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Abstract
1996 marked the putative end of Guatemalas 36-year internal armed conflict. During the conflict, an estimated 45,000 persons were detained-disappeared, 200,000 killed, and over 1,000,000 persons were forcibly displaced. Today sites of memory, or places of commemoration that link the past and the present, are beginning to appear around Guatemala. The sites are an attempt to come to terms with Guatemalas past. Using a series of Foucauldian Discourse Analysis guideposts on the landscape, I analyze three sites of memory in Guatemala City: a series of posters by the activist group H.I.J.O.S., the Guatemalan armys military museum, and the new Casa de la Memoria (House of Memory). I show that while sites of memory as a political project against history may purport to provide alternative versions of the past, that they may be reproducing particular ways of knowing that are linked to instances of power, and the status of truth.