Chilean Dictatorship Research Articles

Crisis y refundación del mito democrático: el octubre chileno, preguntas y tensiones

Based on a critical theoretical tradition of democracy, the article rehearses an interpretation of the Chilean revolt of October 2019. It is argued that this episode indicates the exhaustion of the myth in which democracy obtains its legitimacy and perpetuation as a promise of the realisation of its founding values. To this end, it examines the overall historical context in which the Chilean democratic transition is taking place, thus discovering its close link to the order designed by the Chilean dictatorship. A series of symbolisms articulate the global market order with the social model favoured by the dictatorship, but implemented with a democratic appearance. Finally, the elements that allow us to understand the signs of the collapse of the ‘democratic mythologem’ in the October revolt are reviewed and questions are asked about the political challenges that are posed.

Afectividades y desplazamientos escriturales en la obra de Nona Fernández

Nona Fernández's work has been catalogued within what is known as the "generation of the children" to refer to those narrations by authors who were children during the Chilean dictatorship. The work of the Chilean writer Nona Fernández will be analyzed to understand how the writing process, its relationship with the event and the processes of subjectivation of the characters, from a narrative perspective towards the autobiographical and autofictional genres, have been crossed by fiction to question the constructed certainties and the failures of memory. We will focus mainly on two works which have a thread of narratological and historical continuity, such as Space Invader (2013) and La dimensión desconocida (2016). Both works are related by the terrible events that happened during the Chilean dictatorship. Everything narrated in a cyclical time, like an unknown dimension, living in the present the horrors that we thought were past.

Niños y niñas chilenos adoptados por familias suecas. Proximidad diplomática en tiempos de Guerra Fría (1973-1990)

Objective/Context: This article seeks to understand the characteristics and political implications of the process that allowed the adoption of Chilean children by Swedish parents during the military dictatorship in Chile. Methodology: The research is based on the review of diplomatic documentation corresponding to the Chilean Embassy in Sweden, specifically on reports that described the dissemination of the image of Chile and its children in the Swedish media between 1973 and 1990. In addition, reports, periodicals, and official records were consulted that expressed the reaction of the Chilean authorities to criticism received from the Swedish press for irregularities in the adoptions of children. Originality: The political and diplomatic framework for the regulation of international adoptions in the context of military dictatorships in Latin America has been poorly addressed from the humanities and social sciences since interest has been focused on the search for origins by adopted people and their biological families. Hence, this work’s contribution to the historiography of adoptions lies in its focus on the political and diplomatic dimensions of the phenomenon, on the scope of forced mechanisms in the circulation of children to first world countries, as well as on regulatory policies regarding children and family. Conclusions: Based on the revised documentation, it is feasible to conclude that the adoptions of Chilean children by Swedish families were part of a campaign of the military dictatorship to promote adoption, which worked as a counter-propaganda to stop “anti-Chilean campaign” in Sweden, as well as to recover international ties.

“Un millón de chilenos”: Testimonios del exilio en la Revista Araucaria de Chile

One of the political consequences of the repression experienced during the years of the Chilean dictatorship established after the 1973 coup d'etat and led by the military Junta, was the phenomenon of exile. Through the study of the journals created by Chileans in exile in the most remote places of the planet, it is possible to recompose the cultural and political history of Chile. In particular, this article proposes cultural journals as fundamental spaces for recognizing how the common experience of a past of Unidad Popular is approached from exile, together with the horror of a present marked by the coup d'etat, persecution and exile. In this sense, the journal Araucaria de Chile (1978-1990) coined in its pages the writing of the outside, pierced by the modes of saying dependent to a great extent on the concrete experience of the social disarticulation of a previous identity and its ways of re-articulation. Focusing the work on the section Un millon de chilenos will allow us to identify three dimensions within the set of testimonial narratives that deal with the experience of exile defined as uprooting, guilt and possibility.

La escuela chilena bajo la dictadura civil militar (1973-1980): la experiencia escolar en contexto autoritario

This paper presents the results of an investigation that aimed to describe and analyse the transformations in the educational experience of students and teachers based on the new regulations designed and implemented by the civil-military dictatorship in Chile between 1973 and 1980. Specifically, it deals with the initiatives that sought to control and monitor various actors in the educational system at different levels and to transform relevant aspects of school culture and reorient pedagogical practices in the school. In methodological terms, various primary documentary sources were analysed, such as circulars, official letters and decree-laws published by the Ministry of Education, newspapers, and magazines. We conclude that these actions were aimed at intervening educational establishments in three main areas: in daily school life, through the incorporation and intensification of new civic and religious rites; in the purification and ideologization of educational plans and programs, and in pedagogical practices, through a hierarchical approach to the relationship between teachers and students.

Girl Protagonists of Chilean Dictatorship Novels for the Young

Narratives for children about Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile (1973–89) written by the sons and daughters of that era constitute a recognised genre. For the most part the genre features boy characters who not only have voice and choice, but also unrealistically win the fight against the oppressors. This paper examines two of the rare works with girl protagonists, paying attention to how their voices are constructed: Mariana Osorio Gumá's Tal vez vuelvan los pájaros [Maybe the birds will return] (Mexico, 2013) and Matilde by Carola Martínez Arroyo (Argentina, 2016). I apply Deleuze's theories about the gaze to girls to identify patterns that afford the construction of ‘lucid’ protagonists in terms of recurring modes of language production (silence, ordered discourse, invention), giving rise to inquisitive girls. Through the construction of a girl's lucid gaze, which can withstand and narrate the horrors of the dictatorship, these novels offer young audiences a powerful space for historic and collective memory.

The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile's Dictatorship by Ángeles Donoso Macaya

Reviewed by: The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile's Dictatorship by Ángeles Donoso Macaya Clayton Oppenhuizen The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile's Dictatorship. By Ángeles Donoso Macaya. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2020, p. 250, $80.00 Ángeles Donoso Macaya's book The Insubordination of Photography examines the importance of photography as a documentary tool to denounce, protest, and defy the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). Macaya challenges the notion that photographs are indexical ephemera by examining their production, representation, and construction in public spheres in Chile. Developing from the concept of "field" in queer theories of Judith Butler and Sara Ahmed, the central concept of the book is "depth of field" which refers to "what is discernible, intelligible, or visible within the expanding field of photography" (4). Through meticulous examination of counter-archives of reproduced (photocopied) photos, amended IDs, forensic photography, precarious photographic publications, and censored media, each chapter provides a glimpse and reframing of the importance of various photography practices to oppositional movements and their media during the dictatorship. The first two chapters, "Persistence of the Portrait" and "Forensic Matter," examine the multifarious ways photographs, as documents, shaped the public sphere. "Persistence of the Portrait" examines the use of amended state IDs in various campaigns – on TV displays, as posters, in print media, and on protesters – during some of the earliest opposition demonstrations and performances that emerged starting in the late 1970s and flourished in the 1980s. Chilean photographers and activists used photographs of the detained and disappeared to draw attention to violations of human rights. These demonstrations also made icons of the photographs. The most emblematic example from the chapter is that of Hernán Parada's "Obrabierta A," a project wherein Parada commemorated his disappeared brother's life by wearing an enlarged portrait of his brother over his face while demonstrating on the streets of Santiago and visiting the veterinary school where his brother studied. The practice of wearing his brother's portrait as a sort of skin in public was, according to the author, a "loving/photographic act" that transformed both subject (Hernán) and beholder (77) by repurposing family portraits and state IDs from documents to signifiers of missing persons and emblematic materials in protests. Historians of media, particularly print media, in Chile will find the third and fourth chapters of most interest. Chapter three, "Emergence of a Field," traces the discursive emergence of a photographic field through the creation of the Asociación de Fotógrafos Independientes (AFI) and the creation of inexpensive books like Presencia del Hombre and Ediciones económicas de fotografia Chilena. Due to the nature of censorship and the overhaul of the Chilean economy, the photographic field as constituted [End Page 579] in the halcyon days of the 1950s and 1960s did not exist. However, the field was created "anew" through the practices of photographers like Paz Errázuriz and Luis Navarro (142) who documented the quotidian lives of average Chileans, depicting life in Chile outside of explicit repression but still within the precarity of the regime. Ediciones económicas also depicted daily lives of Chileans but also transformed the medium but using a Ricoh copying machine – a more affordable and often better version than a Xerox (145-6) – to reproduce images and composed entirely new images from the amalgamation and repeated copying of photos. Chapter four, "Photography Off Limits," charts the efforts of Chilean independent press to chronical the national protests in 1984 despite the censoring of all images within their pages. In response to anti-regime protests in the years before, the military regime announced Edict Number 19 in September 1984, banning independent media from using any images in their publications. This ban on images led independent publications Cauce and Análisis to emphasize reference to the censored images. Two such examples include Cauce claiming that a blank image contained all the rights afforded to Chileans, while Análisis filled their photographic space with a printed question mark made up of the words "cuantos son, quienes son, donde estan". The censorship backfired as activists and journalists used the banned images as a means of debating freedom of press and freedom of...

Chile - The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile's Dictatorship. By Ángeles Donoso Macaya. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2020. Pp. 286. $80.00 cloth.

Chile - The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile's Dictatorship. By Ángeles Donoso Macaya. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2020. Pp. 286. $80.00 cloth. - Volume 78 Issue 1

Ecos de la dictadura: Pinochet en las novelas gráficas de ciencia ficción chilenas

This paper analyzes three Chilean graphic novels that use science fiction rhetoric and aesthetics to constitute fables that are developed with a look at the Chilean dictatorship and on the figure of Augusto Pinochet. The review of these novels allows to identify the way in which the character of the dictator is configured both from the textual narrative and from a visual perspective through the use of illustrations, combining a multimodal discourse that feeds from memory, history and science fiction, giving life to a character Pinochet.

Fanny Edelman and Jewish Argentine Antifascist Women, 1930–47

Fanny Edelman and Jewish Argentine Antifascist Women, 1930–47 Sandra McGee Deutsch (bio) Keywords Anti-fascism, Argentina, Jewish women, Latin America Fanny Edelman's Story illustrates the women of Jewish origins who were key players in Argentine as well as Uruguayan antifascism. As described largely in her autobiography, Banderas, pasiones, camaradas,1 Edelman's fascinating trajectory sheds light on the significant yet largely unexplored topic of Jewish women's participation in Latin American antifascist movements. It also suggests avenues for research. Fanny Edelman was born in 1911 in Argentina, the daughter of impoverished Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. She grew up in a secular socialist household that prized reading and learning. When Edelman finished primary school, she entered the labor force. The poverty around her, the Socialist and Communist events she attended, the progressive cultural circles in which she circulated, and her future husband's influence led her into the Communist Party in 1934. From the beginning, her Communism intertwined with antifascism. From 1930 to 1932, a military dictatorship brutally repressed union, anarchist, and Communist militants; expelled foreign-born leftists; and endorsed fascist groups. Successive fraudulently elected governments kept some of these policies and, in Edelman's view, increased Argentine dependency on Britain and the United States. Edelman defined fascism expansively to include imperialism, exploitation, authoritarianism, and antisemitism. During her earliest days in the party, she participated in what became known as the Liga Argentina por los Derechos del Hombre, which defended liberal freedoms and helped political prisoners and their families. A Liga publicist and fundraiser, Edelman admired the bold women—many of them Jews—who took food and supplies to incarcerated militants and confronted prison officials. She also joined the Unión Argentina de Mujeres, whose main [End Page 517] goal was to fend off Nazi-like attempts to limit women's rights. Edelman helped usher women workers into this group's orbit. Imprisoned briefly for her Liga activities, the day she left jail in 1936 marked the start of Francisco Franco's uprising against the Spanish Republic. She connected the two in her mind: solidarity with political prisoners and the Spanish people lay at the heart of her identity. Edelman served as assistant secretary of the Comité Argentino de Mujeres Pro Huérfanos Españoles, a large women's organization providing clothing, shelter, and food for Republican children. In Spain she worked in Socorro Rojo, gathering provisions and garments for Republican troops and their families and manifesting, as she put it, her "profound love for the cause." When the Francoists took over, Edelman was back in Argentina, working from afar for Spanish political prisoners and refugees. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Edelman affiliated with the Junta de la Victoria (JV), a Popular Front movement that sent aid to the Allies, supported democracy at home, and advocated for women's rights. It was perhaps the largest and most diverse Argentine women's political organization until this time. The JV organized numerous chapters around the country; its members made garments and hospital supplies day and night. The military coup of 1943 drove the JV underground but could not halt its activities. The JV had mentored a sister organization, the Uruguayan Acción Femenina por la Victoria (AF). Clandestinely, the JV sent funds to AF so that the latter could continue to ship goods to the Allies. In her words, Edelman "worked without pause, without rest, in the Junta de la Victoria."2 As the JV faded by 1947, she transferred some of her energies to the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF), founded by veterans of the French Resistance, which continues to labor for peace, antifascism, women's and children's welfare, and women's rights today. As WIDF secretary general, Edelman contested what she considered fascist: U.S. Cold War militarism and the Chilean dictatorship's (1973–90) human rights abuses. Edelman was far from the only Argentine woman of Jewish origins to take part in antifascism. Several others went to Spain; one of them became a captain in the Trotskyite militia. Many engaged in solidarity with local political prisoners and the Spanish Republic and joined the JV. In neighboring Uruguay, a Jewish women...

Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet's Terror State to Justice by Alan McPherson

Reviewed by: Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet's Terror State to Justice by Alan McPherson James Barefoot, Ph.D. Candidate Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet's Terror State to Justice. By Alan McPherson. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019, p. 392, $34.95. On September 21, 1976, operatives of Augusto Pinochet's Chilean dictatorship and Cuban-exile allies murdered former Chilean Minister of Defense Orlando Letelier and his research assistant Ronni Moffit in the middle of Washington DC. The action stemmed from other international assassinations related to both Pinochet and his South American allies within Operation Condor, a transnational network and extradition treaty amongst Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay in the 1970s and early 1980s. While other operations proved successful in Argentina and Europe, Alan McPherson shows that Letelier's death permanently divided the U.S. and Chile, which ultimately put the dictatorship on the long path to collapse. Lack of secure financial and political relations with the U.S. had great relevance in a time where Chile's anti-communist stance should have served as an asset during the Ronald Reagan presidency. Thirty-nine years after John Dinges and Saul Landau published their groundbreaking work on these murders, Assassination on Embassy Row, McPherson enhances and expands the narrative and provides an approachable analysis for a broad audience. His subject matter already lends itself to a spy thriller if the antagonists were as incompetent as real political operatives. McPherson quotes U.S. diplomat Robert Steven, "The Letelier assassination in retrospect was of the more stupid things done by any government." He painstakingly captures the complexity and power relations of transnational murder, divided legal systems on two continents, the political rise of human rights, sparse evidence of covert and extrajudicial operations, and the bumbling ideologues who cost the aggressors their prized immunity in the end. Much like his historiographical counterpart Tanya Harmer, author of Allende's Chile, McPherson's bottom-up approach reads like a novel or screenplay. The text is centered around the people on the ground and sticks with them in chapters that truly read like scenes because of the level of detail associated with bibliographic backstories, setting, and allotting space to the voices of people on the ground. The narrative is linear, but it also overlaps on occasion due to groups of individuals getting their own chapters. If a chapter concerns a trial in the US, then the next chapter may retrace a few steps as the reader is now focused on simultaneous events in Chile. This is a big-picture text, but it is not a birds-eye-view analysis. The reader does not need a background in theory or Latin American history. The volume of information provided within each arm of the argument and the 'peopled' narrative makes this a hybrid between academic and popular history. This is a methodology that will draw even casual readers into a complex historical narrative. [End Page 586] The layout of the work is not simply a bonus for accessibility. McPherson's methodology drives at the age-old question of agency versus fatalism. Scholars phrase this dilemma as agency and post-structuralism vs structuralism. This competition gauges how much weight an author gives to the decisions of individuals in relation to often overwhelming 'structures,' such as culture, ideology, economics, and everyday things that are seemingly out of the control of an individual. At first, it may appear that he sides with structuralists. When he introduces the reader to historical actors, he includes their (un)happy childhoods, how they fared in school, and the ideologies of those around them. There is a notion of each person, from 1976 onward, as a product of all these shaping forces. In addition, the narrative of the separate trials and larger politics of judiciary systems in both countries can make individuals seem somewhat irrelevant as the system seems designed against the notion of justice. However, the crux of the story and a side-effect of all the included dialogue shows the overwhelming importance of individual decisions. Seemingly throwaway lines of dialogue, which sometimes seem like scenery or establishing their personalities, are clues...

The Insubordination of Photography. Documentary Practices Under Chile's Dictatorship by Ángeles Donoso Macaya

The Insubordination of Photography. Documentary Practices Under Chile's Dictatorship by Ángeles Donoso Macaya

La Educación especial desde la dictadura chilena a su consolidación en tiempos actuales

La Educación especial desde la dictadura chilena a su consolidación en tiempos actuales

Santiago 2000. La prospectiva y la ciudad del futuro en la “Reconstrucción Nacional” del Chile de Pinochet

En este artículo se analiza cómo durante la Guerra Fría la prospectiva, ligada a la planificación estratégica, fue un instrumento clave en el diseño del Proyecto Nacional de la dictadura chilena, así como en la reorganización política y económica que impuso el régimen. Dicha metodología, preconizada por tecnócratas civiles y militares, sirvió para otorgarle fundamento científico al proyecto refundacional del régimen. En América Latina, los estudios prospectivos estuvieron ligados a los principios de la Doctrina de la Seguridad Nacional, permitieron prever escenarios futuros, desarrollar las políticas públicas y planificar el desarrollo urbano de la ciudad de Santiago para 2000. En ese sentido, Herman Kahn, uno de los líderes del método predictivo, fue convocado por el gobierno militar chileno y orientó a los asesores de Augusto Pinochet en materia de desarrollo económico para consolidar las bases de la “Reconstrucción Nacional”.

Documentário e memória: os usos do testemunho em Nostalgia de la luz

Neste artigo visamos esboçar uma chave de leitura do documentário Nostalgia de la Luz, do chileno Patricio Guzmán, a partir da identificação dos possíveis usos da memória observáveis ali. Esse filme, um dos mais notórios da filmografia de Guzmán, busca interligar as atividades de três grupos que possuem o deserto do Atacama como cenário da investigação do passado: os astrônomos, os arqueólogos e as mulheres que, vasculhando aquela imensidão árida almejam encontrar os restos dos seus familiares desaparecidos pela ditadura militar no Chile. Além disso, há a presença de sobreviventes dos campos de tortura e extermínio daquele regime autoritário. Dessa maneira, os nossos propósitos são: destrinchar como o documentário trabalha com os depoimentos dos seus personagens; o que poderia significar esse trabalho da memória; quais são os sentidos plausíveis dos testemunhos da obra, e quais são as práticas memorialísticas realizadas pelo documentário

Mortality in survivors of torture ad prison during the chilean dictatorship between 1973 and 1990

Studies on the long-term consequences of torture in survivors in Chile have only addressed the consequences for mental health, leaving aside the physical consequences. To report the causes of death in the universe of victims of the Chilean civic-military dictatorship recognized by the Reports of the National Commission for Political Prison and Torture (CNPPT) and the Advisory Commission for the qualification of Disappeared Detainees, Politically Executed individuals and Victims of Political Prison and Torture. The causes of death, age at the time of death, sex, political context of death and opportunity of repair up to June 2016 are described in 38,254 victims of the Chilean civic-military dictatorship. Of the universe of 38,254 victims, 9,152 (23.9%) died until June 2016. The median age at death was 68 years. The main causes of death were malignant tumors in 28%, cardiovascular diseases in 27%, respiratory diseases in 10%, digestive diseases in 9% and external causes in 8%. These results can inform prevention and treatment strategies for victims of the Chilean dictatorship.

Human Rights in Chilean Social Work: Lessons from Chile to Prepare Social Work Students for Human Rights Practice

This article presents findings from two studies conducted in Chile to examine the link between human rights and social work practice. The focus of this paper was to explore the role of undergraduate education in preparing future social work practitioners for human rights practice. Data from a qualitative longitudinal study to understand the role of social workers during the dictatorship in Chile (1973–1989) were used; then, in October 2019, as civil unrest and police and military brutality erupted across the country, the authors created a commission to register and document narratives and testimonies of current human rights violations in Chile. The research team utilized a qualitative approach to analyze data from the in-depth interviews that were conducted in the longitudinal study and from the 2019 commission. Findings suggest a need to cover more in-depth human rights content in social work education and to teach students to create community collaborations in the field. Implications for social work education and practice in the current political climate are explored.

“Change Direction”: Influencing the National Church through the Vatican during the Pinochet Dictatorship in Chile

The relations between the Chilean Church and the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990) are often characterized as conflictive. After a short period of accommodation and legitimation, the Chilean episcopate started to confront the dictatorship in the name of the poor and persecuted, but never breaking entirely with the regime. This led to a complicated relationship between the Church and the dictatorship, which tried to legitimize authoritarian rule by reference to Christian values and the defense of “Christian civilization”. Much historiography has examined this relation from the point of view of the Church. When examined from the point of view of the State important nuances appear. Documents from the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Relations and correspondence with the Chilean ambassador to the Vatican, shed new light on efforts by the Chilean state to shape relations with the Church and to change the position of bishops who were critical of the regime. These data help understand better the dynamics of conflict between Church and State in Chile during the dictatorship.

Чили и пиночетизм. народная диктатура?

This article probes into the “popular” dimension of the Chilean dictatorship headed by General Augusto Pinochet, also branded “pino-chetista”, in its efforts to seek legitimacy among elite and middle-class groups, but especially among shantytown dwellers. In this it exhibited some peculiar traits, which set it apart from other dictatorships in Latin America’s Southern Cone. Its hypothesis suggests that the social support received by Chile’s dictatorship and “pinochetismo” was actively sought by its ruling circles, mainly on account of two factors: the urge of military officers and civilian backers to legitimize the coup d’état and the regime it set up, and the process of personalization that overtook it and eventually led to “pinochetismo”. Its aim was a re-socialization of the popular classes, turning them into adherents of its neoliberal authoritarian project. This venture implied the formation of state apparatuses capable of penetrating the popular world.

A Gunshot, Dying, and Living: Writing Into Activism

In this article, I explore the idea of inquiry as activism through remembering the activism made by my aunt and uncle during the Chilean dictatorship (1973–1989). I try to understand how their story lives on in me and affects who I am and who I have become. I work with the idea of “the ghost,” as something missing that calls for a change, as something of the past that keeps asking for answers in the present. With the death of my uncle and the gunshot my aunt received, I try to think of how their “ghost” keeps doing activism when I am working on my own trauma.