Estrategias de construcción de las memorias de mujeres víctimas de Colonia Dignidad en obras ficcionales chilenas recientes

A series of recent artistic works address the case of ‘Colonia Dignidad’, a German sect in southern Chile. Key examples are the literary works Cuando tu cuerpo dejó de ser mi casa [When Your Body Ceased to Be My Home] (2022, Emma Sepúlveda) and Sprinters. Los niños de Colonia Dignidad [Sprinters. The Children of Colonia Dignidad] (2016, Lola Larra). These works address the sexist violence perpetrated against women, one of the most oppressed groups within the enclave. We aim to analyze the representations of female characters and the strategies that the protagonists and authors of both novels use in order to build memories and alternative narratives that help us think through the history of the sect and its traumatic aftermaths in the present. We argue that the construction of memory in these works is articulated through what Alison Landsberg terms “prosthetic memories”, which mobilize, in turn, transnational modes of solidarity among women: women victims, Chilean women, and women in exile.