Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the challenges for researching the construction of social memory after atrocity in interviews with victims of the massacre of Bojayá (Colombia). It argues that a focus on the present and the future in the interviews allows interviewees to explore the past in their own terms.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in Chocó (Colombia) that suffers a humanitarian crisis due to the conflict. The research was focused on the construction of social memory by grassroots communities after a massacre occurred in Bojayá in 2002. This attracted the attention of a large number of researchers, and governmental and non-governmental organisations who aimed to implement humanitarian help and reparations to victims. As a result, victims have suffered research fatigue. On one hand they feel that they have been over-researched and on the other hand they do not feel that they have been benefited by research.

This paper explains some of the strategies used during interviews avoiding creating feelings of discomfort or the re-enactment of painful emotions in the participants. For instance, questions that were directly referring to the massacre were avoided. Instead, the questions addressed victims' present and expectations for the future. This perspective allowed victims to explain their experiences in their own words, emphasising risks, suffering, and decision making in their own terms. In their accounts they took from the past what was meaningful to their present. In this way the painful accounts were not limited to the experience of the massacre but they included experiences of displacement, discrimination, sexual harassment, and being victims of corruption and impunity. This approach led to a broad comprehension of the impacts of violence and reparation in the everyday life of people.