It is just as violent to knock down a monument as to impose a historical discourse by decision of dominant groups. Colombia needs a participatory and inclusive memory policy.
Authoritarian societies breed violent responses. Yes, it is a violent act to knock down the statues that throughout history have collected what certain dominant groups believe must be the historical discourse of a nation. But it is just as violent to impose a historical discourse by decision of dominant groups. We cannot forget that each monument, each statue, each museum represents a public message, and that message is itself a political decision. Someone has decided that this statue must represent national history. (We recommend: William Ospina Video Column: Not only the statues will fall).
If the decision that has been made at some point in history to honor certain historical figures, and not others, cannot be transformed by the decision of social groups, it can easily end in the violent act of knocking down the statues. Because choosing to honor the founder of Bogotá, undoubtedly implies placing oneself in a historical discourse that accepts in an acceptable way the excesses and atrocities that were committed for the founding of our capital. That game between honoring or hating, between recognizing Jiménez de Quesada as part of who we are, our founder, or as a genocidal one, is part of the politics of memory, the one that here in Colombia is usually developed by powerful people with little interest in opinion. of his opponents. What we must or must not remember is what is at stake, it is a political act that must be rethought. What would happen if we put a statue of the Zipa Tisquesusa in front of Jiménez de Quesada? What would happen if we made it clear that whoever founded Bogotá founded it on a territory already founded? That to found Bogotá he had to kill thousands of indigenous people, residents and owners of this land? It would be interesting if they told us that, just as Jiménez de Quesada had studied law, Zipa had been preparing for much longer to be Zipa. They were two trained men who faced, in unequal conditions, by the atrocious decision of a nation to conquer territories and assume them as their own, usurping their former inhabitants. (It may interest you: Two historians think about the demolition of statues).
The problem with the statues is not whether we agree that this being represents our history, it does not even mean that we would like to erase that being from history, it rather implies that the political decision of a ruler who accepts to receive from Spain the statue of Jiménez de Quesada and placing it in front of one of the first universities that were founded in this territory is taken for granted. Precisely, the decision of who has chosen that this statue be in that place is blurred, and a construction of a politics of memory is prevented that can define whether it should continue to be there, or if to be so requires that the genocidal and not just the founder. It is taken for granted that as a nation we must accept genocide as a necessity in order to become who we are. And of course, we cannot change the past, but we can tell it differently. See in the past the violence that our leaders have wanted to erase. Because hiding violence, agreeing with only one side of history is a violent act, which our current governments unfortunately repeat.
Follow the news of El Espectador on Google NewsThat in 1988 it occurred to some politicians and leaders that the statue of Jiménez de Quesada should be left in the Rosario square as a celebration of the 450th anniversary of the founding of Bogotá was an act of memory politics that can always be revised . That at that time the relationship with the Spanish past was accepted, naturalized, and that our indigenous people continue to be left as a story of the past that does not deserve to be named, that they continue to be left outside their territory, with the naturalness with which they continue to do so today as a culture that is perpetuated in violence; If at that time there was no manifest annoyance in this act of celebration and acceptance of the genocide, it does not mean that in the present it remains the same. The situation has changed, and we must understand that the politics of memory is transformed with the evolution of the conceptions of the historical. In the present for many scholars, historians, historians and citizens it is inadmissible to see these statues only as a celebration. We cannot make visible only the founding gesture, the genocidal gesture is also needed. The politics of memory must continue to transform itself into fuller understandings of the present and the past. That is why the discussion about the relevance of honoring the founder or making the genocidal person visible, those two truths that he embodies, becomes absolutely necessary.
And this cultural need to permanently rewrite history, according to the understandings of each era, goes far beyond the conquering genocide. Remembering the armed conflict in Colombia is also in conflict. Hopefully one day, when we are governed by less biased people, we can build a policy of participatory, inclusive memory. Of course, that will be the reflection of a society that is also just and inclusive in politics, economics and society.
For now we will see monuments and statues fall, we will see a struggle in the streets to make history a plural field, as our rulers would not want it to. Citizens will try to make visible the barbarity of the armed conflict, from the arrival of the Spanish to the present. We will continue to seek critical historical understandings of our history.
And I close with this small detail, if the rulers do not open the politics of memory to a collective construction, if they are going to continue to blur violence of any kind in the history of our country, they will continue to be the artists, the writers, the theater workers, musicians, filmmakers who are in charge of pluralizing the construction of the symbolic, and showing what the officers do not want us to see. I therefore make a call to understand that memory is a political construction, that we are called to carry out an inclusive memory policy in this country, which has not yet been done. Meanwhile, let us invoke art to bring to the streets the multiplicity of versions that we need to know, to make the memories that a culture of death, like ours, needs to survive barbarism.
* Bogota writer. Novelist, short story writer and Creative Writing teacher at the National University of Colombia. Here you can read a story of her.
