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 Conflicto 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) 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are 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 publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Cover illustration: Gary Roebuck / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. New York
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, first-hand, about social class, familial political memory, and state violence.
CONTENTS 1 When the Past Matters 1 2 The Culture of Fear and Its Afterlife 37 3 Political Stigmas and Family Legacies 61 4 Family Memory and the Intergenerational Remembering of Political Violence 89 5 Family Countermemories 117 6 Concluding Remarks 149 Index 167 vii
PREF ACE 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 culture and the local regimes of memory. It was a time of persecution, death, unemployment, and exile for some, but a time of order, stability, privatization, 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 carpet, fluorescent 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 clandestinity 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 fictional memory to me. Despite the ix
x PREFACE smoothness of everyday life of my childhood, I grew up feeling that some aspects of my personal life were secrets I had to protect from others. It was not the told story alone which shaped my sense of self; those unsayable stories were equally important. At the heart of this idea, it was the feeling that in the presence of others I had to make a great effort. I could not just be who I was; I had to be someone else. Every social encounter outside my family implied a process of simulation. From a very early age, I learnt to be two: one who follows the rules and one who silently distrusts them. I remember the end of the dictatorship in 1988 as one of the happiest days ever. I was 12 years old, and for the first time we could use the public space to expose our secret. After decades of social movements, the opposition managed to win the plebiscite under the slogan Chile, la alegría ya viene (Chile, Joy Is Coming). These were years of social euphoria during which a significant number of exiles returned to the country. But afterwards, I forgot about politics and lived my adolescence intensively. Despite the fact that during my childhood being part of the opposition to Pinochet had been fundamental to my family identity, after 1988 the past did not find an easy role in the present. Looking back on my own story, I find no memories related to the decades of fear until 1998. My personal amnesia is correlated with a broader phenomenon of forgetting, but also with long-term forms of memories which I aim to illuminate in this book. In 1998, however, Pinochet was detained in London and the House of Lords decided that he could be allowed to face an attempt to extradite him to Spain to be investigated for human rights abuses. After hearing the news, I experienced a state of euphoria. I did not understand why I had such an overwhelming reaction after almost a decade living in democracy. I started to think of the past as a seething presence, even when it was absent. I realized, for instance, that I rarely talked about my family experiences of that period, but I would still become furious at people if they showed support for the dictatorship. This book is concerned with family legacies, state violence, and the affectivity of politics. It is about how we are marked by intimate life and family stories, and how intimacy, affects, pain, shame, and pride are at the centre of the way we remember the past. After all, I resort to an understanding of memory which looks at the patterns of everyday life and the crucial role of families in its making. Daniela Jara Santiago, Chile
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS While I was writing this book, an important personal event took place: the birth of my son Mateo. So the first words are for him, for all that it has meant for him to have a mother immersed in books, ghosts, and writing, and for having made of his life a story of airplanes, farewells, and airports since he was born. This book has been possible thanks to the help of several people. First of all, to the dozens and dozens of people who told me their life stories, who decided to write their autobiography for me or accept my invitation to sit down and talk about their childhood memories. I hope this book makes justice to the stories I heard. I thank Professor Victor J. Seidler, from Goldsmiths College, who taught me to listen sociologically to personal experience, and by doing so, gave me access to my childhood experiences during the dictatorship. He also taught me to focus on the how rather than the what. But his influence went beyond that: he showed me the importance of thinking with authenticity, beyond conventions, and even if doing so challenges theory. He taught me to give space to the unthinkable or the unspeakable. He has influenced me not only as his former student or a sociologist but as a person. I also thank Professor Leigh Payne and Avery Gordon for their generous and insightful comments on an early draft of this book. I thank Carolina Aguilera, my friend and colleague, whose erudite knowledge of contemporary Chilean history gave me tools and perspectives with which to enrich my thesis. I also thank Ximena Tocornal and Mireya Dávila for their comments on an early draft, and Les Back and Nirmal Puwar, from Goldsmiths College, for encouraging me to let the xi
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ghost in in an early stage of the research. Thanks to Maria José Jara, Camila Berrios, Mixia Cárdenas, and Sandra Papic for their various contributions during the fieldwork. To Federico, my husband, who adapted his personal life to the needs of my PhD studies. To my parents, who have always given me so much confidence and support that I do not have sufficient words to thank them enough. This book is based on my PhD dissertation, funded by the Presidente de la República scholarship, awarded by the Chilean government. It also was awarded a grant from the Central Research Fund of London in 2010 and the Thesis 2013 distinction from the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. Finally, I am grateful for the support of the Interdisciplinary Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies, COES (FONDAP/15130009), who has partly supported this research in its final stage. I express my gratitude for all this institutional support which made this research possible.