Postdoc Rachel Hatcher: 'The nation-building project requires a very simple version of history.'
Now, as an FRQNT (Fonds de recherche Nature et Technologies) postdoctoral fellow at Concordia, Hatcher wants to uncover details that challenge the 12-year conflict’s official narrative.
“There’s always an institutional history,” Hatcher says. “But what we learn in school can silence so many important voices.”
Her new project aims to expand on local accounts of the war by taking a deeper look at El Salvador’s many regional monuments.
Are truth commissions enough?
“One way to get to the whispers of the local experience is to understand a monument’s role in a community,” Hatcher argues.
“I’ll be examining whether their accounts of what happened in these little towns question or support the official version of history.”
One of the broader questions Hatcher intends to address is the need for truth commissions to create a unitary version of the past. The Commission on the Truth for El Salvador was released in 1993, but she maintains that it offers a very binary version of the war, excluding many important details.
“The point of creating that overarching, simple narrative has to do with the nation-building project,” Hatcher says.
“It requires a very simple version of history — one that can’t afford much complexity or nuance.”
‘Parallels’ between El Salvador and Canada
Of course, sometimes even official accounts of state-sanctioned commissions are overlooked.
When Hatcher explains her research to Canadians outside of her field of study, she usually likens it to the public acknowledgement of the trauma of Canada’s residential school system.
She found this comparison resonated during her time at the University of Saskatchewan, but that many Quebecers seem unaware of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
“There are parallels between individuals in El Salvador and those here,” she observes, adding that many Salvadorans are just trying to get on with their lives and put food on the table.
“In Canada, the residential schools affected a very particular population, and unless you took a class about Indigenous Canada or know an Indigenous person, you can just go about your life without even knowing the commission happened.”
The importance of local perspectives
Before pursuing the FRQNT fellowship, Hatcher stumbled across the work of Erica Lehrer, associate professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Science. A Canada Research Chair in Museum and Heritage Studies, Lehrer is also the director of the Curating and Public Scholarship Lab at Concordia.
“A lot of Erica’s research in public histories of the past, museums, monuments and memorials complements my own interests,” she says.
Lehrer is pleased to host Hatcher, whose work she believes will enrich the intellectual community surrounding her Centre for Ethnographic Research and Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence.
“The question of how to do ‘symbolic’ justice, or make redress in the form of monuments or memorial museums, is a core challenge in the wake of post-violence regime change or truth commissions,” Lehrer explains.
“There’s not a lot of ethnographic research that takes the time to understand how local communities are responding. Rachel’s doing unique work.”
Learn more about postdoctoral research at Concordia.
