El pasado de los niños: Recuerdos de infancia y familia en dictadura (Chile, 1973-1989)

Abstract

In recent years, considering transformations in the representations of childhood, history had made a room for the studies on civic-military dictatorships of the southern cone in order to investigate the experience of childhood from the own protagonists' point of view. This article shows the outcomes of people¬'s memories who had lived their childhood during the last Chilean civic-military dictatorship specifically memories about their family and personal experiences. They were collected after the analysis of two sources: 1) objects created by girls and boys between 1973-1990 like letters, drawings, cards, diaries, etc.; and 2) interviews with adults who lived this historical stage, guided by the encounter with the mentioned objects in point 1, which were donated by these people for the construction of a patrimonial file. The results section reflects the impact of violence on the reorganization or rupture of the consanguineous family ties, the perception of their lives during childhood, the repression and the role of the exogamous and political family.