Participatory Mapping and Historical Memory: Reconstructing Destroyed Villages of the Salvadorian Civil War

This presentation examines the use of participatory mapping and historical GIS to reconstruct communities destroyed during the Salvadoran Civil War. These reconstructions serve as both a repository of living memory and an access point to a growing body of archival evidence and testimonials collected by the surviving memory team. This work incorporates precision GPS equipment, and Survey 123 to record data from survivor testimonials and physical evidence, alongside historical maps, and archival imagery. It briefly discusses the data collection workflows and tools and introduces a trauma-informed approach to participatory mapping in an historical memory context and how these approaches can be applied across multiple projects in different contexts. Finally, it shows how the resulting interactive maps become powerful tools for knowledge mobilization and to support more in-depth reconstructions of communities lost to scorched-earth tactics.