“Together, we will go through”: continuity and memory in the intervention Hoy, hundimos el miedo of the colectivo LASTESIS

Abstract

Hoy, hundimos el miedo of the colectivo LASTESIS was an intervention realized in Valparaíso, Chile, in October 2020. In it, women and dissidents from the sex-gender system participated in the symbolic funeral of the 1980 Constitution, days before the plebiscite that began the process of Constitutional Convention. The action consisted of a funeral procession that crossed the city from the hills to the sea, where the participants brought "constitutions" in the form of books, which through concepts or phrases evidenced “fears” constitutive of Chilean society with which they wanted to end. From political activism, using artistic languages and a collaborative methodology, the intervention becomes relevant to think about the 50 years of the “Coup d'état” since it was articulated as an exercise of memory, in which the continuity of an apparatus of power/knowledge colonial, entrenched in the formation of the modern Chilean nation-state and reinforced by the civil-military dictatorship, not only in its practices, but also in its Constitution. Based on this, the article analyzes the scenic strategies that allow us to propose this reading, highlighting the oppressions linked to coloniality that appear sedimented in the collective memory and that permeate the current Constitution.

Memory

Constitution

Military dictadorship

Coloniality

Performance