The Memory of Trauma under the Dictatorship as Portrayed in Contemporary Chilean Comics. A Comparative Perspective with Spain

Abstract

In recent years, Chilean comics have started to deal with the historical memory of Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’état in 1973 and the subsequent dictatorship, to the point of constituting a still brief but interesting corpus. Graphic novels such as Historias clandestinas (2014) by Ariel and Sol Rojas Lizana, El golpe. El pueblo 1970–1973 (2014) by Nicolás Cruz and Quique Palomo, Los años de Allende (2015) by Carlos Reyes and Rodrigo Elgueta, Fuentealba:1973 (2017) by Ricardo Fuentealba Rivera and Anticristo (2017) by Javier Rodríguez represent a variety of issues related to trauma and political violence and repression. Thus, different strategies of representation will be brought to light: fictionalization, abstraction, ellipsis, different modulations of the graphic style and more. Given the similarities and parallels between Chilean and Spanish transitions and politics of memory, it seems appropriate to adopt a comparative perspective with some Spanish comics, in order to get deeper into the matter. On the one hand, methodology takes tools from historiography and memory studies, from authors such as Jaume Peris Blanes, Paloma Aguilar Fernández or Luis Martín-Cabrera. On the other hand, we employ a specific methodology of images analysis, mainly adopted from the authors related to the “pictorial turn,” W. J. T. Mitchell and Keith Moxey, but also from specialized comics bibliography, such as Hillary Chute. This is followed by a classification of Chilean comics, divided into two categories: “memory comics” and “history comics.” The analysis of the five graphic novels selected is developed in three thematic areas: violence against the civilians, torture and specific violence against women. This precise perspective, instead of the more common general approach, allows to understand that comics have become a medium especially suitable for the representation of all kinds of political violence.