Making History: The Present Time of Memorials During a Nationwide Strike in Colombia

Hacer historia: el presente de los monumentos en el paro nacional

This article proposes an analytical reading of the knocking down of the so-called colonial memorials during the national strike in Colombia in 2021. In the light of the notion of history silences and uses of the past, we analyze how the colonial word articulates some narratives to disarticulate others. In turn, relying upon ethnograhpy and interviews, we go over several events aiming to identify readings of history, present time, and the reasons underlying the fall of monuments, trying to elucidate today’s place of the uses of past for the emergence of potential contemporary collective subjects. We conclude that the ways of connecting and disconnecting past allow for making history in the present time.