The Language of Contemporary Social Protests in Latin America: Mnemo-Critical Artifacts and Their Role in Shaping Marginalized Collective Memory and National Identity During the 2021 Colombian Social Outburst

My research, grounded in the Colombian context, explores the relationship between memory, collective identity, and the visual language of social protest. Focusing on aesthetic-political expressions that emerged during the 2021 Social Outburst, I argue that these mobilizations center on the memory of a state crime from the early 2000s, commonly known as the falsos positivos (false positives). The unresolved and secretly ongoing process of false positivization functions as an ideological framework through which marginalized communities in the second decade of the century come to interpret themselves as a collective identity potentially targeted by state violence—that is, as “living false positives.”This subaltern identity is expressed through various mnemo-critical artifacts. I define mnemo-critics as epistemological and de-ideologizing artifacts through which protesters symbolically interpret their multidimensionally violent reality, challenging hegemonic narratives rooted in the exclusion of the “Other”—the so-called “non-Colombian.”Rejecting the roles traditionally assigned to marginalized populations by the state—such as the “internal enemy” or the passive “victim”—these protests construct an identity that emerges from systemic violence and resists entrenched exclusionary dualisms. Rather than reviving the failed tactics of armed revolutionary movements, this identity seeks transformation within the framework of democratic principles. The vision of an inclusive Colombian national identity—symbolically inscribed on the walls during the Social Outburst—ultimately culminated in the historic election of the country’s first leftist government one year later.Throughout this work, I examine a range of mnemo-critical artifacts and their role in the narrative and existential struggles of those who perceive themselves as “falsely alive.” I analyze how these mnemo-critics temporarily grant material presence to a precarious identity under the pressures of capitalist politics, question the illusion of hegemonic permanence, and articulate a humanistic political alternative.