The Association of the Mothers of April (AMA) was formed to seek justice for their sons and daughters killed in the repression after April 2018. They put together a Museum of Memory Against Impunity which was located on the Central American University campus (UCA) in Managua for months. On April 19th they published an interactive book on the victims. What follows is the translation of one of the introductory pieces, done by Vilma Núñez, founder of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH), whose legal status was revoked by the government in December 2018 and their building confiscated. Vilma talks about the significance of the museum and the work of the Association.
Memory and Human Rights
Vilma Núñez de Escorcia
Human Rights Defender and President of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH)
The day that I first visited the Museum of Memory Against Impunity, a sense of impotence filled me, due to the arbitrary occupation and destruction of CENIDH, in spite of the fact that I always had the firm intention of recovering it so that it could continue being an instrument of struggle for all Nicaraguans. In the different sections of the museum I saw the proof of the savagery of the human rights violations that we are experiencing, and I discovered behind each personal piece displayed, the force that moves the Mothers of April and the rest of their relatives in their determination to fight against impunity. I left the museum moved but strengthened in my decision to continue forward. In the face of the belongings of Alvarito, Sandor or Matt Romero, I told myself, we cannot let them down!
The initiatives for the construction of memory have different effects, depending on the goals to which they are directed, for example, to contribute to transitional justice, or to transcend to social transformation. It is a risk to generalize about the effects that it produces and to determine a priori how they might contribute to transitional justice and social transformation.
The four traditional components of transitional justice, truth, justice, reparations and guarantee of non-repetition, constitute interrelated areas of action that can and should be mutually strengthened. Where does memory fit in this series of activities? Up to now, the initiatives of memory are not considered one of the four pillars that we have mentioned.
The initiatives of memory frequently are understood as elements foreign to the political process. At times they are circumscribed to promoting processes that help to heal in families the traumatic grief that the aggression on a loved one produces, locating it many times in the private sphere as part of personal grief that must be processed.
Personally, I think that memory, like any process, is determined by the context or the reality on which it is built, because memory is remembering. How is it remembered? Why is it remembered? This leads us to determine the modalities of how human rights violations are committed in a certain moment and how we deal with them. All this reveals the type of society that we are and that we want to be: it leads us to establish our identity and capacity to exercise our sovereignty as active subjects of human rights, so that forgetting, negotiations promoted because of discouragement or tiredness, do not take the place of individual or collective memory. We need to always keep present that these are all human rights problems and that human rights are not negotiable.
As a human rights defender, I consider initiatives of memory as an integral part of any strategy to defend and promote these rights, that require that we not just remember the victims, but think in a critical way about what the forces were that unleashed the installation of the repression, dictatorship or political persecution. It is going to the investigation of the causes that led to the human rights violations.
The measures of transitional justice and also memory, even though they cannot on their own establish democracy, reinforce the processes for its consolidation in so far as they recognize people, particularly the victims, as holders of the rights that were violated and that must be demanded of the State and secondarily with international human rights protection entities.
In this respect, the United Nations Rapporteur on truth, justice and reparation and guarantee of non-repetition has said, “It is not enough to recognize the suffering and the strength of the victims (…) what is required is remembering and acting in light of the subject as the holder of rights.”
The idea should be clearly transmitted that serious human rights violations occurred and were not a simple excess, but a policy planned and executed by the State in flagrant violation of elemental principles of humanity, legal norms, ethical and moral principles and democratic conceptions.
Certain United Nations´ standards insist on the duty to recall, educate about the past, and reject the denial of atrocities. Memory should not just be remembering and trying to avoid more serious human rights violations, but it should be a rejection of forms of abusive exercise of power and allow other violations, generally silenced, to be made visible. The challenge of a policy of memory is contributing to the creation of more just, egalitarian and democratic societies.
I think that all this is present in the project promoted by the Mothers of April with the installation of the Museum of Memory against Impunity. And this is not just my personal appreciation, it is described in component 2 of the project that was carried out, that goes beyond “social investigation on the victims of the state repression and its milieu” and proposed promoting reflection on the following questions: “What happened in Nicaraguan society beginning on April 18th? What does this crisis indicate to us and this cycle of political violence about the organization of power in our society? From what past is this crisis derived? What memories emerge with it? What does it mean to do justice? What future does it allow us to desire and project? What memories require us to build the desire for a different future, one of non-repetition, never again? What memories are essential for a process of reorganization of power and democratization?” This is a holistic strategy for the defense and promotion of human rights that any investigation should contain that wants to characterize the brutal repression begun in Nicaragua on April 18, 2021.
In addition, there is an important element to consider which marks a difference with the processes of the construction of historic memories, which generally have been done or can happen after conflicts have ended. This initiative of AMA is different because it contributes along the way in a conflict which is not ending, but rather is growing and extending over time.
The museum thus becomes an element of ongoing resistance, it is the immediate contradiction to the lies, cynicism, false discourse of the Ortega-Murillo dictators. In this museum the slogan translated into a just complaint becomes alive: “they were students, they were not criminals.” They are mothers and relatives defending in addition the human right to the honor and reputation of their children and relatives, giving an impressive example of the defense of their own rights. They are the belongings showing their lives, customs and dreams. This is an invaluable contribution to the truth. A fundamental element to access justice, which we should not renounce.
Speech made on December 5, 2019 in the Amando López Auditorium in the Central American University in Managua.