(Re)signifying the Past of Violence: Emerging Memories and Voices at Colombia’s National Strike in 2021

The 2021 National Strike in Colombia laid bare social discontent exacerbated by structural inequalities in its society. It provided a much-needed platform for those historically excluded voices, including those of young people. They raised their voices to challenge the meanings of the violent past to construct an activist and politicized citizenship. I will analyze from a discursive-performative stance the meanings that emerge in the protest taking as corpus two graffiti. These materials’ irruptions give room to doubts, complaints, demands of justice, and new questions about the memories of violence as they open the space to a political we.