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How did Chilean arpilleras commemorate people who were jailed, tortured, or disappeared under Augusto Pinochet?
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Latin American art
Detail from Popular History of Mexico, mosaic mural by Diego Rivera, 1953; on the Teatro des los Insurgentes, Mexico City.
Following the military crackdown in Chile after 1973, women used arpilleras—a form of textile art—to commemorate loved ones who had been jailed, tortured, or "disappeared" by the regime of Augusto Pinochet.
These works were created by stitching fabric remnants onto burlap, serving as a poignant visual record of the human rights abuses occurring under the military dictatorship. By documenting the lives and fates of those kidnapped and presumably killed by the regime, these textiles provided a powerful means of protest and remembrance during a period of severe political repression.1