Textile Details

'Al servicio de la vida / Servicing life', Anonymous. (Photo: Martin Melaugh)

This arpillera depicts the many activities and areas of support that the Catholic church undertook, to assist a substantial part of the population persecuted and abandoned by the Pinochet dictatorship. It shows the headquarters of the church where problems such as legal defence, exile, political imprisonment, the detained-disappeared, and the presentation of habeas corpus to the courts are being dealt with, on behalf of local people. This arpillera was made in one of the handicraft workshops in the Santiago suburbs run by the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, founded by the Chilean Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez. Marjorie Agosín, describes these first workshops in her book, Tapestries of hope, threads of love: The Arpillera movement in Chile (second edition, 2008): "At the height of despair, approximately fourteen women arrived at the Vicariate...they met as a group, fearfully ...away from the dark corridors of death...they began to tell their stories on pieces of cloth."

The Vicaría also provided support through its regional offices by offering legal aid, health care, work opportunities and training in human rights. It was active from 1976 to 1992, continuing its work for two years after Pinochet was deposed in 1990.

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