Dolores Figueroa Romero, “Review of Oral History in Latin America: Unlocking the Spoken Archive.” Oral History Forum d’histoire orale 38 (2018). ISSN 1923-0567 1 Review: Oral History in Latin America: Unlocking the Spoken Archive. Dolores Figueroa Romero, Centre of Research and Advanced Studies of Social Anthropology (CIESAS), Mexico David Carey, Jr. Oral History in Latin America: Unlocking the Spoken Archive. Routledge: New York and London, 2017. 238 pages. ISBN 978-0-415-71759-5 This book by David Carey, a well-known historian of popular resistance and resilience in Latin America, has a double purpose: on one hand, it characterizes oral history as a unique historical methodology that focuses its analytical view on social actors’ narratives, memories, and testimonies about past events; on the other, it conveys a complex and well-documented overview of the contemporary political violence in Latin America and its pervasive effects on subaltern subjects located at the margins of Latin American societies. This book comprises a wide range of technical recommendations on how to conduct social research drawing from mainly oral testimonies. Nevertheless, it is more than that; it offers thoughtful reflexive guidance on how to engage in respectful ways with local actors. As a teaching manual, it is organized in terms of methodological discussion of techniques and practical advice on how to organize and conduct oral research. At the same time, it offers an in-depth exploration of the politics in which oral history takes place. Carey firmly anchors his reflexive teachings in the political, social and economic contexts in which he has travelled, lived, and collaborated as an academic, activist, and friend. For him, as well as for other scholars who embrace a long-term commitment to social justice, scenarios of terror and dispossession powerfully shape the very existence of poor, rural, indigenous and Afro- descendant communities and their relations with national states. Because of this compelling reality, trained professionals with well-honed academic skills have the moral and ethical responsibility to make known popular voices that denounce the repressive actions of state forces and the pervasive politics of powerful elites. In light of the former, Carey narrates how oral history – as an academic and activist tradition – was born of and linked to both the teachings of populist education and socio-political unrest, encompassing uprisings, repressive state-led retaliations, massacres, genocides, displacements of population, left-inspired revolutions, and peace negotiation processes. Making an oral history of the working class and peasant sectors in Latin America is not the same as doing so in the United States or Europe, not only because of the ethno-racial composition of Latin American societies but also because of the colonial and neo-colonial violence that makes Latin America one of the world’s most unjust and unequal regions. Carey’s narratives of the Guatemalan, Peruvian, Colombian and