This research seeks to investigate how the record of political violence produced du- ring the military dictatorship in Chile (1973-1990) is brought to the present to certify the experience of its victims and allow other generations to know the violence perpetrated, mobilizing actions of memory, re-signification and inscription of the memory of the dictatorship in the community from Sites of Memory. From interviews, documentary material of human rights organizations in dictatorship and field notes of my participation, I analyze the enunciations around the former political detention and torture center Providencia de Antofagasta, Chile. This place, a former convent of nuns, was used as a detention center during the civil-military dictatorship in Chile, and then a police station until mid 2023. The place is in dispute by a memory group of the city that seeks its refunctionalization as a Site of Memory. I seek to un- derstand how actions of registration for denunciation and memory tension the discursive and non-discursive forms around the building, showing the different enunciations that cohabit the space. In this way, through this article, I seek to contribute to the dispute of a multiple space, as well as to the form of study of these places that are articulated under different layers of memory, affecting and generating knowledge in the communities that surround it.
Suárez Madariaga, R. (2023). Inhabiting a Former Political Detention and Torture Center: Repression, Religiousness, and Memory in Antofagasta, Chile. Revista De Sociología, 38(1), 142–170. https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-529X.2023.71440 (Original work published August 1, 2023)
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