Pushing the Boundaries of Latin American Testimony

LOUISE DETWILERAssociate Professor of Spanish and Chair of the Department Modern Languages and Intercultural Studies at Salisbury University, USA. JANIS BRECKENRIDGE Assistant Professor of Spanish at Whitman College, USA.

• Introduction: Points of Departure; L.Detwiler & J.Breckenridge PART I: MOVING THEORIES: NEOLIBERALISM AND COALITIONS Writing Fabio Argueta: Testimonio, Ethnography, and Human Rights in the Neoliberal Age; L.Binford Testimonio and Its Travelers: Feminist Deployments of a Genre in Action; P.Connolly PART II: POSITIONING OPPOSITIONAL PERFORMANCES: CLANDESTINE, RELUCTANT, AND FALSE WITNESSES Hiding the Camera in Miguel Littin's Acta General de Chile; D.W.Foster Guerrilla Narratives through the Kaleidoscope of Time: Nicaragua and the Revolution that Was; J.M.Medina Bearing False Witness? The Politics of Identity in Elsa Osorio's My Name is Light ( A veinte años, Luz ); N.J.Gates-Madsen PART III: CONNECTED COMMUNITIES: EMERGING CONTEXTS AND MERGING MEDIUMS Testimony in Truth Commissions and Social Movements in Latin America; L.Stephen Rumors as Testimonios of Insile in La mujer en cuestión ( The Woman in Question ) by María Teresa Andruetto; C.Pubill Accomplishing 'Tellable-Tellings': Managing Displays of Faith on Live Radio; M.Guzman Embroidered Discourse/s Break the Silence: The CPR-Sierra of Guatemala (Re)vive Testimonio; T.Scholz PART IV: NOVEL LANDSCAPES: COUNTER-GEOGRAPHIES, GRAPHICS, AND TERRA-TRAUMA Ciudad Juárez as a Palimpsest: Searching for Ecotestimonios; A.Driver Drawing the Line Between Memory, History, and Artistic Re/creation: Miguel Gallardo and Carlos Giménez's Graphic Testimonies; J.Breckenridge Witnessing the Earth through Gaspar Pedro González's El 13 B'aktun: La Nueva Era 2012 ( 13 B'aktun: Mayan Visions of 2012 and Beyond ); L.Detwiler Conclusion: 'Something that Might Resemble a Call': Testimonial Theory and Practice in the Twenty-First Century; K.A.Nance

'Detwiler and Breckenridge correctly identify a paradigm shift. Testimonio scholarship and the definition of testimonio as text or transcribed oral testimony have limited the role of marginalized groups the texts are meant to empower. Especially in the late-20th-century and early-21st-century contexts of new media, shifting global relations, truth commissions, post-dictatorial societies in Latin America, new social movements, and continued violations of human rights in neoliberal political circumstances, this collection of essays is timely. This book offers a refreshing step beyond the textual confinements of previous testimonio studies to consider other forms of agency, empowerment and denouncement through testifying to lived experience.'Joanna R. Bartow, associate professor of Spanish, St. Mary's College of Maryland