by Pía Montalva


Versión española aquí



Pía Montalva is a designer (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) and PhD in Latin American Cultural Studies (Universidad de Chile), as well as a professor at the History Institute of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is the author of the books Morir un poco: Moda y sociedad en Chile 1960-1976 (2004), Tejidos Blandos: Indumentaria y violencia política en Chile 1973-1990 (2013), and Apuntes para un diccionario de la moda (2017). She has curated multiple clothing exhibitions and fashion shows and collaborated as a specialized columnist in Chilean media.

 


Introduction


On September 11, 1973, the Chilean Armed Forces, who were deployed throughout the country, carried out a coup d'état, overthrowing the constitutional government of President Salvador Allende, and taking control of political power by forcefully and effectively repressing the supporters of the Unidad Popular. A military dictatorship that would last for the next 17 years was installed, marshaling in a new political, institutional, and economic order based on the use of violence in the country. The military dictatorship was to be the mechanism through which changes were set in motion that would radically affect the future of Chilean society, and key projects associated with the regime's re-foundational purpose (such as the establishment of the new neoliberal economic model at the end of 1975, and the enactment of the new Political Constitution of the Republic of Chile in 1981) were implemented through undemocratic means.

In the sphere of everyday life, state violence was presented as the device through which the dictatorship remodels the bodies of its opponents, intervening directly in their materiality through force and removing public space. Illegal arrests, executions, disappearances, imprisonment, and torture, often resulting in death, relegation, or exile, were some of the actions that took place systematically, and with greater or lesser civilian resistance and/or armed resistance, until 1990.

Beyond its ongoing pervasiveness and purpose, which was defined largely by the postulates of the National Security Doctrine, the ways in which violence was managed and administered (where, how, and when) were gradually modified in accordance with the legal frameworks in force, which served as a shield for the regime to justify its actions. [1] It was also influenced by the nuances of neoliberal ideology and the free market model from 1976 onwards (specialization, intensity, selectivity, regularity, efficiency) and by pressure from opposition groups and the international community which, although it did not eradicate it, did partly define its visibility and invisibility.


Body, clothing, and political violence


The links between state political violence and clothing is evident when analyzing the testimonies of people affected by it. This connection between state political violence and clothing has mainly been dealt with in forensic work that aims to identify the remains of the disappeared or establish cause of death. To a large extent, naked bodies and bony assemblages devoid of soft tissue define the imaginary of the body abused during the Chilean military dictatorship. However, it is the dressed-undressed body that best exposes the different forms of political violence exercised during this period. Because clothing, in whatever condition, and to the extent that it touches or covers, totally or partially, the body, refers to a subject with a name and a surname, a history, a time, a place, an identity, a voice, an autobiographical account. Leonor Arfuchs suggests that subjects are inscribed in a biographical space that involves the historical, political, social, and cultural context, and where each person produces their own narrative as a way of structuring life and identity. [2] From the above approach, I suggest that clothing is a key signifier in this process of inscription, because it is not limited to spoken or written language.

In the same line of analysis, I propose that the body and clothing do not operate, in practice, as separate entities. They compose a single materiality, in a permanent state of constitution, because subjects use clothes and accessories to produce and voluntarily replicate different body styles — and autobiographical narratives — throughout their existence, which they modify or sustain according to the life experiences and historical contexts in which they occur. Although these bodily styles are regulated by hegemonic norms related to gender, sex, class or race — even fashion — they need to be reiterated in order to assert their presence and be recognized as such. In this sense, the performance through embodied practices, proposed by Judith Butler  as a way of fixing and performing gender, unstable by definition, would help to explain other dimensions of the autobiographical narrative: its configuration through dressed bodies but also the possibility of fracturing it by remodeling those bodies through exercising political violence. [3]

In everyday life, clothing satisfies functional (physical and symbolic protection, shelter, hygiene, modesty), aesthetic (adornment), and social (integration, differentiation, distinction, categorization) needs that determine the appearance and actions of the clothed body in public space. Joanne Entwistle argues that fashion and dress studies overlook the body and vice versa. [4] For analytical purposes, she proposes the concept of contextualized bodily practice, which would make it possible to consider both the discursive and representational aspects of dress and its inclusion in the framework of power relations and corporeal experience in social space. Djurdja Barlett agrees with Entwistle in defining fashion as an embodied social practice. She stresses its performative aspect, its links to the advance of Western capitalism and its possibilities of highlighting — and resisting — “the totalitarian, nationalistic and extreme religious spaces on the world map,” thus affirming its political dimension. [5] Both assign a key role to the historical context in which these practices take place.


Figure 1. Drawing of the overalls used by Ignacio Vidaurrázaga in the Borgoño Barracks of the CNI National Information Center, in the 1980s, during his detention. Author: Ignacio Vidaurrázaga. 2012. Source: Pía Montalva Archive
The direct exercise of state political violence restricts, prevents, or forces the covering of one's body. On the other hand, clothes act as devices for manipulating and remodeling bodies for the purposes of the regime. The system modifies the functions of certain everyday clothes — including  the fashions available — which, once in a space of confinement, can become activators of physical punishment. A significant part of the effectiveness with which these uses were realized was related to the materials used in their manufacture. Soft, rough, transparent, opaque, flexible, or rigid, they give consistency to the garment, articulating it to the body: akin to the last of its soft tissues, the most superficial, the one that paradoxically is both its own and alien to it. This body-clothing link is not replicated with other objects of culture. Although the architectural space that contains the dressed-undressed body surrounds it and touches it in all its contours, it operates as a void, as an effect of its material dimension, but not as a concrete materiality where the traces of the human condition are embodied, transferred, exchanged, and fixed. This particularity of clothing is what makes it possible for violence to creep into the interstice where it borders on the body. From there it is signified by transgression: a stain, a tear, a deformity, a smell, an absence, a negation.

There are two emblematic pieces of state political violence deployed by the Chilean military dictatorship: the blindfold that covers the eyes, and the overalls that cover the trunk and limbs. Both suspend the passage of time, marking stages in the chain of production of violence. And although, in the 1980s, they are found on the body of the detainee, they allude to intervals of different durations: in the case of the former, the blind wait, devoid of any possibilities on the horizon; and in the case of the latter, the masquerade about the state of the future, a connection that will be explained further below. 


“[T]he body and clothing do not operate, in practice, as separate entities. They compose a single materiality, in a permanent state of constitution, because subjects use clothes and accessories to produce and voluntarily replicate different body styles — and autobiographical narratives — throughout their existence, which they modify or sustain according to the life experiences and historical contexts in which they occur.”


Blindfold: Waiting Blind


The blindfold can be described as a small, amorphous piece of material used to suspend the sense of sight. Despite its opacity, it becomes transparent when it comes to characterizing dictatorial violence. Its activation always refers to an anomaly, because under normal conditions and in terms of clothing, the eyes are the only part of the body that is not dressed. When this happens, the gesture is of a temporary nature: to protect the eyes from excess light (sunglasses, bandages after surgery) or to optimize vision (optical glasses, contact lenses). Moreover, in the history of Western culture, there is a codification that regulates glazes. In other words, objects that fulfill this function retain the necessary transparency so as not to restrict other bodily functions.

The blindfold as a violence-producing garment remained in force throughout the Chilean military dictatorship, beyond the changes established to exercise such violence. In this sense, it becomes a common and universal object that does not make distinctions of class, gender, race, or nationality. All male and female prisoners were blindfolded equally. They share the initiatory character of the blindfold, which, by denying the sense of sight, marks a break with the past and introduces a space of uncertainty regarding one's own destiny.

If we consider only its formal dimension, the blindfold could be defined as a rectangle of flexible material that should cover at least the area occupied by the eyes and the length of which should be long enough to be tied at the back of the head, unless other means of fastening it to the face are used. One way of differentiating between blindfolds is by analyzing the material used to make them. In general, the material coincides with the time and conditions in which the blindfold remains on the prisoners' faces. It is possible to identify, then, that a blindfold always has an ephemeral character because its material characteristics do not guarantee its durability. It alludes to the moment of arrest and the urgency of reducing the subject. This includes adhesive tape that literally fixes the upper and lower eyelashes of both eyes with the inner side of the eyelashes where the glue is located, which causes a lot of pain when it is pulled off, leaving the individuals without hair on the edges of the eyelid. Of particular note, there is the transparent plastic tape used for packaging, which detainees call ‘Scotch’ alluding to a well-known brand that manufactures it abroad, and which is replicated by the national industry.


Figure 2. Work overalls made with fabrics from Yarur Manufacturas Chilenas de Algodón, when the country still had a democratic system. Pieces similar to this one are part of the torture device during the Chilean military dictatorship. Advertisement published in Yarur Magazine: Nº1, Santiago de Chile, October 1965.
This type of clear adhesive blindfold obscures the reality of detentions occurring in broad daylight because, although the blindfold is applied in public, its transparency helps to camouflage the anomaly. The persons concerned are put into a car. The transparent blindfold prevents passersby on the street from noticing what is really happening. Most of the time, such actions were consolidated by adding a pair of dark glasses on top of the tape blindfold. Delia Bravo, a militant of the Socialist Party, captured in 1975 by the National Intelligence Directorate, DINA, remembers being forcibly put into a van and blindfolded with Scotch, “of the normal kind.” [6] Ignacio Vidaurrázaga, a militant of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria MIR, detained by agents of the Central Nacional de Informaciones, CNI, in 1984, in the Biobío Region and transferred to Santiago, says: “When they put Scotch on me it was during the transfer from Tobalaba [aerodrome]. When passing through the city it was Scotch and dark glasses.” [7]

A second transitional blindfold was improvised using a self-adhesive wrap, a material commonly known in Chile as telemplastica. It is a strip of cloth, one side of which is covered with an adhesive plaster. White, opaque, thicker and stronger than Scotch, it is used to secure gauze bandages used on wounds. In the context of violence, it is used for interrogation and torture sessions that last for several hours. The idea is that the political prisoner remains deprived of sight and the blindfold ensures the non-identification of the aggressors, despite the secretion of various bodily fluids, such as sweat or tears, where the humidity tends to weaken the glue and make it easier to remove. Alberto Gamboa, arrested in 1973 in Santiago, mentions this type of blindfold:

“They pushed me into the car. [...] When I sat between two men in sport shirts, they put telemplastica (tape) over my eyes. This happened two days and two nights ago. I visited three places of detention in those conditions. I don't know where they were and I will never know. In each of these places I was interrogated and beaten as they pleased.” [8]
Figure 3. Drawing of blindfolded prisoners. Author: Miguel Montecinos Jeffs. Date not specified. Source: Villa Grimaldi Park for Peace Documentary Archive
In addition to the blindfolds made of different types of adhesive tapes, there are other, much more permanent ones that accompany the detainee during his or her journey through the clandestine detention centers. They clearly mark the passage of time, and, like the original clothes, which are worn at the time of arrest and cover the body throughout the prisoner's captivity, they make materially evident the deterioration suffered by the prisoner. They also reveal the precariousness of the prisoner’s conditions as well as the degree of improvisation used by the Armed Forces during the first months of the dictatorship because it is evident that the bandages are not on the official list of equipment. One of the most striking items in this category is recorded in the testimony of Hernán Valdés, where the author recounts his stay in the Tejas Verdes prison camp. He refers to it as an “antifaz” (mask), because it covers only a portion of the face. It is made of an irregular piece of sponge (polyurethane foam), possibly a waste product from the packaging of other products. And it is formed on each face when it is tied with a cotton string. Valdés recalls:

“They take off my glasses and order me not to open my eyes while they violently pull off the adhesive cloths, possibly with a good portion of my eyelashes. Instead, they cover the upper part of my face with an eye mask, which they secure tightly with a thin thread that slices my ears and the back of my neck.” [9]

This thin, tough cord, used for wrapping packages, causes injury to the skin. On the other hand, the sponge, kinder to the prisoner's flesh, adds some relief and comfort. Both materialities activate the perverse game of torture itself, configured on the basis of the administration of protection and harm. The materials increase the efficacy of the blindfold as a violence-producing object insofar as they better fill the possible voids located in the eye socket. This change of blindfold annuls the provisional character of the adhesive bandage through the materiality of the garment — its initial flexibility hardened on contact with the body or the possibility of applying more than one layer until the desired opacity is achieved. The change of policy was institutionalized in the course of the following months.

Another type of blindfold, which also has a more permanent character,  uses the elastic bands used to immobilize muscle injuries. It is highly efficient when it comes to preventing any partial hint of vision. In addition, excessive pressure on the head causes pain in the temples and increases the sensation of suffocation. At the beginning of the dictatorship, these blindfolds abounded in mass detention centers, where there were often female personnel carrying out nursing work (collective disinfection with products to prevent parasitic epidermal diseases associated with precarious environments and lack of hygiene). It is possible that these supplies were included as part of the basic first aid supplies and were then assigned a function other than the original one related to the exercise of state political violence. Luis Corvalán Castillo, a 25-year-old agricultural engineer and Communist Youth militant, imprisoned in the National Stadium between September and November 1973, mentions this clothing in his testimony:

“They hold me between several people and undress me, they place a tight elastic bandage on my eyes; they still do not ask me any questions, only blows, insults and threats [...] I faint several times and they wake me again. I am aware that twice, they take off the elastic bandage so that the doctor can observe my pupils.” [10]

The most durable blindfold was one made by reusing different textiles owned by the detainee and in his possession at the time of capture. Fernando Villagrán, a 24-year-old journalist, prisoner at the Chilean Air Force Specialities School, claims to have been blindfolded with a handkerchief he was carrying in his pocket. However, the material could have been taken from any torn pieces of clothing resulting from early torture sessions--not necessarily his own. Whether or not  torn-cloth blindfolds were given to those who originally wore those garments was a product of timing and the particular events of each interrogation. The sleeves of men's shirts and women's blouses are quite often mentioned because the garment is torn along the contour of the armhole. Because of its elongated shape and double layer of fabric, this fragment comes close to the required dimensions. Humberto Trujillo, a member of the armed resistance against the dictatorship, arrested in 1983 in the Borgoño Barracks of the CNI in Santiago, recalls: “In the dungeon, a civilian ripped off one of the sleeves of my shirt, with which they blindfolded me.” [11]
At best, the aggressor minimizes effort by merging the force of bodily aggression with the manufacture of the blindfold. This enhances the massification of violence, whereby bodies are entered into a production chain and go through different stages until the sequence is completed. This type of blindfold is much more effective than the previous ones in terms of the productivity of violence. When instituted with a part of the body’s clothing — a constituent part of the subject's autobiographical story — it transforms external violence into self-aggression. The physical pain produced by the fusion of the adhesive with the eyelashes, the sores on the skin caused by the tightness of the pitilla (thin cotton thread), or the headache due to the pressure of the elastic rubber adds another, unprecedented, perverse layer of violence, which comes from the clothed body itself and disrupts the order of things.

Often, the same fabric blindfold covers the detainee's eyes for a long period of time. Patricio Rivas reports having used the same covering for a year. [12] Sometimes it even becomes an identification mechanism inside the detention center: “I could tell Flaco apart by the blindfold; it was the only red one.”[13] With the passage of time and continuous use, its deterioration is evident. Even more so when it is used by one prisoner and ends up over the eyes of another. In this case we speak of a rag, signifying the idea of a scouring pad, a dirty object used to the limit. When the material is thick and made to absorb the body's humidity, like a towel, the bandage acquires an unbearable smell that is difficult to forget:

“It was a light blue towel, dirty, foul, covering me from my forehead to my mouth. I stopped smelling it years ago, but from time to time the memory of the fear secreted by other faces returns. Many faces had moaned behind that rag, many tears had dried up.” [14]

The textile used to make the permanent bandages was modified during the dictatorship, as the application of violence was optimized and specialized, the result of the change in its institutional framework. In the 1980s, in the Borgoño barracks of the CNI, a very elastic nylon knitted bandage was used, similar to the one worn by girls and adolescents when they went to school in a proper uniform. Ignacio, held incommunicado for ten days in that center in August 1984, recalls: “I think that the bandage in the Borgoño, I recall, was a tight, very tight, black or dark blue headband.” [15]






“Th[e] particularity of clothing is what makes it possible for violence to creep into the interstice where it borders on the body. From there it is signified by transgression: a stain, a tear, a deformity, a smell, an absence, a negation.”

Overalls: Masquerades of Violence


After the dissolution of the DINA in 1977, the creation of the CNI, and the enforced adoption of the 1980 Constitution — which came with transitional articles — the military dictatorship refined the methods of applying violence and organized a sophisticated legal context to legitimize it. It operated on the basis of a system of incommunicado detention, with defined but renewable time limits, in the framework of which the prisoner is at the mercy of the security apparatus. In some cases, they were made visible in the public space for propaganda purposes. The transfer to the Military Prosecutor's offices for interrogation would take place in broad daylight and with the press stationed outside. This new modus operandi imposed unprecedented requirements with regard to the physical appearance of the detainee, which had not been the case in the past when indefinite and clandestine detentions were the norm. Other ways of treating the body and other types of clothing emerged.

Overalls, track suits, or bodysuits, accompanied by rustic espadrilles, became the temporary uniform of the political detainees. The function of these garments was radically different from the uniforms worn daily by prisoners in many prisons. This clothing was added in order to prevent the deterioration of the clothes with which the men and women were captured so that, in the event of an eventual transfer or definitive release, they would look impeccable, without any trace of the violence to which they had been subjected during their incommunicado detention.

Such clothing does not refer to a precise historical moment, although it is possible to establish a link between this uniform and the blue canvas overalls used by the maintenance teams of the Navy and the Air Force. Both institutions used them occasionally and, as an initiative from the officer in charge, around 1974, in some detainee camps and torture centers, respectively. By 1983, in the context of protests from groups opposed to the dictatorship, and the period of incommunicado detention (prior to formal prosecution) of five days, which could be extended to 20, the use of the blue jumpsuit became part of the interrogation and torture routine established by the CNI. G.Z., detained in the Borgoño Barracks (Santiago), recalls:

“Arriving at the barracks, we were ordered to undress completely, put on blue overalls and blue trainers (all this in the car park), and then go down to a basement where there were several small cells, rooms with ‘grills’ for interrogations, an infirmary, a bathroom, and numerous personnel.” [16]

“In the sphere of everyday life, state violence was presented as the device through which the dictatorship remodels the bodies of its opponents, intervening directly in their materiality through force and removing public space.”

As for the material used to make the garment, the testimonies agree on its hardness and blue color. Some mention denim, but taking into account the tradition of work clothes in Chile, it is possible that it is gabardine or canvas, a very stiff and damp-resistant cotton fabric used for camping supplies and beach or terrace furniture and awnings. Despite the rotation — the coverall is used for different prisoners according to need, without washing them in between — it does not lose the stiffness of a new garment until much later. Juan, a militant of the MIR, arrested in the Agua Santa barracks in Viña del Mar, explains:

“I can't say exactly because I don't know much about textures, but they were blue overalls made of a very thick, very coarse fabric that went over the body... I don't think they were made of denim, but what I do remember is that the seams, which were internal and in contact with the naked body generated, with the dirt after three days without bathing, sores, they scratched you, they hurt you, it was a hard, coarse fabric, and it hurt you. I mean, because I remember that they never washed them, you had them on all day every day you were there, and they probably passed them around for you to put them on after another person had worn them for days before.” [17]

The use of the coverall marks a difference in the exercise of political violence in relation to how it is carried out in the DINA and CNI contexts. The process of degradation of the prisoner considers the accumulation and subsequent visibilization of bodily fluids on the clothing to be fundamental, precisely because these remind the subject through the traces of that violence, signified in physical appearance that borders on destitution. Carmen Rojas describes an exceptional lunch, organized for no apparent reason, during her stay in the Villa Grimaldi detention center. It was the first time she had a complete picture of what she and her fellow prisoners looked like:

“I am sure we were putting on a sorry spectacle, or else what were they doing there, that bunch of freaks. Those outlandish, ragged, and filthy clothes on the men and women. Some of them in shackles, with their blindfolds half falling off, with the air of madmen or medieval beggars and guarded by deceitful guards, dressed like farm foremen and eating chicken in the sun on a Sunday in the country.” [18]

In the second case, the protagonist is the coverall. Its effect is more or less the same as that of a shower after several days without access to water — that is, to erase evidence. Soledad Aránguiz, a clandestine MIR militant, captured in 1984, recounts the various changes of clothing to which she was subjected during her detention:

“At the time of the CNI, when I was a prisoner, it was more technological, more developed. These guys in the torture centers had overalls that were made of denim fabric, with legs, sleeves, and a zip here. All made of denim. [...] So when you arrived they put them on you so that you wouldn't arrive smelly and filthy when they put you in solitary confinement. [...] So they kept your clothes impeccable, just as you arrived. And when you were going to leave, when they decided, after a fortnight, a week, a month, whenever they wanted, they would give you a shower with shampoo and everything and you would go out to the prosecutor's office with your clothes on. [...] Then you arrived at the prosecutor's office impeccable, as if you had just come from home.” [19]

The certainty or undeniable proof of what has happened migrates from the concrete — the stain on one's own clothes or those of one's companion — towards a kind of abstraction or virtuality, fixed in a dirty but ownerless coverall that has passed through an indeterminate number of bodies and remains hidden in the barracks. The tracksuit summarizes in part this set of serialized experiences and therefore expands its effects towards the totality of other potential bodies, even if it does not materially touch them.

As the system was perfected, the use of the coverall and its subsequent dress code became more efficient in reinforcing the repressive purposes of the regime and concealed the true physical and mental condition of the prisoner. The coverall means, on the corporal plane, what solitary confinement regulated by a fixed time limit means on the judicial plane. Both structures support the mask of normality, contributing to creating confusion both in the affected person and in public opinion.


Conclusion


The coup d'état of 11 September 1973 and the military dictatorship that followed were unprecedented events in Chilean political history, insofar as they established the use of sustained state violence as an instrument for achieving its objectives. The annihilation of the internal enemy mobilized an apparatus that became specialized over the course of its 17 years of activity. One of the strategic elements of this system, which allows us to understand its effectiveness, even in the long term, was clothing. Associated with the specific techniques employed by the regime's security apparatus, it exposed the traces of the violence applied to the bodies of the opposition. Bandages and overalls recorded the history of each wearer. The former remained in place throughout the period. Universal and original, transitory and permanent, they modified their material characteristics according to time and opportunity. Their anomaly lay in the fact that they dressed the only part of the body that is not normally covered. The latter, on the other hand, by covering the trunk, legs, and arms, signified the legalistic masquerade that concealed the traces of the violence exercised without respite during the time of detention and incommunicado detention as set out in the legal norm. They kept the original clothing intact and used it as a signifier of normality every time the detainee was made visible in public space.



Notes: The Clothes of Violence: Chile 1973-1990

[1] The National Security Doctrine permeated Latin American armies since the Cold War, which were trained by U.S. officers in counterinsurgency. It constituted the ideological substratum that legitimized the violation of human rights during the Chilean military dictatorship, arguing that the opponents, by professing Marxism, had voluntarily subtracted themselves from them. See: Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura, Informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre Prisión Política y Tortura (Santiago de Chile: La Nación S.A. Impresores. I.C.N.P.P.T., 2005).
 
[2] Arfuchs, Leonor. (2007). Biographical Space: Dilemmas of Contemporary Subjectivity. (trans. Spanish). Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

[3] Butler, Judith. (2001). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. (trans. Spanish) Barcelona: Paidós.

Butler, Judith. (2017). Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. (trans. Spanish) Buenos Aires: Paidós.

[4] See: John Carl Flügel. (2015). The Psychology of Clothes. (trans. Spanish) Spain: Melusina; Georg Simmel. (1999) Female Culture and other essays. (trans. Spanish) Barcelona: Alba; Pierre Bourdieu. (1999). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (trans. Spanish) Madrid: Taurus; Erving Goffman. (2006). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. (trans. Spanish) Buenos Aires: Amorrortu.

[5] Entwistle, Joanne. (2002). The Fashioned Body: A sociological view. (trans. Spanish). Barcelona: Paidós.


[6] Barlett, Djurdja (ed.). (2019). Fashion and Politics. (trans. Spanish). New Heaven and London: Yale University Press.
[7] Helène Cixous and Jacques Derridá (eds.). (2002). Veils. (trans. Spanish) Mexico City: Siglo XXI.


[8] Bravo, Delia. (2010). Interview by Pía Montalva. July 9.

[9] Vidaurrázaga, Ignacio. (2012). Interview by Pía Montalva. October 23. 

[10] Gamboa, Alberto. (2010). A Journey Through Hell. Santiago de Chile: Forja.

[11]  Valdés, Hernán. (1996).  Tejas Verdes: Diary of a Concentration Camp in Chile. Santiago de Chile: Lom/ Cesoc.

[12] Corvalán Castillo, Luis Alberto. (2007). Viví para contarlo. Santiago de Chile: Tierra Mía.


[13] Villagrán, Fernando. Disparen a la bandada. Una crónica secreta de la FACH. Santiago de Chile: Planeta, 2002.

[14] Kunstmann, Wally and Torres, Victoria (comp.). (2008). Cien voces rompen el silencio. Testimonios de ex presas y presos políticos de la dictadura militar (1973-1990). Santiago de Chile: Centro de Investigaciones Barros Arana/ DIBAM.

[15] Rivas, Patricio. (2007). Chile, un largo septiembre. Santiago de Chile: Lom.

[16] Rojas, Carmen. Recuerdos de una mirista. Santiago de Chile: Autoedición. Inscripción Nº 69.951. Impresión José Miguel Bravo, s/a.


[17] Rivas, Patricio. (2017). Chile, un largo septiembre. Santiago de Chile: Lom.

[18] In the periodification of state political violence, different authors and official reports coincide in identifying three distinct periods. The first, marked by mass arrests in public places such as regiments and stadiums, was carried out by members of the Armed Forces and Carabineros and operated between September and December 1973. The second, characterized by clandestine detention centers and the disappearance of people, operated between 1974 and 1977, under the wing of the National Intelligence Directorate, made up of civilians and members of the uniformed forces. The third, in charge of the Central Nacional de Informaciones, was organized around selective and informed detentions and incommunicado detentions of detainees regulated by law. It was in force between 1977 and 1990.
[19]  Vidaurrázaga, Ignacio. (2012). Interview with Pía Montalva. October 23.


[20] In the case of the Uruguayan dictatorship, the coverall refers to a type of normalized political imprisonment that took place in the EMR military prisons, where the camp scheme is combined with the forms of traditional prison regimes. See: Jorge Montealegre, Acciones colectivas, memorias y procesos de resiliencia en experiencia de prisioneras y prisioneros políticos de Chile y Uruguay (Santiago de Chile: Universidad de Santiago, 2010).

[21] A grill is a metal cot whose base imitates a barbecue or grilled griddle where meat is cooked. In the case of torture, the detainee is tied naked to the corners of the structure and then electricity is applied.

[22] Rojas, María Eugenia. (1988). La represión política en Chile. Madrid: IEPALA Editorial.

[23] It does not correspond to the real name of the interviewee who expressly requested to use a pseudonym at the time of quoting.

[24] Juan (pseudonym). (2013). Interview with Pía Montalva. January.

[25] She is in fact Nubia Becker Eguiluz, a member of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, captured by the DINA and held in the Villa Grimaldi clandestine detention center. In 1986, as Carmen Rojas, her political name, she published a first self-publication of her testimony. In 2011, she released it under her real name in a revised edition titled Una mujer en Villa Grimaldi (A woman in Villa Grimaldi).


[26] Rojas, Carmen. (n.d.). Memories of a Mirista. Santiago de Chile: Self-published. Inscription Nº 69.951. Printing José Miguel Bravo.

[27] Vidaurrázaga, Tamara. Women in red and black. Reconstruction of the memory of three Mirista women, 1971-1990. Concepción: Escaparate Ediciones, 2006.


Additional references

National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture. Report of the National Commission on Political Prisoners and Torture. Santiago de Chile: La Nación S.A. Impresores. I.C.N.P.P.T., 2005.

Montalva, Pía. (2013). Tejidos blandos. Indumentaria y violencia política en Chile 1973-1990. Santiago de Chile: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Montealegre, Jorge. (2010). Acciones colectivas, memorias y procesos de resiliencia en experiencia de prisioneras y prisioneros políticos de Chile y Uruguay. Santiago de Chile: Universidad de Santiago, 2010.


Issue 13 ︎︎︎ Fashion & Politics
Issue 12 ︎︎︎ Border Garments: Fashion, Feminisms, & Disobedience

Issue 11 ︎︎︎ Fashion & Digital Engagement
Issue 10 ︎︎︎ Fashion & Partnership

Issue 9 ︎︎︎ Fall 2021

Issue 8 ︎︎︎ Fashion & Mental Health

Issue 7 ︎︎︎ Fashion & Motherhood

Issue 6 ︎︎︎ Fall 2020

Issue 5 ︎︎︎ The Industry

Issue 4 ︎︎︎ Summer 2017

Issue 3 ︎︎︎ Spring 2017

Issue 2 ︎︎︎ Winter 2016

Issue 1 ︎︎︎ Fall 2016


Issue 13 ︎︎︎ Fashion & Politics



Issue 11 ︎︎︎ Fashion & Digital Engagement


Issue 10 ︎︎︎ Fashion & Partnership


Issue 9 ︎︎︎ Fall 2021


Issue 8 ︎︎︎ Fashion & Mental Health


Issue 7 ︎︎︎ Fashion & Motherhood


Issue 6 ︎︎︎ Fall 2020


Issue 5 ︎︎︎ The Industry


Issue 4 ︎︎︎ Summer 2017


Issue 3 ︎︎︎ Spring 2017


Issue 2 ︎︎︎ Winter 2016


Issue 1 ︎︎︎ Fall 2016