Children and the Afterlife of State Violence: Memories of Dictatorship

180 Pages·2016·2.17 MB·English

by  Daniela Jara (auth.)

Memory Politics and Transitional Justice
CHILDREN AND THE
AFTERLIFE OF STATE
VIOLENCE
Memories of Dictatorship
Daniela Jara
Memory Politics and Transitional Justice
Series Editors
María Guadalupe   Arenillas
Northern Michigan University
Marquette ,   USA
Jonathan   Allen
Northern Michigan University
Marquette, USA
The last two decades of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of a novel
idea the belief that an explicit confrontation with past injustices forms an
essential component of commitment to constitutional democracy and the
rule of law. This has had a widespread impact in transitional contexts across
regions. It has also assumed a variety of political and cultural forms. The
Memory Politics and Transitional Justice series publishes innovative new
scholarship that confronts critical questions at the intersection of memory
politics and transitional justice. The editors welcome submissions from a
variety of disciplines. including political science and political theory, law,
sociology, and cultural studies.
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14807
Daniela   Jara
Children and the
Afterlife of State
Violence
Memories of Dictatorship
Daniela   Jara
Centro de Estudios de la Cohesión Social y el Confl icto
COES
Santiago, Chile
Memory Politics and Transitional Justice
ISBN 978-1-349-94852-9 ISBN 978-1-137-56328-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56328-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016937725
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2 016
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exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
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exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
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To my grandfather, who taught me the art of storytelling from early
childhood and because it was through his working-class history
that I learned, fi rst-hand, about social class, familial
political memory, and state violence.

C
ONTENTS
1 When the Past Matters 1
2 The Culture of Fear and Its Afterlife 37
3 Political Stigmas and Family Legacies 6 1
4 Family Memory and the Intergenerational
Remembering of Political Violence 8 9
5 Family Countermemories 117
6 Concluding Remarks 149
Index 1 67
vii

P
REFACE
In 1973, the three-year-long socialist government of Salvador Allende
was abruptly interrupted by a military coup, which was the prelude to
17 years of dictatorship in Chile. On 11 September, La Moneda Palace was
bombed by a section of the army which considered that the country was
on the verge of a civil war. Public activities were forbidden, unions were
dismantled, and a politics of fear was put into practice. After the coup, a
neoliberal regime was installed which had a deep impact on Chilean cul-
ture and the local regimes of memory. It was a time of persecution, death,
unemployment, and exile for some, but a time of order, stability, privatiza-
tion, and enrichment for others.
I was born in 1978, during Pinochet’s regime of fear. I remember my
childhood: I believed there were prehistoric animals hidden under the car-
pet, fl uorescent spiders creeping along the walls at night, and giant insects
living in the garden. Although those fantasies were part of my daily life,
I never talked about them to anyone, not even my parents. I was a child
with a strong sense of privacy. As a child of opponents of an authoritarian
regime, I was aware of a radical distinction between inside and outside,
between privacy and social relationships, between home, neighborhood,
and school. At home, we were allowed to do things that outside home we
could not do; there were family stories that could only be told at home.
I always knew it was a secret that my parents had been members of the
Communist Party before the coup and that my father went into clandes-
tinity for months. The story of my grandfather’s kidnapping by the secret
police and his experience of being tortured was never told to anyone, to
the extent that it still sounds like a fi ctional memory to me. Despite the
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