Abstract
Testimony can be an important tool for documenting human rights violations and achieving political and legal credibility when formal institutions for the defense of human rights are incapable of guaranteeing rights and providing impartial justice. The testifier is an active social agent engaged in a personal and collective performative act that can potentially broaden the meaning of truth to advance alternative and contested understandings of history and events. The case of Ramiro Aragón Pérez, Elionai Santiago Sánchez, and Juan Gabriel Ríos, who were falsely charged, tortured, and imprisoned in connection with the social movement in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2006, provides evidence of this function.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
