In many cultures, the notion of weaving or spinning is confused with that of storytelling, with the collective memory maintained through stories passed down from generation to generation. In the exercise of weaving memory, women have played a fundamental role, not only by writing with ink, like men, but also with their threads and needles. The history of the Chilean arpilleras is that of women who barely knew how to write but who knew how to embroider and sew the democratic memory of the country. They did it with scraps of old fabrics that they transformed into tapestries that represented scenes of life under the dictatorship, those that did not appear in the media and could not be told out loud.
The arpilleras began to be made shortly after the military coup in the circles of women close to political prisoners and disappeared detainees who spent long hours waiting for news in the offices of the Catholic Church. Someone remembered Violeta Parra’s arpilleras and thought it was a good idea to put these women to sewing and embroidery to reduce their waits. Soon, the hands began to tell the stories of the violence experienced. The arrests, the torture centers and the incessant search for disappeared detainees. The groups of arpilleristas multiplied and the tapestries also began to speak of other faces of the dictatorship such as hunger, unemployment or the lack of access to health and housing.
