The concept of postmemory (Hirsch) focuses on the transmission of memory within families. But what is a family? What memories are transmitted and how, and what memories are not shared between generations? How is transmission interfered with, interrupted or blocked? My research with daughters and sons of former guerrillas in El Salvador suggests the answers to these questions depend on are the nature of (the familial) relationships. In my project I asked “how, what, why or why not, do the sons and daughters of Salvadoran guerrillas remember, and how do they think about or make sense of their memories?†. Between 2013 and 2016, I carried out a participatory memory work research project with young adults born during or soon after the end of the 1980-1992 civil war in El Salvador. They had difficulty answering the question "What is family?" when related specifically to memory. Their answers highlighted those aspects of familial relationships which encouraged or fostered transmission, what memories are transmitted, and the factors hindering or blocking the transmission of memories. In this paper I want to talk about the transmission of memory as the basis of postmemory in El Salvador. I like to focus especially on the questions: What encourages transmission? Is this transmission gendered, and if so in what way? What interferes or disables the transmission of memory? And how, taking into account these aspects, does such transmission reshape postmemory in El Salvador?
