Communicative Memory

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 5 explores how transnational families remember together across borders. The chapter situates this communicative practice within the context of memory work in postwar El Salvador, where long-standing institutional silencing makes remembering a deeply political act. Inspired by local theories of memory in struggles for memoria histórica (historical memory) and in the rituals of Día de los Difuntos (Day of the Dead) celebrations, remembering is understood as a collective form of care that stitches together social relations. By remembering together, transnational families forge new ways of living-together at-a-distance by building connections from past to present. They thereby resist dominant discourses that depict migration as inevitably rupturing family ties, refusing the imaginaries imposed upon them, and instead insisting on their continued togetherness despite long-term separation.