This unusually large Chilean arpillera is a window into the life of a poor community depicting their daily joys and struggles for survival. Immense effort is required to eke out a living as well as maintain their community way of life. The viewer can rejoice in colour and movement as well as gaining an understanding of how far removed the inhabitants are from the capital, Santiago, with all its modernity.
Keeping the community together and alive is crucial to the survival of this community, living under a repressive military dictatorship. Thus, in this arpillera we see that the school is placed in the community itself, so children can walk to it easily. Water is not available in each home and people have to gather at the street stand, collect it in buckets and carry it to their homes.
What makes this arpillera very different from the others in terms of technique, is the fact that it is not the labour of an individual woman working together with other women in a workshop, but actually a piece done in a collective way, where each participant seems to account for their own way of living and their role in the community. The other difference is that the burlap backing is the full size of a flour sack, normally cut so as to have material available for several arpilleras.
Truly this is a multilayered community with a lot to say to us.
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