Violence, memory and amnesia : political conflicts in XXth century Chile

Résumé du document

Dictatorships always tend to elaborate an official truth that does not tolerate any contradiction. This phenomenon is particularly visible in Chile, where the device of forced-disappearances and the constant denial of torture have profoundly occulted Chilean memory. This efficient work of deconstruction of memory has lasted 17 years; long enough to inflict on Chilean society a deep trauma of amnesia. Memory confuses an objective dimension (the historical one), as well as a subjective dimension. Memory will vary from one individual to another, depending on personal feelings and reflexes. Therefore, reconstructing memory is a difficult task that not only implies capacities of reflection but also openness to emotions and feelings that flow directly from one's consciousness. Visual elements gather both dimensions.

Extraits

[...] Then, from the beginning of the transition until now, visual elements intervene in the process of reconstructing memory at a collective level. Finally, visual elements help to come to terms with what is past and therefore open on present and future of Chilean society. Visual elements as a way to resist against immediate amnesia As every authoritarian regime, Pinochet's dictatorship has pretended to invent and impose its own truth, and to eradicate every resisting element to this official truth. Visual elements have been a way of counteracting this strategy of amnesia, especially concerning the issues of disappearance and torture. [...]

[...] Especially concerning the bodies that, when they are found, enable Chilean justice to charge the responsible for murder instead of perpetual disappearance. Photography and cinema are similar devices of proving crimes. As Roland Barthes puts in La Chambre Claire[4], effect [the photography] has on me is to attest that what I see, has been actually”. Directors and photographs play a part in the trials which involve torturers and responsible for disapperances. Carmen Castillo, one of the former leaders of the MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria), has directed several documentaries about the Pinochet regime. [...]

[...] Still, it is not enough reconstructing memory through an institutional process. Victoria Baxter underlines the role of civil society in promoting truth and justice[5]. According to her, in a period of transition, official transitional mechanisms such as commissions often tend to privilege stability over justice, fearing new disorders and violence. No commission of torture was instituted before 2004. Moreover, these institutions are generally temporary bodies, concluding their work with the release of a report a few months later; and their good will tends to depend on the temporary government's one. [...]

[...] This painting is extracted from Núñez's Libro de artista, an exhibition held for the first time in 2005, gathering pieces on human pain that he had been painting for years. This example is emblematic of Núñez's work. By focusing of specific parts of the body, in scattered pieces, he emphasizes the pain provoked by the torture. The dark background evokes the fact that most of he was blindfold. According to him, blindness has been a traumatic experience that has made the pain even more unbearable. [...]

[...] The families who demonstrated in the streets hold posters with pictures of the disappeared that read “Where is my “Where is my brother?”, or simply “Where are they?”. More than a search for specific individuals who had disappeared, the mobilisation of the AFDD was a way to counteract authoritarian production of truth. The whole society had to become aware that the authoritarian regime was fooling the Chileans. To do so, wives of disappeared recuperated popular traditions that could arouse a collective feeling of involvement in these families' work. In 1978, they reinvented the cueca, the traditional dance of Chile. [...]