Basta ya!. Colombia: memories of war and dignity. Excerpts

Abstract

This report is not an account of a remote past. It is instead a narrative firmly anchored in our present. It is a report that, as a matter of conviction and by law, explicitly departs from the idea of an official memory of the armed conflict. Far from pretending to be a corpus of unchallengeable truths, it aims to encourage everyone to reflect on the country s violence and enter into an open social and political debate about it. Colombia has yet to build a legitimate but non-consensual memory that explicitly includes the differences, contradictions, opposing political stances and responsibilities on all sides, and that in turn recognizes the victims. This report is a moment and a voice among a packed audience undertaking multiple dialogues of memory over the past decades. It is the "Basta ya!" which emanates from a society that is overwhelmed by its past, but is striving to build a new future. These excerpts from the Basta Ya! Colombia: Memories of War and Dignity Report include three sections of the General Report: the prologue, the introduction and the public policy recommendations.