This article reconstructs and analyzes the memories of women who were in the city of Valparaíso on September 11, 1973, the day of the coup d’état in Chile. Research participants were six women from the Valparaíso region, militants of leftist parties, and survivors of political imprisonment and torture during the Chilean civil-military dictatorship. We conducted a focus group and two semi-structured individual interviews. Data analysis was carried out in two stages: the first one phenomenological-hermeneutic and the second one based on Grounded Theory. The research results show that the day of the coup d’état in Valparaíso is remembered by women as a mighty and irrevocable milestone, functioning as a biographical event. The coup d’état means a before and after in civic experiences in social, political, and historical aspects and in the dwelling manners of the city.
Much of the research conducted on transitional justice in Chile has focused on social memory and memory policies. However, limited attention has been paid to the process of memorial production taking place in specific spaces and places during the postdictatorship period. The present study examines how five Chilean memory sites perform this task by means of 16 interviews with people linked to these places in some way (e.g., as workers, volunteers, visitors, or academics). On the basis of data produced, an analysis of biographic and contextual elements was conducted using the thematic networks technique (Attride-Stirling, 2001). The authors argue that, in line with the Chilean context, the memorial production of these sites is marked by tensions derived from internal factors and from their contact with the State and other members of the community.
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