History Museum Archives - Not Even Past

By Jimena Perry

In 2013, a memory museum opened in Medellín, Department of Antioquia Colombia. Its founding was part of the Victim Assistance Program created by the city’s mayoralty in 2004. Known as one of Colombia’s most violent cities, due mainly to the drug cartel of Medellín led by Pablo Escobar, this urban area suffered severe violence (bombings, targeted killings, kidnappings, bribes, threats, and massacres) from the 1980s to the mid-1990s. The communes of Medellín ‒16 divided into neighborhoods and institutional areas‒ acquired a very bad reputation during this period because most forms of violence happened there. According to official sources, such as the National Registry of Victims, 1,383.988 of 8,421,627 registered victims nationwide, are from the Department of Antioquia.

The house-museum (casa museo) is conceived as part of the symbolic reparation of victims the state must pursue, as a space in which they can grieve, come together to tell their stories, and heal. The museum has 378 testimonies that can be heard, viewed, and read. The building in which it is housed has three stories. The first one is a temporary exhibition space, the second is where the permanent display is, and the third is a documentation center. Located downtown, the museum is at the Bicentenario Park and behind a traditional theatre.

Museo Casa de la Memoria, Medellín (Jimena Perry, 2017).

The permanent exhibition of the museum is divided into 16 topics. The first one, named Absences, opens the hall with a mirror wall in which people can read fragments of testimonies related to the sadness of losing loved ones, homes, lands, and domestic animals. The second one, Nostalgic Landscapes, is an audiovisual projected on a wall in which one can observe Antioquia’s rural sceneries affected by the armed conflict. It is meant to convey the pain of forced displacement. The third one, called simply Medellín, is a narrative of the city’s history since 1541. It includes indigenous peoples, afrodescendants, and peasants, trying to be as inclusive as possible. The fourth, Sensitive Territories, is composed by three interactive cartographies which show the numbers of the department´s municipalities, facts of victimization that are remembered collectively, and memory sites in Medellín. These cartographies are intended to highlight how the people from Antioquia resisted the conflict, to denounce atrocities, and to call the viewers’ attention to social mobility.

Interactive Cartographies. People can touch the screens and navigate through information related to violence, victims, and memory (Jimena Perry, 2017).

The fifth space is called Medellín in Movement. It is also a video in which spectators can see the city in action. It shows streets, people, activities, traffic, day, night, and the different ways of inhabiting the urban center. The sixth one, Children’s Words, is a touching panel in which kids define words such as love, violence, fear, dead, displacement, and murder. This is one example: “Murder: To take away the best of a person.” This sentence was written by a nine-year-old boy. The seventh, is an interactive chronology, from 1946 to 2013, in which the history of Colombian violence is told. This piece sticks out due to its grand size and the information it contains. A person can click on its links to find out specific data about certain events, such as the creation of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC-EP (Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia-People’s Army), peace processes, and institutional efforts to end the country’s armed conflict.

Interactive Chronology (Jimena Perry, 2017).

Space number eight is perhaps one of the most impressive of the displays. It is called Multiple Faces of Violence. This is a sample of approximately 50 pictures taken by four known photographers. The images are displayed in triptychs which the observer can turn and alternate. They are shocking and capture many violent moments that deserve reflection. Besides the pictures there is an interactive screen where the photographers tell their experiences taking the images. The following pictures are the work of Natalia Botero, Jesús Abad Colorado, Albeiro Lopera and Steven Ferry. I chose only a few of them. The images reproduced here were taken by Jimena Perry.

The ninth topic of the permanent exhibition is named Words. Like with the children’s definitions, here children and adults play with the meanings of fear, solidarity, resiliency, memory and difference. The tenth space, Whispers, as shocking or more as the former, is composed by 13 wooden boxes attached to a wall. If someone places his or her ear to a box, a testimony of violence can be heard. The narrative of each box is different and some of them are very hard to listen to.

Wooden Boxes (Jimena Perry, 2017).

The eleventh space is a composition of 16 cases with artistic pieces in which the armed conflict is represented. They are in the middle of the permanent hall and include topics such as violence against the earth and indigenous communities. The twelfth one, Present Histories, is made of three person-size panels in which recent victims — survivors of violence, politicians, activists of human rights, and priests — give their views and experiences of war. Twenty-four different voices can be heard here. Space thirteen is a recompilation of recent songs with social meaning. Here people can stop to listen to the music, which is mainly hip-hop and rap. The fourteenth one, Art’s Point of View, is also an interactive panel that presents artistic works in which violence is depicted. The fifteenth one, Memory Enclosure, is a wall in which the viewer observes images that come and go over a black screen. The pictures allude to birthdays, baptisms, and everyday life activities and chores to remind the viewer how life was interrupted violently. The last part of the permanent exhibition is a long hall in which there are fragments of speeches of human rights activists, writers, and other people who had fought for peace in Colombia.

“To close old wounds. And that from death new life arises.” (Jimena Perry, 2017)

Medellín’s House-Memory Museum is a place intended to give voice to Medellín’s victims of violence and provide them a site to grieve, reunite, remember, and develop strategies to avoid future violence. The institution’s first director defined this mission clearly enough, however the second and current one is implementing some changes. She said publicly that the museum should not only be for victims and perpetrators but for every citizen. This statement caused uneasiness in the city’s inhabitants because the space is supposed to represent symbolically the people directly affected by violence. So, here big questions come up: How much inclusion is desirable? Which is the audience of the institution?

Another issue worth mentioning is the absence of drug trafficking victims at the museum. Even though Pablo Escobar was born in Rionegro, his business was all run in the capital of Antioquia. Escobar and his organization, the Medellín Cartel, committed 623 attacks that left hundreds of dead civilians and thousands wounded. The Cartel also was responsible for the murder of 550 policemen, 100 bombs in Bogotá and Medellín in malls, official institutions, airplanes, and newspapers. Approximately 15,000 people died due to the actions of the Medellín Cartel between 1989 and 1993. Among the deceased were presidential candidates, journalists and politicians. Kidnappings of politicians and journalists were very common as well. It is surprising that the museum does not mention these victims. This is a part of Colombian history that remains absent from most institutions, drug lords are not part of museum narratives leaving big silences that need to be filled. Perhaps telling this part of history should also be part of the healing process.

Also by Jimena Perry on Not Even Past:

Time to Remember: Violence in Museums and Memory in Colombia, 2000-2014
My Cocaine Museum, by Michael Taussig (2004)

You may also like:

Magical Realism on Drugs: Colombian History in Netflix’s Narcos

banner image for The Museum of Sour Milk: History Lessons on Bulgarian Yogurt

One evening this summer, I found myself careening down a country road at breakneck speed to the town of Studen Izvor on the Bulgarian border with Serbia. Stunning scenery enveloped a string of thinly populated towns, some peppered with socialist-era industrial ruins that somehow added to the charm. Edit, the wife of my friend and colleague Kiril, drove like a bat out of hell. The trip, after all, was Edit’s bright idea. She knew I was interested in the history of food in Bulgaria and so planned this little day trip for the three of us. But we were running late and there was no way that we were going to make it to the yogurt museum before closing time. We had lingered too long over a meal in a traditionally themed restaurant on the edge of Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, where I had ordered a rather salty filet of “brain” in the interest of culinary adventure. Clearly agitated, Kiril put in a call to the museum from the speeding car, pleading with the museum staff to stay open late for the “visitor who had come all the way from America.” Of course, they waited.

The Museum of Bulgarian Yoghurt in Studen Izvor. — *The Museum of Bulgarian Yoghurt in Studen Izvor, near the western border of Bulgaria (via author).*

Finally, we pulled into the museum’s small gravel parking lot with a dramatic spray of pebbles. As we ascended into the sleepy mountain village with our Sofia license plate, the few elderly inhabitants followed us with their gaze from their courtyard perches. A Bulgarian woman, with a few family members in tow, warmly greeted us, and we profusely apologized as they led the “American visitor” and her Sofia entourage into the small, freshly painted rooms of their brand-new museum. The yogurt museum is one in a string of small food museums—along with one for honey and beans—that are scattered across rural Bulgaria. Created with EU funds, they are part of a larger effort to develop “sustainable tourism” through local attractions that are depicted on the freshly published tourist maps of Bulgaria available in any Sofia kiosk. While the tourist draw is…well, still minimal, for me the museum of yogurt or “kiselo mliako” (literally, sour milk) was pure inspiration! A starting point to dig deeper into the history of this critical ingredient in the Bulgarian (and now global) diet.

Bulgarian yogurt served in a traditional dish. — *Bulgarian yogurt served in a traditional dish (via Wikimedia Commons)*

While yogurt is consumed in much of the world, in Bulgaria, it is a staple, often a part of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. It is used as the base of cold soups and sauces with garlic or herbs or with honey as a simple dessert. The per capita consumption is roughly 27 kg, which is 4 times that of the US. Though most often sold and eaten plain, unlike in the US, it never says “plain” on the label. And indeed, Bulgarian yogurt is far from plain—even in its barest of forms. With choices commonly available of cow, goat, sheep, or water buffalo—the consumer is usually choosing by the distinct flavors of region, season, or animal rather than added fruit or other flavors. Much of the flavor comes from the way it is produced, in small local farms, largely in mountainous areas, with grass-fed and free-range animals. In part, what makes it so delicious is that you taste the terroir (as the French would say of wine, cheese, and other products), that is, the soil, air, plants, and general characteristics of the locale where the product originates.

*Stamen Grigorov in 1918. He served as a medical officer in the Bulgarian Army during WWI (via Wikimedia Commons).*

But the cult of yogurt in Bulgaria is not just about the flavor. It is also about the health effects of its unique bacterial flora. The visit to the little museum—which stayed open just for me—revealed the details of a key chapter in the history of yogurt. The village of Studen Izvor was the hometown of Bulgarian scientist and physician, Stamen Grigorov (1878-1945) who in 1905 first discovered and viewed through a microscope the bacteria used for the fermentation of milk into yogurt. Grigorov, apparently had brought a number of ceramic urns of the “sour milk” from Bulgaria to Geneva, where he earned his PhD in medicine under famous microbiologist Dr. Léon Massol (1838–1909). With Massol’s urging Grigorov presented his findings at the famous Pasteur Institute in France in the same year. The particular variety of bacteria was named Lactobacillus bulgaricus in his honor, often followed by (Grigorov) in early scientific references.

*Ilya Mechnikoff in 1908 (via Wikimedia Commons).*

A number of sources wrongly credit Russian immunologist Ilya Metchnikoff (1845-1916) for the discovery, as he was at the Pasteur Institute in 1905 and shared in the general enthusiasm for Grigorov’s discovery. Mechnikoff became famous for his work on immunology and aging and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1908. Metchnikoff, though, was intrigued by the prevalence of centenarians in Bulgaria—people who lived to be over 100 years old—and famously linked this phenomenon to the consumption of yogurt. He is also credited with popularizing yogurt in turn of the century Europe and the US.

The process of milk fermentation originated among the Turkic herding tribes of Central Asia, who brought it to the Balkans with the Ottoman advance in the fourtheenth and fifteenth centuries. Until the twentieth century, its consumption was rather limited to the geographical extent of Turkic influence and beyond to South Asia. Grigorov’s discovery and Mechnikoff’s writings created a sensation in the growing US “health food” movement in the early twentieth century. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg—the well know vegetarian and proponent of whole grain foods—jumped on the bandwagon. Kellogg advocated the regular consumption of yogurt for cleaning your colon from the “putrefaction” caused by consumption of flesh. He also gave himself regular yogurt enemas, noting that if you “balance your intestinal flora” you will “live as long as the rugged mountain men of Bulgaria.”

I read more about Grigorov and yogurt or “kiselo mliako” (literally sour milk) after returning to Sofia. In contrast to Mechnikoff, Grigorov, chose to live out most of his life as a country doctor in Studen Izvor, where he continued to conduct research. Grigorov is remembered by few people inside or outside of Bulgaria, but his name does come up frequently in histories of yogurt and probiotics—from Wikipedia to a plethora of books on the subject. The yogurt museum—though probably visited by few—is a monument to his name.

*The author outside the Museum of Bulgarian Yogurt (via author).*

Because I arrived late, the museum was out of the yogurt usually offered to guests for an on-site tasting. I was not disappointed, as I had come to look more than taste and there was no lack of yogurt at any and every shop or restaurant in Bulgaria. Indeed, back in Sofia, I decided to do a taste test of local yogurts sold at a specialty shop for “local and organic” dairy products. Such shops are a recent response to the inroads of companies like Dannon and the growing commercialization of dairy products in the post-socialist period. I bought three containers of plain yogurt—cow, sheep, and goat. All three were delicious with quite distinct flavors, but the sheep’s yogurt was my hands-down favorite. Of course it might have been the season, the region, or who knows what else.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Too Much Inclusion? Museo Casa de la Memoria, Medellín, Colombia

The Museum of Sour Milk: History Lessons on Bulgarian Yogurt

Recent Posts