The Moral Economy of Memory: Public and Private Commemorative Space in Post-Pinochet Chile

Abstract

This chapter describes how certain civil society groupings in Chile have recently – since around the late 1990s – turned their attention to the reclaiming of public or private spaces to use for commemoration of the individuals or causes targeted by past repression. These groups, now varied in composition, origins and purposes, initially included both ‘traditional’ human rights and political activists plus new associations formed in the aftermath of the 1998 Pinochet arrest to pursue renewed justice for victims of human rights violations committed by Chile’s 1973-1990 military dictatorship.

Although often motivated to take up memorialisation activity by the desire to find a field of direct, unmediated action, relatives’ and survivors’ groups quickly found themselves driven to engage with state authorities. The need to negotiate permission, ownership and resources to transform sites has led in some sense to a ‘re-professionalisation’ of the commemorative impulse. An increasing official insistence on state-run and adjudicated public licitations for major site projects has replaced an early, more ad hoc system whereby sympathetic individuals within the state apparatus would find ways to support or finance campaigners’ own projects. This has resulted in a certain loss of protagonism by relatives’ and survivors’ groups, and is accordingly resented by some. Nonetheless, there are signs of a largely unintended but possibly welcome consequence in the increasing – although still embryonic – ‘mainstreaming’ of commemorative discourse and activity as a legitimate, and indeed a necessary, activity for the state to engage in.

Keywords: Memory, Chile