Folk art? Messages of protest? Historical records? The arpilleras (are-pea-yare-uhs) of Chile are all of these. Brightly-colored patchwork pictures that are stitched onto sacking (arpillera means burlap in Spanish), arpilleras chronicled the life of the poor and oppressed in Chile during the totalitarian military regime of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Crowded around tables in one-room workshops on the outskirts of Santiago, poor women and women whose husbands, sons, or brothers were killed or imprisoned by the government met each week to share their burdens and to stitch the small tapestries, or arpilleras, that told the outside world of their hunger, fear, unemployment, housing shortages, and missing family members. Arpilleras document and denounce oppression in a country where all normal channels of free expression were closed. The women said that making arpilleras was a way of sharing their sorrows and concerns. Arpilleras testify to the strength and survival of women whose imprisoned or murdered menfolk are sill referred to in Chile as the “disappeared” and “detained”.
Arpilleras were collected in each workshop once a month and taken to the Vicaria de la Solidaridad (Vicarate of Solidarity), an ecumenical human rights group of the Catholic Church in Santiago, for distribution internationally. The earliest arpilleras were smuggled out of the country in diplomatic pouches. The Chilean government considered arpilleras to be traitorous and frequently inspected and confiscated packages and suitcases that were suspected of containing them. It was forbidden to show, much less sell, arpilleras inside Chile. Arpilleras were generally unsigned to protect their makers, but the Vicaria paid the women (arpilleristas) for every tapestry, giving them all the profits made from selling arpilleras abroad. This money was often the only income the women had.
Contemporary political unrest brought arpilleras into being, but their roots are historical. In the 1960’s a Chilean cottage industry was producing decorative embroidery of domestic scenes using brightly colored yarn. But after the coup in 1973, wool was scarce and unemployment was at 25% (partly because relatives of the disappeared and detained were barred from most jobs), so arpillera makers turned to fabric appliqué in the Vicaria workshops that were organized as support groups. The earliest arpilleristas were the survivors of husbands, brothers, and sons who had disappeared in the first years after Pinochet came to power. Then shantytown dwellers and other destitute women in and near Santiago joined in.
Conventions about arpilleras-making developed quickly. At first all arpilleras were the size of a large placemat (about 14 x 18 inches) but later they made smaller and larger ones as well. A ‘mural” size, about six feet square was made up of several arpilleras sewn together. No matter what size, reviewers in every workshop checked the arpilleras for both quality and content, a practice that was established early. Most likely the reviewers were women whose design and sewing talents were recognized by the group as superior and who were also informal teachers. Certainly their critical discussion with workshop members on technique, design, and theme must have been helpful.
Themes of arpilleras were decided upon each week by each workshop group, but an arpilleras is the work of an individual, who developed the design at the workshop, continued sewing on it at home, and brought a finished piece to the next meeting. Workshops generally had about twenty women in them. Each woman was allowed to make just one arpilleras a week unless her need for money was so great that it was decided she could make two. More than 250 Chilean women were arpilleristas.
A few rules about what could and could not be shown were set by the Vicaria and adhered to by all the workshops. Explicit scenes of torture, for example, were prohibited, as were other frankly political or “too strong” themes, as the Vicaria termed them, that might provoke the government to arrest or harm the arpilleristas. The only words allowed on arpilleras were those that would normally appear in a real scene, as on banners carried by protesters or names on buildings and sides of trucks. The Andes Mountains should always me in the background, so that viewers would know where the scenes that are pictured took place.
Arpilleras have many common elements. Bits of fabric are cut in the shapes of houses, trees, or objects and are stitched to the backing. Figures of the people are almost always three-dimensional, with little rolled arms and heads and bodies coming out of a flat background. Sticks, bits of foil, plastic, or paper, dried beans, and other commonly found materials are frequently sewn or glued onto the tapestries. Simple decorative topstitching fills in the details. Each arpilleras is bordered by a colorful fabric binding, blanket stitch, or crocheted wool edging. The older women with failing eyesight helped by stuffing the heads for the figures or crocheting the borders.
Certain images appear over and over. Big black kettles sitting on fires represent the community soup pots (ola comun) that Chilean churches provided in Santiago’s “hunger zones.” Frequently seen, too, are the cooperative bakeries and laundries that were organized to help the poor survive, and the arpilleras workshops (talleres). Many arpilleras show children standing in milk or clinic lines, washing cars or scavenging for cardboard to sell. Bands of protesters are seen carrying banners or distributing political flyers (both were illegal acts). The national militarized police appear frequently, wearing dark uniforms and driving tank like vehicles. Threads spilling out of a nozzle can represent the water that poor women got for their daily needs from a community pump – or the contaminated water that was sprayed on protesters by militia determined to break up a street demonstration. Other threads represent electric lines that people hooked up illegally from their houses to the main power lines in order to steal electricity after the government shut theirs off. The dangerous practice of hooking up happened every evening, and the unhooking was done every dawn, since people feared arrest even more than accidental electrocution. Doors of factories and hospitals have big X’s stitched on them to indicate that they were closed to families of the disappeared of detained.
The women who made the arpilleras had no training in art. Some were certainly talented, and some had such unique ways of portraying trees, mountains, or houses that one can tell which work is theirs. Still, these tapestries rarely show technical sophistication. They more than make up for it, however, in their powerful sense of design, their strong colors, and their gripping subject matter. Small as the images are, they speak simply and movingly about particular events and the daily hardships of Chilean life.
It should be said that not every arpilleras depicts soup kitchens, demonstrations, arrests, or candlelight vigils for executed political prisoners. Some arpilleras show life as it should be, with thriving markets, good health care, happy children, and a peaceful countryside. Actually it can be argued that all the Chilean arpilleras express hope for a better future. Over the mountains of the Andes the arpillerista nearly always sewed the sun.
Fake arpilleras began to appear. Some women – and men – who believed that the arpilleras that came out of the Vicaria workshops were too timid in their themes produced “fake” arpilleras with strident political themes. By contrast, propagandizing arpilleras were made by women who were loyal to the dictatorship, which was unable to stem the flow of arpilleras to the free world and consequently established arpilleras workshops of its own, where only happy themes that depict Chile as a prosperous country with benevolent rulers were allowed.
People in other Latin American countries “adopted” arpilleras, especially in Peru (where the three-dimensional doll-like figure is said to have originated, in the view of some analysts) and in Colombia and Nicaragua. Such arpilleras almost always depict an innocent, happy world.
Chilean arpilleras were an influence on fine art in Chile, where artist-printmakers were inspired by their imagery and design. An exhibition of such prints in Santiago in the 1980s was firebombed by the militia. A few of these prints have reached the U.S.
The arpilleristas of Chile learned the delights of creating art. Oppressed for centuries by a machismo society, then transformed into heads of the households when their husbands were abducted, these women turned to the traditional feminine tool of sewing for comfort and a little money but unexpectedly discovered a new power in themselves. They grew more self-confident, thoughtful, independent, and they took pleasure in color, texture, shape, and form. By telling their stories fearlessly and truthfully from their hearts, they became citizens of a world wider than anything they or their mothers had ever known. No wonder that their arpilleras have been called the revolutionary banners of modern Chile.
One policeman is writing a citation: Detenidos por robo de luz = detained for robbing the light "Art 22684" = law # 22684
Another policeman is arresting a villager. Note the women crying in the yellow house, possibly because it is her husband arrested.
Also note the illegal power lines attached to the house and the electric company workman removing the wire to the blue home.
Note the woman in the foreground with the shovel, perhaps signifying another dead or "missing" person.
The gray building is most likely a school.
Note the holes in the books and the torn pages scattered around.
"Registros electorales" = election registry
"Si a la plena democracia" = yes to full democracy
"No hay leche" = no more milk
"No hay N#" = no more numbers
Numbers may be issued to get food and milk.
Note their empty arms, possibly signifying the missing husbands and children.
Women are bringing odds and ends to add to the arpilleras.
