This groundbreaking collection of essays by experts in political science, sociology, history, and literature analyzes the nuanced and often contentious interplay between memory, truth, and accountability in contemporary Latin America. While previous studies have examined democratization efforts (and right-wing backlashes), transitional justice, and victim-oriented narratives since the end of the Cold War, this volume takes a new approach. It convincingly demonstrates the importance of deconstructing the militaries’ own active memory work—or rather countermemory work, a term the contributors employ to refer to military memories that are both counterintuitive and run counter to the “victim-oriented” memories that have historically informed Latin American public memory and human rights activism.

With an eye toward particular cultural, political, and historical contexts of the specific countries involved, the collection emphasizes the continuities that come into relief by taking a broader regional focus. The contributors identify the many subtle ways in which past military perpetrators appropriate mechanisms of accountability and truth-telling to reconfigure the past, muddy the distinctions between perpetrator and victim, and weaponize ways of remembering.

Cynthia E. Milton is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Victoria and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She is the author of Conflicted Memory: Military Cultural Interventions and the Human Rights Era in Peru and Art from a Fractured Past: Memory and Truth-Telling in Post–Shining Path Peru.

Michael J. Lazzara is a professor of Latin American literature and cultural studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the associate vice provost of academic programs and partnerships in Global Affairs at the University of California, Davis. His books include Civil Obedience: Complicity and Complacency in Chile Since Pinochet, Luz Arce and Pinochet’s Chile: Testimony in the Aftermath of State Violence, and Chile in Transition: The Poetics and Politics of Memory.