Memories of Motherhood and Militancy in Chile: Gender and Nostalgia in Calle Santa Fe by Carmen Castillo

Abstract

This essay examines how Chilean women of the radical left remember and narrate their stories of resistance in the wake of the Pinochet regime. I will deal specifically with the autobiographical film Calle Santa Fe (2008) by Carmen Castillo and ask how the filmmaker represents the lingering recollections of her own participation in Chile's aborted experiment of democratic-socialist change and the traumatic memories of political persecution. To my mind, the film constitutes a striking example of a critical nostalgic reflection on the period that raises new questions about the multiple meanings of the dictatorial past and how the complex intersections of gender and revolution have shaped such meanings. Calle Santa Fe finds its strength not through two-dimensional idealizations of resistance fighters, but rather through a nuanced rendering of the emotional landscapes of mothers and daughters whose stories bring out the complexities of historical processes while calling into question the gendered assumptions that shape them. By paying attention to the gendered dimensions of political resistance in cultural production, we might complicate appeals to a homogeneous memory of the anti-Pinochet resistance and by extension, contribute to the interdisciplinary dialogue among the humanities and social sciences on the meanings and memories of revolution and dictatorship in post-dictatorial Chile.