The Raíces and Memoria Viva Community Artist Networks
Raíces and Memoria Viva are two collectives or networks of community artists from ten communities in the northeast of Chalatenango Raíces gathers artists from Arcatao, Nueva Trinidad, Las Flores and Guancora, while Memoria Viva represents the Las Minas cantón, Chalatenango, and two other communities in the municipality of Las Vueltas. These two collectives have been working together since 2021 with the support of Cáritas Chalatenango in the context of the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador project.Raíces and Memoria Viva are two collectives or networks of community artists from ten communities in the northeast of Chalatenango Raíces gathers artists from Arcatao, Nueva Trinidad, Las Flores and Guancora, while Memoria Viva represents the Las Minas cantón, Chalatenango, and two other communities in the municipality of Las Vueltas. These two collectives have been working together since 2021 with the support of Cáritas Chalatenango in the context of the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador project.
They are children and grandchildren of survivors of the armed conflict, and some of them experienced war as children or young people. They are all united by their interest in memory and the search for healing the transgenerational wounds that the war left in their families and communities. They believe that popular art is a good way to do this, which is why they support cultural and memory initiatives in the region through theatre, dance, and song. They understand their way of making art as a means to rescue, dignify, and redefine the silenced memories of their ancestors, their struggles, and their resistance.
“Our Search”: Art as a Channel for the Healing of Transgenerational Wounds
The people involved in Raíces and Memoria Viva know that – as the children or grandchildren of war – they are also affected by the history of violence in their region. That is why, when they began their collective work, they sought to actively exchange ideas with survivors of the various civilian massacres in Chalatenango to ask them how to represent the experiences of violence that they survived without causing harm. In these exercises of intergenerational dialogue, they began to be more aware that the representations of violence in plays can re-victimize the survivors of these events. On one occasion, Uberlinda, the mother of a member of Raíces, told them: “When the fireworks sound [representing the bullets in the theatres of the Sumpul massacre], my body is present, but my soul is gone, I can no longer pay attention because otherwise it makes me relive what happened” (01/17/2022).
From these dialogues, a common motto emerged that inspired their way of making community art: “art for memory and healing.” From this perspective, the performances they create seek to bear witness to the violence survived without the need to recreate it explicitly. They highlight the resistance and resilience of their communities, give space to the voices of the survivors, and dignify their struggles and memories. They feel that this change in representation has been very well received by the different audiences where they have presented their works, especially by survivors. By developing other ways of bearing witness to what happened, according to Fran, a participant in Raíces: “what we want is to communicate emotions and not just literally bear witness to the facts” (05/14/2022).
Through their artistic work, they are discovering and working on their own transgenerational wounds, those that were formed by the absences, silences, tears, struggles, and resistance of their relatives and communities and that are part of their personal and collective identity. These two collectives feel that art helps them know themselves, understand their stories better and reconcile themselves with them. They work on their memories in their creative processes through their words and tears, body exercises, poems, songs that they write and collective support.
Performances on Repopulations
Each network has a dance performance on repopulations. In June 2022, the Raíces network worked with Paola Lorenzana on a proposal focused on rootedness in their land, that land that military operations tried to destroy but in which life, struggle and dignity flourished again and took deep root. It is a very poetic dance performance.
In September 2022, the Memoria Viva network created a dance performance based on a process of four intergenerational dialogue workshops with people who repopulated Las Vueltas. These workshops of dialogue and artistic experimentation were the basis for a testimonial performance about the reasons that led them to seek refuge in Honduras and their struggle to return and rebuild their communities. In the process, some grandmothers and grandfathers worked on body images with their daughters and grandchildren to communicate their experiences. These images are part of the performance.
Since then, they have managed to present their performances in their communities, in Suchitoto, and at the UCA.