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From the River to the Gravestone: Spaces of Disappearance and Re-Appearance of Unidentified Bodies in Colombian War

López Londoño, Luis Miguel
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7542-4121
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1651660899354589

Abstract Details

2022, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, Communication Studies (Communication).
During the Colombian armed conflict, the tossing of corpses and limbs into the rivers became a common strategy used by perpetrators of enforced disappearance to erase evidence. However, by the mid-1980s, the inhabitants of Puerto Berrío, a small town located on the Magdalena River banks, began to pull out the cadavers floating down the river. The villagers buried them in the town´s cemetery as NN (which means “no name,” from the Latin nomen nescio), decorated the graves, and began to build religious bonds based on reciprocity and gratitude. This dissertation analyzes the narratives by which people in Puerto Berrío have rhetorically constituted the Magdalena River as a space of disappearance and La Dolorosa Cemetery as a space of re-appearance. I coined the term rhetorics of adoption of unidentified bodies to account for this relationship and the meanings by which corpses were invested. Whereas the river emerged as a space used by perpetrators to carry out the disappearance of unwanted bodies, the cemetery became a space to resist this crime and reinscribe the nameless corpses into the social and religious life of the community as subjects of devotion. Unique to this study is the analysis of two complementary spaces existing and converging within the same ecology.
Roger Aden, Dr. (Committee Member)
Black Laura, Dr. (Advisor)
288 p.
Communication; Rhetoric
Spaces of disappearance and re-appearance; enforced disappearance; unidentified bodies; Colombian war; Magdalena River

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • López Londoño, L. M. (2022). From the River to the Gravestone: Spaces of Disappearance and Re-Appearance of Unidentified Bodies in Colombian War [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1651660899354589

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • López Londoño, Luis Miguel. From the River to the Gravestone: Spaces of Disappearance and Re-Appearance of Unidentified Bodies in Colombian War. 2022. Ohio University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1651660899354589.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • López Londoño, Luis Miguel. "From the River to the Gravestone: Spaces of Disappearance and Re-Appearance of Unidentified Bodies in Colombian War." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 2022. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1651660899354589

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.