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Culture and Violence Linked in Chile

  • Culture and Violence Linked in Chile
  • USC sociologist Macarena Gómez-Barris

By Eddie North-Hager on December 23, 2008 10:49 AM

In her new book Where Memory Dwells: Culture and State Violence in Chile (University of California Press), USC sociologist Macarena Gómez-Barris finds that a traumatic past can inform the present.

At the height of the Cold War in 1973, the CIA backed Augusto Pinochet as he seized power and killed Chile’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende.

“Allende was a global symbol for change,” Gómez-Barris said.

Instead, Pinochet ruled Chile for 17 years and was responsible for 3,300 disappearances, tens of thousands of torture victims and many more tortured souls.

In her book, Gómez-Barris explores the Chilean people’s attempt to cope with their violent past and finds that those memories often emerge in art, film and literature.

The story is a personal one for Gómez-Barris, who as a child was forced to flee shortly after the coup. Today, in addition to having published her first novel, Gómez-Barris, an assistant professor of sociology and American Studies and Ethnicity at USC College, has won a USC Raubenheimer Award given to junior faculty in recognition of “outstanding performance in the three areas of teaching, scholarship and service within the university.”

Gómez-Barris believes that governments should note the relationship between economic and political reform and the grave social outcomes in Chile.

“Much of the financial crisis we are seeing today harkens back to the purist ideology that does away with social policy for the supposed good of the market,” the author said.

The United States’ intervention was all in the name of restoring capitalism, as Allende had started to implement his plan of nationalizing major industries.

Even though Chile is touted as an economic success, Where Memory Dwells shows the other side by documenting people still traumatized by a dictator who terrorized the country for nearly two decades. Gómez-Barris records the grief and anger invoked by the totalitarian regime and passed on from parent to child.

“We must consider how the implementation of market ideology is connected to human right violations in countries all over the world today,” Gómez-Barris said.