Jóvenes y Memoria: Conflict and Vitality in Education for Human Rights

In 2002, the Comisión Provincial por la Memoria (the Provincial Commission for Memory - CPM) of Argentina’s province of Buenos Aires (PBA) established Jóvenes y Memoria: Recordamos para el Futuro (Youth and Memory: We Remember for the Future – JyM), an elective program for secondary school students. JyM empowers students to create and communicate narratives about the history and current state of human rights based on investigations using primary sources. The goals of CPM include fostering historical memory and preventing the return of authoritarianism. JyM furthers these goals by building exemplary memory to inspire positive change in the present and future and inscribing democratic values in the identity of its participants. This thesis analyzes the strategy and program of Jóvenes y Memoria in the historical context of Argentina’s civilian-military-ecclesiastical dictatorship of 1976-1983 and a theoretical framework of exemplary memory and narrative identity. The heart of the research is the qualitative analysis of a sample of student works and interviews of their creators and docentes (adult educators), which shows that JyM achieves its goals. Key elements producing these results are the agency of participants, the commitment of their docentes, creative production in groups, and encounters with young people from different backgrounds. The principles of JyM can be adapted for implementation in other contexts, under the right conditions, if certain barriers can be surmounted.