Revista UNINPAHU No 9

30 Pp 23 - 31. Nº 9, octubre de 2013
do with the place the building was purposely
constructed on; it faces the intersection of two
very close mountains, which for aboriginals
that first inhabited Bogotá represented the
encounter of the past and the future.
Seeing the visit as a tour of continuous
displacements and orientation movements
through different sites of the edifice and through
different epochs of the Colombian’s history, the
visit presented important confrontations with
students’ previous ideas about history and the
past. In terms of learning about social memory
and how collective memory works, the Archive
visit offered important clues to the Montessori
students’ former knowledge and understandings.
My interpretation is that students’ comments
reflect an interesting confrontation with
perceptions and images of the past that comes out
of unusual encounter with what they as students
do not see often: a place and the people who are
dedicated to work for the past and preservation
of memory.
Amanda 16 years old supports and complements
this idea:
“VISITA AL ARCHIVO GENERAL DE LA
NACION: Esta visita me pareció muy interesante
debido a todos los documentos que existen allí y como se
pudieron recuperar debido a las circunstancias de aseo,
humedad y que muchos de estos están muy deteriorados,
hojas y libros completamente destruidos. El solo hecho
de recuperar tanto patrimonio cultural es un avance
muy grande y también que este establecimiento tenga
un laboratorio de química para crear líquidos para
la reestructuración de todos aquellos documentos,
pero mas impresionante es que a todos estos libros los
protejan de cualquier otro microorganismo que quiera
vivir allí, pero gracias a los químicos que se le aplican
no es posible que ese organismo viva, y así se pueda
conservar por mucho más tiempo.” 19 (Amanda, 16
years old, Diary notes)
Reading Amanda’s notes, I recall as well that the
chemistry laboratory was introduced to us, as a
first aid area in the National Historical Archive.
I remember again our tour guide using the
metaphor of clinical emergencies with documents
that are sent out to the National Archive clinic.
He said that quite often they receive patients in
very critical condition and showed us through a
big glass window National Archive’s employees
dressed up with white coats manipulating papers
and chemicals. He remarked that the purpose
of the chemical process was to keep documents
of the past alive, to assure their existence in the
present, and to preserve them for the future. For
me, the important fact was that right there we
began to understand and learn how to preserve
the past and make it exist longer, or in other
words, how to prevent memory and history from
falling into oblivion and disappearance.
I believe these images and words touched and
left a significant effect on students’ knowledge,
awareness and attitudes towards history and the
past. These images of an archive-hospital where
documents come for repair and preservation
created a powerful environment, a learning
context for the understanding of memory and the
work done on memory: a pedagogical referent
that helps to understand why Amanda was so
impressed by liquids and chemical processes for
the “reestructuración de todos esos documentos” 20 and
the meaning of images linked with the life and
death of archival texts. To me, Amanda’s detailed
reflection on micro-organisms living in books, and
chemicals protecting documents from destruction
is another way to talk about the reconstruction of
the past. It is a powerful metaphor that evokes the
struggles against historical oblivion.
(19) “GENERAL NATIONAL ARCHIVE VISIT: This was a very interesting visit because of all those documents that exist
there and the way they were recovered taking into account hygiene conditions, humidity, and that many of them are
very much deteriorated, papers and books completely destroyed. Just the fact of recovering so much cultural heritage
is a huge progress and also that this Institution had a chemistry laboratory to create liquids for the reconstruction of all
those documents. But most impressive is that all these books are protected from any other micro organism that wants to
live in them, but thanks to the chemicals that are applied it is not possible for that organism to live, and then it is possible
to preserve them [documents] for longer time”.
(20) “reconstruction of all those documents”