Memory is the first step to overcoming trauma and moving towards recovery, the director of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile, Ricardo Brodsky, has told delegates at the Museums Association’s Conference and Exhibition in Liverpool.
In his keynote address, Brodsky, the director of The Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago, Chile, said that memory wasn’t a nostalgic exercise about the past but was key to people’s identity and defined their past, present and future.
“It is the experience that determines who we are and to which human community we belong,” he said.
The Museum of Memory and Human Rights was opened in 2010 to commemorate the victims of human rights violations under Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship between 1973 and 1990.
Now a democracy, the government’s human rights policies have centred around four basic pillars: truth, justice, reparation and memory.
“The Museum of Memory and Human Rights is where Chilean society symobilically fulfills its duty of memory, looks directly at its past and responds to the right of memory for victims of the dictatorship,” Brodsky said.
“[The museum] has the mission of recovering and preserving the tracks of that traumatic past, giving testimony of the sufferings so that public knowledge about what happened may break into the circle of silence and impunity, and emphasising the need to prevent something like from happening again.
“In other words, the museum, as an expression of a public policy of reparation, is the state’s main gesture of moral reparation to the dictatorship’s victims: this is where the history or the biography of each one of the victims is found or built and where their dignity that was snatched away is given back.”
The museum is one of the most visited museums in the country and is a reference for similar projects in Peru, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia.
But Brodsky said the museum had challenges, most notably in dealing with “the tension between history and memory” in order to create a universal message.
Another controversial area has been the political influence on the museum, from its design to its recourses, and critics have accused it of distorting history by showing only one aspect of the dictatorial period.
Brodsky said: “For us, the issue is summarised by stating that its mission is to promote a public awareness about the seriousness of the human rights violations during the Pinochet period, and that awareness does not have a political or electoral purpose but a moral one, that is, to transform the respect for human rights into a categorical imperative in our coexistence, whatever the context in which it takes place.”
In his keynote address, Brodsky, the director of The Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago, Chile, said that memory wasn’t a nostalgic exercise about the past but was key to people’s identity and defined their past, present and future.
“It is the experience that determines who we are and to which human community we belong,” he said.
The Museum of Memory and Human Rights was opened in 2010 to commemorate the victims of human rights violations under Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship between 1973 and 1990.
Now a democracy, the government’s human rights policies have centred around four basic pillars: truth, justice, reparation and memory.
“The Museum of Memory and Human Rights is where Chilean society symobilically fulfills its duty of memory, looks directly at its past and responds to the right of memory for victims of the dictatorship,” Brodsky said.
“[The museum] has the mission of recovering and preserving the tracks of that traumatic past, giving testimony of the sufferings so that public knowledge about what happened may break into the circle of silence and impunity, and emphasising the need to prevent something like from happening again.
“In other words, the museum, as an expression of a public policy of reparation, is the state’s main gesture of moral reparation to the dictatorship’s victims: this is where the history or the biography of each one of the victims is found or built and where their dignity that was snatched away is given back.”
The museum is one of the most visited museums in the country and is a reference for similar projects in Peru, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia.
But Brodsky said the museum had challenges, most notably in dealing with “the tension between history and memory” in order to create a universal message.
Another controversial area has been the political influence on the museum, from its design to its recourses, and critics have accused it of distorting history by showing only one aspect of the dictatorial period.
Brodsky said: “For us, the issue is summarised by stating that its mission is to promote a public awareness about the seriousness of the human rights violations during the Pinochet period, and that awareness does not have a political or electoral purpose but a moral one, that is, to transform the respect for human rights into a categorical imperative in our coexistence, whatever the context in which it takes place.”
