Cuadernos de antropología social versión ISSN 1850-275X JIMENO,
Myriam. After the massacre: Memory as historical knowledge.
Cuad. antropol. soc. [online]. 2011, n.33, pp. 39-52. ISSN
1850-275X. Why recall experiences of violence? Why do we, as
anthropologists, inquire about painful stories? Can ethnography
foster personal and collective reconstruction in societies that
have experienced traumatic events? From what point of view is
memory of traumatic life events constructed, and how is the
narrative of memory interwoven in games of power and
subordination on the one hand, and counter hegemony and self-
affirmation, on the other? These questions are addressed by
reflecting on a massacre that took place in Colombia in 2001:
the Naya massacre. The article explores the use of ethnography
to understand the way in which a group of people affected by
this event reconfigure the meaning of life and inscribe what
happened in certain cognitive-emotional schemes. In this
process, the anthropologist's inquiry is more than a