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Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: We are here at El Museo del Barrio in
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New York in front of a gallery wall covered in arpilleras, and we
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are looking at one at the center of the exhibition. And here we
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have an arpillera workshop, the type of workshop that produced the types
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of work we are looking at. We're in the middle of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship,
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and we are in a very tense and difficult time for politics and
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the economy in Chile. Chloë Courtney: So how does this object relate
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to that political context? There had been in Chile, a history of women
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creating appliqué and embroidered narrative scenes like this one, but in
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the context of the dictatorship, this technique became a way for people
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to process their pain and their grief in a time when there was
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a great risk of censorship and retribution for speaking out. So what we
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see in the center of the composition is a large church with a
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table surrounded by women who are represented as these little stuffed dolls,
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and they're working with thread. And we see on the wall behind them
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a textile with a crochet border and a scene of mountains and a
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sun that is, in fact, very similar to the object as a whole.
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Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: Beyond the building itself, we have the
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town. We see the little houses, mostly female figures going about their
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day, sweeping in front of their houses. We see the representation of nature.
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We have the clever use of patterns with floral designs to represent the
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trees and the leaves. Chloë Courtney: Initially, the creation of
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arpilleras took place through the sponsorship of a Catholic organization
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called the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, the Vicariate of Solidarity. And this
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organization was able to operate because it had the protection of the Archbishop
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of Santiago. And one of their initiatives was to organize sewing circles
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for the sisters and the mothers and the daughters of activists who had
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been detained and disappeared to come together and talk about their missing
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family members and to try to process their experience. One thing they did
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was bring the sweaters and the clothing of their loved ones in order
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to work that into the pictures they were creating. They also did things
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like unravel their own sweaters to source yarn, so we can understand this
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as a real conceptual embedding of their care and their love and their
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grief into these objects. Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: We have a representation
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here of the intimate reality of how the state violence was affecting these
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families. We have a smaller arpillera, and we are inside the family home.
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By the dining room table we see female figures seated, but there around
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the middle ground, we find an empty seat with a question mark on
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it, referencing the person that has disappeared: taken by the state.
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We also see possibly another arpillera on the wall where we have a portrait
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of a male figure, and it says, "Dónde está", where is he?
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They don't have photographies. They don't have journalists that can publish
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what is happening. So now the arpilleristas are taking the documentation
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of their lives and of their emotions and of their experiences in their
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own hands, and they are using a technique that they probably already use
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at home. Chloë Courtney: There are at least three, if not more
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techniques happening in most arpilleras: appliqué, or quilting; embroidery,
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the ornamental stitches used to create the details; and then crochet for
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the borders. At the end of the dictatorship in 1989, there was a
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peaceful transfer of power, and some scholars hypothesize that these communities
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of women that maybe represented the first time that these arpilleristas
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were getting involved with politics empowered them and encouraged them to
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get involved in other ways. They were empowered to say, "I'm not commenting
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on the politics, but as a mother, where's my son? As a sister,
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Where's my brother?" And to use this politics of care to go out
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in the streets and protest and to speak openly, and that this created
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the potential for the transition to a democratic system. As these sewing
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circles continued, the Vicaría de la Solidaridad realized there was a big
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interest in these objects, and they could easily be rolled up and hidden
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in suitcases between layers of clothing. So they developed this network
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of circulation to ship the arpilleras outside of the country secretly.
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And they decided to also establish more workshops. More women got involved
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who were not necessarily directly impacted by the death of a loved one
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or the disappearance of a loved one, but who were nevertheless concerned
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with what was happening. And so a body of themes began to emerge,
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like protests where people are demanding work and justice and food to feed
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their families. We see community efforts at recycling, which was a way to
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earn a little extra money on the urban periphery where people would collect
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cardboard. We see people instituting soup kitchens for their community so
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that they could share resources. There are little bags of rice that really
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make that idea of the soup kitchen come alive.
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Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: It is very interesting how [a] workshop that started as a way to
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support emotionally the women affected directly by the violence of the state
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developed into a way of resistance, into a way for these women to
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have some sort of control in the situation, to be able to denounce
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the violence exerted against their family members against themselves. And
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the Pinochet government was aware of the power of these images,
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and they would try to destroy or hide these arpilleras if they could
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get their hands on it. And the end result of the arpilleras is
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very interesting because there's something very sweet in terms of the aesthetic.
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But when they invite you to look into them, you see that there's
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a subject matter that can be very tense, very heavy with the representation
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of the violence of the state and the consequences of that violence in
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the everyday.