Abstract
Over the past three decades, Latin America has experienced an unprecedented wave of reparations addressing the legacies of political violence under military regimes, the historical dispossession of Indigenous and Afro‑Latin populations, and harms caused by environmental degradation. In this talk, I will present an anthropological approach that I co‑developed with Piergiorgio DiGiminiani (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) and Helene Risør (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile & Copenhague University) (2026) to examine the diverse effects of these reparation processes. We argue that reparations compel societies to confront uncomfortable pasts and, in doing so, create conditions for imagining multiple and contested futures. By representing the experiences and aspirations of those affected by political violence, environmental harm, or colonial dispossession, reparations are shaped by conflicting visions of what lies ahead, (mis)translations of harm, and emerging forms of (un)belonging both within and beyond the nation‑state. These processes simultaneously reinforce and challenge state authority, particularly regarding the promise of meaningful repair. To illustrate these arguments, I will draw more specifically on my own field research in Guatemala, where I have examined Indigenous claims for reparations related to damages caused by mining activities.
Speaker
Karine Vanthuyne is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Ottawa. Her research has focused on Indigenous participation in Canada and Guatemala in so-called ‘transitional justice’ projects, mining development and calls for the decolonization of universities. She authored Le présent d’un passé de violences: mémoires et identités autochtones dans le Guatemala de l’après-génocide (2014, Presses de l’Université Laval), and co-edited The Power of Testimony: Residential Schools and Reconciliation (2017, UBC Press) and The Future of Reparations in Latin America: Imagination, translation and belonging (2026, Rutgers).
Details
Date : Thursday, 21 May 2026
Time : 1pm CET
Location: Join us in the Common Room (B5.12) of the Anthropology Department at UvA REC (B/C building, 5th floor) or online via MS Teams.
Registration: To attend the lecture, please register via this link.
Online attendance: MS Teams link coming soon.
The REPAIR lectures
The REPAIR lectures are an interdisciplinary lecture series on contemporary reparations demands and policies around the globe. They are given by leading reparations experts and investigate how reparations claims and policies come about, how they play out from a political, economic and moral perspective, and what they may teach us about politics and economics today. The lectures are hosted by the REPAIR project, based at the Anthropology Department of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). They are co-sponsored by the UvA’s Amsterdam Centre for Conflict Studies (ACCS).