Visual Testimonies of Atrocity: Archives of Political Violence in Chile and Guatemala

Abstract

In the aftermath of political violence in Latin America, the testimonial emerged as an important document of witness regarding the atrocities that had been committed in the region. In many cases, testimonies stood in for the absence of evidence, whereby archives of witness had been destroyed, hidden, or otherwise disappeared from public record. In this essay, the author analyzes forms of visual evidence in Guatemala and Chile, such as documentary film and illustrations from survivors that extend the function of the testimonial by not only narrating the past, but also visualizing spaces of terror and witness, such as the collective grave, prison camps, and photographs of skeletons. Such visual interruptions in the landscape of memory have the potential to fracture dominant State memory in their refusal to merely disappear. Instead, these forms of visuality name and mark social suffering.