GEOGRAPHICAL MEMORY IN THE CHILEAN TESTIMONY: DAWSON ISLAND

Abstract

 This article analyzes the relationship between geographic space and memory in the testimonies of political prisoners, that relate the experience of detention in the prison camp of Dawson Island, during the Chilean civic-military dictatorship. The article proposes that these testimonies elaborate a geographical memory, manifested in memories of the contact and relationship that the prisoners established with the geographical context in one of the southernmost areas of the world. At the same time, within the broader framework of State terror memories, a memory of the geographic imprisonment is constituted. Here, memories of the violence, with which the climatic and topographic conditions of the island collaborate, appear alongside experiences of subjective liberation and discreet autonomy, manifest in memories of contemplation of nature, noticing a beneficial dimension in that remembrance. This opens the possibility of expanding the relationship between space and memory, where spatial analysis from geography works together with the interest in the processes of remembrance characteristic of the collective memory field of studies