“Therapy for the Soul”: An Ethnography of Arpillera Embroidery Workshops for Women in Southern Chile

Abstract (English)

This presentation reflects on memory embroidery using arpilleras (patchwork textiles) created by a group of women who were forcibly displaced by state agents in southern Chile during the military dictatorship from 1973 to 1990. The research is part of my doctoral thesis in anthropology, developed through an ethnographic approach.
As part of the fieldwork, I participated both as an anthropologist and as an embroiderer in craft workshops, including one specifically dedicated to arpillera embroidery.This technique involves stitching together scraps of recycled fabric in different colors and patterns to tell a story. The aim of the workshop was to recover memories associated with the everyday lives of people who lived in a mountainous area that had a thriving timber industry in the 1960s, encouraged by the Agrarian Reform. With the onset of the military dictatorship in 1973, the area was occupied by the Armed Forces, where killings and torture were carried out against workers involved in the reform process. The timber industry was fully privatized, and the local population suffered forced displacement.
In 2024, a group of women gathered in a library to embroider their memories of daily life in the area before the military intervention. The embroideries evoke elements such as the mountains, rivers, houses, schools, people, and animals, capturing the interactions between these actors and their environment. During one of the sessions, a participant shared that embroidering her memories felt like “therapy for the soul,” a process that came 51 years after the dictatorship.