Memorial fragments, monumental silences and reawakenings in 21st-century Chile

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 38, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 379-400

  Hite, Katherine ^a   Collins, Cath ^b  

^a VASSAR COLLEGE   (United States)

^b UNIVERSIDAD DIEGO PORTALES   (Chile)

Author keywords

Human rights; Latin America; Memory

Indexed keywords

EID: 77049127086     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0305829809347537     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. A paradigmatic contribution of the latter is Pierre Nora. See 'Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire', Representations no. 26 (Spring 1989): 7-25.
2. See also Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), for analysis of states' intent to erase violent pasts, exam- ining instances from First World War memorials to the 11 September 2001 World Trade Center memorial project.
3. For a useful framing of cultural oppositional politics and nationalism through commemoration in the United States, see Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997).
4. For her quite distinct, provocative analysis of the US state's rather deliberate tendency to turn memorials of past violence into commodified, kitsch experiences, see Sturken, Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).
5. See Eric Hobsbawm, 'Inventing Traditions', in The Invention of Tradition, eds Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
6. Daniel Sherman argues that in France erecting monuments has historically occurred 'chiefly in areas (in both the discursive and geographical senses) of political contestation'. D. Sherman, 'Art, Commerce, and the Production of Memory in France after World War I', in Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, ed. John Gillis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 188.
7. Ibid., 199-203. See also Kirk Savage, 'The Politics of Memory: Black Emancipation and the Civil War Monument', in Commemorations, ed. Gillis, 127-49.
8. This emphasis on process is particularly apparent in the work of James Young. Among his other works, see The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993).
9. See Alexander Wilde, 'Irruptions of Memory: Expressive Politics in Chile's Transition to Democracy', Journal of Latin American Studies 31, no. 2 (May 1999): 473-500
10. Brian Loveman and Elizabeth Lira, El espejismo de reconciliación política: Chile 1990-2002 (Santiago: LOM Editores, 2002), and, on Chile's cautious and occasionally contradictory transitional justice trajectory since 1990
11. Cath Collins, 'Prosecuting Pinochet: Late Accountability in Chile and the Role of the "Pinochet Case"', Working Paper no. 5, Human Rights, Global Justice and Democracy Working Paper Series, George Mason University (2009), available at http:// cgs.gmu.edu/publications/hjd/hjd_wp_5.pdf, and 'Post-transitional Justice: Human Rights Trials in Chile and El Salvador', Pennsylvania State University Press (forthcoming 2010).
12. The official demand of relatives' associations in Chile and Argentina remains 'aparición con vida'.
13. Reinhart Kosseleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Times (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 272.
14. Cited in Elizabeth Jelin, State Repression and the Labors of Memory (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 4.
15. James Young, 'The Counter-Monument: The Memorial against Itself in Germany Today', Critical Inquiry 18, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 267-96.
16. The previous reparations policy involved a relatively complete and welladministered package of financial, medical and other reparations for victims' relatives and returning exiles, complemented in 2004 by modest financial reparation arrangements for survivors of torture and political imprisonment.
17. See discussion below of the Guzmán monument for a particularly striking example of the operation of this neutral arbiter logic regarding the state's role.
18. In the context of the imminent alternation to a right-wing government, which many seem to expect. Interview material, 2007 and 2008.
19. See Lawrence Weschler, A Miracle, a Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990)
20. Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2001).
21. The ESMA (Escuela de Suboficiales de Mecánica de la Armada [in Spanish]), a former navy mechanics school, in Argentina was recovered earlier but its development and opening were delayed.
22. Such claims are necessarily subjective but, as an indication, Villa Grimaldi and Paine were mentioned sporadically in selected national newspapers around the time of their inauguration. They have been covered only rarely, if at all, since. Other active projects involving the sites of the National Stadium, Jos é Domingo Cañas and Londres 38 have not, to the authors' knowledge, been discussed at all in mainstream media outlets or other public fora.
23. misctextFor instance/misctext, the José Domingo Cañas group and one of the existing Londres 38 groups have made particular efforts to link with other social movements, inviting student leaders and striking workers to speak at weekly site vigils and in turn attending events organised by these other groups.
24. For a creative, literary analysis of Villa Grimaldi as a site of memory, see Michael Lazarra, 'Tres recorridos de Villa Grimaldi', in Monumentos, memoriales y marcas territoriales, eds Elizabeth Jelin and Victoria Langland (Madrid and Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2003), 127-47.
25. Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales, Ministerio de Educación, Gobierno de Chile, Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi brochure (undated). See also www. villagrimaldicorp.cl
26. Mónica Echeverría, Krassnoff: Arrastrado por Su Destino (Santiago: Catalonia, 2008)
27. Jelin and Langland, eds, Monumentos
28. Michael Lazarra, Prismas de la Memoria: Narración y Trauma en la Transición Chilena (Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 2008).
29. Such as the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, www.sitesofcon science.org
30. See Juan René Maureira, 'La importancia de nuestras historias para una memorial social'
31. Gabriela Zúñiga F. and Juan René Maureira, 'Con el alma sin cicatrizar: Consecuencias transgeneracionales de la desaparición forzada', in Sexto Congreso de Salud Mental y DDHH (Asociación de Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires, Argentina) for two young protagonists' reflective first-hand accounts and analyses of the Paine community's history and experiences of the memorial- isation process. For the stories of several of the survivors and widows of Paine
32. see Patricia Verdugo, Tiempos de días claros: Los desaparecidos (Santiago: CESOC, 1990)
33. Ruby Weitzel, El callejón de las viudas (Santiago: Planeta, 2001).
34. This is not to say, of course, that the Association is immune to internal disagreements and conflict.
35. Juan Leonardo Maureira was recently elected to the Paine town council.
36. K. Hite's visit to Paine and meeting with the Association, 7 January 2009. Some 35 members attended the Association's monthly meeting.
37. Although the group went on to campaign around the 'permanent' site of Londres 38, tellingly, they were amongst those whose plans for its use caused concern amongst government officials.
38. For a thoughtful discussion of counter-memorialising and a range of alternative examples in Chile, see Lessie Jo Frazier, '"Subverted Memories": Countermourning as Political Action in Chile', in Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, eds Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe and Leo Spitzer (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College, 1999), 105-19.
39. The FUNA, in particular, has a combative relationship with authorities. Many of its larger scale demonstrations have ended in confrontation, falling foul of a continuing Chilean practice of notoriously heavy-handed policing of public space.
40. For a detailed account and analysis of the Allende monument, see Katherine Hite, 'El monumento a Salvador Allende en el debate politico chileno', in Monumentos, eds Jelin and Langland, 19-56.
41. In marked contrast to similar earlier procedures - over monuments to late presidents Alessandri, (1958-64) and Frei Montalva (1964-70) - which took a mere three months from start to finish.
42. See Katherine Hite and Leonardo Morlino, 'Problematizing Authoritarian Legacies and Good Democracy', in Authoritarian Legacies and Good Democracy: Latin America and Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective, eds K. Hite and Paola Cesarini (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004).
43. For a thoughtful and provocative discussion of 'acting out' and 'working through' as 'labors of memory', see Jelin, State Repression, 5-7.
44. On conceptualising struggles over appropriations or 'ownership' of memory, see Jelin, State Repression, especially chapter 3, 'Political Struggles for Memory', 26-45.
45. Elizabeth Jelin and Victoria Langland, 'Introducción', in Monumentos, eds Jelin and Langland.
46. This borrows from Jacque Derrida's ethical conceptualisation of the spectre. Derrida Specters of Marx (New York: Routledge, 1994).
47. For a very useful analysis of Jaime Guzmán and the rise of his movement- to-party, see Carlos Huneeus, The Pinochet Regime (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007), 225-70.
48. Despite trailing in third place in the ballot, Chile's idiosyncratic binomial electoral system, which Guzmán himself had helped design, ensured his election.
49. See plans, photographs and discussions on the architect's blog at http:// www.plataformaarquitectura.cl/2008/02/29/en-construccion-memorial-jaime- guzman-nicolas-lipthay/ (Spanish only, last consulted November 2008).
50. Martín Abregú, remarks at the conference 'El Efecto Pinochet: A Una Década de Londres 1998', held at the Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile, 8-10 October 2008.
51. The obvious reference was to Allende, who once notoriously declared, in the context of a grilling about his more radical reforms and the actions of saboteurs opposed to them, that he was 'not the President of all Chileans'.
52. Including the forcible removal of portraits of Junta members from the Military Academy's honour gallery in 2004.
53. See comments by Martín Abregú reported in Sebastian Brett, 'The Pinochet Effect: Ten Years On', Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile, 2009.
54. The ceremony was itself an instance of the peculiar indeterminacy that has surrounded the initiative: hand-picked invitees watched Bachelet dig a symbolic shovelful of earth before announcing, to the apparent surprise of all present, an agreement with the Israeli ambassador for the construction of a Chilean memorial to victims of the Holocaust.
55. C. Collins's conversations with NGO representatives and two members of the committee.
56. Including the archive of the Vicariate of Solidarity, Chile's most complete and most professionally run human rights collection.