Editorial. Exhumations in Latin America

International audienceMilitary dictatorships and armed conflicts delineate the history of Latin America over the last four decades. Dead bodies were produced en masse before being confiscated , concealed or destroyed by those who carried out the crimes. Today, some of these corpses are being exhumed and identified. This special issue aims to specify and understand the challenges this process of exhumation represents for Latin American states, namely, the social and political life of these exhumed corpses in democratic post-conflict societies, the possible performance of sovereignty that these dead bodies can activate and, in a broader context, the impact that the presence of corpses may have on the community of the living.Exhumations in Latin America gathers five different contributions, each enlightening particular aspects of the exhumation process in Guatemala, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay and Colombia, respectively. In the case of Guatemala, Clara Duterme explores this process as an element of 'transitional justice' in which tensions between different social actors arise. If community associations, governmental actors and victims all share the pursuit of justice as a common goal, their understanding of what compensation and reparation mean is not uniform. Departing from the discourse of local actors, Duterme focuses on concrete forms of compensation , showing how 'local justice' is sometimes more effective than legal justice. Exploring a distinct form of tensions occurring in Argentina, Laura Panizo analyses the impact of the exhumed corpses of the disappeared on the living bodies of the families and of the scientific investigators. The article analyses different conflicts that emerge when people cohabit with the 'reappeared' corpses. Moreover, digging into her personal experience, Panizo reflects on the extent to which her own body was, and is, affected by cohabitation with the exhumed corpses of the victims