Entre Memorias e Historias (Between Memories and Histories) is a new podcast in Spanish dedicated to the role of history and memory in present-day Colombia. Through dialogues with experts, listeners will gain an understanding of the inequality, joy, conflict and resilience found in contemporary Colombia. The themes covered range across two centuries of history, from transitional justice to curriculum reform, from the heroes and villains of the past to the uses of the machete over time.
The podcast is being launched by the University of Bristol’s Professor Matthew Brown (Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies) in collaboration with the Colombian peacebuilding organisation Embrace Dialogue (Rodeemos el Diálogo – ReD) and the Institute of Political Science and International Relations of the National University of Colombia.
Entre Memorias e Historias came to fruition as a result of travel restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic which prevented Professor Brown from continuing to learn about Colombia through his usual channels: archival research, conference participation, and the workshops that had been planned as part of the UKRI/Newton Fund project ‘Bringing memories in from the margins’.
“This feeling of enhanced remoteness, of somehow being even further away from Colombia than normal, motivated me to reach out and have longer, deeper dialogues with people who I would normally have shared a conference panel or archive coffee with,” said Professor Brown.
The audios – each a conversation of around 30 minutes – were originally recorded via Zoom in late 2020 as part of ‘Colombia: History and Culture since Independence’, a final-year undergraduate unit taught by Professor Brown in the School of Modern Languages. The podcast uses technology to build previously unthought-of dialogues, so that they can be used as instruments for reflection and transformation.
Professor Brown and his colleagues invite you to broaden public debate and awareness of Colombia’s past and present by listening to Between Memories and Histories on Spotify.
Podcast interviewees:
Daniel Gutierrez Ardila
Ana María Otero Cleves
Javier Guerrero Barón
Maria Emma Wills
Gustavo Duncan
Claudia Leal
Andrei Gomez Suarez
Catalina Muñoz
Ingrid Bolívar