Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love: The Arpillera Movement in Chile

Abstract

In the Chilean autumn of 1974, a dozen women took part in a workshop to make handicrafts. The women shared a search for missing relatives who had been detained and “disappeared” by the authoritarian regime of Augusto Pinochet. Under the auspices of the Catholic Church these women created arpilleras, or appliquéd burlap tapestries. Marjorie Agosín’s book tells the story of this artwork and its development into an internationally recognized denunciation of the dictatorship. In arpillera workshops, women came together in search of information, income, and a vehicle to publicize their plight. They went on to form the nucleus of the Association of the Families of the Detained-Disappeared, an organization that protested human rights abuses committed by the regime. The appearance of the book’s second edition is a testament to Agosín’s eloquent portrayal of their struggles. It is divided into an analysis of the workshops, the author’s personal story of exile, reproductions of the arpilleras, and testimonies from the artists. While not a traditional historical monograph based on archival research, this work engages topics of scholarly interest, including the relationship of popular culture and politics, women’s movements, and democratic transitions in Latin America.The book explores the connections between the arpilleristas’ practices, such as the distribution of the proceeds from sales, their personal trauma, political activities, and artwork. Through the workshops, women constructed new roles for themselves as artists and political actors. In addition, Agosín chronicles how the structural details of the arpilleras, such as the fabrics and arrangement of representations, shaped their messages. Her discussion of folk traditions is poetic without being romantic. Part of the magnetism of arpilleras was the diversity of artistic forms they incorporated and their change over time. In her consideration of the post-dictatorship period, Agosín contextualizes arpilleras among other public commemorations of the disappeared, including the monument in the General Cemetery.The author also engages with the rich historiography on the Latin American women’s movements that emerged as powerful forces against dictatorships during the 1970s and ’80s. As in Argentina and El Salvador, women’s organizations drew upon traditional ideologies of gender in their protests of human rights violations. In the process, they redefined motherhood and women’s roles in civic life. Arpilleristas, for example, created a musical group that performed the national dance, the cueca. Whereas the romantic couple is the centerpiece of the cueca, dancers performed alone to underscore the absence of their partners. In particular, the book’s consideration of the women’s movement both during and after the dictatorship will make it useful in comparative discussions of women’s mobilization in times of authoritarianism and democracy. Several arpilleristas suggest that women’s movements have been hurt by the growth of a consumer culture that emphasizes personal gratification over collective action. These assertions merit greater attention in historical research and should spark debates in the classroom.The election of Socialist Michelle Bachelet, persecuted during the dictatorship, would seem to signal a resolution of the arpilleristas’ search for justice. However, Agosín’s book is a strong indictment of the current political climate in Chile. After the transition from military rule to a civilian government in 1990, the Catholic Church and international community directed their support elsewhere. Yet democracy has not brought fulfillment of these women’s demands. After nearly 20 years in power, the center-left governments of the Concertación have continued the economic policies of the Pinochet regime and achieved only marginal success in holding responsible the perpetrators of torture and disappearances. As Peter Winn’s afterword explains, the arpilleristas have faced “political leaders who benefited from their struggle and paid lip service to it, yet now wished to be left undisturbed to enjoy the parliamentary politics it had helped regain” (p. 166).This edition is not a major revision of the first, but is updated with beautifully reproduced arpilleras and historical pieces by Peter Kornbluh and Peter Winn. Agosín’s poetic touch will engage undergraduate students in the humanities and social sciences as well as general readers. Given its potential in the classroom, the book should be more tightly organized. Portions of Agosín’s analysis are repeated and some of the testimonies are categorized in the wrong chronological sections. Although the historical timeline is helpful for the uninitiated, inclusions and exclusions in it are puzzling.In sum, Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love views Chile’s democratic transition from the perspective of those who were not willing to accept impunity and neoliberal economic reforms. Their artwork is a remarkable response to state terror. Through her documentation of the arpilleristas, Agosín has insured that they will continue to shape struggles over historical memory.