Las arpilleras chilenas en los Países Bajos: denuncia de pobreza y represión

This article presents the results of the analysis of the representation of poverty and repression in a series of arpilleras (hand-made textile works of art) that were smuggled to the Netherlands during the dictatorship in Chile (1973-1990). These arpilleras intended to denounce the events in this Latin American country and to stimulate solidarity actions. The analysis was carried out from a Cognitive Linguistic perspective applied to multimodal messages. The study shows that the representation of the topic of poverty deals mainly with the unemployment that is the cause of poverty and with the consequences of poverty for children: public soup kitchens, lack of access to education etc. The analysis of the representation of repression shows that the whole process of direct repression is denounced in the arpilleras, ranging from detentions in manifestations to the discovery of mass graves in which the remainders of citizens that were killed by militaries are found. The study moreover suggests that arpilleras are an ideal testimony to use as didactic material for the construction of Collective Memory.