Abstract

VELAZQUEZ-HERNANDEZ, Emilia. How is the past built? Reflections from a historical ethnography in the isthmus of Veracruz. Alteridades [online]. 2023, vol.33, n.65, pp.21-33.  Epub Nov 24, 2023. ISSN 2448-850X.  https://doi.org/10.24275/uam/izt/dcsh/alteridades/2023v33n65/velazquez.

The objective of this article is to reflect on the non-univocal construction of the past. To this end, it contrasts the reconstruction of the past based on archival sources against ethnographic information as part of an academic research, with the views on the past elaborated by the local people from their different socio-cultural and political positions. The existing gaps between both approaches to the past are shown, but without seeking to establish the “veracity” of one or the other. It is concluded that the past does not refer to a static set of events, accessible in the same way to anyone at any time, but that in the reconstruction of the past, events acquire or lose relevance depending on theoretical approaches as well as on present experiences and imagined futures. In other words, the present and the past are mutually constituted as part of a process that is always dynamic and changing.

Keywords : Memory; history; ethnography; anthropology of the past; Soteapan.

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