Chile: Patchwork of Memory
Agosín, Marjorie
It's summer in the southern hemisphere, and a warm brightness permeates the beginning of the days. There is an insinuating aroma of fresh fruit, especially peaches and figs. Last December...
...The weaving is made for one purpose alone: to denounce and expose...
...Now, with the passage of nearly 21 years since the beginning of the dictatorship, these women have aged...
...The women tilling to make sacrifices, by their common struggles ,irations...
...Before we had a shop never lacked for food...
...The creation of arpilleras is woven into the fabric of their lives...
...I saw the women arrive at the workshops tired and with worn-out shoes...
...york with the arpilleristas n 1979, the time of greatest oyment in the country...
...It's easy to see why the 32 workshops located in the city's periphery disappeared...
...The women say that other international bodies-among Vol XXVII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1994 0 0 2 0 13JOURNAL / CHILE them the World Council of Churches and Amnesty International-have also withdrawn their support...
...With the restoration of democratic rule in 1989 under President Patricio Aylwin, Chile entered a phase in which the political mobilization of women in diverse sectors came to a stop...
...This was a group of women who in 1974 began to create the so-called arpilleras, patchwork tapestries which denounce human-rights violations in the country...
...They engaged in es and planned projects...
...With the passage of time, the activity of the Chilean arpilleristas took on an international dimension...
...But not even the neoliberal economic policies of the last five years can eliminate these women entirely...
...All these groups united to raise their voices in protest against repression...
...But on my recent visit, I saw the women more solitary, stamped by the mark of indifference...
...It has the power to condemn the invisible tortures and clandestine ons...
...These were w in...
...I ,er meeting with the women om in the Vicariate...
...The women spoke about the importance of continuing to talk about the deceased, to remember them, to build plazas and cities with their names, and to embroider their lives in the arpilleras...
...Of the approximately 200 women who made arpilleras in the urban zones of Chile, only ormation 13 truly active women remain...
...They remain steadfast, however, in the face of the pain...
...They reiterate that it is necessary to talk about the dead and to reconstruct the past...
...ous government's victims and their families, these Christmas holidays signify rupture, absence and desertion...
...The Vicariate's decision was also a capitulation to An the systematic imposition of the cultural values linked to market capitalism-the exaltation of individual success, order and national security...
...Using and asp und the worn remnants of fabric-even dialogu hildren from their own closets-these Thro women subverted the conventional women y means of embroidery that ced authoritarianism...
...sly, in these most difficult f the military dictatorship, a )irit reigned...
...showing a group of women demanding inf disappeared family members...
...ugh these groups, the acquired a deep sense of NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 12JOURNAL / CHILE politics...
...The women, however, developed a united rn was broader political mission...
...Translated from the Spanish by NACLA...
...The arpilleristas were among the principal aesthetic voices in the struggle to awaken the international community to the horrors of the Chilean political situation...
...They have to struggle to get the fabrics, to pay for public transportation, and to find a place to meet...
...arpilleras tell the story of a Chile in graphic and visim. They contain figures ed in the daily life of a dissociety...
...They are repositories of the nation's memory, which is essentially feminine...
...The answer is crushing and thoroughly disheartening...
...This dance, rooted in Chilean folkloric tradition, is thus overturned by the image of a woman dancing alone because the body of her loved one is lost...
...The women leave their weekly meetings to return to their homes in the shantytowns, where light and water are scarce...
...With the advent of democracy in 1989, the 32 existing arpillera workshops closed...
...People around the world were genuinely moved by the dignity of this peaceful form of political protest by women whose family lives and economic situations had been tragically violated...
...They carry on to demand a certain justice that would vindicate arpillera depicting a human-rights demonstrat the work of their family members...
...They invented strategies to challenge the fear, feed their children, and engage in a new form of political activism and of struggle against authoritarianism...
...The Vicariate of Solidarity closed its workshops in 1991, indicating in numerous newspaper articles that it had concluded its work in defense of human rights in this new phase of democracy and reconciliation...
...The arpillera is not an adornment...
...they are the conscience of the country...
...The renown that this An arpillera anonymous work about their gained was almost magical, given that it did not have consumer aspirations, and was never promoted by mass-marketing strategies...
...My had jewelry and other va that we had to sell...
...In 1974, a g around 13 women began into each other in th places-morgues, hospit torture centers...
...The precarious, almost abandoned situation of the arpilleristas coincides with the state of absolute silence with respect to human rights in Chile today...
...Despite the initial exhilaration of the 1988 plebiscite-in which 57% of Chileans voted against the dictatorship-and the jubilation of those exiles who returned, another Chile has appeared...
...The great force of social transformation gestating in the urban zones of Santiago motivated many of these women to join the workshops...
...Jobs reached 35% nationwide %c in the shantytowns where f the arpilleristas lived...
...At first, their anything e upper struggle was distinctly maternal: to Curiou cts and reestablish family alliances years o1 d in the destroyed by the dictatorship, and bold sp ore the to find their children...
...A rhythm of festival is palpable in the air, presaging the new year...
...After the cou Violeta Morales, one founders of the arpillera shops, "my family lost thing-a pension and two jobs...
...In Chile, the sale of arpilleras is nonexistent...
...What makes them different from the rest who have quit making the tapestries...
...Solidarity groups in Europe and the Americas exhibited their work, bought it, and more than anything, supported the women with social campaigns on their behalf...
...Without doubt, this collective mobilization precipitated the fall of the Pinochet government...
...The democratic government has created an image of economic success and prosperity, while Chileans who live in extreme poverty in the shantytowns have been forgotten...
...This Chile is a product of neoliberal economics which has geographically segregated people...
...neither is it made to cover oneself or to simply pass the time...
...The dictatorship," says Violeta Morales, "took the possibility of life away from us...
...The most visible of these people are women who have remained widows, who have lost loved ones, and whose fruitless search for the disappeared has spanned almost 20 years...
...I was sed by the solidarity that among them, and the care 'hich they discussed the of the arpilleras...
...The 13 remaining women, anchored in a collective pain, work from a sense of responsibility...
...The Vicariate of Solidarity-an organization created by the Archorder b denoun The divided ble for immers locatec recur, hunger, familycountr3 trees, a mount side-despite The precarious, almost abandoned situation of the arpilleristas coincides with the state of absolute silence with respect to human rights in Chile today...
...f these bishop of Santiago in 1974 to detenti ier mid- defend against the constant viola- memor, he poor tion of human rights-gave the the dis ir chil- first group of women a place to caught ists and gather...
...With their gloomy appearance and dark clothing-as if they wore their mourning both outside and inside-these women continue to create arpilleras...
...The suspension of the arpillera workshops is simply a microcosm of what has happened to grassroots organizations more generally...
...Nonetheless, these 13 regularly meet and maintain among themselves the bonds of solidarity that have unconditionally united them since the first deplorable years of the Pinochet regime...
...lessnes p," says The arpillera was born sponta- and 815 of the neously...
...Both children and their parents wear colorful garments, and the city seems bedecked in multicolored balloons...
...In its first year, the Aylwin Administration created an investigative commission to look into the crimes committed by the military government and the fate of the disappeared...
...As many told me, the disappeared children gave their lives for others, and "now no one speaks for them...
...The scent of fresh fruit assures us of the continuity of life, but only for some...
...The arpilleristas feel the absence of the women who once belonged to the other workshops...
...The women only make the tapestries when they have orders from foreign countries...
...Using a domestic, essentially impres and we female tradition of embroidery, the existed mother women protested the destruction of with w luables their lives and homes, economic themes to this, scarcity, constant psychological spoke e time...
...She is the author, most recently, of Happiness (White Pine Press, 1994...
...They invented the solo cueca, a variation on the Chilean national dance that is normally danced in pairs...
...The miracle of free-market economics hasn't touched them...
...They confided in me that they have lost the desire to "get dressed in the morning," to manage their lives, to be grandmothers...
...The large majority o: women belonged to the low dle class...
...Its five-volume report documents the disappearance of more than 2,500 people...
...Hardly anyone makes these tapestries anymore...
...They dis that they shared remarkably stories: the detention of c and husbands, and later th pearance of their loved on first arpilleristas-the focu essay-were mostly midd mothers in search of their c This group inspired the birth of other groups in the zones ringing Santiago...
...The beautiful people" concentrate in the elite neighborhoods of Santiago, while "the others" live in the periphery-the invisible sectors of the city...
...The arpilleristas have been left feeling disillusioned, confused, and morally abandoned...
...They lived in tl neighborhoods, where the dren were community activ leaders...
...Perhaps the answer resides in the fact that these women are determined that their fruitless search of almost two decades will not be in vain...
...The s of this le-aged hildren...
...They told me that their economic difficulties had grown worse because of inflation as well as the lack of arpillera sales...
...These 13 women, under the spaces class- wing of the Vicariate, met every My v s-saw week from 1974 to 1989 to tell began i] ummet their stories by means of the unempli t of the arpilleras...
...there are no antecedents many o work- in Chilean popular culture of mak- rememb every- ing tapestries for political denunci- in a ro factory ation...
...Vol XXVII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1994 11JOURNAL / CHILE The history of the ( arpilleras runs par the history of the dictatorship...
...The impact of these women on the struggle for democracy was enormous...
...In addition to the arpillera workshops, these women also participated in the creation of communal kitchens and educational groups...
...My return to Chile in the first years of democratic rule and then again last December have left me in a state of deep consternation...
...And although the commission acknowledged the culpability of the Pinochet government, it did not recommend the trial and punishment of the guilty parties...
...In the democratic opening of 1982, the arpilleristas forged alliances with other groups against the dictatorship, among them university groups and popular women's organizations...
...As I bid farewell to the women, they give me new arpilleras inscribed with the same question: "Where are they...
...Democracy has not improved their standard of living, and has subjected them to the deep oblivion of a nation that prefers not to speak about its past...
...The vigorous arpillerista movement that occupied such a visible space in the 1970s and 1980s seems non-existent today...
...hy have these women who began the arpillera workshops in 1974 continued with the work...
...The news media managed, however, to diffuse the guilt of the regime with reports of the supposed terrorism that the government confronted at the time...
...Thanks we were able to get by for a Although a small nun arpilleristas were from th middle class, class confli social hierarchies dissolve arpillera workshops bef common adversity of pai women's central conce political mobilization aroi search for their missing c and husbands...
...The arpillerista dances it solo because her compafiero has disappeared...
...While they live, their presence is historic...
...By means of the tapestries, they undertook a collective dialogue grounded in social justice and the commitment to transform an authoritarian culture into a democratic and cooperative one...
...On December 9, the Christian democrat Eduardo Frei won the presidential elections, assuring democratic stability...
...Last December I returned to Chile, my country, in the fifth year of democratic rule as Chileans were preparing for Christmas holidays...
...Curiously, many of these values are carry-overs from the authoritarian model of the previous regime...
...What has happened to the extraordinary historic, artistic and symbolic activity in the arpillera workshops...
...On some of the tapestries the followion, ing is written: freedom, bread and justice...
...Not only human rights, but also economic justice goes largely undefended today...
...It brings us closer to y. It recovers the names of appeared, the places that their attention, and the which they inhabited...
...They continue the struggle for human rights, affirming that the years of dictatorship must be remembered so that history does not repeat itself...
...The report caused a big commotion in the country, and produced a state of collective shock...
...Very few people know that they continue to make arpilleras...
...In 1983, the first group of arpilleristas also created a folkloric group that tried to use dance to recover an autochthonous culture, and to subvert the dominant national identity...
...The women associate democracy with the image of a country molded from indifference and pain...
...They loquently of blankets withies to cover, and more than g, of their immense solitude...
...In this essay, I would like to reflect upon the changes in the lives of one group of women whom I met in Chile during the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973 to 1989), and revisited recently...
...Certain themes such as disappearance, torture, and the wounded -a metaphor for a divided y. Scenes of nature-leafy huge sun, and the Andean ains framing the countryare also common because the leitmotif of pain, there is hope...
...Today, the production of arpilleras is sporadic...
...The end of the Vicariate's support is symptomatic of the general state of silence in the face of what has occurred--a kind of complicity with the years of dictatorship...
...Thilean allel to military roup of to run - same als and covered similar :hildren e disapes...
...I estimate that from 1976 until 1988, 32 workshops-whose members varied in age from 17 to 80-were active in urban Santiago...
...tension, and the fruitless search for out bod iber of family members...
...They understand, however, that survival, need for employment, and the absence of solidarity made the workshops disappear...
...Those arpilleristas who did not lose children, but dedicated themselves to the workshops as a way to attack hunger, can no longer afford the cost of public transport, or the time to organize themselves...
...It's summertime in Santiago...
...Life in Chile for those people concealed in the invisibility of extreme poverty is ever more precarious...
...The women found it almost impossible to continue with communal kitchens and arpillera workshops when not only economic aid, but also moral support has vanished...
...In the scale of priorities, the weaving of arpilleras became secondary...
...This lower middle already with few resource its economic position pl drastically with the adven dictatorship...
...The work is ever more difficult...
...We are in a "democratic" society, however, and only silence envelopes us...
...however, for the previMarjorie Agosin is a Chilean poet and professor of Spanish literature at Wellesley College...
...As they have since I first met them, the women ask me to talk with others about their work...
Vol. 27 • May 1994 • No. 6
