%0 Journal Article
%T The monument to the children of Villatina: commemorating innocent child victims in the context of lethally stigmatized youth in Colombia
%A Ana Mar¨ªa Reyes
%J Visual Communication
%@ 1741-3214
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1470357219832798
%X This article examines the monument for the children of Villatina (2004, Medell¨ªn, Colombia) that resulted from the Masacre Villatina v. Colombia Friendly Agreement put forward by the Grupo Interdisciplinario de Derechos Humanos (GIDH) to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). In 1992, the Colombian police murdered eight youths ranging in age from 8 to 22 years in the Villatina neighborhood of Medell¨ªn. After long and difficult negotiations, the GIDH and IACHR brokered a Friendly Agreement (2002) between the victims¡¯ families and the government of Colombia. As a part of the reparations program, the Colombian State committed to installing a commemorative monument in a public park in downtown Medell¨ªn. While the monument was designed to recognize the dignity and honor of the youthful victims, the author argues that its emphasis on innocence tacitly endorsed the extermination of non-innocent children and young men caught in the vortex of war. Following Judith Butler¡¯s arguments regarding ¡®grievable¡¯ lives in Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2004) and the condition of the human, the author contends that both the process of the Friendly Agreement negotiations and the resulting monument rehearse a hierarchy of humanity that casts some lives, but not all, as grievable
%K Inter-American Human Rights System
%K Medell¨ªn
%K Colombia
%K monument
%K stigmatized youth
%K symbolic reparations
%K Villatina massacre
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1470357219832798