This book offers a critical examination of how twenty‑first‑century human rights discourses are represented in selected works of literature and film, with a primary focus on Guatemala and Colombia. It analyzes how these narratives mobilize notions of empathy through their plots, character development, and engagements with historical memory, including reports and archival materials. The study conceptualizes reflexive empathic connections as socially and historically shaped forms of identification that confront the legacies of armed conflicts and neoliberal dispossession, while also attending to representations of agency and solidarity alongside spectral dynamics of mourning.