Stories about Past, Present and Future: Memory and Narrative between Refugee Pasts and Migrant Futures among Young People in Chiapas, Mexico

Abstract

This article explores processes of memory among diasporic children and grandchildren of Guatemalan refugees, by reflecting on a postmemorial theatre project in Southern Mexico. The theatrical performances enable me to analyse how young research participants perform their ‘postmemorial repertoire’ and how their performances are being evaluated by older residents. The encounters and clashes between eye-witness accounts and postmemorial mediation and imagination are both conflictive as well as productive. In a second step, the postmemorial processes are put in conversation with the ways young people participate actively in the creation of other types of memory, which are anticipatory and contain narratives around migration.