1 See Ministerio de Cultura, Luchando contra el olvido: Investigación sobre la dramaturgia del conflicto (Bogotá: Ministerio de Cultura, 2012), at www.mincultura.gov.co/areas/artes/grupos/teatro-y-circo/documentos/Documents/Luchando%20contra%20el%20olvido.pdf (accessed 14 March 2022).

2 María Victoria Uribe Alarcón and Pilar Riaño, ‘Construyendo memoria en medio del conflicto: el Grupo de Memoria Histórica de Colombia’, Revista de Estudios Colombianos, 50 (July–December 2017), pp. 9–23. See also the GMH's report, Grupo de Memoria Histórica, Trujillo: una tragedia que no cesa (Bogotá: Comisión Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación, 2008).

3 Paramilitary groups are right-wing militias that were founded as a way to counter guerilla violence. In 2005, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, then the president, made a demobilization agreement with the unified paramilitary forces, AUC. This is the background of the story of Labio de liebre, which I explore in this paper.

4 Hutchison, Yvette, South African Performance and Archives of Memory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013)Google Scholar. Zapata, Miguel Rubio, El cuerpo ausente (performance política) (Lima: DIDI de Arteta, 2008)Google Scholar.

5 Cultura, Ministerio de, Luchando contra el olvido: Investigación sobre la dramaturgia del conflicto (Bogotá: Ministerio de Cultura, 2012)Google Scholar.

6 The use of ghosts onstage is not exclusive of the Colombian context. Another remarkable case is that of the Yuyachkani group in Peru. When the Truth Commission was established (2001), the group offered to accompany them in their sessions with what they called bienvenidas (‘welcomes’). In these welcoming sessions, Yuyachkani staged plays (mostly three: Antígona, Rosa Cuchillos and Adiós Ayacucho) that were created or adapted in reaction to the stories and testimonies that were being told in these sessions. Two of these plays (Rosa Cuchillos and Adiós Ayacucho) feature ghosts as their main and only characters: they come back from the realm of the dead to make either a claim of justice (Alfonso Cánepa in Adiós Ayacucho) or a claim of truth (Rosa Cuchillos) about what happened to their loved ones. Miguel Rubio, director of Yuyachkani, narrates this process in Rubio, El cuerpo ausente.

7 For more on the involvement of government forces in the conflict see the latest reports of the Comisión de la Verdad, available at www.comisiondelaverdad.co (accessed 10 July 2022).

8 In addition to having been present at two consecutive editions of the Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá, in March 2012, President Juan Manuel Santos posted a video on his official blog, inviting the public to attend the play.

9 This claim of the ghosts of the disappeared to know where their bodies are is also a common trope in this kind of story; it is also the case of Yuyachkani's Adiós Ayacucho where the protagonist walks from Ayacucho to Lima demanding that the missing parts of his body (he was dismembered and thrown into a mass grave) be given back to him.

10 The speech reveals Castello's relation to Salvatore Mancuso, paramilitary leader. Fragments of his speech are played on the radio and recited by Castello and the Sosa family in unison. This speech is famous enough that most members of the audience will recognize it, even if they cannot point specifically at who gave it when.

11 The Law 975 of 2005, better known as ‘ley de justicia y paz’, contemplated that any actor of the armed conflict could receive lesser punishments on the condition that they demobilize and confess to their crimes. It is estimated that around 25,000 members of paramilitary groups submitted to it.

12 Beverley, John, Testimonio: On the Politics of Truth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), p. 1Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., pp. 2–3.

14 Ibid., p. 71.

15 Ibid., p. 7. Emphasis in the original.

16 Ibid., p. 33.

17 Ibid., p. 32.

18 Derrida, Jacques, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Kamuf, Peggy (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 11.Google Scholar Emphasis in the original.

19 Ibid., p. 6.

20 Ibid., p. 48. Emphasis in the original.

21 Ibid., p. 5.

22 Martínez, Juliana, Haunting without Ghosts: Spectral Realism in Colombian Literature, Film, and Art (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Derrida, Specters of Marx, p. 50. Emphasis in the original.

24 Austin, J. L., How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

25 Derrida, Specters of Marx, p. 59. Emphasis in the original.

26 Ibid., p. 9. Emphasis in the original.

27 Avelar, Idelber, The Letter of Violence: Essays on Narrative, Ethics and Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 20Google Scholar.

28 Peggy Phelan, Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 3.

29 Derrida, Specters of Marx, p. xviii. Emphasis in the original.

30 Diéguez, Ileana, Escenarios Liminales: Teatralidades, performances y política (Buenos Aires: ATUEL, 2007), pp. 19–20Google Scholar.

31 Ibid.

32 This also holds true for the case of Peruvian theatre. See Rubio, El cuerpo ausente.

33 Blair, Elsa, Muertes violentas: la teatralización del exceso (Medellín: Universidad de Antioquia, 2005), p. xix.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., p. xxv.

35 Ibid., p. 5.

36 Avelar, The Letter of Violence, p. 49.

37 Artaud, Antonin, The Theater and Its Double, trans. Caroline, Mary Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1979)Google Scholar.