Textile Details

Prisioneros de Cuatro Álamos / Prisoners of Cuatro Álamos Torture Centre (Photo: Martin Melaugh)

Cuatro Álamos (English: Four Poplars) was a clandestine detention centre located within the larger official prison camp of Très Àlamos. It operated between 1974 and 1977 under control of the Directorate of National Intelligence, known as the DINA, secret police of the Pinochet regime. Here victims of torture were held incommunicado in often overcrowded cells before either release, official detainment, transferal to a torture centre, or being brutally ‘disappeared’.

The floating eye symbolises the constant surveillance faced by the population, with particular scrutiny towards political activists and their families. In 1977, the year in which both Cuatro Álamos and the DINA were dissolved, the Directorate employed 9,300 agents and an unknown number of informants estimated to run in the tens of thousands. Under this culture of fear and silence the Vicariate of Solidarity paid women to stitch their testimonies. These arpilleras were then sold to members of the International Solidarity Movement who smuggled them abroad to illustrate the repression Chileans faced

Textile Detail Image(s)