The purpose of this investigation is to identify the witness’ role in the individual elaboration of trauma and its implication in the establishment of a collective memory on armed conflict context.The witness’ role can be personified by the aggressor, the victim or a third person being present in the scene, complying diverse individual and collective functions, not just on juridical matters, also anthropological, psychological, historical, among others.Regarding the production of testimonies by a witness, a testimony may work as a mediator among processes like the trauma elaboration and the establishment of collective memory. Now, the testimony being a linguistic elaboration that uses both word and silence, works as a resource (tool) in the process of giving, both to society and to the individual, a meaning to their existence.The act of providing a testimony by a linguistic faculty, allows the articulation of (shocking) experiences at an individual level, effect that may influence in how a “broken” social tissue might be fixed.
