Kirsten Weld describes the events that occurred in Guatemala after the war, where documents were found and released showing that the government had only released data that backed up their beliefs, and shunned any evidence that showed their cruel and naive treatment of its citizens. Weld shows that through a shift in the way archives were treated and maintained, the people of Guatemala were able to show their side of the historical events, and they were able to keep their story and memories alive through expressing their own interpretations of the events and making sure that people had access to multiple different narratives. “Memory is less a filing cabinet that we open to examine a pre-selected file (my childhood, the war) than a book we are waiting and editing.” (Weld, 48) Although the people of this nation had suffered a horrific loss, they pushed for people to fight for different ideas and not to just follow the thoughts of people in higher positions that were being dictated to them.
While reading this, I thought back to Trouillot’s article where he argues that the past is a particular “bundle of silences”. History is made up of select pieces of information that people wish to remember, and the narratives are created through the lenses in which one wants to perceive a particular event. We must be careful not to shun people for expressing their opinions on something, and instead embrace the different points of view and challenge the existing order of a historical event and create a more realistic depiction of what happened.