num_pages: 240
description: Tapestries of Hope Threads of Love tells the story of ordinary women living in terror and extreme poverty under General Pinochet's oppressive rule in Chile (1973-1989). These women defied the military dictatorship by embroidering their sorrow on scraps of cloth using needles and thread as one of the boldest means of popular protest and resistance in Latin America. The arpilleras they madepatchwork tapestries with scenes of everyday life and memorials to their disappeared relativeswere smuggled out of Chile and brought to the world the story of their fruitless searches in jails morgues government offices and the tribunals of law for their husbands brothers and sons. Marjorie Agos'n herself a native of and exile from Chile has spent more than thirty years interviewing the arpilleristas and following their work. She knows their stories intimately and knows too that none of them has ever found a disappeared relative alive. Even though the dictatorship ended in 1989 and democracy returned to Chile no full account of the detained and disappeared has ever been offered. Still many women maintain hope and continue to make arpilleras both in memory and as art. This new edition of the book updated for students includes a reaction to the death of General Pinochet a chronology of Chile several new testimonies from arpilleristas in their own words and an introduction by Peter Kornbluh. It retains a section of full-color plates of arpilleras an afterword by Peter Winn and a foreword by Isabel Allende. Students and interested readers will find the arpilleras beautiful moving and ultimately hopeful and the testimonies a powerful way to learn about the history of contemporary Latin America and the arpillera movement in Chile.
language: English
title: Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love: The Arpillera Movement in Chile
publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers