On Thursday, March 1 Grand Valley State University's Latin American Studies department hosted a presentation by Chilean scholar Gonzalo Leiva on the Allendale campus. The title of Dr. Leiva's talk was "A Historical Cultural Imaginary of the Chilean Military Dictatorship 1973 - 1989." He presented part of a three-year research project that he and some of his colleagues were conducting that looked at certain cultural elements during the Pinochet regime. The dictatorship was intolerant of many art forms and was resisted by numerous artists who created "subversive art." He stated that their research project was a form of "visual memory."
Before discussing what he called the "4 phases of the imaginary of the dictatorship," he addressed the Allende government and cultural expression.
Under Allende there was what he termed "visual memory and the visual unity." Allende is usually referred to as a Marxist, but it was a new form of Marxism that was much more artistic and imaginary. He was elected by popular vote and adapted similar language of the Cuban revolution, like the term Venceremos, which translates to "We Shall Overcome." He showed an example of a poster of a boy at 8 with the Venceremos statement. After the coup this boy, who was known as the Venceremos boy was tortured and killed at age 11. Then he showed the audience a whole new aesthetic with the Pinochet dictatorship, consisting mostly of military images, weaponry, and Pinochet with the flag. Primarily, the presentation consisted of what Dr. Leiva called the "4 phases of the imaginary of the dictatorship." Note: The Allende government was overthrown with the assistance of the US government and the CIA. There is now substantial documentation on the US role in this coup.
Phase I (1973-75) - This phase included a cleansing process, particularly of Marxism, which was seen as a disease. The methods used were torture, exile, murder and a curfew. A new economic model began with an emphasis on the external. It began by targeting those in the Allende administration - with an element of gender stereotypes, where men were prohibited to have long hair and women could not have pants. This authoritarianism gets played out at the university level and other cultural centers. There was most certainly censorship of the media. He provided and example of a Chilean artist who was critical of the Pinochet government, who was arrested and sent into exile, which demonstrated the intolerance of the new regime.
Phase II (1976 - 83) - This phase was the beginning of the neo-liberal model with the assistance of Chicago University Professor Milton Friedman. This was a period where the bodies of many people who had disappeared during the early years of the regime were discovered. The dictatorship could no longer deny what had been done. This is also the time that the first demonstrations against the regime had began, with organized political opposition by 1982. One artistic example was the work of Luz Donoso and Hernan Parada who did an exhibit in the main street with images of the disappeared and TVs. From 1977-79 a collective of artists come together that had as a metaphor for it's artistic expression a thread, to show that their work "sewed people together who had been torn apart from the violence." There was also the work of Eugenio Dittborn who addressed the violence of the state without talking about it directly. He used images of torture techniques and images of people died decades earlier.
Phase III (1983-85) In this phase there is a strong institutionalization of the regime with changes if the constitution and laws. It was also a crisis period where the economy starts to fail and things like soup kitchens and street people appear. There were also beginning efforts at an international level to prosecute Pinochet. The dictatorship tries to use Chilean history to justify the present. For example, a Chilean named Portales who was the first to advocate for a military, his image was used to promote Pinochet's regime, in the same way that Russia used the image of Lenin. You also see new organizations like social and human rights groups in the country during this period. Pinochet called for a plebiscite, but lost the election and eventually stepped down.
Phase IV (1985-90) - During the fourth phase a new collective of artists came to together to document with photography the past 15 years of the dictatorship. Professor Leiva focuses on several female photographers. He talks about a women named Leonora Vicuna who only photographed in black and white, since she believed Chile is a grey society. She then painted on top of the photos to communicate what she wanted the country to be. She looked at everyday life for many people as well as the view of Indigenous populations. Another photographer Paz Errazuriz, looked at all the hidden places and people of Chile. She did work photographing the mentally ill. She also looked at trans-gender people and the elderly. One last artist is Hellen Hugues, an American from California who worked with a solidarity group. Her most important work is around the curfew and the repression directed at people who protested publicly.
He concluded by saying that "there was substantial artistic expression against the repression." Many artists who rejected the Pinochet regime they either went into exile or formed collectives to resist the dictatorship. In many ways their work was a set of metaphors for the dictatorships and that the repression of the dictatorship was defeated in some ways by this subversive artistic expression.
We also interviewed Professor Leiva after his lecture about other forms of art as resistance in Chile, what artists are doing since the death of Pinochet, the exile Chilean community, and the role that Milton Friedman played in shaping the Chilean economy. The interview is in Spanish.
