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How is art a form of protest today? The story of arpilleras in Pinochet's Chile, 1973-1989

  • Feb 8
  • 10 min read

Can art be a form of protest? Does art really work as resistance? And how can you make protest art?


In times like these, it's natural to wonder if art is really important. If writing, music, performance, and other creative work really matters.


I find hope and inspiration from looking at stories of artists using their work to resist the status quo. The story of arpilleras under Pinochet in Chile is a powerful example to show the way.


Listen to this story!



When the women showed up in the basement room, they were in pain. If they’d been grieving, that would have been something; when you lose a loved one to death, at least you know it’s over and they’re gone. But these women were feeling the wholly unique despair that comes with not knowing what happened to their husband, brother, son.


So when they were handed scraps of cloth and thread, told to make something, they couldn’t help but pour their pain into their creations.


And in the process they were allowed to feel, to talk about their pain. To break the silence that had fallen over an entire country out of fear.


How did handsewn crafts help desperate women fight back against a dictatorship? How did communal creative groups empower one another? And what can we learn from the arpilleras from Chile about how to make art as resistance, today and tomorrow?

 

PART 1: CHILE AND ALLENDE

To understand the arpilleras, and the women that made them, we need to back up a bit. And we need to look at a political environment situation that increasingly sounds familiar.


In 1970, Chile and Chileans felt pretty secure. There were problems, yes. Inequality. But the country was an established democracy for over a century. They had a strong constitution. They had checks and balances. They looked at other countries around the continent and around the world, and knew that they would never experience the kinds of government collapses and coups that others did.   

  

That year, Salvador Allende won the presidency as a socialist. He was the first freely-elected socialist in history, and he was supported by students, laborers, common people. He ran on a campaign of empowering those people, saying too much money was going to the ultra-rich, the out-of-touch business leaders, and foreign countries. 


That kind of talk - that’s a massive threat to the powers that be. The rich, the business leaders, the Americans – everyone was on high alert. The Nixon administration and the CIA, just like it did in other countries verging on socialism, intervened. They cut off funds. They stopped providing the mechanical parts that drove major Chilean industries.


So things started to go very wrong. Food shortages, destabilized money. All of it impacting not just the common people, but the middle class and upper class.


Quickly, the country divided. Those who supported Allende, and those who wanted a return to the status quo. Families screamed at one another. Friends broke off.


And the military, extremely anti-Allende and right wing, plotted.


PART 2: COUP

On Sept 11, 1973, the army attacked the capital city of Santiago. Tanks in the streets. Planes flew over the city and bombed the presidential palace, La Moneda.


Allende spoke his last words via radio as he waited for the army to enter. He said: Other men will overcome this bitter and grey moment, where treason attempts to dominate. You should all know that much sooner than later, the great avenues will open on which free men will walk and build a better society. Long live Chile. Long live the people. Long live the workers. These are my final words, knowing that my sacrifice will not be in vain.


When the army raided, they found Allende dead.


Four military leaders emerged as a ruling junta. The idea, they said, was they’d rule together, each taking different areas. And they promised they’d right the ship. They’d get things back to normal. Of course, the military would need to rule for several years, maybe even a decade. And don’t worry – we’re going to stick to law and all the stuff. Not seeking retribution.


Quickly, everything was proved a lie.


Agosto Pinochet, who had been the head of the military under Allende, maneuvered his way into leading the junta and the country.


And their first acts: Closed down congress. They shut down or censored all media, with only state media allowed.


Political parties and labor unions were outlawed. Declared entire country an emergency zone, meaning military had control over all civilian activities. The established the DINA, or secret police, who had full rein in catching “spies” and “agitators.”


And then there was the revenge. Labor leaders, activists, artists, and even just Allende supporters were rounded up. Thousands and thousands, held in soccer stadiums, and later detention centers. From these places would emerge horrific stories of torture and rape. And mass graves, only found years later.


A month after the coup, Pinochet declared they were purifying the country with a moral cleansing. And how long that would take? Can’t put a time on that.


 

PART 3: TWO CHILES

From that moment on, there were two Chiles.


One was the world of the conservatives. The business community, the rich, and the middle class trying to be rich. All Pinochet supporters. For them, life went pretty much back to normal. Better, even. They could get what they needed from stores, send their kids to school, read gossip magazines. They proudly proclaimed to all that freedom had finally returned. When stories were told about raids, torture, murder, they didn’t believe them. And as the years went on, and the new economy designed by free-market leaders brought luxury and malls to the country, they thrived.


Then there was the world of the poor, the political, and the supporters of human rights. And it’s worth noting - the people with darker skin, with mixed-indigenous race. For these people, life would never be the same. Universities and public schools taken over, and ideologically purged. They had no right to speak up through unions or political parties. Homes were invaded and ransacked. And those economic policies killed entire industries, drove unemployment to insane levels, and created more desperately poor people.


In this Chile, there was suddenly a massive group of people who were just gone. By the end of October 1973 – six weeks after coup – over 7000 people were already missing.


The very poor were hit very hard. Entire communities of men just gone. The women left behind.


Many of these women witnessed their loved one disappearing. The DINA or local forces would show up at their door, or meet them on the street. They would not identify themselves. They asked for their son or husband. And when they took them away, they’d say – don’t worry senora, he’ll be back by midnight.


Then that person would just be gone.


The women would search, first the neighborhoods. Then police stations. Local army barracks. Their parish churches. Then the new detention centers.


And that process became an exercise in madness.


The women would go to a detention center, like Tres Alamos, Villa Grimaldi, Londres 38. They would ask the guards if their husband, their brother, their son was there.


He left the country, one would say. He left you for another woman.  Yeah, he’s here, let me get him; oh wait, no that person doesn’t exist.


Every day, the women would try again. Searching, endlessly.


On a national level, when asked about people detained, disappeared or killed, the government would deny deny deny. Or, blame the radical left.


And the courts, when cases would come their way – the judges fell in line. Many were Pinochet supporters, including the Supreme Court. That’s not real, they’d insist. No one just disappears.



No one was helping the women. Except the church. Especially the La Vicaria de Solidaridad in Santiago, which housed a group of lawyers and social workers collecting information on all the missing, and the abuses of the regime.


This is Javier Luis Guegaña Barahona, the former executive secretary in the Vicaria, in a 2014 documentary.


He said: The powerful are confronted with power, not by asking for permission. For me, it was very symbolic that the organization defending human rights occupied the Suburban Palace, in the heart of the city, and did so openly and in full view of everyone who wanted to see it.

 

PART 4: ARPILLERAS

The Vicaria committed to finding work for people at minimum wage. They especially wanted to help the women, the ones searching for their Detained and Disappeared.


This is Winnie Lira, the former director of the Solidarity Foundation, in 2014 interview.


She said: One day, a designer, along with a psychologist, and several other professionals, said, "Why don't we try to get this growing group of women to do something where they can also express their anxieties?"  They came up with the idea of ​​bringing in a bunch of fabric scraps to see if cutting and sewing, making designs, could be a way to help them. The first ones were made with the sacks left over from the flour that Caritas International sent to Chile.  These sacks were cut into pieces, and the women started sewing these fabric scraps onto them.

 



14 women came to the first craft workshop in March 1974 in a shantytown in Santiago. IN the basement of the church, they were given fragments of cloth, bits of yarn and scrap. The women could use them to sew dolls they could sell, they said. Or make scenes of daily life, the things they saw and felt.


This is Winnie again.


They put everything, absolutely everything, into it, everything they could imagine about where their loved one was. Some even depicted themselves giving their loved one a hug. There were, I would say, every scene one could imagine of someone suffering the loss of a very, very, very dear person.


And Arpilleras were born. In English that word means burlap. In Spanish, it became a word for cloth used as resistance.


This is Chloe Courtney from El Museo del Barrio in a 2024 interview.


The women came to workshops every week, even every day. They made their scenes of daily life, and inserted their loved ones and their search into the scenes.


As they worked, they found a community of other women who understood, other women in desperate pain. Many women had not ventured much out of the house before. Now, they traded stories. They counseled one another on searching tips. They expressed their frustration, rage. They learned. 


More material came from appeals to places abroad. And then the arpilleras were wanted around the world.      




PART 5: DONDE ESTA

The Pinochet leadership and whole crew were all about returning to some status quo. And that was one of extreme machismo. They saw their threats as only men. Women were supposed to just be in the home and be quiet. Take it.

And crafts? That’s pointless domestic labor with no value in their world.


So the women - they made their arpilleras.


And as they crafted, and talked, they hatched ideas. 


Soon, they were marching to the Supreme Court, wearing pictures of their loved ones. Demanding the courts stop lying and find the detained and disappeared.


The women held hunger strikes. They chained themselves to fences outside Pinochet’s house. They went to one of the most notorious prisons, Londres 38, and wrote in red paint the names of 119 prisoners women knew had been there. Tortured and killed.


Always, always. In their arpilleras and on their bodies, they put pictures of their missing. Donde esta, each one asked. Where are they?

 

For years, the arpilleristas were the only ones talking about this. Media, controlled by the state, only repeated the company line – that there were no desaparecidos, or disappeared. The courts. The well-to-do Chileans.

 

But through the Vicaria, the arpilleras were smuggled out of Chile, and told the rest of the world what was happening.


In 1988, Pinochet, convinced like all despots that the people loved him, held a referendum on if military rule should continue. And to his shock, a large majority of the country voted with a resounding no. Humiliated, he allowed an election to take place. By 1989, he was done, and a left-leaning president was in.


In the years after, the women waited. They wanted truth. They wanted to find out what happened to their desaparecidos.


Over the next years, mass graves were found, and some women got their answers. Some never did.                 

 



Conclusion

As I researched this episode, I found some pretty surprising, and alarming, similarities to the last decades of American history.


See, I think the easy, comforting understanding we have of dictatorships throughout history is this: there was an already volatile government, then coup, then everyone is repressed and no one supports the dictatorship. Then one day – it breaks.


But Chile. Chile was a stable democracy. There was a certainty that things could never go as bad as other places.

Then, they had a bright moment of a progressive, history-making leader.


Then a right-wing backlash and takeover. Where the rich got richer and more powerful, and the poor ground down.


All the figures in that right-wing takeover claimed they working for morality, for family, to protect the children. They repressed women, yet praised traditional roles. And the new armed forces of that takeover were men who didn’t identify themselves when they stole people from their homes or off the street, locking them away in detention centers while leaders denied, denied, denied. Empathy was weakness; violence and unspeakable cruelty the rule fo the day.


And in the process, a rigid hardening of lines. Two countries, left and right. And the right thinks everything is great, while the left pleads for the truth to come out. 




My point is this. Stories from history about repressive governments are often told like simple fairy tales. And that helps those on the right deny that we are living with devastating repression.


Storytelling can be used in detrimental ways. Art can sometimes be made to serve the regime.


But there will always be voices that rise above and stand the test of time. Stories of truth. And they’ll often be told in the most unexpected ways. Like sewn into scraps of cloth in a church basement, by women who can’t stand lies for one more second.


Historians often point to the women who made the arpilleras as the first – the first to organize a culture of resistance in Pinochet’s Chile. They were the first to use their hands and pain and vision to fight back.


And along the way, they showed other Chileans – we can do this. We can push back against terror and power.

 

So with the story of the arpilleras in mind, what we do from here?

 

  • We don’t hide our pain, or our truth. We show it, in any way we can.

  • We appropriate stereotypes and insults. A machismo society thinks women are nobodies? That just means they can create a resistance movement right underneath their ignorant noses.  

  • And we  commit to making art as resistance for the long term, for a better world.

 

 

OUTRO

The Art of Resistance is a podcast from Rebel Yell Creative. To make art that matters, every creative person needs support. Find yours at RebelYellCreative.com.


This is Amy Lee Lillard, and I wrote, narrated, and produced this show. Check the show notes for all sources. And head to rebelyellcreative.com for full show transcripts, art, and more.


I’ll see you next time.  

 

 

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