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Unto the Next Generations: The Blurring of Binaries and the Re-creation of the Social in Lola Arias's El año en que nací

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2022

MARIA C. SPITZ
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Abstract

This study explores the relationships of El año en que nací (The Year I Was Born) (2012) by the Argentine Lola Arias, within the social context of post-dictatorship Chile. Chile was characterized by a repressed and traumatized population whose governments aimed to depoliticize society in an effort to avoid the presumed cause of Augusto Pinochet's seventeen-year authoritarian government – the extreme polarization of politics and the population reflected in media, documents and political rhetoric. By showing the play's strategy of collapsing the binaries that define Chile's polarization, the author posits that El año en que nací not only provides a model that questions what Diana Taylor and others have called the ‘archive’ or stable retainer of memory, but also models an alternative of the social, creating an opening for personal agency on the part of the actors and audience that offers an alternative to the official narrative of polarization.

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Article
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , July 2022 , pp. 126 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2022

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References

Notes

1 Reinelt, Janet, ‘The Promise of Documentary’, in Forsyth, Alison and Megson, Chris, eds., Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present (London: Palgrave MacMillian, 2009), pp. 6–23Google Scholar, here p. 10.

2 See ibid., p. 12. Kershaw, Baz, The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre and Cultural Intervention (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 24Google Scholar, Brownell, Pamela, ‘Acerca de lo politico y lo histórico en el teatro documental contemporáneo: algunas experiencias de Argentina y Chile’, Latin American Theatre Review, 52, 1 (Fall 2018), pp. 43–64Google Scholar, here pp. 50–1, 60; Anderson, Michael and Wilkenson, Linden, ‘A Resurgence of Verbatim Theatre: Authenticity, Empathy, and Transformation’, Australasian Drama Studies, 50 (April 2007), pp. 153–69Google Scholar; and Martin, Carol, ‘Bodies of Evidence’, TDR: The Drama Review, 50, 3 (Fall 2006), pp. 8–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Martin, Carol, Theatre of the Real (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Anderson and Wilkenson, ‘A Resurgence of Verbatim Theatre’, pp. 153–4.

4 Ripp, Alexandra, ‘Remembering the Coup: Chilean Theater Now’, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 36, 3 (2014), pp. 87–101Google Scholar, here p. 89; del Valle Barrera, María, Koch, Tomás and Aguirre, Benigno E., ‘Commemorating Chile's Coup: The Dynamics of Collective Behavior’, Latin American Politics and Society, 55, 2 (Summer 2013), pp. 106–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Jennifer Thompson, ‘Dramaturgies of Democracy: Performance, Cultural Policy, and Citizenship in Chile, 1979–Present’, PhD thesis, City University of New York, 2019, p. 3, https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3274, accessed 4 September 2021. See also her article ‘Horizons of Possibility: The Political Imperative and the Dramaturgy of Guillermo Calderón’, Theater Journal, 73, 2 (2021), pp. 169–87, where she extends her analysis of how Guillermo Calderón's work resists the external strictures of the global market, political history and cultural institutions with aesthetic mechanisms that create political contestation.

6 Taylor, Diana, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 19–20Google Scholar.

7 Schneider, Rebecca, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), p. 180CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See especially her ‘Foreword’, pp. 1–31, ‘In the Meantime: Performance Remains’, pp. 87–100, and ‘Afterword’, pp. 169–86.

8 Ripp, ‘Remembering the Coup’, p. 89; del Valle Barrera, Koch and Aguirre, ‘Commemorating Chile's Coup’.

9 Jorge Fábrega, Jorge González and Jaime Lindh, ‘Polarization and Electoral Incentives: The End of the Chilean Consensus Democracy, 1990–2014’, Journal of Latin American Politics, 60, 4 (November 2018), pp. 49–68, here p. 50; Manuel Antonio Garretón, ‘Chile 1997–1998: The Revenge of Incomplete Democratization’, International Affairs, 75, 2 (April 1999), pp. 259–67, here p. 266.

10 Alexander Wilde, ‘Irruptions of Memory: Expressive Politics in Chile's Transition to Democracy’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 31, 2 (May 1999), pp. 473–500, here p. 476.

11 Andrea Aravena and Manuel Antonio Baeza, ‘Construcción socio-imaginaria de relaciones sociales: la desconfianza y el descontento en el Chile post-dictadura’, Cinta moebio, 53 (2015), pp. 147–57, here p. 153.

12 Patricio Silva, ‘Doing Politics in a Depoliticised Society: Social Change and Political Deactivation in Chile’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 23, 1 (January 2004), pp. 63–78, here pp. 63–4; Paul W. Posner, ‘Local Democracy and the Transformation of Popular Participation in Chile’, Latin American Politics and Society, 45, 3 (Fall 2004), pp. 55–81; Juan Pablo Luna, ‘Delegative Democracy Revisited: Chile's Crisis of Representation’, Journal of Democracy, 27, 3 (July 2016), pp. 129–38, here p. 130; Kenneth Roberts, ‘(Re)Politicizing Inequalities: Movements, Parties, and Social Citizenship in Chile’, Journal of Politics in Latin America, 8, 3 (2016), pp. 125–54, here p. 136.

13 Roberts, ‘(Re)Politicizing Inequalities’, p. 136.

14 Camila Jara Ibarra and Margot Olavarria, ‘The Demobilization of Civil Society: Posttraumatic Memory in the Reconstruction of Chilean Democracy’, Latin American Perspectives, 43, 6 (November 2016), pp. 88–102, here pp. 90 and 94–5.

15 Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile, Política Cultural del Gobierno de Chile (Santiago de Chile: Asesoría, 1975), available at https://obtienearchivo.bcn.cl/obtienearchivo?id=documentos/10221.1/39504/1/135512.pdf, accessed 9 January 2020, esp. pp. 28–43.

16 Patricio Dooner, Periodismo y política: La prensa de derecha e izquierda 1970–1973 (Santiago: Ediciones Hoy, Editorial Andante, 1989); Diego Hurtado Flores, Las palabras no se las lleva el viento: Lenguajes politicos y democracia durante el gobierno de la Unidad Popular (Santiago: Ediciones Estudios Bicentenario, 2019), pp. 48–9. See also Amy Walter, ‘The Mass Media and Political Socialization: Chile, 1970–2000’, Frontiers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 12, 1 (November 2015), pp. 127–56, here pp. 135–9; and Diego Hurtado Torres, Las palabras no se las lleva el viento: Lenguajes políticos y democracia durante el gobierno de la Unidad Popular 1970-73 (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones CIP Centro de Estudios Bicentenarios, 2019). The latter makes a more focused analysis of political rhetoric that framed the left and the right, specifically the differing uses of the word ‘democracy’ and the resulting differences created in economic discourse and the discourse of crisis. See especially his chapter ‘Todas las oposiciones, la oposición’, pp. 297–368. A trove of representative examples of opposition can also be found in Pío García, ed., Las fuerzas armadas y el golpe de estado en Chile (México: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1974), a collection of articles spanning 1972–3 of Chile's most journalistically respected pro-Allende publication, Revista Chile Hoy.

17 Walter, ‘The Mass Media and Political Socialization’, p. 143.

18 ibid., p. 145; Rosalind Bresnahan, ‘The Media and the Neoliberal Transition in Chile: Democratic Promise Unfulfilled’, Latin American Perspectives, 30, 6 (November 2003), pp. 29–68, here pp. 46–61.

19 Daniela Jara, Children and the Afterlife of State Violence: Memories of Dictatorship (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

20 ibid., pp. 101–8; Marcelo Cornejo, Carolina Rocha, Nicolás Villarroel, Enzo Cáceres and Anastassia Vivanco, ‘Tell Me Your Story about the Chilean Dictatorship: When Doing Memory Is Taking Positions’, Memory Studies, 13, 4 (1 August 2020), pp. 601–16, here pp. 611–12.

21 Alejandro Zambra, ‘Detectives of Our Parents’, in Lola Arias, Reenacting Life, ed. Jean Graham-Jones (Aberystwyth: Performance Research Books, 2019), pp. 124–5, here p. 124. According to one of the actors, Jorge Rivero, ‘(F)ue muy difícil abstraerse emocionalmente del relato. Nos costó entender lo que Lola quería: un relato sin emoción, limpio’ (‘It was difficult to detach ourselves from the story. It was hard to understand what Lola wanted: an account without emotion, clean.’) Alejandra Valdevieso, ‘Desde Patria y Libertad al MIR: Los testimonios de los actores de “El año en que nací”’, La Segunda, 1 June 2012, at www.lasegunda.com/movil/detallenoticia.aspx?dnoticia=751393, accessed 16 September 2015. My analysis of the performance derives from an online viewing offered by Arias and Fundación Teatro a Mil, 14–17 May 2020. Lola Arias, ‘El año en que nací’ (video), Fundación Teatro a Mil, 28 May 2014, at https://teatroamil.tv/obras-completas/el-ano-en-que-naci, accessed 15 May 2020.

22 Schneider, Performing Remains, p. 180.

23 ibid., p. 29.

24 Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire, pp. 31 and 143.

25 ibid., p. 143.

26 Schneider, Performing Remains, p. 180.

27 Lola Arias, El año en que nací, in Arias, Reenacting Life, pp. 83–124, here p. 102.

28 To confirm the streamed visual, I checked the version of the play found in Lola Arias, The Year I Was Born, in Arias, Reenacting Life, pp. 83–124, here p. 93: ‘Para Alexandrita, chiquitita, de aquellos que te amarán por toda la vida. De aquellos que siempre te enseñaron siempre el camino para construir un mundo mejor, para ti, para los millones de niños que en esta tierra quieren reír y cantar, quieren contigo, unidos estar’.

29 Elizabeth Jenin, ‘Victims, Relatives, and Citizens in Argentina: Whose Voice Is Legitimate Enough?’, in Richard Wilson, ed., Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 177–201, here p. 187.

30 Alejandra Valdivieso, ‘Desde Patria y Libertad al MIR: los testimonios de los actores de El año en que nací’, La Segunda, 1 June 2012, at http://www.lasegunda.com/movil/detallenoticia.aspx?idnoticia=751393, accessed 16 September 2015: ‘Se escuchan gritos en la audiencia que dan la clara sensación de que no se está vitoreando lo teatral de la pieza, sino … la valentía de desnudar historias tan íntimas – a la vez que colectivas – en el escenario … como si hablaran desde un deseo profundo de estar dentro de la obra y haber contado su historia.’

31 ibid.: ‘El día del estreno no me salía la voz. Como actor me enseñaron a hacer personajes, no a contar mi historia. Me dio bastante pánico, pero al ver cómo la gente sigue la obra y la sala llena con el tremendo aplauso y la emoción, al final entendí que … estar en el escenario es un aporte para la reflexión que Chile necesita hacer.’

32 ‘Pablo Díaz vuelve con “El año en que nací” antes de salir de gira’, La Segunda Online, 29 August 2013, at www.lasegunda.com/Noticias/CulturaEspectaculos/2013/08/875106/pablo-diaz-vuelve-con-el-ano-en-que-naci-antes-de-salir-de-gira, accessed 14 September 2018.

33 Cecilia Sosa, ‘Los niños que fuimos’, Página 12 (suplemento radar), 7 October 2012, at www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/radar/9-8291-2012-10-07.html, accessed 14 January 2018.

34 Cecelia Sosa, Queering Acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina's Dictatorship (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2014), pp. 1–11.

35 Alex Lauer, ‘Truth, Not Necessarily Reconciliation: Lola Arias Confronts Dictatorships’, Walker Reader, 24 January 2014, at https://walkerart.org/magazine/lola-arias-dictatorships-chile-argentina, accessed 24 September 2020.

36 Marietta Santi, ‘La verdad de los hijos de la dictadura’, Diario La Hora, 20 January 2012, p. 47: ‘Yo quiero a mis compañeros, nos hemos contado todo, desde las intimidades más tontas a las más profundas de la familia.’

37 Valdevieso, Desde Patria y Libertad al MIR.

38 Jenin, ‘Victims, Relatives, and Citizens’, p. 177.

39 ibid.

40 Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. Gabrielle Rockhill (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), pp. 13–14.

41 ibid., p. 12.

42 ibid., pp. 24–5.

43 ibid., pp. 28–9.

44 Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire, p. 143.