Human Rights Violations in Chile and Struggles for Memory: Life Stories of Residents from La Victoria 1973-2011

Abstract

This article is based on a compilation of life stories of residents from La Victoria. We analyse several documentary sources about their stories of struggle and mobilization. Based on this data, we explore the processes of production of popular subjectivity as well as its relevance to preserve the ethos and utopian projects that made possible the organization and resistance to the civil-military dictatorship. At the same time, we study a progressive weakening because of the imposition of an official history that seeks to make utopian projects and ideas disappear. Hence the importance of reconstructing a history that recovers the social memory of popular subjects. One of the article’s main foci is the inquiry about memory devices that resist the imposition of narratives from power, preserving popular subjectivity as well as an ethos of rebellion and resistance.