Behind the Neoclassical Façade: A Haunted National Monument in Chilean Film

Abstract

This article analyses filmic representations of the Chilean presidential palace (La Moneda), an emblematic site at which narratives of past violence, national exceptionalism and emancipatory anticipation intersect. I build on a growing corpus of work that uses film analysis to explore the spatiality of dictatorship memories and legacies in the Southern Cone. Unlike more conventional “sites of memory”, La Moneda is simultaneously a functioning government building, a site of violence, and an object of heritage. This complex temporal fabric makes it a powerful space for political interventions, a setting that can sharpen the continuities and symmetries between different historical events and periods. Drawing on theories of inheritance and haunting, I first examine the hegemonic temporalities of progress and heritage that frame the building, moving on to reflect on the alternative temporal imaginaries offered by film. In these texts the palace is haunted by images of its own destruction in 1973, as well as by the figure of Salvador Allende, whose prophesy of future emancipation sits uncomfortably with triumphalist accounts of the Chilean democratic transition. Through my analysis, I explore how site-specific struggles for historical justice are imbricated in resistance to ongoing state repression, and the formulation of alternatives to neoliberal capitalism.

Keywords:

• Cultural memory
• haunting
• Chilean film
• postdictatorship Chile
• politics of time

Acknowledgements

I thank my former PhD supervisors, Graham Dawson, Victoria Margree, and Thomas Carter, who provided support and advice during the writing of this article; Andrea García González, Garikoitz Gómez Alfaro, Kate Newby, Fearghus Roulston, Melina Sadiković and Kasia Tomasiewicz, who read and discussed the text as a group; and finally, César Barros and Daniel Willis for their critiques, comments, and words of encouragement.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Original declaration in Spanish: “Los estudiantes nos cansamos, las familias chilenas se cansaron, Chile se cansó. El camino que mostraron los chilotes, Aysén y Freirina rebelde, los trabajadores del cobre, y los secundarios con las ocupaciones de liceos.”

2 Translation by Stojanowski and Duncan (2017, 258).

3 See Garcés (2019).

4 By stating that the palace has been a symbolic site of violence throughout its history, I am referring to its association with the Chilean state: a state that repressed labour movements throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Frazier 2007; Loveman 2016), decimated and displaced indigenous groups, such as the Mapuche and the Selk'nam (Marchante 2019; Antileo Baeza et al. 2015), pursued expansionist war with Peru and Bolivia (Beckman 2009), and defended a socio-economic model that sustained the wealth, privilege, and power of an elite minority. How to register the exceptional violence and trauma of the 1973 military coup, without disappearing these histories of violence and exploitation, is one of the questions framing my research.

5 Cited by Zárate (2003, 187).

6 For further discussion of the distinctions between cultural memory, trauma theory, and haunting see Gray (2019), Gordon (2011), and Gordillo (2014).

7 See Fischer (2016).

8 See Abraham, Torok, and Rand (2005).

9 For further discussion of this film see Aravena and Pinto (2018).

10 A feature-length version of this film was released in 2018.

11 It is worth noting that although the films I mention disturb the temporal imaginary of the democratic transition, they do not contemplate forms of state repression and social resistance that preceded the coup. In order to fully interrogate these pasts, a broader physical and textual landscape needs to be acknowledged.

12 See Moulian (2002).

13 Translation by Teitelboim (1992, 469).

14 For example, Mi vida con Carlos (2010), La quemadura (2009), Héroes frágiles (2006), El eco de las canciones (2010), and En algún lugar del cielo (2003).

15 For more on the distinction between reflective and restorative nostalgia, see Boym (2001).

16 Writing about two other postdictatorship documentaries, La ciudad de los fotógrafos (2006) and Chile, la memoria obstinada (1997), José Miguel Palacios identifies a similar process of restitution, in which filmed encounters with sites of memory and archive footage challenge the de-ideologisation of individuals who lived through Unidad Popular years (2014, 119).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Struan Gray

Struan Gray is an associate researcher at the Centre for Memory Narrative and Histories, in the University of Brighton. He received a BA in Journalism, Film and Media from Cardiff University in 2011, moving on to work as a journalist in Santiago, Chile. His PhD, which was awarded in June 2019, explored how the aftermath of the Pinochet military dictatorship is represented and negotiated in Chilean film, developing the concept of haunting as an original theoretical lens. He is currently conducting postdoctoral research on the work of activist and experimental filmmaking collectives in the Southern Cone.