Madres Terra: The mothers of Soacha in the photographic imaginary

Abstract

Based on the consideration of the murders of children by the Colombian military apparatus, this research aims to analyze the representations of the mothers of Soacha, in the photographic series Madres Terra, by Carlos Saavedra and Sebastián Ramírez, in order to understand their meaning effects. Those women are the mothers of so-called “false positives”: innocent young people executed by the Colombian army on the grounds that they were in the service of illegal armed groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The analysis has pointed to the fact that, in addition to being a space for denouncing state crimes and fighting for justice, the photo essay works as a symbolic place for the elaboration of the mothers' mourning, as well as a way of resistance/persistence of memory, that is, a way of remembering in order not to forget. The theoretical basis is constituted by the Discourse Analysis, which works in the middle between Language, Unconscious and History.