Telling a Story or Rewriting History? Fighting Oblivion and Amnesia through Ibero-American Fiction—Quilting the Collective Memory

From the outset, Ibero-American literature and cinematography have blended with the politics, history and culture in general in our communities; that is, they have woven themselves into the fabric of our daily lives. Whether it be as a note of protest or simply for the purpose of entertainment, to some degree, the spheres of cinema and literature both were always marking–and continue to do so–parallel paths which sometimes cross in order to realize a new project with a political, historical, social, religious or cultural tone. Through the cinematographic and literary production of our directors and writers, we manage to recover what is known as collective memory and, consequently, advocate for human rights. In his essay “Reflections on the Latin American Narrative of the Post-Boom” from 1994, the Argentinean writer, Mempo Giardinelli, points out that “. . . we are still writing to get rid of our fear, to exorcise our ghosts and our grief. . . . [T]oday we write not only against politics, but against fear and oblivion. . . . [T]he need to revise history and to engage in a profound self-criticism and introspection . . . is what many Latin American writers of the generation I would prefer to call the ‘Writers of Recovered Democracy,’ . . . are carrying out.” This presentation will analyze different literary and cinematographic Ibero-American works, focusing on the phenomenon of re-writing and re-telling history, whether it be official or not, or whether it be with the purpose of advocating for human rights. Consequently, we will examine the way these authors and cinematographers create their stories to reconstruct history and build a societal quilt of collective memory