Historians Podcasting for Peacebuilding in the Aftermath of the Colombian 2016 Peace Accords

This paper addresses the challenges of making historical knowledge and skills relevant for the transition towards more just societies in the aftermath of conflict. Based on the experience of a collaborative and multidisciplinary project in Colombia called “Historias para lo que viene,” I explore the crucial role that History plays in transitional justice. Building on wider definitions of transitional justice that invite us to think of justice beyond its criminal, legal and political dimension, the objective of “Historias para lo que viene” is to enrich public understanding of the historical causes of war as a necessary element of peacebuilding efforts in the aftermath of the 2016 signing of the peace accords with the FARC guerrillas. While government agencies like the National Center for Historical Memory have done significant memory work, the Center has collected victims’ narratives mostly with the purpose of building a documented record of past human rights violations. The Center has promoted the right to truth, yet in public debate the conflict remains associated with victims and perpetrators and there is little awareness of the historical and structural causes of violence of which all members of society are part. “Historias para lo que viene” seeks to respond to this challenge by producing historically deep and aesthetically rich stories for radio through a collaboration of historians, designers, artists, media-makers, and popular communicators. These stories weave concrete individual experiences and historical context of the structural causes of the conflict together. My paper will discuss some of the major challenges and tensions we have encountered in applying historical knowledge to peacebuilding efforts. How can we rigorously articulate history as a scholarly enterprise and history as a moral endeavor? As historians who produce explanations about the past, what is our theory of change in making our knowledge relevant for the present?