| Description: | This arpillera depicts a woman mourning alone. The image is cold and forlorn, with a dark sky, snow-capped peaks and a darkened city beyond. In the right-hand corner we see a plane flying over the mountains into exile; an estimated 200,000 people were forced to leave Chile during the dictatorship era. The woman is longing for the return of her beloved. This pain and sorrow is what fuelled the entire arpillera movement. During the Pinochet regime countless people were disappeared, executed or forced into exile. Families were broken, and loved ones went missing without warning or explanation. Women began speaking out against the disappearance of loved ones, and to that voice was added more voices protesting the economic situation, the torture, and the lack of justice. Through all the protesting, one longing remained predominant - the longing that some day families would be reunited or properly remembered.
Though the arpilleras often appear women-centred, it is the enforced disappearance of men that prompted their creation. The women who created these arpilleras were not necessarily feminists, though some of them were. Though they frequently presented strong faces to the world, they deeply mourned the loss of their loved ones.
Their children experienced the collective trauma of a generation that never knew their fathers and that grew in a divided country.
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