“Ps. I’ll find you.” The discourse of postmemory in letters to executed and disappeared grandparents in Chile

ABSTRACT

In 2020, the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile started the digital project Epistolario de la memoria, which aggregates letters addressed to victims of the civic-military dictatorship (1973–1990). The first epistolary consisted of 34 letters from grandchildren to their disappeared or executed grandparents, which constitutes the corpus of this article. The letters were analysed to examine the grandchildren’s aims, commonalities, and postmemory discourse. The results show that for these young people, the victims are a constant and desired presence in their everyday life. Grandparents are memorialised in sobremesas (family conversations), through photographs and artefacts, as well as through embodied forms of memory such as names passed to descendants and inheritance of personality traits. In their letters, these grandchildren highlight their inherited memories, manifest their commitment to memorialisation and justice, express the pain of absence, and reflect on the presence of the past in the present. This study informs the field of Trauma and Memory Studies and Discourse Studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Postmemory
• discourse studies
• Chile
• trauma and memory
• museum of memory and human rights
• letters

Introduction

The Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile (MMHR) was founded in 2010 and has its headquarters in a popular neighbourhood of its capital, Santiago, where its permanent exhibits and research centres are located. Its creation emerged following the recommendations of two truth commissions that expressed the need to contribute to the reparation process through measures that honour and compensate the victims (Read 2018). As such, the MMHR is conceived as a form of symbolic reparation within the frame of transitional justice that is defined as the process through which governments and societies face their past of human rights violations to reach justice and peace (Ferrara 2022). Its objectives are to honour the victims of the civic-military dictatorship (1973–1990) and to influence citizen reflection and civic engagement to create a solid culture of human rights (Apsel and Sodaro 2020; Estevez 2018; MMHR 2023; Rojas-Lizana 2020).

As part of the activities that commemorate the anniversary of the 1973 coup d’état every September, the MMHR developed a digital project called Epistolario de la memoria (Epistolary of memory) that aggregates letters to victims of the dictatorship. Beginning in 2020, this project collected 34 letters from grandchildren to their disappeared or executed grandparents.¹ The launch of this project took place virtually on the Museum YouTube channel on 11 September 2020.

This article examines the 2020 corpus of this project to identify and analyse the themes and discourse of familial postmemory evidenced in these letters. In this work, I follow the concept of postmemory developed by Hirsch (2008; 2012) as referring to second or third generation victims with learned memories of suffering through intergenerational transmission. In the following sections, I define the concept of postmemory and review the postmemory studies done in Chile regarding the third generation. After discussing the corpus and analysis method, I study the letters within five memory themes: everyday presence, memory triggers, the duty to remember, the pain of absence, and the past in the present.

The discursive analysis of these letters shows the lasting effects of these executions and disappearances, how the unresolved trauma is transformed into a positive experience of family unity and pride, as well as the resilience and agency developed in a generation that “wants to talk about it”, in contrast with findings from studies on the previous generation. This study contributes to the limited research on the third generation’s narratives of (post)memory in a context such as that of Chilean society, where there have been instances of reparation within the frame of transitional justice.

Postmemory

The concept of postmemory was developed by Marianne Hirsch (1997; 2008; 2012) to refer to “the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right” (2008, 103). Hirsch states that this concept is separated from memory in terms of generation as the experience is not direct, as well as from history in terms of personal connections. The effect of this temporal distance from the traumatic event constructs a powerful memory in the new generations that is emotionally mediated through imagination and creativity; that is, inherited memory is not reduplicated but re-created.

Hirsch started applying it to her own Holocaust experience as second generation; in later work, she included the third generation in the definition and identified two types of postmemory: inherited, acquired intergenerationally, and affiliative. Affiliative postmemory, also called political or cultural memory (Assmann 2008), is mediated through symbolic systems beyond family, such as media and school curriculum (Palma and Albornoz 2022).

This concept has proven useful as a category to account for the generational transmission of traumatic experiences in several parts of the world and in different genres. To give a few examples, Forcinito (2006) used this concept to study women’s testimonial postmemories of the Uruguayan dictatorship; Anastasiadis (2012) explored the use of postmemory in literary studies from a critical standpoint, focusing on European literature; Perassi and Calabrese (2017) explored how testimonies were revisited forty years after the dictatorship in Argentina; de la Torre-Espinosa (2021) used Hirsch’s concept to analyse third generation theatre productions from Spain in the genre of autofiction; Renker (2022) saw how the “generation after” (second generation) contested postmemory in Latin American literature; and Creţan and Doiciar (2023), in the field of geography, studied Romanian youth and their spatial postmemories of the communist era.

Postmemory presents “a strong connection to the events and even an influence on their psychological life and identity. In a broader sense, postmemory reflects the after-images and after-effects of collective catastrophes.” (Anastasiadis 2012, 6) In this approach to postmemory, I emphasise its productivity and creativity (Kyungah 2020) over the trauma that created it. That is, postmemory gives way to imagination and creativity which in Hirsch’s words could be “a form of repair and redress” (2012, 6).

Postmemory studies in Chile: the third generation

According to Faúndez and Cornejo (2011), there were no published postmemory studies of the third generation in Chile until 2010, when research in the areas of psychology and psychiatry started to emerge. Faúndez and Cornejo’s (2011) review of studies on generational transmission of social trauma found that for first and second generation², the trauma tends to not be discussed. Later, Faúndez, Cornejo, and Brackelaire (2014) found that the grandchildren of people who had been tortured would associate and compare the story of their grandparents with that of the country at the time they were interviewed (Mapuche struggle, students struggle) focusing on how they themselves were struggling at the time (2011), like their grandparents had in the past. These grandchildren considered their choices in life as influenced by their grandparents’ example.

Hite (2012, 12) studied the “Paine memorial”, which is product of the efforts of three generations to memorialise their relatives. Paine is a rural town situated over 30 km south of Santiago, the capital of Chile, in which there was a massacre of 70 men in 1973.³ Hite found that, “[f]or the grandparents, memories of their loved ones tend to emphasise their deaths and disappearances, the grief associated with the loss, while The Third Generation urges recuperating memories of their loved ones’ lived experiences in order to know them, as human beings.” This marks different objectives in the generations’ memorialisation strategies.

Faúndez and Hatibovic (2016) collected narratives by 14 grandchildren of people who had been subjected to political imprisonment and torture to understand how that trauma is expressed narratively in the postmemory of the grandchildren. They noticed that the metaphor of the hero is pervasive in their narratives; that is, they described their grandparents as brave heroes who managed to overcome death, presenting their experience in three stages: violent detention, political prison and torture, and return home, which in the tropes of the hero’s journey are departure, initiation, and return.

Jara’s book, Children and the afterlife of State violence (2016), mainly explores the memories of the second generation of victims and non-victims through interviews; however, they have a chapter dedicated to the third generation. In it the author confirms the importance of family in the transmission of memory, especially as there are contested memories in Chile and part of the population denies the violation of human rights during the dictatorship despite state recognition and transitional justice efforts. Additionally, Frei (2018) studied the phenomenon of “social silences” while interviewing second and third generations Chilean and Argentinean people who were not directly affected by their respective dictatorships. The author found five modes of communicative silence between generations regarding the dictatorship period: fear of talking, reconciliation, lack of argument, control of knowledge arguing direct experience, and conflict avoidance. Fear being the main one in older generations.

Cuestas and Manzano’s (2019) psychoanalytical study explored the transmission of feelings between generations as consequence of political violence. They researched the feelings of guilt and shame in the descendants of victims and perpetrators; understood as a form of memory that appears in the private and public sphere. The insufficient treatment of human rights violations occurred during the civic-military dictatorship, and the few instances of reparation have not favoured public condemnation of perpetrators and social recognition of the victims in Chile. This promotes a denial of guilt on the part of perpetrators and their descendants. On the other hand, the consequences for some survivor-parents are that they may be silent about their experiences, but they would still transmit to their children the shame of having been dehumanised. This shame is recognised but not elaborated and revictimizes the survivors and their families.

All these studies promote the need for conditions to avoid the privatisation and containment of memory and pain. They support the creation of a collective memory that considers these narratives and assume their trauma as part of the history of the recent past, thus contributing to reparation and wellbeing. Aiming to further postmemory studies of the third generation in Chile, the general research question that guides this article is that of how postmemory manifests in the writers’ discourse. This includes an exploration of memory triggers, and the aims and commonalities found in the corpus of letters.

Materials and method

The MMHR is regularly enriching its archives with written and audio-visual testimonies and projects, as well as with activities to involve the public in a presential and virtual form. The digital project Epistolario de la memoria was one of such activity, running for two years from September 2020. Although the letters are in the public domain, I informed Museum personnel about my interest on working with them in case of any objections. After confirming their approval, all the letters of the first epistolario⁴ were downloaded as PDF files from the MMHR website in 2020. Based on their declared name only, the corpus consists of 34 letters from 16 male and 25 female⁵ grandchildren, including one great-niece. Most grandchildren provided their name and age, which ranged from 6 to 47 (31 writers stated their age), with a 21-year-old media.

The letters were addressed to their grandfathers⁶ (including 3 great-uncles, taken along with the grandfather). Apart from the name of the victims, no information was provided on who they were outside of what was deduced from the letters. To research details of each case, I used the site Memoria Viva, a digital archive that documents the human rights violation during the dictatorship (Memoria Viva 2023). The age of the grandfathers ranged between 18 and 56 (media 35-year-old) at the time they were assassinated. 12 are in the list of the executed,16 are disappeared, and one is a martyr. Most of them were killed in the 70s (4 in the 80s) in diverse parts of the country. Some of the victims are emblematic cases that are part of the country’s cultural memory, such as Manuel Guerrero, Sebastián Acevedo and Jorge Peña; other victims were part of the massacres (Guerrero 2023) in the areas of Paine, Mulchén, Isla de Maipo, or victims of the infamous Caravan of Death (Madariaga and Brinkamann 2006).

The letters were translated into English by a Summer Research Scholar, and every translation was carefully revised and discussed between the translator and me. This process facilitated in-depth reading that resulted on the identification of patterns; these were then systematised in a thematic classification relating to the objective of the letters, the postmemory they evidenced, their associated ethical stances, and the academic literature on the topic.

The data analysis used tools from Critical Discourse Analysis to explore language use, discursive strategies, and emergent meanings in detail, given that CDA focuses on what is being said and how it is presented (Rojas-Lizana 2020). More specifically, I followed the categories of analysis proposed by Reisigl and Wodak (2001) as I explore the discursive strategies and linguistic means employed in the letters’ discourse. These resources are emphasised in bold when presenting examples to illustrate the analysis.

Analysis

The corpus I analyse here has characteristics that must be stated in advance, as they influence the former’s content and can be considered limitations. First, the MMHR selected the writers through the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (AFDD) and Agrupación de Familiares de Ejecutados Políticos (AFEP).⁷ Consequently, these grandchildren belong to families and organisations who understand memory as important to strengthening their feelings of identity, continuity, and unity (Jelin 2002; Panizo 2021). Furthermore, these texts are autobiographic (Pollak 2006) and belong to the genre “letters”, which means that they have a specific structure that determines their length, headings, greetings, and addressing (Rojas-Lizana 2009).

In the following sections, I will analyse the recurrent themes found in the letters. I explore how the addressers’ grandfathers are remembered, through what means, and which reflections their addressing activate. The themes are 1. Everyday presence, 2. Memory triggers, 3. The duty to remember, 4. The pain of absence, and 5. The past in the present.

1.	Everyday presence

The letters reveal that transgenerational transmission of memory is part of everyday life for the addressers. Memories are passed in everyday acts of family meetings, such as sobremesas⁸, and special reunions, like birthdays (e.g. Letter (L) 6), name day (L9, L11), and execution/disappearance day (L4). Sharing memories would classify these families as “united”, given their diffused position regarding limits, in opposition to disconnected families which present rigid limits in their communication (Faúndez and Cornejo 2011). The dialogical form adopted in the generational discourse is of support, dialogue and learning with respect to the second and third generation (Reyes, Marcela, and Cruz 2014).

Example 1

ML1(43)⁹ I always remember how well people spoke of you, the neighbours, and in general, whoever knew you, they were always lovely comments that made me imagine what kind of person you were … 

DL3(19) Ever since I could remember my family has made sure to tell me anecdotes about him, stories about his childhood, and the ones I like the most are those of how he and my nanna met and fell in love.

EL32(33) We imagine you as they [relatives] have told us, we imagine you as we have revived you over and over during these years … 

DL34 I think she never tires of speaking about you. As for me, with each story she tells me my admiration for you has grown.

Example 1 shows how the constant absent presence of the victims in the everyday life of their grandchildren is reflected in the letters’ discourse. Across twenty letters, the writers consistently and explicitly tell their grandfathers that they are routinely remembered in their conversations with the second and first generation. Adverbs and intensifiers (“always”, “ever since I could remember”, “over and over”) mark them as a frequent topic, and the presence of a collective “we” referring to the whole family is common (L3, L32) in their discourse.

Example 1 shows a tight extended family network that manifest active dialogical remembering around the figure of the grandfather; that is, the family produces a relational space in which memories are produced, reproduced and transformed constantly (Reyes, Marcela, and Cruz 2014). It is not only the family, but also colleagues, students, neighbours (L11), and organisations (L15, L20) are all part of the construction of memory, which focuses on the grandparents’ anecdotes, everyday routines (e.g. playing the violin, singing in choir, playing soccer, becoming a great dancer, reading a specific newspaper, their favourite food, playing chess, being a prankster, loving cats), their personality and deeds, as well as memories of their militancy and commitment to their cause.

These grandchildren mostly select to recall positive memories rather than sad ones (but see Example 2), creating a sense of warmth and love. Thus, the grandfathers’ absent presence is manifested through a range of emotions, such as pride, hope, love, and especially gratitude (explicit in 12 letters), in which the writers express thanks to their grandfathers for passing on their example, ideals, worldview and traits (see section “Names and personality” below). Connected to the speech act of gratitude is the recurrent view of the grandfather as a “Guardian Angel” who watches over them and sends them answers to their problems. This is explicitly present in five letters (L11, L23, L26, L28 and L33), with declarations such as, “You are without a doubt my Guardian Angel, and since I have been conscience of that, never again did I feel alone.” (L28).

These positive emotions contrast with studies on the first and second generations, in which survivors manifested anger, guilt, and fear when remembering the victims (Dalla Porta 2014; Lira 2015). Furthermore, studies on the second generation report them remaining silent about the past for reasons of fear, pain and fresh trauma, as well as conflicts in generational memory (Cornejo, Rocha, and Villarroel 2020; Lira 2014; Reyes, Cornejo, and Cruz 2014). These reactions can be explained by the fact that past generations endured state persecution and the denial of their relatives’ status as executed or disappeared until this century (Cáceres 2012; Díaz 2017). Many of them lived with the uncertainty of not knowing if their relatives were alive. Mourning was negated and even perceived as betrayal, as the admittance of death would have been considered as giving up on them (Collins 2020).¹⁰

One traumatic postmemory found in five letters of this Epistolario¹¹ refers to the last time the family saw the grandfather alive; that is, the moment of arrest, abduction, or, when grandfathers left to present themselves voluntarily before the authorities.

Example 2

DEL4(32) We, your grandchildren, gifted from our parents the memories of the final moments of that day, that farewell which would be the last.

DEL6(31) I learned that you voluntarily turned yourself in and to calm everyone you said something like, “the army is here to take care of the people, not to kill them”.

DL12 I heard amongst the few stories that my aunties tell, that when they took you, you said, “Rosa, take care of the little girls because I won’t come back, they will kill me.”

The importance of this family postmemory (received from “our parents”, “my aunties”) is marked in Example 2 in the reproduction of “the last words” reported in direct speech. This renders the memory more immediate, personal, and accurate. Discursive strategies present in other “last time” memories of this corpus are the inclusion of dates and specific details (e.g. L6, “your buttons badly fastened”; L29, “they took you from your bed”), which make the memory vivid and evidence its replication.

These memories are significant as they mark a before and after (e.g. L4, “ … that 11th August, the day that seemed to have distorted our fates forever”); that is, they document the beginning of the family trauma, described as a sudden and violent act of which the whole family is a victim. This traumatic grief has also been reported as an important memory in first and second generations recalled to help their mourning (Fried 2009); and in third generation to mark the change in the family (Faúndez and Hatibovic 2016). In other cases, it tends to be memorialised as an inherited duty or “a permanent daily state, in which a relationship is maintained with the deceased and played out in the public arena.” (Panizo 2023, 696).

2.	Memory triggers

Memory is awakened and carried through cultural means (Haye and Carvacho 2011). Some of the physical elements that activate and keep memories alive in everyday spaces are items such as photographs, or objects that belonged to the victims (Aguilar 2020; Hirsch 2008; 2012). Other immaterial triggers are present in names, and inherited physical and personality traits.

Photographs and artefacts

Photographs are a trace, a register and proof of something that no longer exists, “an irretrievably lost past world” (Hirsch 2012, 36). In the case of these victims, their pictures have historical plurality of functions both in the public and private sphere. Publicly, photographs functioned as evidence to denounce and as historical documents (Carvajal 2020; Dalla Porta 2014; Medalla 2010; Orrego 2013). They are the most iconic symbol in human rights demands, together with handkerchiefs, flags and red flowers in Latin America and other cultures (Delacroix 2020; Hasen and Sandoval 2009; Kovras 2017; Orrego 2013). Photographs are pinned to the chest of the relatives or placed in placards when protesting and commemorating (see L15 and L25 in Example 3 below). The photos “reassert the presence of the disappeared in the mind of the public” (Schirmer 1989, 20), sometimes producing lasting impact on witnesses as they are evidence and testimony of a negated truth (Orrego 2013). Photographs are given a prominent space in nine letters of the corpus.

Example 3

EL5(13) your noble face, and your deep blue gaze that I see every day in the portrait that I have brings me calm, happiness, and love.

EL15¹² My first memory of you and my uncles are photos. Photos in black and white, somewhat damaged with the top part full of pinholes. Always on the chest of my mother, my grandmother, and my aunties or framed in my house […] every time I look at your picture that today hangs on my chest, I know that I never go alone. I go accompanied by you and my uncles who have taught me to fight for what is right.

DL25(10) When we go to the protests, we take your photo because we want to know where your body is.

EL30(31) because all I know about you is [from] a portrait, a portrait that your daughter keeps, my mum, and who always asks, where are you?

In the private sphere, photographs trigger imagination and “affective memory” (Bennett 2005, 36) as seen in L5, which refers to the photograph as soothing. Furthermore, photographs are constantly mentioned, analysed, and speculated on. They are displayed in the home in key places (bedroom, living room) as an “intimate forms of paying tribute to the dead” (Aguilar 2020, 281). In the absence of objects that potentiate the memory of the dead, such as tombstones in a place reserved for them (cemetery), photographs become a site of memory and play a similar function (Prezioso and Alessandroni 2022). Photos are also a reminder that it is never enough, that truth has not been discovered (L25 and L30), and that they trigger questions that cannot be answered (Anastasiadis 2012).

Other forms of memorialising, mourning and tribute mentioned in the letters are the treasuring of personal items that belonged to the victim (e.g. books, a globe, badges, a jacket, a pen). They have associative and emotional values, which confirms the idea that objects have a social life (Vera 2023). In two letters, writers associate other-than-human beings with their grandfathers, in the form of an espino shrub (L4) and a dragonfly (L5).

Names and personality

The legacy of names is an important embodied form of memory and tribute in times of dictatorship, it was even a secret mourning strategy (Aguilar 2020). The victim’s name and variations (e.g. “Antonia”, L18) are given to children and grandchildren to keep the memory alive. This is culturally helped by the tradition of celebrating name day in Chile.¹³ In the letters, grandchildren reflect on their names, and the pride and responsibility of carrying them.¹⁴ Four writers mention the importance of inheriting the name of their grandfather.

Example 4

DL9(26) today, 1st of August, my name day reminds me that your legacy lives in me. The responsibility to carry your name as third generation is a joy.

DL11(24) First of all, Happy Name Day! Today we celebrate your name, that of my dad and that of my brother … and maybe, someday, that of my future nephew.

EL18(15) Also, it makes me happy that my first name is your second name Antonio that they gave me to remember you and I hope to be like you were someday. I hope to maintain this name, from generation to generation so we remember our family … 

Grandchildren tend to give great importance to their lineage and the benefits that descending from their grandparents has brought to them (L9). They manifest a responsibility and commitment in bearing these traits, as they consider their grandparents a guide, example, and inspiration (L18 “I hope to be like you were”). Aside from their names, the writers reflect on what they feel they have inherited from their grandfathers, such as their mathematical talents, musicality, perseverance, bravery, rebelliousness, altruism, and empathy. Physical traits are also mentioned, as in L24, “I am 6 years old, and I have the same-coloured eyes as yours.”

The letters analysed above evidence that postmemory is mainly transmitted through family narratives and re-created in cultural elements such as photographs, names and personal items. The act of listening in this generation makes them co-owners of the traumatic memory, as they became “witness to the trauma witness” but with their own positioning and perspectives that, in these cases, elicit positive feelings (Felman and Laub 1992, 58).

3.	Duty to remember

Research shows that the duty to remember (le devoir de memoire, el deber de recordar, memorialisation) is often present in generations with a traumatic past, and is especially strong when governments do not provide memory spaces and justice for the victims (Kovras 2017; Prüfer 2017; Vera 2023). In cases of relatives, this duty is also a debt that “transforms memory even more deeply into a form of honouring the memory of the missing” (Fried 2009, 142).

All letters but one (L19¹⁵) manifest the will (and duty) to remember. There is no reported attempt to rebel against the weight of traumatic memory, family pressure, or the “sanctity” of the victim, as has been found in second generation studies (Carvajal 2020; Frei 2018; Hirsch 2012). This memory duty is effortless in the letters and not only reflects an emotional and ethic stance, but also a political one, as it includes the search for justice and loyalty to victims’ beliefs, values, and ideals. This generation is aware of their inherited “pending accounts” which refer to a sense of obligation regarding the truth about their grandfathers' deaths (Jara 2006, 112). Memory duty is discursively expressed in the speech act of promising, which was identified in 18 letters.

Example 5

DEL4(32) I will carry you in my blood, my memory, and thoughts until the day I close my eyes for the last time.

EL15 And I swear that your great-grandchild will know you and you can teach them everything that you taught me.

DL16(16) P.S. I will find you.

D26(21/22) In the meanwhile, we promise you that we will continue holding our flags as a priority and that nothing ever will knock our feelings and ideals down, because thanks to you, everyone together as a family learned how to fight.

D33(13/11) We promise you that we will always fight so justice is served for you and all the detained-disappeared and politically executed just like our other grandfather Sergio Peña.

The expressions of promising in Example 5 are emotionally stressed with emphasis markers, such as the use of the formal future tense and adverbs (“always”, “ever”). This generation mainly swears to find the truth, never forget, demand memorialisation (Kovras 2017; Prüfer 2017) and follow their grandfathers’ steps. These objectives are mentioned more than those of finding perpetrators and the bodies¹⁶, which is a logical adjustment as memory and duty change according to the demands of the present. The relatives of the disappeared and executed in Chile have had a long consistent tradition of activism, which has passed through periods. The first generation fought for recovering their relatives alive or dead, and to make people aware that disappearances and executions were taking place. When democracy returned, they fought for forensic truth and justice. This generation seems to focus primarily on truth, justice and memory.

Another important point evidenced under this theme is the proud mention of their grandfathers’ political agency, the defence of their political claims, and declaring their own choices in life as influenced by their grandfathers’ political example (e.g. L5.2 “to know that you fought for your ideals until the end has turned me into someone who also fights for their rights and convictions”; see too Faúndez, Cornejo, and Brackelaire 2014). This seems to echo the claim of authors who have criticised the efforts of truth commissions and memory sites for erasing the political commitment of the victims as they focus on the description of their suffering (Bustamante-Danilo and Carreño-Calderón 2020; Guerrero 2023).

4.	The pain of absence

Pain is reflected in the mention of absence and loss. Named painful experiences include examples such as not knowing what happened to the grandfathers in their final moments, where their bodies are, and the lack of justice. At the individual level, grandchildren manifest sadness for being deprived from the experience of growing up with a grandfather. A particular pattern that emerges within this theme is that grandchildren place themselves in a “non-protagonist” (Reyes, Cruz, and Aguirre 2016) role by backgrounding their own pain and foregrounding that of their parents and grandparents.¹⁷

Studies on the area of childhood in dictatorship have revealed that the second generation lived deeply traumatic experiences as children when their relatives were taken, added to the constant fear of repression to fall on their surviving parents and themselves, and the cases of families that had to be separated for economic and safety reasons (Guerrero 2023; Hite 2012; Lira 2015; Verdejo, Maureira, and Porta 2014). Furthermore, Cabrera, Roberto, and Matamala (2017) present the case of third generation people commenting on their parents not being able to experience their parenthood plainly (in cases suffering chronic depression), as they were busy looking for their relatives and for justice.

Example 6

EL15 I would see my aunties, grandmother and mum cry, the women that have sheltered me from all the bad that they have had to face alone. I used to see them cry uncontrollably with anger, with sadness, with impotency and, above all, with a thirst for justice that has allowed them to move mountains to find you.

EL18(15) our family that suffered and still suffers these terrible moments. Amongst them, my dad who grew up without you, for you couldn’t be with him by his side, give him a hug … 

DL25(10) We will never forget you, never in [this] life and we will take care of my mum because she has suffered a lot.

“Writers underplay their individual pain by using collective subjects or naming the suffering of others (‘our family’, ‘we’, ‘my mom’). Backgrounding one’s own victimhood is a common form of coping as people do not want to be categorised as victims” due to the connotation of helplessness, weakness, passivity, and sadness that this carries (Rojas-Lizana 2020). On the other hand, these grandchildren may be wanting to contest certain official narratives that place them exclusively as victims; “[i]t seems that presenting themselves as activists who should not be considered victims constitutes a reply to positions that reduce their political experience to victimization.” (Cornejo, Rocha, and Villarroel 2020, 608; see also, Hite 2012; Palma and Albornoz 2022; Guerrero 2023).

Their mention of family trauma is also presented to pay homage to the first and second generations, which are well known as a global symbol of resistance. Their efforts were catalytic in advancing justice, finding victims and “gradually annulling the amnesty law applicable to the crime of disappearances [and executions].” (Kovras 2017, 12; Ferrara 2022). The pain of previous generations is transformed into an active wish for action, expressed in the promises we saw in the previous theme. Example 7 below shows the use of other discursive strategies that minimise suffering, present in the formula “don’t worry”, disclaimers and other phrases.

Example 7

ML1(43) Here we are all very well, … and in each of us there is a little piece of you inherited transgenerationally as a mark, as a wound that still hurts us … I won’t lie to you … it still hurts us; it still makes us cry … 

DL34 My mum, your spoiled Irmita is well, don’t worry, however, I have no words to describe how much she has missed you all this time.

DL8(12/15/17) It has been a difficult time, but we ask you not to worry about us because despite all of the deaths and pain that all this has caused us, we have found strengths in a family that is not of blood, but of the struggle, to continue happy and to see all the positive outcomes that comes with this.

In these instances (included in 6 letters), writers used mitigation strategies in the narration of their families’ suffering as a form of consideration for the addressees, their grandfathers, to spare them the knowledge of the deep trauma their family experienced. Very few of the letters detail the suffering and humiliation the families had to endure in their long search, the re-traumatisation experienced due to double disappearance of some cases (see Cáceres 2012; Díaz 2017), errors in the identification of exhumated victims, the deception in the armed forces’ declarations and in countless legal proceedings, among other cruelties (Madariaga and Brinkamann 2006).¹⁸ On the other hand, avoiding mentioning bad experiences, may also relate to what Hite (2012) identifies as memory contrasts between the third and previous generations, stating that while the third generation wants to recall memories of everyday life, the first and second generation prefer to remember the moments of their kidnapping, death and associated pain (see section “Postmemory Studies in Chile”, above).

5.	The past in the present

Fifteen letters relay at length the 2019 Estallido social (social upheaval movement that lasted a year, see Águila, Rojas-Lizana, and Uribe 2022) as an important news to bring to their grandfathers. They all saw Estallido as a sign of hope that things would change for the better in the country. Estallido connects the past with the present, as they claim people have joined the (“humane”, “lovely”, “noble”) “ideals” (mentioned in 9 letters) of their grandparents, confirming that they had been right all along. Interestingly, the Covid19 pandemic is mentioned only in passim in 11 letters (the letters were written during lockdown in 2020), possibly due to Covid not being a product of political forces.¹⁹

Example 8

DL8(12/15/17) pa, we are very happy as more and more people join the struggle to tear down this capitalist and murderous government that was part of the dictatorship that snatched your life from us and the life of many others.

EL15 You and my uncles gave your lives for what was right, for what the state should be delivering. My classmates and I, we know, we needed an education of quality just like they give you when you pay for it.

DL27(14) I would also like to tell you that on the 18th of October 2019 there was the Social Outburst here in Chile and I would have liked to have gone to the rallies with you.

Example 8 shows writers building reflection bridges between the past and present by directly connecting their government with the dictatorship (L8), imagining their grandfathers marching with them in the streets (L27), and making a parallel between the fighters from the past (grandfather and uncles) and those of the present (grandchild and classmates) (L15). The theme of connecting the past with the present in memory work is common in current activism linked to past processes of transitional justice, where relatives seek to promote the political project and highlight the condition of militants of the victims which have not been included in social discussions (Ferrara 2022; Hite 2012; Rangelov and Teitel 2023).

Discussion and conclusion

The MMHR’s digital project “Epistolary of memory” (2022) rescues everyday memories of third generation survivors of the Chilean dictatorship who grew up learning the narratives of previous generations, which were composed of unresolved traumatic experiences as well as memories of love. These letters show that they have absorbed these memories and created their own defining narratives and memories from which to draw strength.

The analysis shows that the absent grandfather is a constant and welcomed presence in the everyday life of these grandchildren. The family and extended family participate in active dialogical remembering, and grandchildren are eager to learn more about who their grandfathers were, both as everyday people and as militants. This was also found in other third generation studies such as Hite (2012), Faúndez, Cornejo, and Brackelaire (2014), and Faúndez and Hatibovic (2016). The letters show that the memory of the grandparents is triggered by photographs, objects, and embodied forms of memory such as namesakes, and character traits these grandchildren say (or want) to have inherited.

Some of the emotions most expressed in the letters are pride, hope, love, and especially gratitude for passing on their example, ideals, worldview and traits. Moreover, (memory) duty is abundantly manifested in the speech act of promising. In contrast, first- and second generation studies show the presence of anger, guilt and apprehension in their accounts (Dalla Porta 2014; Lira 2015) as well as attempts to rebel against the burden of traumatic memory and family pressure (Carvajal 2020; Frei 2018; Hirsch 2012). The letters also express the pain of absence and its mitigation in several ways; by foregrounding the pain of the first and second generation, and (given that these are letters directly addressing their grandfathers) by avoiding the mention of painful memories, asking grandfathers not to worry, and promising the family is well and united.

These grandchildren seem to have overcome the culture of fear that promotes silence and omissions as a form of protection against emotional pain and fresh trauma, as well as conflicts in generational memory, which are present in cases for the first and second generation (Cornejo, Rocha, and Villarroel 2020; de la Torre-Espinosa 2021; Frei 2018; Jara 2006; Jelin 2002; Lira 2014; Reyes, Marcela, and Cruz 2014). They commit to keeping the memory alive, which is considered healing and reparative (Atkinson 2020; Danieli 1998; Herman 2023). The letters reflect on the historical presence of the past in the present, placing the writers as historical subjects and agents of change. In this way, the project places in the public sphere intimate memories that move from the intrahistory to become part of global history.

However, as limitation of this study, we cannot generalise these dispositions to the entirety of the third generation. As explained at the beginning of the analysis, these writers and their families are members of organisations that have always been vocal about the importance of struggling for justice and memorialising. It seems that it is precisely this belonging to “united” families that has contributed to the form of their postmemory discourses. Further studies on inherited and affiliative postmemory, including different demographics would help to gain more knowledge on the factors that influence the selection and emotions involved in postmemory accounts.

This digital space in which writers exercise their right to memory is a valuable contribution to national discussions of the recent past, promoting civic engagement and awareness of the generational impact that the violation of human rights has on families and beyond. The project allows us to learn about a diversity of voices actively contributing to the construction of memory. We learn about the victims in their individuality, how the recent historical past has affected the younger generations, and what this generation highlights as relevant when writing their stories.

Epistolary of Memory reminds us that traumatic memories of a difficult past are part of national history and should be acknowledged as such if we wish to build a healthier society. These grandchildren certainly interpellate us, their readers, (in Dusselian terms), but they also give us hope, as their voices are powerful in their demands of recognition and participation in history.

Acknowledgements

My gratitude to the writers of these letters. Their strength and love have been inspiring and encouraging. Thanks to the Museum of Memory and Human Rights for starting this project and guarding these letters. Thanks to Sarah Stockton for translating them into English as part of a Summer Research Scholar Program at the University of Queensland.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The 2021 collection is comprised of 27 letters from female relatives to 19 disappeared or executed female victims of the dictatorship (MMHR 2022). The 2021 Epistolario contains letters written mainly by first- and second generation women. They are not analysed here as this article centres on third generation postmemory discourse.

2 In Chile, therapists use “first generation” to refer to all who lived the experience directly as children or adults (Lorena Pérez, therapist, personal communication). I use second generation to refer to those who lived through the dictatorship as children because their memory discourses are different to that of their parents.

3 To learn about this memorial, see the visual essay by Traverso and Azúa (2013).

4 The letters can be read in, https://epistolariodelamemoria.cl/2020/

5 Some letters have more than one writer signing. In four cases, letters were addressed to the same grandfather.

6 Among the disappeared and executed, 94% were men. The first Truth commission of 1991 registered 2398 deaths of which 1469 are detained-disappeared (Freire, Meadowcroft, and Skarbek 2019). Until 2022 only 176 bodies were properly identified (Panizo 2023).

7 See the MMHR 2018 short video, “Nietos, a 45 años del golpe de estado” [Grandchildren: 45 years after the coup d’état] where some of the Epistolario letter writers appear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B0dzdWedpQ. The AFDD was created in 1975 and the AFEP in 1976 (Lira 2015).

8 Sobremesas are a Spanish cultural tradition that can last hours. They reinforce family communication and unity (Jara 2006). Pérez (2010, 28) defines sobremesas as, “the time after a meal where the family may sit around a table and discuss each other. It is a time for reflection and discussion and a time to simply be immersed in the presence of the family.”

9 Before each extract, I include the victim’s condition (M = martyr, D = disappeared, E = executed, DE = found disappeared), an “L” (letter), its number in the corpus, and the age of the writer (if stated). Although the Epistolario is in the public domain, the writers may have not intended for their letters to be analysed in an academic article, so I have not included their names for ethical reasons. The reader can access the Epistolario at the MMDH site if they want more information. See Endnote 4.

10 In the book Truth and Repair, Herman (2023) traces the course of survivors’ recovery from trauma in three stages, a) establishing safety in the present; b) grieving and social support; c) refocus on present and future. It seems in some cases the first and second generation have not reached the third stage.

11 This postmemory is also present in several letters of the 2021 epistolary, https://epistolariodelamemoria.cl/2021/

12 This writer does not state their age, but the letter mentions they are in high school.

13 Each day in the calendar carries the name of a saint or a biblical character in the Catholic church. People celebrate their name day like a birthday.

14 Similarly, Letter 5 (age, 13) starts, “I was born the same day as you, the 1st of June and it’s an important day for me because it reminds me of you.”

15 This letter referred to the grandfather in third person and focused on the sadness of the writer’s mother.

16 Through several attempts and processes, it has been solidified that the disappeared will not reappear given the army’s and other involved organisations unwillingness to cooperate. Three letters in this corpus refer to the recovered bodies of their grandfathers after years of having disappeared.

17 This minimising was also present in second generation studies in which their parents (first generation) are perceived as the real victims of the regime (Becker and Díaz 1998).

18 The consequences of this psychological trauma on the first and second generation have been documented in several publications (Lira 2015; Madariaga and Brinkamann 2006; MMDH 2014; Verdejo, Maureira, and Porta 2014).

19 Similar results are reported in the digital memory study of Águila, Rojas-Lizana, and Uribe (2022).