro Funari

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Synopsis: The study of Archaeology in Latin America has been strongly affected by the socio-political setting of the region. The history of military repression in Latin America in the 1960s-1980s has been particularly challenging to study, with many holes in the historic accounts. Several Latin American dictatorships emerged during this period, particularly during the Cold War and the Cuban Revolution. Military regimes remained in power for decades, until internal and international changes allowed democracy to take over a firm hold. Due to military and governmental upheaval, written sources on clandestine repression are scarce and fragmentary, with many of these sources destroyed deliberately by repressive governments. New archaeological methods must be employed to reconstruct the true history of this period, helping shed light on repressive mechanisms, to recover missing history. Not only will the contributions of this important volume shed light on the specific case of Repression in Latin America, but the techniques described will be a valuable resources of information for archaeologists working to reconstruct other historical periods without reliable written sources, and shed light on the nature of political repression worldwide.