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I have recently fallen prey to ‘La Pola’ a historical drama, cum soap opera, cum series which first appeared on Colombian TV in 2010. It tells the story of the life of Policarpa Salavarrieta, who was one of the few female leaders of the Independence movement in Colombia. Even though I am clearly a bit slow to get on the bandwagon it has made me think about the way history in Colombia has been and is being written. And as I was writing this piece, the news broke that Alvaro Uribe Velez had been voted the greatest Colombian – as did the following backlash.

The old saying goes that “history is written by the winners” and this is certainly true in the Colombian case.  Take for example Independence. It has traditionally been thought that Independence returned the Colombian nation to its original state, a ‘state of sovereignty’. Popular history too, like ‘La Pola’, also make the claim Colombia already existed.

This however is not only unlikely but anachronistic.The idea of the nation-state was only being developed abroad.

Independence marked the point at which the Colombian nation began to be developed and created, not the point in which we returned to the natural state.

Of course there is good reason why history is remembered in the way it is. In the two centuries following Independence we have forged a national identity whose potency is greater if it reaches back to a time before colonization and before independence. The interpretation of history, and of course the writing of history, defines national identity and memory.

To give the “Pola” series credit, it successfully deals with many of the dimensions of history, from the representation of minorities within history (women, afro-colombians) very differently to the way mainstream history approached the period.

This led me to think of more contemporary events and the way history is being written now. I have always had a feeling that time in Colombia goes by faster and because of this people forget events with a certain haste. There is a sense that in fact nobody is writing history.

Semana Magazine even ran an article this week which included “historical alzheimers” in the title, referring to the election of Uribe Velez as the “greatest Colombian in history”. But why is this the case? Perhaps there is too much history, too many massacres, too many deaths to keep records and tolls. Perhaps everyone is too busy with their personal survival and safety to be able to worry about the wider picture. Perhaps it is all a bit too much, and it is a bit too difficult (both physically and emotionally) to put down in paper all the happenings of the last hundred years.

They say that Colombians are some of the happiest people on earth, and perhaps our willingness to forget has something to do with this.

The thing is, no one really forgets. But by not sharing and not commemorating we are running the risk that events will not be remembered in the future, and in many ways that is when they will matter.  This idea reminds me of a quote by a great British Parliamentarian, Edmund Burke, who said: “Society is a contract between the past, the present and those yet unborn”.

As “the present”, we have both a responsibility to commemorate past events and record contemporary ones for posterity. Many argue that in the case of the violent conflict that has plagued Colombian life, politics and history for the past 60 years, we should wait for peace to arrive in order to revise the events historically. However as a country we are already making history and setting a precedent for not remembering. We should avoid history being written by the victorious, since it will take about 100 years for an eager revisionist historian to figure out that the story perhaps wasn’t as one-sided.

Remembrance is also a key to justice, and as the prologue to the new “Ley de Victimas” cites: “Reparación, justicia y paz son, pues, requisitos indispensables e inescindibles para la terminación definitiva de un conflicto armado” (Reparation, justice and peace are indispensable and inseparable for the definitive end to the armed conflict). For many of the families who have lost relatives in the period, the Ley de Victimas might be the first step towards recognition of injustice, and in many ways one of the first moves at recording our difficult past and present. However this law may also be the first step towards the “winners” finally writing history and thus the experiences and suffering of the minorities in Colombian history being undermined, if not forgotten.

Perhaps the way forward can be found in history itself. Every 11th of November Remembrance Day is celebrated in the UK. It now commemorates the lives lost in British Wars, but it originally started as a date that marked the end of WWI. After the war there was a huge social movement towards the building of monuments erected in almost every town around the country, marking the names of the people from those towns that had lost their lives. This was also replicated by companies who raised monuments in the memory of their employees. Another form of remembrance that appeared was the grave of the Unknown Soldier, a monument that acknowledges the impossibility of keeping all records, and in the case of Colombia, could ensure objectivity and avoid the term “victim” being applicable to only one side.

We too can learn from this form of commemoration that has now become tradition. Of course it will not be the same, and in many ways it will transform into a form of commemoration that will suit our own history. Perhaps time has come for Colombia’s own Remembrance Day, a day in which we can remember, a day that will force us all not to forget. History can be taken into the hands of the witnesses and the victims, not just the winners. Peace will not arrive if we forget our troubles and forget what brought conflict along, peace will come from acknowledging our past and coming to grips with it. As Colombians, we should feel a responsibility to remember.

Picture, colombia.com

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