"We fight for the memory of our children": Political memory, favela heritage, and mothers of victims of state violence

Abstract

There have been extensive studies of the struggles against Latin American military dictator-ships of the 1960s and 1980s, especially regarding the activism of mothers of political activ-ists who were disappeared. However there has been far less research about women's contin-ued struggle for memory, truth, and justice in contemporary Latin America. There has been even less consideration of how small-scale urban protesters use memory within urban cul-tural geographies of activism. This article explores the production of political memory by mothers of victims of state violence in Rio de Janeiro. The mother's struggle encompasses heritage practices in favelas, as well as in the central business district, but deliberately recall and amplify the claims for justice from the 1960s and 1980s. This recalls not only the herit-age connected with the dictatorship, but situates their practices within activists' lived expe-riences of the colonial state and its attempts to render their murdered children criminals.