Abstract

ESPINOSA MORENO, Fernanda. The Public Emergence of the Victim in Colombia: The Testimonial Voice of Torture (1978-1979). Hist. graf [online]. 2019, n.52, pp.129-156. ISSN 1405-0927.

This article analyzes the public emergence of the testimonial voice of the victim as a political subject in Colombia. At the end of the decade of 1970s, two interconnected events that show how the pressure and debate was increasing in response to the denunciation of human rights violations in Colombia were presented. This events are the “Accidental Commission on Alleged Violations of Human Rights” integrated in the Congress of the Republic, its report presented in the House of Representatives in 1978, and the I National Forum of Human Rights in March 1979 held in the Capitol and where the Standing Committee for Human Rights comes from. In these scenarios the victims who testify are fundamentally those affected by torture, raids and arbitrary detentions. The figure of the victim-survivor who testifies and narrates the facts publicly appears in them. These events show a formalization of the denunciation of human rights, on the one hand, by the outstanding appropriation and use of international legislation and on the other, by the level of dissemination, participation and social organization that they reach. Throughout the 1980s, the testimonial voice on violence was consolidated in the public sphere, but suffered transformations.

Keywords : victim; testimony; human rights; torture; repression.

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