Los lugares de memoria y las nuevas generaciones: algunos efectos políticos de la transmisión de memorias del pasado reciente de Chile

Abstract

The present article falls within the context of social studies on the memory of the Chilean dictatorship. The text presents the results of a study on the transmission of memories from the perspective of the relationship between places of memory and young people. Methodologically, a qualitative design was used which included two memorials of political repression visited by two groups of young people who were later interviewed in group. The results reveal a discourse that includes a who that remembers, is remembered, and is an addressee of the past, and a what which is remembered. This discourse positions young people as spectators of the past and it shows how memorials are interpreted according to a rather privatized and ghettoized logic of the victims’ suffering. It is concluded that the memories of young people have a weak public facet and that, therefore, political socialization would have increased their depolitization, making it more difficult to establish a virtuous relationship between memory and citizenship.