La toma militar en Siloé: memoria colectiva e identidad política

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the degree of the subjective importance that the inhabitants of the Lleras Camargo, Pueblo Joven and Tierra Blanca neighborhoods grant to the military takeover carried out on December 1 of 1986, in Siloé, Cali, Valle del Cauca. The question to be considered is how and to what degree this event is interpreted in the collective memory of the commune 20 population. Additionally, how it materializes in the population’s personal and collective spheres, and to what extent this interpretation is linked to sociodemographic conditions such as age or generational range and the political identity of the respondents. In order to accomplish this analysis, we will delve into four relevant analytical dimensions: the subjective experience of the military takeover (the importance of this event, the knowledge of it and the emotions it aroused); the perception of the military takeover (the degree of violence, justification, social support and the resistance that came with it); the perception about the causes of the military takeover (role of the actors involved in the event, responsibility of these in the actions that were carried out) and the future projection (counterfactual questions and lessons learned from the military takeover), crossing the same with the variable of age -or generational rank- and political identity (Manzi et al., 2003).