Same, Same but Different

‘Same, same but different’ - The National Museum of Memory, Bogotá, Colombia, appears to be yet another gentrified and sanitised vehicle for nation building rather than a legitimate peacebuilding tool supporting and acknowledging the local, everyday narrative of Colombia’s fractured society. It could be argued that the government has potentially missed an opportunity to create an authentic sense of place, reflecting the potential for conflict ownership and post conflict, trans-generational healing.

Posing the question, is this another top-down, elite driven project?, one that struggles to engage the cultural demographic which were most effected by the nation’s struggles?

Despite proposing that "the NCHM is a platform for the articulation, compilation, inclusion and increased visibility of the plural memories of Colombia’s armed conflict, emphasizing the victims’ perspective, in order to contribute to the historical clarification and to provide assurances of non-repetition".

There seems to be, a lack of indigenous conviction due to a dearth of local stakeholder consultation and an institutionalised representation of memory and meaning, representing a systematic nation-building liberal narrative rather than a site-specific project tuned to national healing.