Interventions in the field of memory. Pedro Lemebel’s de perlas y cicatrices

Abstract

The chronicles collected in De perlas y cicatrices are concerned with carrying out at least a symbolic trial and a public condemnation of the perpetrators and accomplices of the crimes against citizens committed by the security forces during the Pinochet dictatorship. Before the official gesture of resigning the search for justice and promoting a forced social reconciliation through the promotion of forgetfulness and the ideology of consumption, Lemebel’s voice seeks to break the silence and install an ethic of memory. The various sections that make up the book show the different aspects of the social, cultural, economic and political process that begins in Chile on September 11, 1973 with dictatorial repression and that continues with the imposition of the neoliberal economic model that, under the guise of the globalizing utopia, sharpened inequalities and exclusions.