Toxic Memories? The DINCOTE Museum in Lima, Peru

Memory museums exist as markers in the public domain; meanings and practices are created around them and assigned uses and silences. The Museum of the National Directorate against Terrorism in Peru displays artworks and archives seized from members of the Shining Path Communist Party of Peru and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement and can be visited only with a special permit. The memories it contains are considered "toxic" and are exhibited in a private instead of a public space. This space cannot be understood as a "museum of conscience" or a "site of memory." Victims are not dignified there, and no symbolic reparations are made. It houses memories in the form of artwork, books, and memorabilia of those who because of their participation in the armed groups during the conflict have been denied the status of victims as defined in the country's reparations program.