The passage cautions that a voice can enter a record through quotation without becoming the author's own view. In the debate over disaster-memory monuments, a mayor's dedication stated that the measure responded to shared remembrance. Hugo Varela, a memory studies scholar, cites that statement to support the broader claim that public mourning was the driving force. Later critics reject Hugo Varela's reading and call the record evidence of official control of collective grief. The author concludes only that commemoration that can console while narrowing debate can be inferred; the more sweeping motives belong to the other voices.