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State Repression and the
Labors of Memory
Contradictions

Edited by Craig Calhoun, Social Science Research Council

Volume 18 Elizabeth Jelin, State Repression and the Labors of Memory

Volume 17 Gil Eyal, The Origins of Postcommunist Elites: From Prague

Spring to the Breakup of Czechoslovakia

Volume 16 Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg, editors, Foucault and

Heidegger: Critical Encounters

Volume 15 Michael D. Kennedy, Cultural Formations of Postcommunism:

Emancipation, Transition, Nation, and War

Volume 14 Michele H. Richman, Sacred Revolutions: Durkheim and the

College de Sociologic

Volume 13 Pierre-Andre Taguieff, The Force of Prejudice: On Racism and Its

Doubles

Volume 12 Krishan Kumar, 1989: Revolutionary Ideas and Ideals

Volume 11 Timothy Mitchell, editor, Questions of Modernity

Volume 10 Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly J. Silver, Chaos and Governance in the
Modern World System

Volume 9 Francois Dosse, History of Structuralism, Volume 2: The Sign Sets,

1967-Present

Volume 8 Francois Dosse, History of Structuralism, Volume 1: The Rising

 Sign, 1945-1966

Volume 7 Patricia Hill Collins, Fighting Words: Black Women and the
Search for Justice

Volume 6 Craig Calhoun and John McGowan, editors, Hannah Arendt and
the Meaning of Politics

Volume 5 Gerard Noiriel, The French Melting Pot: Immigration,

Citizenship, and National Identity

Volume 4 John C. Torpey, Intellectuals, Socialism, and Dissent: The East

German Opposition and Its Legacy

Volume 3 T. M. S. Evens, Two Kinds of Rationality: Kibbutz, Democracy, and

Generational Conflict

Volume 2 Micheline R. Ishay, Internationalism and Its Betrayal

Volume 1 Johan Heilbron, The Rise of Social Theory

State Repression and the
Labors of Memory
Elizabeth Jelin

Translated by Judy Rein and Marcial Godoy-Anativia

Contradictions, Volume 18
 This book is dedicated to the memory of my parents, from whom I learned-
through their "obstinate memory, " with its silences, repetitions, and lapses-the
significance of human dignity.
Contents
Preface ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xiii

1. Memory in the Contemporary World 1

2. What Memories Are We Talking About? 8

3. Political Struggles for Memory 26

4. History and Social Memory 46

5. Trauma, Testimony, and "Truth" 60

6. Engendered Memories 76

7. Transmissions, Legacies, Lessons 89

Conclusion 103

Appendix: A Chronology of Political Violence and Human Rights Movements

107

Notes 135

Works Cited 149

Index 157
Preface
The manuscript of this book was in the final stages of revision when worldwide
attention was riveted by the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., on
September TT, zoo The English version of the manuscript was in final revisions
at the time of the first anniversary of the attacks, in zooz.

For those who work on memory of repression in the Southern Cone of Latin
America, September ii is a date replete with meanings. Year after year, attention
is focused on the variety of expressions that the struggles over memory take up
in different segments of Chilean society, as a constant reminder of September i
1973, when airplanes bombed the presidential palace, resulting in the death of
President Salvador Allende and the installation of a bloody military dictatorship
led by Augusto Pinochet. In zoos, the meanings attached to September 1i
changed. The coincidence of the dates of these catastrophic and significant
events will undoubtedly call for new meanings, and for new material and
symbolic referents and anchors for memories of these extreme situations.

Rather than making distinctions between magnitudes of selfinflicted

catastrophes, or creating hierarchies of significance or depth of human suffering,
I hope that discussions of the issues in this book open the way to a broader
reflection on the human need to make sense of catastrophic events and suffering,
on memorialization practices, on rituals of homage, and on political initiatives
that advance the principle of "never again" in reaction to all affronts on human
dignity.
Acknowledgments
This book is part of a dialogue. It does not pretend to offer a full or final
interpretation of its subject. Rather, it should be seen as a halt in a longer-term
trajectory: assessing developments in the field in order to pose new issues for
future work. In this dialogue, which has been ongoing for several years and, I
hope, will continue into the future, Susana G. Kaufman occupies a special place.
As a continuous interlocutor, her ability to pose questions about her own work
and that of others, to learn and to teach, has opened my mind and sensitivity to
the multiplicity of dimensions and the complexities of memory, silence, and
mourning.

Dialogue has been continuous also with Eric Hershberg, Carlos Ivan
Degregori, the fellows of the Social Science Research Council's Program on
Collective Memory of Repression, and other colleagues and faculty who have
participated in that initiative since 1998. I have learned a great deal from all of
them, as they have persistently challenged, questioned, and stimulated my
thoughts. The consistent support and trust from my colleagues on the SSRC's
Regional Advisory Panel on Latin America and the enthusiasm and good
disposition of Rebecca Lichtenfeld have been a constant source of
encouragement in this endeavor.

Several colleagues and friends read the manuscript and provided detailed
comments, generously offering specific insights and suggestions, sharing ideas
and concerns: Gerardo Caetano, Ludmila da Silva Catela, Carlos Ivan Degregori,
Claudia Feld, Alejandro Grimson, Eric Hershberg, Federico Lorenz, Alba
Kaplan, Susana Kaufman, Mauricio Taube, and Teresa Valdes. On specific
points I also received assistance from Silvina Jensen and Jose Olavarria. Lucila
Schonfeld provided a careful professional edit of the Spanish version, and
Mariana McLoughlin assisted with the many details involved in preparing the
book.

The English language edition is a slightly revised version of the volume that
was published in Spanish in zooz by Siglo XXI editors in Madrid and Buenos
Aires. I am grateful to Marcelo Diaz and his colleagues at Siglo XXI for their
encouragement to publish an English translation, and to Craig Calhoun and the
staff of the University of Minnesota Press for making that possible. The
insightful comments of Andreas Huyssen provided encouragement as well as
valuable suggestions about how to make the text more accessible to an
Englishlanguage audience. The work of translation was undertaken with skill
and speed by Marcial Godoy-Anativia and Judy Rein. A careful review of the
translation and copyediting was done by Eric Hershberg.

To all of them, and to everyone else who participated in this undertaking-

including authors of texts and books with whom my dialogue is imaginary but
nonetheless present-I extend my most sincere acknowledgment and gratitude.
Introduction
One cannot want Auschwitz to return for eternity, since in truth it has
never ceased to take place; it is always already repeating itself.

Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz

Reading the newspapers in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, and

Peru at the turn of the millennium may sometimes resemble traveling through a
time tunnel. In addition to the obvious economic, political, and police problems
of the moment, the news headlines include a number of stories that reflect the
persistence of a past that is everlasting and does not wish to pass: the comings
and goings of Pinochet's detention in London and Santiago, and his subsequent
indictment (and acquittal on the basis of senility and mental health deficiencies)
for crimes committed in Chile in 1973; the "truth trials" to clarify the truth about
forced disappearances during the second half of the 1970s and the trials to
establish the identity of children (now in their early twenties) kidnapped during
the military dictatorship in Argentina; the commission investigating the
circumstances of the death of former president Goulart (in 1976), and the official
procedures to establish who is entitled to economic reparations for victims of the
Brazilian dictatorship; the first official recognition that repression and
disappearances took place during dictatorship, and the establishment of a Peace
Commission in Uruguay; the coming to light of information contained in
documents found in the Archive of Terror in Paraguay; the establishment of a
Truth Commission in Peru. This list can be supplemented by the new
information about the regional-level workings of Operation Condor being
persistently released.

These issues about the past are emerging across the institutional landscape
and in the various branches and levels of the state: the executive, the judiciary,
national and provincial legislatures, special commissions, the armed forces, the
police. The heart of republican institu- tionality is being pushed to face issues
that entail coming to terms with a past that goes back several decades. These
news items are returning to the front pages after several years of institutional
silence and (apparently unsuccessful) efforts to construct a democratic future
without looking at the past. This is so because, as conveyed by the very
appropriate title of Patricio Guzman's film, memory is obstinate, it does not
resign itself to remain in the past, insisting on its presence.

In fact, at the level of state institutions, the first half of the T99os was a low
point in actions and initiatives related to human rights violations during
dictatorship in South America. It seemed as if a kind of equilibrium between the
various political and social forces had been reached. In Argentina, the trials and
convictions of the members of the military juntas were followed by legal moves
to limit liabilities and by a presidential pardon in T99o. In Uruguay, amnesty
laws implemented by the civilian government were followed by an attempt to
reverse these laws in a plebiscite, a move that was defeated by popular vote in
1987. In Chile, the installment of the constitutional government in 19go came
hand in hand with a continuing strong position of the military and especially of
the commander in chief, General Pinochet. There was only limited debate in
Brazil concerning that country's protracted military government. In Paraguay, by
contrast, in spite of the continuities in real power and personalized politics, some
trials did take place, and soon after the discovery of the Archivos del terror
opened up the regional dimension of the issues involved. And Peru was at the
height of political violence when President Fujimori took office in 1990. Nobody
could have predicted that things were going to change so much in a few years.

At the societal and cultural level, however, there were fewer silences. Human
rights movements in these countries have maintained a significant presence,
linking the demands to settle accounts with the past (demands for justice) with
the founding principles of democratic institutions. Those directly affected by
repression bear their suffering and pain, which they translate into various types
of public action. Artistic expressions in film, narrative, fine arts, theater, dance,
and music often incorporate that past and its legacies.

This book seeks to contribute some tools to think about and analyze the
presences, silences, and meanings of the past. I will do this on different planes
and levels-the political and the cultural ones, the symbolic and the personal,
historical understandings and social spheresbuilding on three central premises or
guiding principles. First, memories are to be understood as subjective processes
anchored in experiences and in symbolic and material markers. Second,
memories are the object of disputes, conflicts, and struggles. This premise
involves the need to focus attention on the active and productive role of
participants in these struggles. It is they who generate meanings of the past,
framed by the power relations in which their actions are embedded in the
present. Third, memories must be looked at historically; that is, there is a need to
"historicize" memories, which is to say that the meanings attached to the past
change over time and are part of larger, complex social and political scenarios.
There are also variations in the place assigned to memories in different societies
and cultural settings and across the distinct spaces in which political and
ideological struggles take place.

The analytic challenges that memory poses cannot be addressed successfully

through an itinerary that is linear, coherent, and univocal. Thus, the text explores
different perspectives and different approaches to the subject. Some approaches
are conceptual and aim to develop analytical frameworks, while others engage
more concrete perspectives that cut across studies and reflection about memory. I
hope that these multiple approaches converge and shed light on the very elusive
subject of the societal construction of memories and meanings of the past. The
text may appear decentered. In fact, such is the nature of memory itself. The
reader will have to travel through a winding path that touches on the core issues
related to memories, with many side trails and detours. Furthermore, the goal is
not to offer a definitive text or a definitive clarification of the field; rather, the
book is intended to problematize, to raise questions, and to offer reflections that
stimulate further studies and dialogues. This approach necessarily means that
there will be gaps and undeveloped or underdeveloped themes. To mention just
one, the book does not offer an analysis of ethnicity, with respect either to the
role of memories in the construction of ethnic communities, or to interethnic or
intercultural differences in the conceptualization of time, temporality, and the
symbolic location of the past. Nor is there a presentation of the centrality of
ethnicity in specific historic processes of violence and repression (such as in
Peru or Guatemala). This is a fertile direction of research for colleagues who are
better versed in the subject than I am.

Discussion of contemporary memories can rarely be done from outside the

scenario where struggles are taking place. The researcher cannot avoid being
involved, incorporating his or her subjectivity, experience, beliefs, and emotions,
and incorporating as well his or her political and civic commitments. In my case,
this includes a strong belief that human conviviality-even among diverse and
conflicting groups-is possible and desirable, although difficult. Also, I strongly
believe that critical analysis and reflection are tools that, as committed
researchers, we can and should offer, especially to the weakest and most
excluded members of society, as resources for their process of reflection and
empowerment.

The Anchors of "Our" Memories

The urgency to work on understanding memory does not exist outside specific
political and cultural contexts. Although this book seeks to present some general
reflections, they are offered from a specific vantage point, namely that of
unveiling the traces of the dictatorships that governed the countries of the
Southern Cone of Latin America in the 197os and z98os, and in understanding
how these traces unfolded during the post-dictatorial I99os.1

In fact, democratization processes that follow military dictatorships are

neither simple nor easy. Once formal democratic mechanisms are instituted, the
challenge becomes how best to develop and deepen them. Confrontations
inevitably arise over the content of democracy, and this is all the more to be
expected in a region such as Latin America, faced as it is with enormous
difficulties in virtually all arenas of collective affairs: economic and social rights
are increasingly constrained by the prevailing commitment to the market and to
neoliberal policies and programs; police violence is ongoing, systematic, and
reiterative; the most elementary of civil rights are threatened daily; and
minorities face systematic institutional discrimination. All types of obstacles to a
true "rule of law" are in evidence. Such realities pose the question as to the
continuities and ruptures between the dictatorial regimes and the fragile,
incipient, and incomplete constitutional regimes that have followed them. These
continuities and ruptures can be analyzed both in terms of everyday lives of
different social groups and in terms of the social and political struggles that
unfold in the present.

Today, some social and political actors believe that repression and abuses are
phenomena of the dictatorial past. Others emphasize the ways that inequality and
the mechanisms of domination in the present both reproduce and evoke the past.
The recent dictatorial past is, nonetheless, a central part of the present. Social
and political conflicts over how to understand and work through the recent
repressive past remain active in the present and often are even intensified or
deepened. For those who fight for justice for violations of human rights,
achievements have been very limited or null. Despite the protests of the victims
and their defenders, laws granting amnesty to the perpetrators of human rights
violations were enacted throughout the region. For human rights activists, "never
again" involves a complete accounting of violations under dictatorship, as well
as the corresponding punishment of the perpetrators. Other observers and actors,
concerned primarily with the stability of democratic institutions, are less inclined
to reopen the painful experiences of authoritarian repression. They emphasize
the need to concentrate their efforts in building a better future, rather than
continuously revisiting the past. Consequently, they promote policies of oblivion
or "reconciliation." Finally, there are those who visit the past to applaud and
glorify the "order and progress" brought about, in their view, by the
dictatorships. All of these positions reflect ongoing struggles and are tied to
current political situations. Some actors may cast them as a continuation of the
same political fights they waged in the past, but, in fact, under changed
circumstances and faced with new actors, the meaning of the past is inevitably
transformed. Even actors keeping the same banners have to assign new meanings
to the past that they want to "preserve."2

In every case, once sufficient time has elapsed to make possible the
establishment of a minimum degree of distance between past and present,
alternative (even rival) interpretations of that recent past and its memory occupy
a central place in cultural and political debates. These interpretations constitute
an inescapable subject for public debate in the difficult road toward forging
democratic societies. These memories and interpretations are also key elements
in the processes of (re)construction of individual and collective identities in
societies emerging from periods of violence and trauma.

A basic fact must be established. In any given moment and place, it is

impossible to find one memory, or a single vision and interpretation of the past
shared throughout society. There may be moments or historical periods when a
consensus is more pervasive, when a single script of the past is widely accepted,
or even hegemonic. Normally, the dominant story will be the one told by the
winners of historical conflicts and battles. Yet there will always be other stories,
other memories, and alternative interpretations. These endure in spaces of
resistance, in the private sphere, in the "catacombs" of history.' There is an active
political struggle not only over the meaning of what took place in the past but
over the meaning of memory itself. The space of memory is thus an arena of
political struggle that is frequently conceived in terms of a struggle "against
oblivion": remember so as not to repeat. These slogans, however, can be tricky.
Slogans such as "memory against oblivion" or "against silence" hide an
opposition between distinct and rival memories (each one with its own
forgetfulness). In truth, what is at stake is an opposition of "memory against
memory."

The Itinerary of the Book

This book has a double structure. Each chapter focuses on an issue or question in
a sequence that does not follow a single logical or deductive line, although it
does follow a script. The script reproduces my own way of questioning and of
proceeding in studying the subject, and in that sense there is some order. At the
same time, the development of the issues raised takes the form of a spiral,
whereby issues raised in previous chapters are revisited in new light later on.
These are "turns of the screw" that are meant to allow for deepening the analysis.
The intention, I reiterate, is for each reader to be able to use the text in
developing his or her own questions, and to advance in the reflective work on his
or her own memories and public commitments.

Two additional warnings are in order. First, the book is informed by

developments and contributions from a multiplicity of disciplines: sociology,
history, anthropology, politics, cultural criticism, psychology, and
psychoanalysis. Nevertheless, it is not intended to be a multidisciplinary hybrid.
It is focused on social and political actors, their stances in public situations, their
confrontations and struggles, and alliances and identifications with others. The
analysis deploys concepts and hy potheses offered by several disciplines to
enrich understanding of the labors of memory in which social actors are
engaged.

Second, although the text is rooted in the experiences of the recent

dictatorships in Latin America's Southern Cone, its significance transcends the
region. The intent is to contribute to analytical reflection and to the development
of issues to be raised for broadly conceived comparative research stretching
across boundaries of time and space. The examples, cases, and illustrations
presented in the book are drawn from various experiences of extreme situations
about which there is substantial research, including the Southern Cone
dictatorships but also the Shoah, Japan, and the Spanish Civil War.
 The order of the chapters is relatively straightforward. Chapter z outlines the
current context for paying attention to issues related to memory, and chapter z
provides a conceptual exploration of the very notion of memory. The
construction of memories as products of confrontation and conflict between
actors with contrasting narratives is the subject of chapter 3. The focus shifts in
the next two chapters, which explore the relationship between history and
memory, and the tense role of personal testimonies. Much has been written on
these two subjects. Thus, the references to disciplinary academic debates
(especially in history, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies) are especially
significant for chapters 4 and 5. The last two chapters are more thematic,
inquiring into gender and generations, two issues that have received less
attention in memory studies. The discussion in these chapters is geared to
question and deconstruct "certainties" rather than to provide "truths."
One
Memory in the Contemporary World
We live in an era of collectors. We record and save everything: pictures from
childhood and souvenirs from grandmothers in private and family life,
newspaper and magazine clippings referring to issues or events of interest,
making up official and private archives of all kinds. The past is an object of cult
in the West, and this displays itself in the marketing and consumption of various
"retro" styles, in the boom of antiques and of historical novels. In the public
sphere, archives are growing in numbers, commemorative dates proliferate, and
there is a never-ending demand for memorial plaques and monuments.' The mass
media structure and organize this presence of the past in all areas of
contemporary life.

This "explosion" of memory in contemporary Western society has

engendered a "culture of memory" (Huyssen zooo) that coexists with and
reinforces itself in the context of the high value placed on ephemera, on high
speed, and on the fragile and transitory nature of life events. Individuals, family
groups, communities, and nations narrate their pasts, for themselves and for
others who are willing to visit those pasts, to listen to and look at their icons and
remnants, to inquire about and investigate them. This contemporary culture of
memory is in part a response or reaction to rapid change and to a life without
anchors or roots. In such a cultural climate, memory has a highly significant role
as a symbolic mechanism that helps strengthen the sense of belonging to groups
and communities. Furthermore, especially for oppressed, silenced, or
discriminated groups, the reference to a shared past often facilitates building
feelings of self-respect and greater reliance in oneself and in the group.

The cultural debate moves among different interpretations and positions.

Those analysts who stress the role of memory as a reaction to the acceleration of
contemporary life and as a source of protection against the fear or even the
horror of forgetting (as expressed with a touch of nostalgia by Pierre Nora, who
laments the disappearance of the "milieux de memoire" and their replacement
with the "lieux") seem to place themselves in opposition to those who deplore
the pasts that last forever and do not want to move-the apparent "fixations" and
returns, the persistence of painful or conflictive pasts, that seem to endure and
reappear without allowing one to forget or to broaden the perspective and thus
overcome them (Todorov 1998).

Both processes, the fear of oblivion and the presence of the past, take place
simultaneously, although they exist in clear tension with each other. In the
Western world, this memorialist movement and the concern with memory of
painful past events were stimulated by the debates on World War II and the Nazi
extermination, which have intensified since the early ig8os.2 Cultural critics
such as Andreas Huyssen theorize about the "totalizing dimension of Holocaust
discourse," which "loses its quality as index of a specific historical event and
begins to function as a metaphor for other traumatic histories and memories"
(Huyssen zooo, z4).

Thus, beyond the cultural climate of the times and the expansion of a
"culture of memory" at more general, community, or family levels, memory and
forgetting, commemoration and recollections become crucial when linked to
traumatic political events or to situations of repression and annihilation, or when
profound social catastrophes and collective suffering are involved.3

For the individual subject, the imprints of trauma play a central role in
determining what the person can or cannot remember, silence, forget, or work
through. At the political level, the processes of settling accounts with the past in
terms of responsibilities, accountability, and institutional justice are overlayered
with ethical imperatives and moral demands. These imperatives, however, may
be hard to settle given the political hostilities prevailing in settings where
conflict is unfolding and where social catastrophes unleash the destruction of
social bonds.

Debates over memories of periods of repression and political violence

frequently surface in specific historical contexts and times, namely, when
societies undergo political change and there are widespread feelings of urgency
to construct democratic regimes in which human rights are guaranteed for the
entire population, regardless of class, race, gender, ideological orientation,
religion, or ethnicity. The actors participating in these debates link their
democratizing projects and their orientations toward the future with the
memories of their violent and conflictive past.

Over and over again, actors who struggle to define and name what took place
during periods of war, political violence, or state terrorism, as well as those who
seek to honor the victims and identify the perpetrators, interpret their actions as
necessary steps to make certain that the horrors of the past do not recur-Nunca
Mas ("Never Again"). The Southern Cone of Latin America is an area where this
association between past violations and the will of a different future is very
strongly established.4 Likewise, some actors associate the memories of the
Shoah and of the Stalinist purges in the Soviet Union with the determination and
will to avoid such atrocities in the future. Elsewhere in the world, from Japan
and Cambodia to South Africa and Guatemala, the processes of remembrance
and the links between a painful past and the expectations for the future may be
different, insofar as they are set in different cultural frames and thus may have
alternative ethical and political meanings.

The Complexities of Time

The framework presented above locates the meanings of the past unequivocally
in the present and in relation to a desired future. If we add the existence of
multiple subjectivities and time horizons, it is clear that we are facing an
inherently or essentially complex issue. What then are the temporal dimensions
at stake here?

A first way to conceptualize time is in a linear or chronological manner. Past,

present, and future are ordered in a clear way-one could even say "naturally"-in a
physical or astronomical time frame. The units of time are equivalent and
divisible: a century, a decade, a year, or a minute. However, as soon as historical
processes and human subjectivities are introduced into the picture, the
complexities involved come to light. As expressed by Reinhart Koselleck
(1985), "historical time, if the concept has a specific meaning, is bound up with
social and political actions, with concretely acting and suffering human beings
and their institutions and organizations" (xxii). And when studying these
concrete human beings, the sense of time and temporality are established in a
different way: the present contains and constructs past experience and future
expectations. "Experience is present past, whose events have been incorporated
and can be remembered" (272).
 Experiences are also shaped by the "horizon of expectations," thus
introducing a reference to a future temporality. Expectation is "the future made
present, it points to the not-yet, to that which has not been experienced, to that
which can only be discovered" (Koselleck 1985, z7z). It is at that point of
complex intersection and convergence, in that present where the past is the space
of experience and the future is the horizon of expectations, where human action
is produced.

Locating memory in time implies making reference to the "space of

experience" in the present. Remembrances of the past are incorporated there,
although in a dynamic manner, since experiences incorporated in a given
moment can be modified in subsequent periods. "The events of 1933 have
occurred once and for all, but the experiences which are based upon them can
change over time. Experiences overlap and mutually impregnate one another"
(Koselleck 1985, 2.74-75).

There is an additional element in this complexity. Human understanding

embodies personally lived experiences; it also incorporates secondhand
experiences-those that are conveyed by others. The past, therefore, can be
condensed or expanded, according to how these diverse past experiences are
integrated.

In sum, we are referring to subjective processes of assigning and changing

meaning, whereby the actors move and orient themselves (or disorient and lose
themselves) among "past futures" (Koselleck 1985), "lost futures" (Huyssen
zooo), and "everlasting pasts" (Conan and Rousso 1994). All this takes place in
the present, which must simultaneously come close to and distance itself both
from the pasts accumulated in the spaces of experience and from the futures
included as horizons of expectations. Furthermore, these temporal meanings are
constructed and change in relationship to and in dialogue with others who,
individually and collectively, can share and/or confront the experiences and
expectations. In turn, new historical processes, as well as changing social and
political conjunctures and scenarios, inevitably produce alterations in the
interpretive frameworks for understanding past experience and for constructing
future expectations. The complexity, then, refers to the multiplicity of
temporalities at play, the multiplicity of meanings, and the ongoing
transformation and change in actors and historical processes.
The Labors of Memory

The title of this book alludes to memory as labor. Why refer to the labors of
memory? As a distinctive feature of the human condition, work is what puts the
individual and society in an active and productive position. The person is an
agent of transformation, and in the process transforms him or herself and the
world. Activity adds value. Thus, to assert that memory involves "labor" is to
incorporate it into the activity that generates and transforms the social world.

To talk about the labors of memory demands establishing some important

analytical distinctions. Undoubtedly, some events lived in the past have effects
on subsequent periods, independently of the will, consciousness, agency, or
strategy of the actors involved. Such effects show up in "objective" social and
collective facts, such as losing a war and therefore being under the domination of
foreign powers. They also are inherent in more personal and unconscious
processes associated with traumas and voids. The presence of the past can
disrupt, penetrate, or invade the present as something that makes no sense, as
mnemonic traces (Ricoeur zooo), as silences, compulsions, or repetitions. In
such situations, the memory of the past intrudes, but it is not the object of labor.
It is a presence without agency. The flipside of these involuntary intrusions takes
place when human beings are actively involved in the processes of symbolic
transformation and elaboration of meanings of the past. Human beings who
"labor" on and with memories of the past.

The events of the past, and the attachment of the person to that past,
especially in cases of trauma, can involve a fixation or a constant return: the
compulsion to repeat or to act out, the inability to detach oneself from the lost
object. Repetition involves, in this case, acting out again and again the same
pattern. There is no sense of distance from the past, which reappears and makes
its way, like an intruder, into the present. Even observers and secondary
witnesses can become participants in acting out or repetition, through processes
of identification with the victims. There is a dual danger in such situations: the
menace of an "excessive" presence of the past in ritualized repetition and in the
compulsion to act out, and the menace of a selective forgetting, a void that can
be subject to manipulation by the self or by others.

To overcome such situations requires considerable labor, working through

the painful memories and recollections instead of reliving them and acting them
out. Psychoanalytic theory refers to this as the labors of mourning. Mourning
involves an "intrapsychic process, following the loss of an object of fixation,
through which the subject achieves progressive detachment from the object"
(Laplanche and Pontalis 1981, 435). In this process, the psychic energy of the
person is released from being "occupied by pain and recollections," and the
subject is able to recover his or her freedom. This labor requires time, "it is
carried out piece by piece, with an expenditure of time and energy . . ." (Freud
1976, z43). It involves being able to let go and forget, and to transform
attachments and feelings, breaking the fixation on the other and on the pain,
accepting "the satisfaction brought about by the very fact of being alive" (z43).5
It involves a period of mourning, and "the labor of mourning reveals itself, not
without difficulties, as a liberating exercise to the extent that it consists of
memory work" (Ricoeur 1999, 3 6).

Acting out and repetition can be contrasted to the idea of working through.
The Freudian notion of working through, conceived in a therapeutic context,
consists of the "process through which the patient under analysis accepts and
incorporates an interpretation, overcoming the resistances that it evokes.... [It is
a] type of psychic labor that allows the subject to accept certain repressed
elements inside himself, thus liberating himself from the spell of repetitive
mechanisms" (Laplanche and Pontalis 1981, 436). Working through is no doubt
a form of repetition, yet modified by interpretation. Thus, it predisposes or
encourages the subject to work on his or her repetitive mechanisms (437)•

These notions of working through and acting out can be applied and
extended outside the therapeutic context. In working through, according to
LaCapra (zoos), "the person tries to gain critical distance on a problem and to
distinguish between past, present and future.... There may be other possibilities,
but it is via the working through that one acquires the possibility of being an
ethical and political agent" (143-44).

At the level of the individual, acting out and working through turn out to be
coexisting forces. Involved with the tension among these two forces, the person
has to face the threat that the process of working through may awaken a sense of
betrayal and a feeling of weakening the loyalty to the lost object. Taken to the
ethical and political level, this tension implies the active incidence of social
forces that push for maintaining and reinforcing the repetitive acting out of the
past. It is as if repetition (even compulsive repetition) would make possible
avoiding the closure and forgetting presumably implied in the process of
working through. To quote LaCapra (zooi):

The result is a paralyzing kind of all-or-nothing logic in which one is in a

double bind: either totalization and the closure you resist, or acting out
the repetition compulsion, with almost no other possibilities. Within this
constricted frame of reference, politics often becomes a question of
blank hope in the future, an openness toward a vacuous utopia about
which you can say nothing. And this view very often links up with an
apocalyptic politics or perhaps a politics of utopian hope in the form of
indefinite deferral of institutional change.... ('45)

At the collective level, the big challenge is to overcome repetitions, to

surmount silences and political abuses, to simultaneously be able to distance
from and promote an active debate and reflexivity about the past and its meaning
for the present/future. Concerned with the "abuses of memory" (stemming from
moral mandates to remember, which generally involve repetitions rather than a
process of working through), Todorov (1998) seeks a way out by trying to
abandon the emphasis on the past in order to place it on the future. This involves
a difficult journey for subjective processes: distancing oneself from the past, and
"learning to remember." For the public and political sphere, it involves
rethinking the relationship between memory and politics and between memory
and justice.
Two
What Memories Are We Talking
About?
The draft title for this chapter was "What is memory?" Such a title invites a
single and univocal definition of the term. Though not involving a logical
contradiction, asking what memory is (in singular) may seem at odds with
offering to study processes of memory construction, of memories in the plural,
and of social disputes over memories, their social legitimacy, and claims to
"truth." This chapter attempts to advance some conceptual issues in order to
offer some tools for further analytical and empirical steps. It does not pretend to
be an exhaustive discussion of issues that, by their very complexity, are
inherently multidimensional and open-ended. Dealing with memories entails
paying attention to remembrance and forgetting, to narratives and acts, to
silences and gestures. Knowledge and information are at play, but so too are
emotions, lapses, voids, and fractures.

A first issue to consider is the subject who remembers and forgets. Is the
subject always an individual, or is it possible to talk about collective memories?
The social sciences have devoted countless pages to answering this question,
which is yet another manifestation of the eternal tension and dilemma of the
relationship between individual and society.

A second issue refers to the content of what is remembered and of what is

forgotten. No doubt, the core of what is remembered and forgotten relates to
direct personal life experiences. Yet even the most intimate incidents are always
mediated by mechanisms of social interaction, involving links between the
manifest and the latent or invisible, the conscious and the unconscious. Memory
also incorporates knowledge, beliefs, behavior patterns, feelings, and emotions
conveyed and received in social interaction, in processes of socialization, and in
the cultural practices of a group.
 Additionally, there is the issue of how and when remembrance and forgetting
occur. The past that is remembered and forgotten is activated in a present and in
relation to future expectations. Be it within the dynamics of the individual, in
interpersonal social interactions, or in more general or macrosocial processes,
certain memories are activated in special moments or conjunctures; in other
moments, silences and even forgetting prevail. There are also other ciphers for
the activation of memories, expressive or performative in nature, in which rituals
and myth occupy privileged places.

Intellectual and Disciplinary Traditions

Memory as "the mental capacity or faculty of retaining and reviving facts,

events, impressions, etc., or of recalling or recognizing previous experiences"
(Random House Webster's Dictionary 1998, 1199) has always intrigued
humanity. Indeed, what most concerns people is not remembering, not being able
to retain events of the past in memory. At the individual level and in daily
interaction, our lives go on accompanied by the unremitting and perpetual
enigma of not understanding why we do not remember a familiar name or a date,
why we store and have available so many and varied "useless" recollections, and
why surprising associations and memories crop up at unexpected times or places.
And the fear of memory loss when aging haunts us permanently.

At the group or community level, or even socially or nationally, the enigmas

are just as compelling. The question of how remembering or forgetting occurs
arises from the anxiety and even the anguish generated by the possibility of
forgetting. The fear of oblivion and forgetting, or that of being forgotten by
others in the future, has come to be interpreted in the contemporary Western
world in terms of the threat to personal and cultural identity.

In the first place, the issue revolves around the psychological ability to
remember and forget, in mental processes that are the domain of psychology and
psychiatry. Developments in neurobiology locating memory centers in the brain
and studying the chemical processes involved in memory are complemented by
significant research on the "paths" and circuits of memory and memory loss and
errors (Schacter 1996, zoo,).

In a different direction, psychoanalysis is concerned with another quality of

the mystery, paying attention to the role of the unconscious in the search for an
explanation of the blocks, lapses, voids, and repetitions that the conscious ego
cannot control. The influence of psychological processes involved in the
development of the ego and the notion of trauma (a topic we will return to later)
are central to this field. This line of inquiry goes beyond examining memory and
forgetting from a cognitive perspective interested in how much and what is
remembered or forgotten. It introduces unconscious emotional and affective
factors when considering "how" and "when" memory works.

The exercise of the abilities for remembering and forgetting is unique. Each
individual has his or her "own memories," and they cannot be transferred to
others. It is this singularity of memories and the possibility of activating the past
in the present-memory as the present of the past, in the words of Paul Ricoeur
(rggg, i6)-that defines personal identity and the continuity of the self over time.

These processes, we know, do not take place in isolated individuals, but in

human beings embedded in networks of social relations, groups, institutions, and
cultures. At this juncture, the passage from the individual to the social and
interactive level is unavoidable; the move follows its own seamless course. It is
human beings who have the capacity to remember, and they are always located
in specific group or social contexts. It is impossible to remember or re-create the
past without alluding to those contexts. The question debated at length in the
literature is the relative weight of the social context and the individual in the
memory process. Thus, to borrow the apt expression from a recent study, the
question is how to combine homo psychologicus and homo sociologicus (Winter
and Sivan 1999).

Two stylized models for thinking about the social dimension in memory
processes can be advanced. These models reproduce the debates within the
classical traditions of sociology. Maurice Halbwachs is the central figure in these
debates, anchored in his writings about the social frameworks (cadres) of
memory (published in 19z5) and about collective memory (published
posthumously) (Halbwachs 1994, 1997). His ideas have generated numerous
readings and interpreta tions, including annotated critical analyses (Coser 199z;
Namer 1994; Olick 1998a; Ricoeur zooo). There are several points for debate
and controversial understandings: whether Halbwachs allows space for
individualities in the field of collective memory; if it is possible to have such a
thing as a "collective memory"; or whether these are purely collective myths and
beliefs, where memory does not have a place (Hynes 1999).
 It is not my intention to enter into that debate or provide a new interpretation
of Halbwachs's ideas here. There is a key insight in his work, and this is what
should be stressed, namely the concept of social cadres or frameworks.
Individual memories are always socially framed. These frameworks bear the
general representations of society, its needs and values. They also include the
worldview and language of a society or group. For Halbwachs (199z), this
means that "we can remember only on condition of retrieving the position of past
events that interest us from the frameworks of collective memory... Forgetting is
explained by the disappearance of these frameworks, or of part of them" (17z).
This entails that the social is always present, even in the most "individual"
moments. "We are never alone"-one does not remember alone but with the help
of the memories of others and of shared cultural codes, even when personal
memories are unique and distinct. These personal recollections are immersed in
collective narratives, which are frequently reinforced in group rituals and
commemorations (Ricoeur 1999). Insofar as the frameworks of memory are
historical and subject to change, all memories are more reconstructions than
recollections. Anything that does not find a place or a meaning in that
framework is material that can be lost and forgotten (Namer '994).

Can the existence of collective memory be asserted? And if so, what is

collective memory? Some readers of Halbwachs interpret his emphasis on a
collective memory as an affirmation of its "real" existence as a "thing"
independent of individuals. However, if emphasis is placed on the notion of
"social framework"-a view that, in my understanding, is more productive for our
objectives-the interpretation shifts toward a focus on the group matrix within
which individual recollections and silences are set. These frameworks-
Halbwachs looks at the family, religion, and social class-provide meaning to
individual recollections.'

In fact, the very notion of "collective memory" presents serious difficulties if

it is understood as a reified entity, a thing that has an existence that is separate
and above that of individuals. Such a conception originates from an extreme
Durkheimian interpretation that takes social phenomena as "things."
Alternatively, the "collective" can also be construed in the sense of shared
memories, layered on each other-as the outcome of multiple interactions
structured by social frameworks and power relations. In this vein, the collective
aspect of memory is the interweaving of traditions and individual memories in
dialogue with others and in a state of constant flux. The outcome is not a chaotic
disorder, because there is some structure shaped by shared cultural codes and
some social organization-where some voices are stronger than others because
they have greater access to resources and to public stages. As Ricoeur (i999)
says,

collective memory simply consists of the set of traces left by events that
have shaped the course of history of those social groups that, in later
times, have the capacity to stage these shared recollections through
holidays, rituals, and public celebrations. (iv)

This perspective allows one to conceive of collective memories not only as

facts that are out there, "given" and preexistent. It calls for placing primary
attention on the processes of development and social construction of these
memories. This implies incorporating the agency of different social actors
(including marginalized and excluded groups), and the disputes and negotiations
over meanings of the past in different settings (Pollak 1989). It also leads to
leaving open to empirical research the question as to the conditions that foster
the existence (or lack) of dominant, hegemonic, unique, or "official" memories.

A further significant distinction in memory processes is between active and

passive memories. Remains and vestiges of the past, even recognizable
knowledge and information, can be kept passively archived in people's minds, in
registers, in public and private archives, in electronic formats, and in libraries.
The accumulation of such traces of the past have led some analysts (Nora
especially) to talk about a "surplus of memory." However, these are passive
reservoirs that have to be set apart from their use, the labor and human activity
connected with memory work. At the individual level, cognitive psychologists
distinguish between recognition (a cognitive association or connection, the
identification of an item with reference to the past) and recall (which implies a
personal evaluation of what is recognized, entailing a more active effort on the
part of the subject). The mnemonic traces of recognition seem to last longer than
those of recall. At the societal level, there may be an abundance of archives and
documentation centers, even of accumulated knowledge and information about
the past, with traces in various types of recognized vehicles and material
supports. Yet all these supports and props do not guarantee that the past will be
recalled, or the specific meanings that groups will attach to its traces. To the
extent that recall is activated by social subjects and is mobilized in actions
intended to give meaning to the past, by interpreting it and bringing it onto the
stage of the current drama, the process of recalling becomes central in the
process of social interaction.

A note of caution is required here to avoid the pitfalls of extreme

ethnocentrism or essentialism. It should be clear by now that memories are
constructed and acquire meanings within specific social frameworks embedded
with values and social needs shaped by particular worldviews. This conception
could imply, in a first naive understanding, that the content of memories being
constructed is contained and shaped by a clearly set and unchanging conception
of past, present, and future. In such a view, there is no room for diversity in the
conception of time itself. Notions of time would thus appear to stay outside the
social frameworks and the actual processes of "framing" memories. A second
reading is therefore needed, one that avoids essentializing time conceptions and
taking the Western conception of time as universal. As Halbwachs indicated, the
concepts of time and space are themselves objects of construction and social
representation. Although all processes of memory construction are inscribed in a
given representation of time and space, these representations-and consequently,
the very idea of what is past and what is present-are culturally variable and
historically constructed. Of course, this includes the analytical categories used
by researchers and scholars.

At this point, anthropological and historical research has to come into the
picture, to enrich the analysis with the diversity of ways of conceiving time and,
consequently, of conceptualizing memory. Classical anthropology did, in fact,
develop itself in contradistinction to history. It was the study of "peoples without
history." And if there is no history, then there cannot be historical memory, since
the present is seen as an unending repetition and reproduction of the past. In
many past and present societies, that which is experienced as "real" is not
historical temporality but a mythical time that returns permanently, in rituals and
repetitions, to an original foundational moment. However, the ritualized
performance of myth is not static. In such cases, the issue is not about ahistorical
societies. Rather, the issue becomes to show how the "new" events are
incorporated into preexisting structures of meaning, which at times can be
anchored in myths. Thus, "every reproduction of culture is an alteration"
(Sahlins 1[987, 144), and the re-presentation of myth implies change.2 In such
cases, what is "remembered" is the cultural framework of interpretation, a tool
that facilitates the understanding of circumstances that viewed from the outside
seem "new," although they may not be seen as such by the actors involved.

Alternatively, there are traditions and customs incorporated as nonreflective

daily practices that have lost their original meaning in the evolution and
historical changes of the times. The Inquisition, for example, forced many Jews
to convert to Catholicism, and many maintained private clandestine traditional
Jewish practices (the so-called Marranos). After several generations, some
practices may have been maintained, although devoid of their original meanings.
Examples include deep housecleaning on Fridays in a rural Brazilian village, and
Stars of David on Catholic tombs in some Portuguese towns.

Memory and Identity

There is a sphere in which the relationship between memory and identity is

almost banal, but nevertheless important as a point of departure for reflection:
the heart of any individual or group identity is linked to a sense of permanence
(of being oneself, of selfhood) through time and space. The ability to recall or
remember something from one's own past is what sustains identity (Gillis
11994). The relationship is one of mutual constitution in subjectivity, since
neither memories nor identity are "things" or material objects that are found or
lost. "Identities and memories are not things we think about, but things we think
with. As such, they have no existence beyond our politics, our social relations,
and our histories" (5).

This relationship of mutual constitution entails a give and take: to establish

some parameters of identity (national, gender, political, or any other type), the
subject selectively takes certain signposts, certain memories that place him or
her in relation to "others." The boundaries of identity are established by these
parameters, which simultaneously stress some features of identification (and
belonging) with some groups and of differentiation with others. In this process,
they become social frames that structure memories. Some of these signposts
develop into "unvarying" or fixed elements around which memories are
organized. Pollak (z99z) refers to three types of elements that can fulfill this
signpost function: events, persons or characters, and places. They may be linked
to experiences lived by the person or conveyed by others. They can be
empirically based on concrete facts or be projections or idealizations stemming
from other events. What matters is that they allow the maintenance of the
minimum of coherence and continuity needed to preserve the sense of identity.'

The constitution, institutionalization, recognition, and strength of memories

and identities fuel each other. Both for individuals and for groups or entire
societies, the processes are not linear over time. There are periods of tranquility
and calmness, when life goes on without disturbances, and times of crises.
During periods when memories and identities are firmly constituted, strongly
attached, or even institutionally established, the challenges that might emerge do
not generate urgencies, they do not lead to major restructuring processes.
Memory and identity can work by themselves and on themselves in an effort to
maintain coherence and unity. Periods of internal crises or external threats are
usually preceded, accompanied, or succeeded by crises in the sense of collective
identity and in memories (Pollak 199z). In such moments, the unsettling of
taken-for-granted interpretations of the past leads to self-reflexivity and revisions
of the prevalent meaning attached to the past. At the same time and in the same
movement, they involve questioning and redefining group identity itself.

Memories and Forgetting

Everyday life is primarily made up of routines: patterns of behavior that are

habitual, nonreflective, learned, and repeated. The past of the learning process
and the present of its memory turn into habit and tradition (understood as "the
handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information, etc., from
generation to generation, especially by word of mouth or by practice" [Random
House Webster's Dictionary 1998, zoo6]). Habitual and traditional beliefs and
practices are part of "normal" life. There is nothing "memorable" in the daily
exercise of these memories. Exceptions-not very frequent in any case-occur
when the person associates some routine practice with the recollection of some
incident of failure of the learned routine, or with some childhood episode in the
process of personal learning.

These patterns of behavior, clearly "framed" (in Halbwachs's sense) socially

in the family, the classroom, and the traditions of other institutions, are both
individual and social. They are incorporated in a unique way by each person. At
the same time, they are shared and recurring in all members of a social group.
Clothing and table habits, manners of greeting men and women, strangers, and
close friends, body language employed in public and in private, forms of
expressing feelings-all these are simple examples of shared learned practices.
The list of learned patterns of behavior where a "habitual memory" functions in a
routine manner is interminable.

Fractures in these learned routines involve the subject in a different way.

Emotions and feelings come into play, occupying center stage. As Mieke Bal
(z999, viii) argues, it is that emotional commitment that transforms these
moments and turns them "memorable." This memory is a different one,
transforming itself. The event or moment being remembered is then associated
with emotions and feelings, and this association sets in motion a process of
search for meaning. In turn, the "memorable" event will be expressed in
narrative form, becoming the way in which the subject bestows meaning to the
past. In this way, memory expresses itself in a narrative story, which can be
conveyed to others.

This narrative construction has two central features. First, the past acquires
meaning in its intersection with the present, in the act of remembering/forgetting.
Second, the interrogation of the past is a subjective process. It is always active
and socially constructed in dialogue and interaction with others. The act of
remembering implies having lived through a given event in the past that is
activated in the present, as a result of some current desire or distress. Often, this
active recollection is accompanied by the intent of communicating it to others. It
does not necessarily entail that the events being recalled were important or
significant in themselves, but rather that they gain an emotional charge and a
special meaning in the actual process of remembering or recalling.

This narrative memory entails, in the words of Micheline Enriquez,

constructing a "new arrangement" between the past and the present.4 A number
of social and psychic mechanisms come into play. The process of constructing
and conveying narrative memories involves complex negotiations about what is
acceptable and what is to be silenced, what can and cannot be said, in the
disjunctions between private narratives and public discourses. Socially accepted
narratives, publicly accepted commemorations, social frameworks, and societal
mechanisms of censorship-along with the more personal and intrapsychical
drives-leave their imprints in such negotiations, as shown in the large body of
research on Eastern Europe and the testimonies of concentration camp survivors
(Passerine i99zb; also Pollak 1989, T99o).
 In turn, although they may reappear in different ways in future instances,
some past events resist the possibility of being integrated in a narrative and
remain without a clear meaning. Traumatic events involve breaks in the ability to
narrate and memory voids and gaps. As will be further developed later, the
presence of trauma is indicated by the coexistence of an impossibility of
assigning meaning to past occurrences, by the inability to incorporate it in a
narrative, and by its recurrent and persistent presence and manifestation in
symptoms. At this level, oblivion is not an expression of absence or emptiness.
Rather, it is the presence of that absence, the representation of something that is
no longer there, that has been erased, silenced, or denied. Like Milan Kundera's
photo, it is a manifestation of a social vacuum.' The clinical equivalent of these
traumatic gaps takes the form of voids, symptoms, and repetitions.

Up to this point we have distinguished two types of memories, habitual and

narrative. The narrative memories are the ones that are of interest here. Among
them, there are those memories that find or construct meanings of the past. And
there are-a situation especially important to our analysis-the "wounds of
memory," an expression that is more precise than "wounded memories" (the
latter expression is used by Ricoeur 1999). These wounds imply great difficulties
for constituting meaning and building its narrative. They refer to situations
where repression and dissociation act as the psychic mechanisms that lead to
interruptions, breaks, and traumatic gaps in narrative. Traumatic repetitions and
dramatizations are "tragically solitary," while narrative memories are social
constructions communicable to others (Bal 1999).

Forgetting and silence play a central role in narrative memory. All narratives
of the past involve silences. Memory is selective; full memory is impossible.
Thus, there is a first type of forgetting, "necessary" to the functioning of the
individual subject, of groups, and of communities. But there is more to silence
and forgetting, since there is a multiplicity of situations in which many different
forms of forgetting and silences are expressed, with different purposes.

One type of forgetting, which can be called deep or "definitive," involves the
erasure of recollections of facts and processes of the past and is produced within
historical development itself.' The paradox is that if total erasure is successful, its
very success impedes its verification. Nevertheless, there are cases when pasts
that seemed "definitively" forgotten reappear as a result of changes in cultural
and social frameworks and acquire a new symbolic or political presence. Those
changes prompt a reexamination and the assignment of new meanings to traces
and residues that had not been significant for decades or even centuries.

Erasures and voids can also be the results of explicit policies furthering
forgetting and silence, promoted by actors who seek to hide and destroy
evidence and traces of the past in order to impede their retrieval in the future.
Recall Heinrich Himmler's famous statement at Nuremberg, declaring that the
"final solution" was a "glorious page in our history that has never been written
and that never will be."7 In these cases, there is a willful political act of
destruction of evidence and traces, with the goal of promoting selective memory
loss through the elimination of documentary evidence. In a broader sense, all
policies for conservation and memory, by selecting which artifacts and traces to
preserve, conserve, or commemorate, have an implicit will to forget. This is true
of course for the historians and researchers who choose what to tell, what to
represent, what to write, and how to do it.

The past leaves traces, in material ruins and evidence, in mnemonic traces in
the human neurological system, in individual psychical dynamics, and in the
symbolic world. In themselves, these traces do not constitute "memory" unless
they are evoked and placed in a context that gives them meaning. A further
question thus arises: how to overcome the difficulties involved in accessing these
traces, to preclude oblivion. The task involved implies uncovering and revealing,
bringing to light the hidden, "crossing the wall that separates us from these
traces" (Ricoeur 1999, ro5 ). The difficulty is not that few traces remain, or that
the past has been destroyed. Rather, what count are the impediments to accessing
those traces caused by the mechanisms of repression and by displacement,'
which cause distortions and transformations in different directions and of diverse
types. Psychoanalysis has worked extensively on the issue of the recovery of
personal memories. As well, recent developments in historiography and social
sciences attempt to deal with the social and collective processes of unearthing
hidden pasts.

One societal response to the fear of destruction of traces of the past is

reflected in the contemporary expression of urgency to preserve remnants of the
past, accumulating them in personal, historical, and public archives. This is an
expression of the "obsession with memory" and the memorializing spirit that are
discussed by Nora, Gillis, and Huyssen.
 There is also the type of forgetting that Ricoeur labels as "evasive," which
involves an attempt not to recall potentially upsetting memories. This mood
tends to prevail in historical periods following large social catastrophes,
massacres, and genocides, which may engender among those who suffered them
directly and survived them the desire to not know, to avoid painful
remembrances as a means to continue living.

At this point, silence comes in, as the counterpart of oblivion. There are
silences imposed by fear of repression in dictatorships of every stripe. Silences
kept during Franco's Spain, the Stalinist Soviet Union, and the Latin American
dictatorships burst open with the change of regime. During these repressive
periods, painful memories survive that "await the propitious moment to be
expressed" (Pollak 1989, 5). Yet the silencing of dissident memories does not
have as a point of reference only a dominant dictatorial state. They also arise in
the context of more horizontal relationships among social groups. Pollak (1989)
analyzes several types of silences among Holocaust survivors, from those who
returned to their places of origin and needed to find a modus vivendi with their
neighbors who "in the form of tacit consent witnessed their deportation," to the
silences about extreme situations in the camps, maintained to avoid the well-
known mechanism of blaming the victims (6). There is also the will to silence, of
not telling or transmitting, of keeping the traces enclosed in inaccessible spaces,
in order to care for the others as an expression of the desire to not hurt them nor
to convey a message of suffering.

Other silences follow a different logic. To communicate suffering and

painful events, one has to find a willingness to listen and understand on the other
side (Laub Tggzb; Pollak 1990). At the level of individual memories, the fear of
not being understood creates silences, and thus the importance of an attentive
ear, of finding others with the capacity to listen. We will return to this issue in
the context of personal testimonies. At the societal level, there are conjunctures
of political transition-such as Chile at the end of the i98os, or postwar France-in
which the desire for reconstruction is experienced as contradictory to messages
linked to the horrors of the past.9

Finally, there is the liberating type of forgetting, one through which the
person or group feels itself free from the burden of the past, allowing a shift of
focus toward the future. This is the "necessary" forgetting in the life of the
individual. For communities and groups, the modern origin of these thoughts can
be traced to Nietzsche, who condemns the historical fever and demands a
forgetting that encourages living and makes it possible to see the world without
being burdened by the heavy baggage of history. This historical fever, as
Huyssen (zooo) states,

[s]erved to invent national traditions in Europe, to legitimize the imperial

nation-states, and to give cultural coherence to conflictive societies in
the throes of the Industrial Revolution and colonial expansion. (37)

As Ernest Renan (zooo) suggested,

Forgetting, and I would even say historical error, is an essential factor in

the creation of a nation, which means that progress in historical studies is
frequently a threat to nationality. (56)

The current fever for memorialization has other characteristics, and other
dangers, as raised in the debate about the "abuses of memory," the title of the
small and provocative book by Tzvetan Todorov (r998). Todorov is not
campaigning against the recovery of memory; rather, he is concerned with its use
by different groups who may appropriate memory to foster their own interests.
The memory abuse that the author condemns is that of preserving a "literal"
memory in which the crimes are viewed as unique and unrepeatable. In that case,
the experience is not transferable; it does not lead anywhere beyond itself.
Todorov defends an "exemplary" use of memory, in which the memory of a past
event is conceived as one instance of a more general category, or as a model for
understanding new situations with different agents. In terms of forgetting, this
proposal entails the (political) forgetting of what is singular and unique about an
experience in order to make memory more productive. We will take up this issue
again in the next chapter.

Discourse and Experience

Let's return to the central issue that animates this inquiry, namely that of memory
as the process of giving meaning to the past. Several questions can be raised
here. Who is to create and convey meanings? Which is the past that is being
referred to? They are active agents who remember, individuals and groups who
assign meanings to the past and who often try to convey their message to others
(and even impose it). This characterization must be accompanied by the
recognition of the plurality of "others" and the complex dynamic of the
relationship between the subject and alterity.

Which past is the one that the subject is to make significant? There are
autobiographical pasts, experiences lived "in one's own skin." For those who
lived through an event or experience, having done so may turn out to be a key
marker in their lives and memory. If the event was a traumatic one, rather than
remembrances and meaningful memories, the subject will be faced with voids,
vacuum, silences, and the traces of trauma, expressed in his or her current
behavior, including pathological symptoms (and, in the least frequent cases,
plain "forgetting").

There are also those who did not have the "past experience" themselves. This
lack of experience puts them in another category: they are "others." For this
group, memory is a representation of the past constructed as cultural knowledge
shared by successive generations and by different "others." In fact, the presence
of this otherness involves thinking about experience or memory in its
intersubjective and social dimensions. As Luisa Passerine argues, memories are
connected one to the other." Subjects can develop narrative memories because
others had done it before, others who had been able to transmit and engage a
dialogue about them.

Similarly, social forgetting is also intersubjective:

What we call "forgetting" in a collective sense occurs when human

groups fail-whether purposely or passively, out of rebellion, indifference,
or indolence, or as the result of some disruptive historical catastrophe-to
transmit what they know out of the past to their posterity. (Yerushalmi
1996, Io9)

As already mentioned, these catastrophes can involve a rupture between

individual memory and public and collective practices. This happens when, due
to political conditions, collective practices are dominated by ritualization,
repetition, deformation or distortion, silence or lies. They can also involve
silences and fault lines in the processes of intergenerational transmission.

Let me return for a moment to the difference between social memory and
personal recollection and forgetting of events lived through personally. What is
firsthand "experience"? In the language of common sense, experience refers to
events and occurrences that are lived directly, firsthand, captured subjectively in
their immediacy. Analysis of the concept of "experience" indicates, however,
that it is not so directly and linearly dependent on the event or occurrence.
Rather, to have an experience implies the mediation of language and the cultural
interpretive framework that allow it to be expressed, to be thought about and
conceptualized (Joan Scott 199z; van Alphen 1999). In fact, the central place of
language for memories had already been recognized by Halbwachs. In a seldom
quoted paragraph, Halbwachs (199z) points out that "[t]here are no recollections
to which words cannot be made to correspond. We speak of our recollections
before calling them to mind. It is language, and the whole system of social
conventions attached to it, that allows us at every moment to reconstruct our
past" (T73). In turn, the unavoidable and ever present linguistic and narrative
mediation implies that under all conditions and whatever their content, all
memories-even the most individual and private ones-are socially and
symbolically constituted (Ricoeur 1999).

In broader terms, this perspective suggests that the availability of symbolic

tools (culture, language) is a precondition for the process of structuring
subjectivity. However, the process is not simple or linear. To the contrary, as
Joan Scott (199z) points out, subjects and subjectivity are constituted
discursively in scenarios that imply multiple and contradictory discursive
systems. In addition, subjects are not passive receivers but rather social agents
with the ability to respond and transform what is conveyed to them. It could be
argued, in fact, that subjectivity emerges and reveals itself in full force in the
cracks, in the confusion, in the disruptions in the functioning of habitual
memory, in the unrest that stimulates the person to engage in interpretive work in
order to find meaning and the words with which to express it. In situations of
extreme disruption and bewilderment, words to express and represent the events
cannot be found, and we are faced then with the signs of trauma.

If the preceding discussion is not qualified, the reader could come to the
conclusion that the perspective adopted here centers attention exclusively on
discourse, on narration, and on the "power of words." This is not the perspective
that we want to advance here. The power of words is not located in the words
themselves but in the authority they represent and in the power-related processes
connected to the institutions that legitimate them (Bourdieu 198 5).

Memory as a narrative social construction involves studying the narrator and

the institutions that grant or deny power to the voice of the narrator and
authorize him or her to speak, since as Pierre Bourdieu notes, the effectiveness
of performative speech is proportional to the authority of the speaker.
Additionally, it involves paying attention to the processes of construction of
legitimate recognition, socially granted by the group to which it is directed. The
reception of words and acts is not a passive process. Quite to the contrary, it is an
act of recognition bestowed on whoever is undertaking the transmission
(Hassoun 1996).

Thus, taking language as the point of departure, the road takes us to

encounter conflicts over the representations of the past, centered on and
reflecting struggles for power, legitimacy, and recognition. Such struggles
involve different social actors developing strategies to "officialize" or
"institutionalize" a (their own) narrative of the past. Achieving positions of
authority, or assuring that the occupants of those positions adopt the desired
narrative, is part of these struggles. The struggle also involves a strategy for
"winning supporters," widening the circle or group that accepts and legitimizes a
given narrative, incorporating it as its own or identifying with it. This issue will
be taken up again when discussing institutional questions related to memories.

What has all this to do with thinking about memory?

First, it matters to have or not have words to express what has been lived
through, to construct experience and subjectivity stemming from events that
"bump" into us. One of the characteristics of traumatic events is the massive
character of their impact, creating a gap in the capacity "to be spoken" or told
about. This provokes a hole in the ability to represent symbolically the event.
There are no words, and therefore there cannot be memories. Memory remains
disarticulated, and only painful traces, pathologies, and silences come to the
surface. Trauma alters the temporality of other psychic processes, and memory
cannot handle them. It is unable to recover, convey, or communicate that which
has been lived through.

Second, if "experience" is always mediated and is never "pure" or direct, it

becomes necessary to rethink the apparent distance and difference between the
processes of autobiographical memory and forgetting on the one hand, and the
sociocultural processes shared through the mediation of mechanisms of
transmission and symbolic appropriation on the other. To transform an
occurrence into "experience," even those who lived through it must find the
words to convey it, locating themselves in a cultural framework that makes
communication and transmission possible. Analytically, this paves the way to a
reconceptualization of what in common sense is understood as "transmission,"
namely, the process through which a shared cultural understanding linked to a
given vision of the past is constructed. Thinking about mechanisms of
transmission, about inheritances and legacies, about learning and the creation of
traditions becomes then a significant analytical task. (These issues will be taken
up in chapter 7.)

Third, the approach taken here makes it possible to articulate individual and
collective or social levels of memory and experience. Memories are
simultaneously individual and social. Insofar as words and the community of
discourse are collective, experience is as well. Individual lived-through
occurrences are not transformed into experiences with meaning without the
presence of cultural discourses, and these are always collective. At the same
time, individual experience and memory do not exist in themselves; they reveal
themselves, and become collective, in the act of sharing. Thus, individual
experience constructs community in the shared narrative act, in narrating and
listening.

Nevertheless, no linear or direct relationship between the individual and the

collective is to be posed or expected. Subjective inscriptions of experience are
never mirrorlike reflections of public occurrences. Thus, no "integration" or "fit"
between individual and public memories, or the presence of a single memory, is
to be expected. There are contradictions, tensions, silences, conflicts, gaps, and
disjunctions, as well as converging points and even "integration." Social reality
is complex, contradictory, and full of tensions and conflicts. Memory is no
exception.

In sum, "experience" is subjectively lived, culturally shared, and "shareable."

It is in human agency that the past, embodied in cultural contents (discourses in
the broad sense), is activated. Memory, then, is produced whenever and
wherever there are subjects who share a culture, social agents who try to
"materialize" the meanings of the past in different cultural products that are
conceived as, or can be converted into, "vehicles for memory," such as books,
museums, monuments, films, and history books. Memory shows up also in
actions and expressions that, rather than re-presenting the past, incorporate it
performa- tively (van Alphen 1997).
Three
Political Struggles for Memory
The past is gone, it is already de-termin(at)ed; it cannot be changed. The future,
by contrast, is open, uncertain, and indeterminate. What can change about the
past is its meaning, which is subject to reinterpretations, anchored in intentions
and expectations toward the future.' That meaning of the past is dynamic and is
conveyed by social agents engaged in confrontations with opposite
interpretations, other meanings, or against oblivion and silence. Actors and
activists "use" the past, bringing their understandings and interpretations about it
into the public sphere of debate. Their intention is to establish/convince/ transmit
their narrative, so that others will accept it.

Thus, research about this issue does not consist of "dealing with social facts
as things, but of analyzing how social facts become things, how and why they
are solidified and endowed with durability and stability" (Pollak 1989, 4). What
is involved is the study of the processes and actors that intervene in the tasks of
constructing and consecrating memories. Who are these actors? Whom do they
confront and with whom do they engage in dialogue in the process? Different
social actors, with diverse connections to past experience-those who lived
through specific periods or events and those who inherited them, those who
studied them, and those who expressed them in different ways-strive to affirm
the legitimacy of "their" truth. They engage in struggles for power, searching
often to legitimate their current positions through claiming privileged links to the
past, asserting continuities or ruptures. In these processes, agents of the state
have a central role and special weight because of their power in relation to
establishing and developing an "official history/memory." Thus, attention has to
be placed on the conflicts and disputes over interpretations and meanings of the
past, and on the process through which some narratives displace others and
become hegemonic.

The Production of a National History and an Official

Memory
One of the central symbolic operations in the processes of state formation-in
Latin America throughout the nineteenth century, for example-was the
elaboration of the "master narrative" of the nation. This involved advancing one
version of history that, together with patriotic symbols, monuments, and
pantheons to national heroes, could serve as a central node for identification and
for anchoring national identity.

What purpose do these official memories serve? They are more or less
conscious efforts to define and reinforce feelings of belonging that aim to
maintain social cohesion and defend symbolic borders (Pollak 1989, 9). At the
same time, they provide the reference points for framing the memories of groups
and sectors within each national context.

Like all narratives, these national stories are selective. Establishing a group
of heroes requires obscuring the actions of others. Emphasizing certain
characteristics as indicators of heroism involves silencing others, especially the
errors and missteps by those who are defined as heroes and must appear
"immaculate" in that history. Once these official canonical narratives,
historically linked to the process of political centralization in the process of
nation-state building, are established, they come to be expressed and crystallized
in the history textbooks passed on in formal education. At the same time, they
become the targets of diverse efforts at reform, revisionism, and construction of
alternative historical narratives. Because the master national narrative tends to be
the story of the victors, there will be others who-whether in the form of private
oral stories or as practices of resistance to power-will offer alternative narratives
and meanings of the past, threatening the national consensus that is being
imposed.2

If the state is strong and its policing includes control over ideas and freedom
of expression in public space, alternative narratives take refuge in the world of
"private memories." At times, these narratives are silenced even in the sphere of
intimacy, out of shame or weakness, or they are integrated into practices of more
open or clandestine resistance (James Scott 199z).

In this process of construction of the master narratives of modern nation-

states, professional historians have had a central role. Official master narratives
are written by professional historians whose link to power is crucial to their task.
Over time, antagonistic interpretations and revisions of that memory of the
nation or official historical narrative will be produced, be it as a result of open
antagonisms and political struggles, of changes in social sensibilities, or of
advancement in historical research itself.

The construction of official histories turns to be particularly problematic

when dealing with contemporary or recent events, especially when they are
marked by deep social and political conflicts. During the dictatorial periods of
the twentieth century-Stalinism, Nazism, military dictatorships in Brazil, Chile,
Argentina, and Uruguay, Stronism in Paraguay-public space was monopolized
by a dominant political story, where the "good guys" and the "bad guys" were
clearly identified. Censorship was explicit, and alternative memories could arise
only underground, prohibited and clandestine, thus exacerbating the ravages of
terror, fear, and traumatic lapses that generate paralysis and silence. Under such
circumstances, the official stories conveyed by the representatives of the regime
encountered few challenges in the public sphere.

Generally, the dictatorships' narratives present the military in the role of

"saviors" of the nation from a mortal threat (in the Southern Cone in the z97os,
the threat was that of "Communism") and from the chaos created by those who
try to subvert the nation. In this context, subsequent military stories may
emphasize the achievements of peace (especially prominent in Argentina), of
economic progress (in Brazil), or of both (Chile) (Jelin zoozb). For example, in
1974, the tenth anniversary of the coup d'etat in Brazil was used as an occasion
to put into circulation one exclusive story in the public sphere and the school
system: the account of the economic success of the military regime-the story of
the Brazilian "economic miracle." There was no mentioning of the political
system or of restrictions of public liberties (Carvalho and da Silva Catela zooz).
Undoubtedly, the ethical and political role and public responsibility of historians
and critical intellectuals are of extraordinary significance in such periods.3

Political openings, thaws, liberalizations, and transitions give a boost to

activities in the public sphere, so that previously censored narratives and stories
can be incorporated and new ones can be generated. Such openings create a
setting for new struggles over the meaning of the past, with a plurality of actors
and agents who express a multiplicity of demands and claims.

The new political scenario is one of institutional change in the state and in
state-society relationships. At such times, the struggle plays out between a
variety of actors who claim recognition and legitimacy of their voices and
demands. The memories of the oppressed and marginalized and the memories
about oppression and repression-at the edge, of those who were directly affected
in their physical integrity by death, forced disappearance, torture, exile, and
imprisonmentemerge, usually with a double intent, that of asserting the "true"
version of history based on their memories, and that of demanding justice. In
such moments, memory, truth, and justice blend into each other, because the
meaning of the past that is being fought about is, in fact, part and parcel of the
demand for justice in the present.

These are moments in which stories and narratives that were hidden or
silenced for a long time emerge into the public eye. There may be considerable
public surprise at the survival (at times for decades) of memories that were
silenced in the public world but were kept and transmitted in the private sphere
(within family or clandestine social groups), maintained in personal intimacy,
even "forgotten" in an "evasive" memory loss (because they might be forbidden,
unspeakable, or shameful memories, according to Pollak 1989, 8), or buried in
traumatic lapses and symptoms. These conjunctures of political and expressive
aperture and "uncovering" provide clear evidence that the processes of forgetting
and remembering do not respond in a simple, linear, or direct manner to the
passing of chronological time.4

Moments of political opening involve a complex political scenario. They do

not necessarily or primarily entail a binary opposition between an official history
or a dominant memory articulated by the state on the one hand, and a
counternarrative expressed by society on the other. Quite to the contrary,
multiple social and political actors come to the scene, and they craft narratives of
the past that confront each other's, and in so doing, they also convey their
projects and political expectations for the future. In these conjunctures, neither is
there a single voice on the part of the state. Political transition involves a
transformation of the state, a new foundational moment, with new readings and
meanings given to the past. At times of political opening, the state itself is
crisscrossed by multiple and competing readings, reflecting the variety of
meanings of the past that circulate in the societal scenario.

The Conflictive History of Memories

Controversies over the meanings of the past surface at the very moment when
events are taking place. At the time of a military coup or of the invasion of a
foreign country, the victors interpret their actions and resulting events in terms of
their insertion in a long-term historical process. Already in the initial
proclamations and in the way in which the event is presented to the general
population they offer an interpretation of what is going on-generally, an image
that portrays the victors as saviors. As Henry Rousso argues, "[i]f we wish to
understand the configuration of a discourse about the past, it must be
remembered that the discourse is being constructed ever since the initial stages
of the event where it is rooted" (Rousso, in Feld zooo, 3z). This discourse will be
revised and resignified in subsequent periods, according to the configuration of
political forces and disputes that unfold in different economic and political
conjunctures.

Rousso studied the memory of Vichy in France. In 1940, De Gaulle's first

speeches already declared that France (the "true" one) was not defeated, and that
the Vichy regime was only a "parenthesis." Starting in 1944, a mystified memory
of the war was being constructed: the French are presented as heroes of the
resistance, and this vision is accompanied by trials of collaborators and by the
"deputation" after the war. The first wave of trials in the postwar period centered
on the crime of collaboration understood as "treason against the nation." Only in
the early 1970s could the French be indicted for crimes "against humanity." The
definition of the norm that had been transgressed and the interpretive framework
have changed by then: crimes committed by Frenchmen who were members of
French fascist organizations could then be recognized. Such crimes were then
disengaged from the notion of "treason against the nation."

Rather than stress treason towards France in relationship to Germany,

i.e., a nationalistic vision of the crime ... the issue becomes
understanding the degree to which the perpetrators were "fascists" and
"anti-semites," incorporating thus the idea, for the most part correct, that
fascism and anti-Semitism belonged to the French tradition
independently of the German occupation. In the extreme, in these recent
representations, the German or Nazi occupier is falling to the
background, especially within the framework of the criminal trials.
(Rousso, in Feld 2000, 34)

Another point stressed by Rousso is that although at the beginning the

charges were pressed by the state, which at that time needed to send strong
signals of its rupture with the Vichy regime, decades later the instigators of
judicial action and of demands of official symbolic recognition were social
actors. Former deportees and resisters acted as "militants for memory," "in the
name of a `duty to remember,' with the objective of keeping alive memory
against all forms of oblivion, which in their perspective is considered as a new
crime" (Rousso, in Feld zooo, 3 6). The public management of memory must
undoubtedly be understood in the French political context, including the
emergence and popularity of right-wing (and anti-Semitic) discourses and
practices, as well as in the broader European context, issues that obviously go
beyond the scope of this volume.

Periods of transition of political regimes take place in scenarios of

confrontation between actors with opposing political experiences and
expectations. Each position involves a vision of the past and an (often implicit)
agenda regarding how to deal with it in the new era, always defined as a break
and as a moment of change vis-a-vis the previous regime. In the Spanish
transition, the painful memories of different actors facilitated convergence and
negotiation, rather than a rehashing of differences and confrontations. Paloma
Aguilar Fernandez (1996) argues that "the existence of a traumatic memory of
the Spanish Civil War played a crucial role in the institutional design of the
transition, in favoring negotiations and inspiring a conciliatory and tolerant
attitude towards each other on the part of the principal actors" (56). The central
hypothesis of her argument is that the memories of conflict and war played a
pacifying role in the transition.

What memory? How was it constructed? "First, the existence of a collective

traumatic memory of the Civil War prompted most of the actors to avoid its
repetition at any price ..." (Aguilar Fernandez 1996, 57-58). During the
transition, most Spaniards interpreted the brutality of the Civil War that took
place forty years earlier as "collective insanity," and the principal lesson they
extracted from that understanding was "never again." "Such a drama must never
be repeated in Spain, and all political, social, and economic forces must
contribute to this aim" (Aguilar Fernandez 1996, 359). At the time of Franco's
death and of political transition, the memory of the Civil War was intensely
activated. The connection made between that moment and the prewar period (the
Second Republic) was paramount in deterring the possibility of committing the
same mistakes.' At the same time, the effort was to forget the animosities of the
past in an intentional forgetting that would help in "retaining the lessons of
history, but avoiding scrutinizing it." It was a political act of forgetting, a
strategic silence that could happen while the Civil War was becoming the focus
of cultural expression for filmmakers, musicians, writers, and academics.'

The transitions in the Southern Cone were different and distinctive. In the
first place, with the exception of Paraguay and to a lesser extent Brazil, the
dictatorial regimes did not last for decades. Thus, there was no generational
renewal and the conflicts of the past were still part of the "lived experience" of
most actors. Argentina was the case where the new regime took as its banner the
redress of human rights violations during dictatorship. The brutality and
immediacy of the human rights abuses led to open denunciations and the
possibility of political, societal, and judicial redress. In Chile and Uruguay,
amnesty laws and decrees obstructed the possibilities of judicial prosecution,
while the political opening allowed for the previously censored and suppressed
voices of victims and their supporters to be heard. Yet in all cases, the
authoritarian voices of dictatorship and its supporters did not necessarily
disappear from the public sphere of debate (Acura and Smulovitz 1996).

Unlike France in 194 5, there was no occupying army in retreat, leaving

behind a political community liberated from foreign yokes. Both the dictators
and the democrats were national political actors and forces, and now they faced
the need to coexist within the framework of the new democratic rules. The issue
of how to settle accounts with the recent past thus became the focus of disputes
about political strategy. Whether to promote amnesty laws, truth commissions,
trials, or reparations became political issues to be tackled in each country
according to the strength of different political actors.' In connection with
memory issues, what is peculiar to the Southern Cone countries is the strong and
visible presence of the human rights movement as a political actor and as an
"administrator" of memory.8 What is also notable in the region is the continuing
presence of authoritarian actors-the military and the Right (especially strong in
Chile)-during the political transitions, and a highly ambiguous role of the
traditional political parties (notably in Uruguay).

Memory Entrepreneurs and Their Projects

In a now classic book in North American sociology, Howard Becker offers a

Exploring the Variety of Random
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Title: The Secrets of a Kuttite

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRETS OF A KUTTITE ***
 THE SECRETS OF A KUTTITE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

AN EMPIRE VIEW OF
THE EMPIRE TANGLE

With an Introduction by the

RT. HON. W. F. MASSEY

THE PLACE OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW
IN JURISPRUDENCE

"CTESIPHON"
(THE FAMOUS ARCH WHERE THE WOUNDED WERE GATHERED AT THE HEIGHT
OF THE BATTLE)

THE SECRETS OF A KUTTITE

 AN AUTHENTIC STORY OF KUT,
ADVENTURES IN CAPTIVITY AND STAMBOUL
INTRIGUE
BY
 CAPTAIN E. O. MOUSLEY, R.F.A.

LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LIMITED

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXXII

SECOND EDITION

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,

LONDON AND BECCLES.
 THE TREK
No pause, no rest! Forward the column pushes
Across the stern and unproductive plain—
And Thirst, Satan's archfiend, darts at the brain
And the weight of the great heat their spirit crushes
To deeper silence and the tired feet bleed—
While the ruthless Turk with yells and sometimes blows
Urges them on beside his impatient steed
To a Future where and how no soldier knows
Beyond the dust-cloud on the horizon's rim,
Beyond the range of Hope—to memories grim.
But neither desert thirst nor fiercest sun
Nor dust-storms, nor the unknown miles ahead
Can touch their heart or clog its valves with dread—
These English lads that fought at Ctesiphon.

"Sparkling Moselle."
From Smoke, the Kastamuni Punch.

TO

MY MOTHER
 PREFACE
The following pages were actually written during the siege of Kut or during captivity. The
original manuscript was concealed in Turkey and recovered months after the Armistice. I
have been persuaded by my friends that to recast or add to the story would detract from
whatever appeal it may have as a human document. As such, with all its limitations, it is
offered to the public.
The exigencies of a captivity such as mine, even more than in the field, determine from
moment to moment one's focus and perspective, and what to-day presents itself for
record is to-morrow ignored or forgotten by concentration on the few things and the few
moments that count. Added to this there is for the prisoner the pressure of existence
when, so far from being allowed a pencil, he is considerably occupied with selling his last
fork.
One moves on from minute to minute between walls that recede or converge, and one's
experience, therefore, is a series of incidents often unfinished. A diary must reflect one's
experience.
The secrets of every Kuttite would "make many books" as large as this. And from an
experience more varied than fell to the lot of many prisoners the author hopes that the
following extract, a simple story of incident, adventure and intrigue, may interest the
British reader.
Edward O. Mousley.
Oxford and Cambridge Club,
Pall Mall,
March, 1921.
 CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE ix

PART I
TO THE FALL OF KUT, APRIL 29TH, 1916

CHAPTER I
En route from Hyderabad to Mesopotamia. Voyage up the Tigris 3
CHAPTER II
With the Sixth Division after Ctesiphon. The retreat and action at
Um-al-Tabul 10
CHAPTER III
We reach Kut. Beginning of the siege. The Christmas assault 22
CHAPTER IV
Relief delayed. Floods. Life during the siege 52
CHAPTER V
General Aylmer's attempt. More floods. Pressure of the siege. Preparations
for relief. Failure. Life in a siege mess 88
CHAPTER VI
The last days of Kut. Sickness. Death. Surrender 120

PART II
THE TREK. KASTAMUNI

CHAPTER VII
The Third Captivity. Baghdad. The desert march of the sick column.
We reach Ras-el-Ain 163
CHAPTER VIII
By rail and trek over the Taurus to Angora. The last trek to
Kastamuni 185
CHAPTER IX
Life in Kastamuni. The first summer, 1916 208
CHAPTER X
Winter. Our "self-made" orchestra 222
CHAPTER XI
Extracts and Photos from Smoke, the Kastamuni Punch 232
CHAPTER XII
Spring. Plots to escape. Betrayal. Escape of others. I am sent to
Stamboul for hospital 267

PART III
STAMBOUL AND BRUSA

CHAPTER XIII
Psamatia (Stamboul). Starvation and neglect in hospital and garrison.
Plots to escape by the Bosphorus. I organize escape from Psamatia
through the heart of Stamboul. Storm and wreck on Sea of Marmara.
Return 291
CHAPTER XIV
Discovery of the letter. Brusa. Court-martial. Life in a Stamboul
prison. Politics and intrigue 323
CHAPTER XV
Brusa again. Change on Western Front. Stamboul before the end.
Political manœuvring. The Prince Subaheddine. The Union and
Progress Party 350
CHAPTER XVI
I leave Stamboul on a mission en route for the Fleet. Meet the Prince's
delegate at Smyrna. Free! With the Entente Fleet at Mudros
before entering the Dardanelles 367
CHAPTER XVII
I leave Mudros with despatches for Rome, Paris, and London, England! 381

EPILOGUE 386
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
FACING PAGE
Ctesiphon Frontispiece
The Brick-kilns, Kut 24
Remains of my Battery Position on the Maidan 56
Recent Photo of Author's Last Billet in Kut 134
General Townshend at Baghdad, a Prisoner, with Khalil
Pasha on his Left 158
Our Prison, Baghdad (after British Occupation) 166
Letter From Eve. (Photographed from Smoke) 232
Kastamuni Kuttites Klearout Kompany. (Smoke) 234
King Arthur's Knights of the Oblong Table, Etc. (Smoke) 240
Mermaid Reading (Smoke) 240
Die Nacht, Etc. (Smoke) 244
An Escape Story. (Smoke) 244
"Fall of Kut." (Smoke) 248
The Song of the Rain. (Smoke) 248
Entry of General Maude into Baghdad 296
Photo of Author taken secretly while a Prisoner in Stamboul 310
Lieut.-Col. S. F. Newcombe, D.S.O., R.E. 318
Hotel at Brusa, Etc. 326
Djemal Pasha, one of the Triumvirate whose A.D.C., Ismid
Bey, met me secretly 340
General Townshend on his Island (Principo) with Visitors 342
The First Warship in Turkish Waters: H.M.S, Monitor 29 370

MAPS
Of Kut during Siege 42
Of General Aylmer's Attempt of March, 1916 88
Of Trek, including Plans of Escape 392
PART I
TO THE FALL OF KUT, APRIL 29TH, 1916

THE SECRETS OF A KUTTITE

CHAPTER I
 EN ROUTE FROM HYDERABAD TO
MESOPOTAMIA—VOYAGE
UP THE TIGRIS
Kut-el-Amara, December 22nd, 1915.—At the present moment I'm snugly settled inside
my Burberry sleeping-bag. The tiny candle that burns gloomily from its niche in the earth
wall of the dug-out leaves half the compartment in sharp shadow. But through the
doorway it lights a picture eloquent of war. This picture, framed by the sandbags of the
doorway, includes a gun-limber, observation pole, rifles, a telescope, and a telephone,
along a shell-pierced wall. Above winding mounds of black soil from entrenchments hang
the feathery fronds of the eternal palm. Only some droop, for mostly they hang, bullet-
clipped, like broken limbs. The night is still and cold, the stillness punctuated by the
rackety music of machine-guns. As I write snipers' bullets crack loudly on the mutti wall
behind my head. Another night attack is expected from the trenches in front of the 16th
Brigade which we must support. When the battery is in action the most unloved
entertainment that offers is the rifle fire that just skips the wall enclosing the date-palm
grove in which we are hidden. Sometimes the sharp crackling sound of bullets hitting the
trees increases as the flashes of our guns are seen by the enemy, and resembles in its
intensity a forest on fire. One hears a sudden crack just ahead like the sharp snapping of
a stick, and in the early days of one's initiation a duck is inevitable. I don't say one ducks,
but one finds one has ducked. For a time every one ducks. It is no use telling people that
if the bullet had been straight one would have been hit before hearing it strike the palm.
Some people go on ducking for ages. Of course I'm talking of the open. In the trenches
ducking is a fine art. The last time I ducked commendably, that I remember, was
yesterday. I was observing from our front line trenches with plenty of head protection
from the front, when a bullet came from an almost impossible direction. It flung a piece
of hard earth sharply on my cheek, and I ducked. Afterwards I laughed and took more
care.
By the way, as this is not a diary but an unpretentious record of things not forgotten, and
intended on reference to dispel the illusion that all this is a dream, I may as well furnish
an explanation of how I, Edward Mousley, a subaltern in the Royal Field Artillery, come to
be in this dug-out here in Kut-el-Amara, along with the Sixth Division under General
Townshend, that is to say, almost the whole original Force D, besieged by the whole
Turkish army in Mesopotamia under Nureddin Pasha.
My brigade was at annual practice near Hyderabad Scind when a wire ordered another
subaltern and me to proceed at once on service with Force D (in Mesopotamia) to replace
casualties. Some very kind words and excellent advice from my Colonel and innumerable
chota pegs from every one else and the next morning we left, the other subaltern and
Don Juan and I, to exchange practice for reality. Don Juan is my faithful horse. At Karachi
I found several gunners of my acquaintance who had come out from Home with me in
the Morea, a few months before, including one Edmonds, who had tripped with me
across India.
At Karachi I stored much useless kit, motor cycle, and spare saddlery, and
notwithstanding a heavy bout of malaria just before, left for service fit and well equipped
and with as excellent a horse as one could wish for. We sailed in the tiny mail boat
Dwarka for Muscat, Bushire, Basra.
Muscat is a mere safety valve of Satan in his sparest wilderness, a lonely patch of white
buildings completely shut in by awful mountains, rocks that in remote ages seem to have
frowned themselves into the most fearful convulsions. And, even in November, hot!
After two days of scorching heat and tempestuous seas we arrived at Bushire, where a
spit keeps shipping off.
Fifty Gurkhas, and a subaltern of whom I was to see something by and by, came aboard.
Fine little fellows they are and very cheerful and contented even on the wretched deck of
a tiny steamer loaded with fowls, food, a Persian donkey, vermin, and half-breeds.
Then, in a resplendent dawn, I saw the banks of the Shatt-el-Arab, verdant with the
greenness of a new lawn, where millions of date palms clustered side by side on the flat,
flood-washed shores. Here the river is half a mile wide. One may imagine its changed
appearance when the great floods come, that are now three months off. Outside the
entrance on the right bank, Fao, a tiny village and fort, marks the initial landing and
conquest by Force D—General Delamain's brigade—in October, 1914.
Both banks of the river are thickly forested with date-palms right up to Basra, a crowded
spot of a few hundred yards in frontage on both sides of a tiny creek Ashar, whence once
Sinbad sailed. It was brimful of soldiers and Arabs, and quantities of stores and planks
stood around half-erected buildings. It had the appearance of a very busy port, some
dozen huge ocean-going vessels being anchored in the stream. There was no wharfing
accommodation at all. One communicates with the shore by bellums. This is a flat-
bottomed pointed boat and propelled by bamboo poles or paddled by sticks nailed on to
a round blob of wood.
The shipping included H.M.S. Espiegle, the Franz Ferdinand, and the Karadenis, the two
latter being large steamers captured by us and used as accommodation boats, each
taking a thousand men if necessary. Pending the arrival of our upstream transport I was
ordered with the other officers on to the Karadenis which lay in mid-stream. Some
wretched-looking Turkish prisoners were aft.
We little knew it at the time, but our few days on this ship or mosquito-hive were
destined to be our last in even moderate comfort. Henceforth we were to be playthings
of the God of War.
There was a strange silence about news on this front. Some thought our army was near
Azizie, over four hundred miles up river; others that we were just outside Baghdad. We
were chafing to get away to our units before we got malaria. A sudden chance with a
detachment of the 14th Hussars was offered to a subaltern nick-named "Fruit-salt,"
because "'e knows," and myself. We left on a paddle-boat called the P.5, a barge of
horses, Don Juan among them, on either side.
To get on the P.5 again from the horse-barges we hop over to the paddle-box and
clamber on deck. Our camp beds we stretched out forward, the men, arms, and maxims
arranged aft. We had a comfortable mess table set so that we could see upstream and
also a good deal of the left bank. The officers of this troop of the 14th Hussars on board
were all very young, very pleasant, and very keen. We sat and drank or smoked and
talked, and war seemed then very far away. Or we watched a wandering tribe of Arabs
trekking in the distance. The country was, of course, dead flat and except for a scrubby
grass there was nothing to intercept one's eye reaching to the horizon. The river winds a
lot and far away the mahela sails seemed to be making over land. One thought of the
Norfolk Broads. Somewhere in the early morning we passed the confluence of the
Euphrates and Tigris, and Ezra's tomb. (Maxim fire increasing: I must switch off here
now.) Later.—No harm occurred except the heavy sniping has knocked out some poor
horses and wounded a syce and spoiled some more palms. I continue.
There was also on board an excellent engineer, full of "sunny retrospect." He could talk or
listen, which is like unto a horse that can gallop and walk. As he explained on inquiry, he
had never married, nor had he ever avoided marriage. Altogether he was a delightful
fellow for company.
We passed the marshes of Kurna of an earlier engagement in this campaign, where our
army had dislodged the Turk with guns mounted on planks between bellums, and whole
brigades punted and poled their way up. "Forward the light bellums!" "Charge!" were the
orders the commanding officers yelled on that day. Britain was always irresistible on the
water! The whole affair is now called "Regatta week."
We also passed where the Garden of Eden was said to have been. As a matter of fact,
the whole of this country, like the plains of India, is delta formation. The two rivers must
have been higher up and consequently Eden also. The latter fact rather knocks out the
little remaining romance about the place. Sir William Wilcocks puts the site at Hit, above
Baghdad, and says that even going no further back than the tertiary epoch would place
the delta there.
We reached Amara on the fourth day. It is a village of some considerable size pleasantly
lining both banks of a beautiful straight reach in the Tigris. In the broad, clear water one
sees reflected the languid droop of the eternal date palm, the great triangular sails of the
mahela, the regular contour of the Bridge of Boats. It is not unpicturesque. Here, some
months ago, a delightful coup was effected by the commander of H.M.S. Shaitan and
about a dozen men. These were the first in the pursuit from Kurna, and the others not
having arrived, determined on a bold policy, as at any moment the Arabs might have
joined forces with the Turk and rendered the taking of Kurna quite difficult. These few
men went ashore and, entering the barracks containing some several hundreds of men,
demanded their surrender and the immediate handing over of the town. The prestige of
the British Navy or the eloquent silence of the gunboat's guns did the rest. And so by this
remarkable bluff Amara fell without bloodshed, and was held although reinforcements did
not arrive until the next day.
Above Amara the country is still perfectly flat, but appears less marshy in winter than
lower down. Here a thicker ground scrub teems with black partridge and quail, some of
which we shot from the boat. A sub. in the Hussars, named Pope, brought off a
wonderful revolver shot into a jackal's ribs from the boat: we practised revolver shooting
hard.
Arabs clustered in tiny tribes every few miles along the river. The men, some of whom
are quite naked, I thought remarkable for great size of limb and muscular development.
They would sometimes accompany the boat for miles, doing their weird undulating
dance, hopping round first on one foot and then on the other. They welcome us when we
win and torture and loot our wounded when they get a chance. Here and there Jewish
women and old men ladle water by a swinging scoop into a drain for their irrigation. The
dress and general customs continually recall one's school days' pictures of Biblical times.
Two or three days later we got to Kut-el-Amara (pronounce Kut like foot), passing the
battlefield of Essin en route. It was at Essin where Townshend, by leaving his tents on
one bank of the river and crossing in the night, deceived the Turk into fancied security,
and the next day flung him neck and crop out of a position of great strength.
Here the Hussars took my horse on by the desert and I left in the Shirin for Azizie. At Kut
we had heard that Baghdad would fall that evening, and later that night reverse news
that we had had very heavy casualties. The hospitals were removed from the barges, and
reinforcements' kit of the West Kents and Hussars was left with us instead. "Fruit-salt"
and I messed with the West Kents, awfully good fellows, one a youngster just from Clare
College. The remaining West Kents marched, escorted by the 14th Hussars, and met us
at some point on the river each day. One night we were stranded ashore and in awful
rain. The tatti (rush) roof let most of the water through, and what it did not let through,
collected in gutters that every now and then deluged over us. My sleeping bag became a
tank. Suddenly came the dawn and we awoke to a steaming-hot sunny world.
A heavily-armed launch protected with boosa bales passed us. Their answer
—"Headquarters"—was our first intimation of the seriousness of the position of our army.
Two days after this, and about eight or nine since leaving Basra, we got to Azizie, a mere
bend in the river with a few huts. There were many horses watering and several hundred
Turkish prisoners on the bank. On every side we saw evidence of a hurried march. It was
all hustle and haste. We went ashore, our last orders being to leave for Salaiman Pak,
some thirty miles up river and fifteen from Baghdad. But once ashore, we saw from the
ungroomed condition of the horses, the dust-covered harnesses and wagons, the
exhausted men, many asleep in their roughly arranged lines, that our army after
tremendous exertions had just arrived and halted. The C.R.A.'s flag hung over a mud hut.
He explained that we had fought a big action at Ctesiphon where the Turks were heavily
entrenched, that we had turned them out, and got into their second line when the enemy
had retired to the Diala river, his third line. But the action, which was tactically a brilliant
success, had cost us a third of our force. The word came that two Turkish divisions were
reinforcing them, so we retired in the night. It seems that for a time both armies were in
retreat, but the Turks, on hearing of our withdrawal, gave chase. They were, however,
doubly respectful in having suffered casualties twice our own, and they held off some few
miles from Azizie.
CHAPTER II
WITH THE SIXTH DIVISION AFTER CTESIPHON
—THE RETREAT
AND ACTION AT UM-AL-TABUL
"Fruit-salt" and I joined our batteries, mine being the 76th R.F.A. All the force bore marks
of a great struggle, great losses, keen hardship. The weary army was resting. That was
well. Some kindly god that knew what still awaited them smiled on them, and they slept.
Here at last, I thought, is the famous army of General Townshend, the fighting Sixth
Division, that had overcome difficulties that few other armies had been called on to do,
that had endured hardships of heat and thirst and pestilence in the cauldron of Asia,
marched hundreds of miles with improvised transit, and moved from victory to victory
until Ctesiphon. General Townshend's was the most loyal of armies in adversity. They
knew that against his counsel he had been ordered to risk the action, where even if
doubly victorious their tiny numbers would have been insufficient to hold Baghdad. There
was also the haunting dream of that lonely river, our sole communication, winding
through a hostile country five hundred miles to Basra. Reinforcements there were none at
all in the country, which was a fortnight's distance from India and more from Egypt.
Anyway, this was the army of which I, a subaltern in the 76th Battery, Royal Field
Artillery, was now privileged to consider myself a member.
Rapid plans were in execution to strengthen Azizie, as the Turks might try a night attack.
The troops had only arrived that morning, but by nightfall we had thrown up quite a bit
of cover with gun pits and light breastwork for the infantry. Perfect order reigned over the
customary military procedure. No Turks were in sight. Every man of the fatigued army
worked as happens on manœuvres. It was only the battered condition of the gun
carriages, the gaping wounds in the diminished teams of horses and that quiet "balanced
up" look in the eyes of every Tommy that told of a reality more grim. On the flat mud
desert, with no kind asset of nature to assist them, the nearest reinforcements hundreds
of miles away, but with its own transport and some limited supplies, this lonely British
army formed its semi-circle on the river. So it faced this unkind plain, its destiny in its
hands.
An atrociously bad place to defend is Azizie, merely a meagre bend in the river, a floody
or dusty desert with a few mud-walled buildings on the Tigris edge. Much of our baggage
had to be left on a barge and the rest was taken from the Shirin into the R.A. shed. The
first was ultimately sunk and the latter burned. None of it I have ever seen since—
saddlery, coats, uniforms, camp equipment—all went.
All the officers of the 76th Battery had been wounded except one—Devereux, who had
been with me at Hyderabad, and Captain Carlyle of the 63rd Battery was in command.
I slept by the gun pits. Beyond the line of infantry that separated us from the Turk, some
jackals howled in ghoulish song. They had followed on the flank of our army and waited
expectant, for they too had visited the field of Ctesiphon! Their devilish symphony grew
fainter, and I slept. Now and then I was awakened by sniping.
The next day, November 29th, we got matters in order, rearranged teams and sections to
replace casualties, and overhauled. We continued our vigilance. There was much to be
done and, as might be expected after the recent ordeal, many were nerve-ragged and
irritable, but all were light-hearted. We expected to move that evening, but did not. I
slept on the perimeter by the guns again, and awoke to find my servant packing up.
Orders to stand by to move in an hour set me going at once. After an early breakfast I
had to go and relieve another artillery officer on the observation post, which was merely
a few sandbags on the roof of a house, covered with rushes to keep off the sun. At 11
a.m. the greater part of the force had got on the road. Southward ho! The Staff left
about 11.30. General Smith, C.R.A., asked me my orders, which were to wait there until
sent for, but which should have included "unless the Staff leaves first," as I was left
without any guard and surrounded by hostile Arabs. I thought it better to wait a little and
give a last attention to the column I had seen emerging from the northward clumps of
trees where the enemy was waiting. I am glad I did so, for I was afforded the privilege of
witnessing a spectacle at once unique and magnificent.
Below me the river lay blue in the morning sun between the black winding banks, and
dark Arab forms dotted its shores. Somewhere ahead upstream was Baghdad. Distant
horsemen scoured the plain. Some cavalry of ours lay hidden in an old smashed serai just
north of the village. Moving south-eastward rose the dust of the main Turkish advance,
mounting in clouds higher and higher. The quicker dust marked their cavalry, and here
and there in dense column formation their wheeled traffic came on. To the southward in
perfect order, and moving at an even pace, was our own army in retreat. The khaki
column reached away to the horizon of dust, and the swarthy visages of our Indian
troops doing rearguard in extended order, and the gleam from the accoutrements of the
14th Hussars were visible without field glasses. The village itself that was burning in a
dozen places now broke into one great conflagration, and simultaneously some Arab
bullets cut their way unmistakably near. I decided to rejoin my battery that was waiting
half a mile off, as it was selected for rear guard. Fortunately, before climbing down the
observation post I took the precaution to peer over the edge at the doorway. I saw about
a dozen gigantic Arabs, one or two with knives, lounging round the exit, evidently
counting on my uniform and equipment after they had despatched me. So I talked and
answered for a minute, and shouted an order for them to think I was not alone. Then I
ducked out the other side and jumped the back wall. I met my orderly coming with my
horse. The Arabs around the doorway yelled in disappointment as we both galloped off. I
brought the battery into action just south of the town, but we did not open fire. Then the
C.O. signalled "Retire." It was "Rear limber up, walk march, trot, canter," then a mile
farther on "Halt! Action rear," and so on. A delightful battery, men and horses knew their
job perfectly and foresaw the order every time.
We did about fifteen miles, and halted by the river side at Um-al-Tabul, a mere locality
without a building. I had scarcely seen that the horses were fixed up and fed, when an
order came that General Smith, B.G.R.A., C.R.A., wanted me as orderly officer. I was to
report immediately. An orderly officer, I was told at once, is responsible for the health and
well being of his general, and has many details to attend to. In action there are countless
orders to deliver and reports to make. The Brigade Major, mistaken for General Smith,
had unfortunately been knifed by an Arab while asleep one night on a boat, so the Staff
Captain and I were the only Staff. We shared a dug-out, or rather hole, eighteen inches
deep and of course uncovered. Reinforced with some bread, meat, and whisky, I scooped
a pillow place for the General's head, and in the darkness tried to collect some little of my
kit, which, however, got lost in the subsequent events of the night. I completed
arrangements for the morning and then slept.
General Townshend's jugga was next ours. We were on the river bank. Behind us lay
H.M.S. Firefly and other boats and barges.
Presently from out of the darkness shells began to fall around us. We were right in the
line of fire. It appeared that they were shelling the Firefly. One shell pitched just short of
us and wounded the syces, another burst exactly over us, but too high for the spread to
reach us. Then a brisk rifle fire commenced and here and there we heard a suppressed
groan. These were my first real moments under fire. The darkness and scantiness of
cover made it seem worse, but I was not half so frightened as I thought I should be, and
after some minutes, when it was necessary for me to deliver some messages, I gave
myself up to Fate with a light heart and blundered in the darkness on my several errands.
That was infinitely better than lying pinched up in the inadequate hole watching the dried
grass being cut by bullets a foot above one's head. It is a great thing to be occupied in
times like this. In passing through my battery I heard that two drivers of my section had
been killed. On returning to the dug-out I saw the Staff Captain ferociously digging with a
mess-tin. I did the same for the General's side with his own shaving mug,—which I bent,
to his disgust—and then got on to my own. About midnight the rifle fire thickened. Now
of all entirely horrid things under these conditions you have first and foremost the bullet.
It is a thing conceived by Satan for the dispatch of his outsiders and unbeloved. Invisible
it comes from anywhere. You hear it and know you are safe. Or you feel it and know
you're hit. Since then I have often been under rifle fire, but that night the devilry of the
bullets was strange. At 3 a.m. General Townshend said he would attack in two columns
unless the fire ceased. I delivered orders connected therewith, but the fire slackened. I
slept, and awoke before the dawn, and bustled around after our headquarters' transport,
as we expected an immediate move. I also got breakfast ready. This was December 1st.
At 8 a.m. the transport began to move. At 8.30 it had got fairly on its way. At nine I was
standing by the Headquarters transport ready to move off, when the fog cleared as
suddenly as the shadows lift when the moon comes from behind a cloud. Before us,
some eighteen hundred to two thousand yards off, on the higher ground, we saw a host
of tents. Even as we looked the guns of the Field Brigade on the outer perimeter were
limbering up. But within two minutes they were down again in action, and the first shell
sang out the delight of the gunner at the prospect of so gorgeous a target. For one
minute it was splendid. The spirits of the incarnated field guns ripped their music across
the morning sky and over the dewy earth in quick and lightning song. The next his shells
came back. I relished much less the white puffs up in the air near us, each burst a better
one. But almost immediately I found myself taking a professional interest in the faulty
fuses of the Turk. Our own shells were cutting great gaps in the tents and in the columns
of panic stricken fleeing Turks. I saw our bursts in excellent timing, quite low. But their
fire also thickened, and converged on the mass of troops not yet under way, and also on
our shipping, which was caught at a wholesale disadvantage. Still, a great mass of
transport stuff and ammunition was on the move.
At last it was all off, and only the perimeter of our camp remained, the four field batteries
and the single line of infantry close beyond them. Standing in the centre of the shell-
strewn ground was General Townshend and his Staff. I stood for a while between him
and General Smith, from time to time galloping to the several batteries with orders or
inquiries about ammunition. Away to our right between the Turkish advance and our
own, the 14th Hussars were very busy, now covering behind the knolls and now
swooping upon the enemy, who, however, gave them no chance of getting in at close
quarters. S Battery, R.H.A., which worked with them, was pouring shell after shell into
the teeth of the Turkish force.
One could not but feel the keenest admiration for General Townshend, so steady,
collected and determined in action, so kind, quick and confident. There, totally indifferent
to the shell fire, he stood watching the issue, receiving reports from the various orderly
officers and giving every attention to the progress of the transport. Some shells pitched
just over us, one, not fifteen yards away, killing a horse and wounding some drivers. The
restlessness of the horses, some stamping their feet, others tossing their heads,
betokened their objection to standing still at such a time. It really is the most difficult
thing to do. One's mind was left too free to prophesy where the next shell would fall.
More than once I caught a humorous smile on the General's face as some shell just
missed us.
Suddenly, to the southward, a thick dust wall appeared. The Turks had got round, and
our transport, uncertain about advancing, was held up. For ten minutes it seemed that
the issue might become general, but our gunners, and especially S Battery, kept up such
a rate of fire that the Turks were paralysed. The officer commanding this battery, acting
on local knowledge, remained in action after the order to retire had reached him, and by
so doing contributed greatly to the success of the day.
About nine o'clock General Melliss' Brigade, which had preceded us from Azizie by several
miles and which had been sent for during the night, arrived on the scene of action,
appearing from the south-eastern quarter. That effectively threw back the Turkish attack.
Then, as we gradually gave way, the tide of action moved very slowly southwards. The
General motioned us to take cover in a ditch. Our horses we had sent on. It was about
this time that H.M.S. Firefly was hit in her boiler and captured by the Turks. Several
barges filled with wounded and stores had to be abandoned.
First one battery limbered up and fell into action half a mile to the rear, then another, and
so on. Several times I took orders over the intervening ground that was now being
plastered with shells bursting either too high or on graze. Don Juan behaved excellently.
He shied once violently when a shell burst just behind us, and again as he took off to
jump a nullah at the bottom of which a medical officer I knew, Major Walker, was
attending to a wounded man. For the rest he went in his best hunting style over ditches
and holes and took not the slightest notice of the noise or bursts. I often give him an
extra handful of hay when I recall December 1st.
The transport was now some miles on its way and the mule-drivers were doing their
utmost. Then the Staff mounted and I was sent to see the whereabouts of the
ammunition barge, as the guns, especially S Battery, were running short. Luckily, I
discovered where it had got stuck. In feverish haste we replenished the carts ourselves,
General Smith, the Staff Captain and I, our telephonists and horseholders, all loading the
first few carts at the run. In less than five minutes the cute little Jaipur ponies and mules
had galloped to their guns. The batteries remained in action as long as possible without
jeopardizing their safety, and each covered the retirement of the other. This went on for
hours. We, the Staff, walked our horses half a mile, dismounted and waited. Our pace
was the pace of the slowest fighting unit, i.e. a walk. Gradually we out-distanced the
enemy, the Cavalry Brigade keeping him back. Once they caught us up and sent shells
wildly over our heads. The Turks don't know enough of the science of gunnery. If their
fuses had been more correct our casualties could not have failed to be very heavy. As it
was they were extraordinarily small considering the huge losses we inflicted on them.
It was a most wonderful engagement, and General Townshend watched its every phase
with great satisfaction. An exclamation of delight broke from him as he directed our
attention to a charge of the 14th Hussars. Over the brown of the desert a mass of
glittering and swiftly-moving steel bore down upon the line of Turks, which broke and
bolted. Then the 14th came back.
My next job was to gather spare men and protect the General's flank from Arab snipers.
Once or twice a bullet hit the ground at my feet. These Arabs use a tremendous thing,
almost as big as an elephant bullet.
At four o'clock I was ordered to ride ahead of the column to find a watering place, which
I did; but the Turks still pressed in our rear, and we had to shove on without watering. I
managed to water Don Juan, however, and gave him three of my six biscuits. The
General had one and Garnett and I had half each. We pushed on, the horses showing
signs of fatigue. At 6 p.m. it was dreadfully cold, and dark as Tophet. The order of the
column had now been changed, the Field Artillery leading. The B.G.R.A. (General Smith),
the Staff Captain, and I, rode at the head of the Division. The orders were seventy paces
to the minute with compass directing. We took this in turns of half-hours. The strain was
very severe. We had had no food except a sandwich for breakfast for twenty-four hours—
violent exercise under exhausting conditions. The ten hours in the saddle had made me
stiff, which was to be expected after the slack life of a month on board. We lost our way
again and again as we got deeper into the dense black night. Road there was none, only
a few hoof marks on the maidan. Tracks that went comfortably for a mile suddenly
proved false, and then we had to hunt for the road. We all grew more irritable as we
grew more tired, and I got an awful wigging about every two minutes. It's no joke
leading an army on a pitch black night and endeavouring to keep to a road that doesn't
exist, especially when thousands of Turks are in hot pursuit a mile or two behind the tail
of the column.
"Is this the road?" asks one.
"I don't believe it is."
"I think he's wrong. He's taking that fire for the star."
"He must be wrong. That fire has been directly ahead for hours and now it's to the left."
This was the eternal conversation behind as one tried to count the seventy and answer
inquiries as to the magnetic bearing at the same time. With such preoccupations one
could not very well suggest that the nearer one got to the fire, the more to a flank it
must appear unless we were to walk on the top of it.
Then arguments would follow as to whether such a mark were really a hoof-mark or
wheel track. The Staff Captain lost his way several times running, and I confess my heart
rejoiced thereat. But we soon passed from levity that was born of nervous exhaustion, to
silence, grim and impenetrable. I shall never forget that night. The want of sleep was
maddening. Since then I have gone without sleep for days together, except for an hour or
so once or twice. Then it came on one unprepared. We stumbled on. I thought of the
army behind us, men as tired and hungry as I was, the army that had conquered
Mesopotamia, all bravely staggering onwards in the darkness; heroes of Ctesiphon, full of
painful memories of lost pals somewhere behind, marching, marching, marching to the
pace we set, and following the indication of my prismatic compass.
Some of the Staff suggested a halt. But our Napoleonic general drove us on. Again, as we
learned subsequently, he saved us. That night the Turkish army, reinforced, was trying to
outmarch us.
We pressed on and on. Don Juan followed with my orderly. It was awfully cold, but I
preferred the cold to the weight of my coat. I slung it over Don Juan. The poor brute
shivered from cold and hunger every halt. The march became a nightmare. With frequent
drinks of water I managed to keep on. At eleven o'clock we were almost into the halting-
place—Monkey Village by name—when the whole column, which was some five miles
long, was compelled to halt owing to a block. The ground was very uneven and scored
with nullahs, and had only the one narrow track leading to the village. Across this track
the Cavalry Brigade, which had gone on ahead of us as advance guard, had bivouacked.
The block took about an hour and a half to rectify.
At last we got to some open ground past the village. How cold it was! We bivouacked on
sandy soil. I scooped a dug-out for the General, got a few handfuls of hay for Don Juan,
and a whisky and water for myself. General Smith got some sort of a meagre meal with
me from a tin of jam, a little bully and a biscuit. We kept half for the morning. All our
delightful yak-dans of stores, hams, fowls, biscuits, jam, tea and coffee were miles away
with the transport, and I inquired a hundred times that night before turning in, without
result. Those of our blankets which were not lost in the scurry of the morning fight, were
there also with the transport. So in the bitter cold wind, feet numbed and teeth
chattering, I scraped a hole for my arm and a sand pillow for my head, and shoving my
topee over my ears to drown the nervy rip-rip of the Arab snipers, I slept. It was not for
many minutes. The cold was too intense, without a coat. Then I had to ride to General
Townshend for orders several times. Poor Don Juan was awfully done, but very game.
There was a tiny stone bridge over a deep nullah near the village. Each time I was held
up there. The scene was of the wildest confusion. Camels were being thrashed across,
kicking mules hauled across, troops trying to cross at the same time. Several overturned
vehicles complicated matters. The whole force had to go over that tiny bridge. After all
had crossed the sappers blew it up.
I was quite an important person that night, what with orders and reports. The Blosse
Lynch, with Major Henley aboard and also plenty of food, if I had known, was alongside.
Captain Garnett was quite done up with continuous fatigue, although he had not ridden
very much. We couldn't sleep for the cold, so we talked and hoped to get to Kut the next
morning. That day, December 1st, he informed me, was his birthday. There could be
many worse ways of passing one's birthday than in participating in the engagement we
had fought that day. We felt a deep debt of gratitude due to our General for bringing us
out of such a tight corner so brilliantly. At one moment the whole force was imperilled.
The next our guns smashed lanes of casualties through the Turkish troops. I was assured
by senior officers of much service that I had witnessed one of the most brilliant episodes
possible in war, where perfect judgment and first-rate discipline alone enabled us to
smash the sting of the pursuit and to continue a retreat exactly as it is done at
manœuvres.
At 4 a.m. we were away again. We walked half a mile, then rested. After an hour or two
of this the pace got slower and troops began to fall out and sit down. More than one
dusky warrior unconsciously depicted the Dying Gladiator. We spoke kind words to them
and where possible gave them a lift. Many mules were shot as their strength gave out. I
ate my biscuit and gave Don a pocketful of hay I had kept for him. He rubbed his nose
on my cheek and wished he were back in his excellent stable at Hyderabad.
Once this day my General's horse nearly unseated him as we crossed a nullah where a
camel was lying stretched out.
"Come on," he shouted to me. "It's dead, and won't bite."
Don hates camels, and was rearing up in fine style. Therein he showed judgment more
correct than did the General, for, in answer to my spur, he had no sooner drawn level
with the beast than the "dead" camel swung its long snaky neck round upon us and
opened eyes and mouth simultaneously. Don jumped the bank and the whole staff of
telephonists and landed almost on top of General Smith, whose horse objected
considerably. I laughed until the general restrained my humour.
The horses were awfully done, and in the batteries could just move the guns at the
slowest walk. We did about a mile an hour. About 3 p.m. General Townshend shouted to
General Smith that one of our batteries was shelling our own transport which appeared
round the head of the river, miles ahead. My general apparently forgot me, and went off
on his old charger. The transport could not have been saved by the time he got up to the
guns. I put Don at a ditch and, racing up a knoll close by, blew on my long sounding
whistle "cease fire," and held up my hand. The battery commander saw it, and when I
galloped up I apologized for interrupting his shooting, and explained. They had bracketed
the transport and a shot was in the breech of the gun, so my whistle had just got them in
time. A splendid fellow is the commander of that battery, Major Broke-Smith, an excellent
soldier and cheerful friend. Unperturbed, he said, "Well, if I'm to shell all Arab bodies,
and the river will wind so——" And when I got back General Townshend thanked me, at
which I was much elated.
In the afternoon we halted for two and a half hours to enable the straggling crowds to
catch up. I rode miles trying to find our transport cart with the stores, but it had got
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