Trans-local paces of commemoration and diasporic counter-mapping

• In Event: Audiences’ Experiences with Memorialization Initiatives Addressing Human Rights Abuses

Abstract

Ecomemoria comprises an intergenerational group of Chilean exiles living in the UK and in Chile, who aim to keep alive the memory of those who were disappeared (desaparecidos) and killed (ejecutados políticos) during Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973–1990). Ecomemoria’s form of commemoration consists in planting trees in the different localities where the Chilean diaspora resides. This paper looks at these multi-local tree-planting ceremonies and the remaining trees around the world, both of which make multiple connections. During the ceremonies, far away from Chile, the commemoration involves occupying different terrains through the generation of spaces where other versions of history can be acted and shared. Compellingly, these spaces of commemoration are developed from a diasporic angle, putting the Chilean diaspora and the disappeared side by side in the same terrain. Regardless of its liminal configuration, this space has an empirical conformation and becomes locally manifest through performances, objects and landscapes. Moreover, the worldwide planted trees appear connecting different territories, a process through which a particular cartography emerges. The planted trees are connecting points that create a disguised map which does not fit well into lines drawn by official geographical demarcations. It is argued that through the ceremony and the dispersed trees, speeches and performances, wayfaring and mapping, Ecomemoria has become for its members another way of talking about the dispersion experienced by the Chilean diaspora. Through the different strategies involved, a trans-local commemorative space for the disappeared emerges from a diasporic vantage point.

Author

• Carolina Ramirez, Universidad Alberto Hurtado