For Mother’s Day, I’ve been thinking about some of the powerful and provocative creative nonviolent activist work that mothers have done through the ages — and there is a lot of it. So much of popular history tells the stories of the men who “led” the charge in struggles, but my thoughts went to South America, and Chile in particular, because of the richness of the cultural methods used, and the leadership of mothers in the face of brutal and patriarchal regimes.
“You can’t have a revolution without songs,” read the banner behind Salvador Allende when he became president of Chile in 1970, highlighting the role of Nueva Canción (New Song) in the emergent resistance movements in South America. This style of musical resistance didn’t just include the voices of women, though one of its early proponents was Violeta Parra, a mother, who wrote the song “Gracias a la Vida.” Nueva Canción was intentionally used to unite and identify concerns of oppressed peoples, as it integrated native and rural musical instrumentation with urban and European styles to speak to ever larger communities. Only three years later, when Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile, his regime outlawed several instruments identified with Nueva Canción, recognizing and attempting to stop the powerful spread of political ideas, courage and resistance through music.
Still, the music lived on. Today, the tradition continues thanks to, among others, the son and daughter of Violeta, who instilled a love of this music in her children. What an amazing gift.
Even as music served functions of education, empowerment, community-building and the putting forward of alternate visions for society, it was not the only cultural work that significantly contributed to the effectiveness of the movement for justice. During the brutal dictatorship of Pinochet, mothers spent hours stitching stories of resistance and suffering in the 1980s into a traditional tapestry form, arpilleras. Disregarded as inconsequential women’s work, it was possible to smuggle and sell these beautiful quilts both into and out of jails, and outside of Chile — moving information to sons and husbands, and spreading news beyond the borders even when a suppressed press corps could not. This galvanized anti-Pinochet sympathizers globally and resulted in both financial and political support for the resistance.
As the arpilleraistas gathered, often in church sanctuaries, the threads of their handiwork not only provided income to support their families, but also sewed together a growing consciousness of their own power. The craft provided a very accessible and low-risk entry point to the movement for many, while preserving collective memory and building capacity to go public with their demands, both on the political and home fronts — confronting the dictatorship and later the culture of machismo itself.
Another protest against Pinochet evolved from Chile’s national dance, the cueca. As thousands were “disappeared” by the regime, a symbol of resistance became “la cueca sola.” Originally done with partners, it was now being performed solo by women, clutching photographs of their missing loved ones, to confront the denial of the death squads.
Chilean women’s integration of cultural resistance into movement strategies seems to have contributed greatly to the outreach, education, accessibility, endurance and, therefore, effectiveness of their protracted struggle. The mothers’ motivation to better their children’s lives and future living conditions inspired many to take action, however risky. Day to day concerns of finding food for empty bellies moved mothers to stitch together rags to not only fill wallets but also to make change.
Thank you, arpilleraistas, singers and dancers for giving us more reasons to celebrate mothers today.
Thanks for your piece on arpilleras; I have Marjorie Agosin’s book on them. I tried, via her, to see if some could be organized for a traveling exhibit, but no luck. This is something I’m STILL willing to work on; any thoughts/ideas/contacts???
Re instruments being banned, you are probably aware that, during colonial days, steel drums were outlawed in Trinidad.
Since I’m a composer by trade, I’m very interested in all this.
Thanks for your piece!!
Thanks for this note– As a political artist myself ( giant puppets, props, banners, stilts, street theater mostly) I have researched a lot of what I now call ‘cultural work” as more inclusive than protest arts and started to look at the functionalities of cultural work in nonviolent campaigns and movements from a strategic perspective…
More information on this broader subject, and links to background, can be found here: http://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/index.php/learning-and-resources/resources-on-nonviolent-conflict?bTask=bDetails&bId=405
I also highly recommend the videos “The Singing Revolution” and “Amandla” if you have not seen them already… Onward, NB
hi i’m a worker , a over the road trucker whose goal in doing this is to pull the blades that drive the windmills,
sometimes i write things
i can tell u of the thoughts one load brought me.
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:58:27 GMT
i have a question, does anyone remember an old black and white movie ,i think it was Hepburn and Bogart, and the line was ” how about a nice cuppa joe” .
this was the slang at the time for a good old american cup of coffee…………..
…… so a few weeks ago i’m headed from Denver to Green bay loaded with..??? …….now during football season, you ask yourself, what would be going to green bay,.where people wear cheese on there heads???? (makes me think of Gulliver travels and Dr. Seuss) right you guessed it …..bud lite. now the folks at Aunheuser Busch loaded so much on the trailer ,that we had to stop twice as often to fuel ,1/2 tank each time. if we had gotten a full tank we would have been over the weight limit.
now it would take lotsa “hard licker” to make me want to wear cheese on my head
on the way,i remembered a time that my parents neighbor Bud Marcus and i were drinking a beer at the pick-nick table behind bud’s house. it was great to drink at buds house, he was a sales exucative for Michelob beer (he gave me a cool promo watch once) and (hey that shows how long ago this was , who wears a watch anymore)
bud “says hey Michelob is going to start selling a new lite beer”
“whats a lite beer bud i ask “expecting a joking reply like “the one i snuck out of your fridge last nite ,yuck,yuck ,now your lite one beer, yuck yuck”.
i got a serious reply “a new beer Michelob is coming out with”
“explain please bud” i ask
” well Michelob is going to sell a beer that will help people lose weight”
“ok” i replied “how is Michelob going to make a beer that’s going to help people lose weight bud”
“their gonna put water in it”
“there’s already water in beer bud”
“yea but their gonna put more water in it”
” more water is gonna make people lose weight?”
“well they will think they are”
“if it’s watered down they will just drink more”
“yea probably”
“of watered down beer”
” they will buy more beer, that costs less for Michelob to make”
“yeah”
“they have laws about watering down beer in Germany i think”
” this is not Germany”
“how are you going to convince people to drink watered down beer bud”
“advertising”
“rite the american people will never go for that bud’
“oh yea they will , Michelob is spending a lot of money, it will work, you will see”
“rite , never happen”
i believed the bright well educated Americans would never go for this,….. watered down beer………….then america elected Reagan and Reaganomics.
i realized with enough advertising you could convince a virgin that a rhino was a fat unicorn and an american of anything….watered down beer ,..hell
anyhow back to the story (oh and by the way , the scientific way is to drink the beer really really really cold, so you can’t even taste it, cold,because anyone with high school knows a calorie is a unit of heat , the amount of heat required to raise one gram of water i degree ,something close to that. and your body will burn lotsa calories warming that cold beer in your tummy,the more you drink ,the more you burn ,and the thinner you get!!)
oh yea, back to the story(and i don’t think because of the weight of the trailer that adding water made it any lighter)
damn ,back to the story , everywhere i look as i drive the truck into Wisconsin , cows ,billboards saying Wisconsin, the” milk state “,.. cows on the hills ,cows,walking to the milking sheds,cows,everywhere cows,cows, cows.
we round the top of a hill to stop in a fuel station to get a half a tank of fuel,and there 10 foot tall ,a statue of “elsie”standing on her hind legs, holding up her skirt with a silly grin,….exposing her utters
i cracked up , this was promising to be a fun stop.
i went inside to get a coffee , i love good old american coffee
i pour it and look for that good old american cream
there is pumpkin spice ,french vanilla , Irish creme ,caramel macchiato,chocolate mocha, everything had 2 names
and how is the coffee going to taste like coffee when you put this stuff in it,you might just as well dump it in hot water,..enough of them and you could have the equivalent of a shake…….but whats that got to do with coffee…. and what is this stuff anyhow??? whats it made of??
i asked the clerk “do you have any cream ,or milk”
he gestures at the stuff
“no” i say”do you have the white stuff,cream or milk”
“we have these” he says holding up a packet of creamora and shaking it
“no” i say “what is that stuff?, and how do they get it out of a cow anyhow?, keep her from drinking for a week?, it says non dairy on it”
“i dunno” he says
that “flavored stuff” there reminds me of when my kids were young and as i was flipping pancakes in the kitchen ,they would stir my coffee with lollipops, and then crack up when i spit lemon or grape flavored coffee on the wall in surprise.
“oh” he said “this stop got bought by a big company and this is what they give us.
so in Wisconsin,the milk state ,where i can look out any of the windows ,in 4 directions and see hundreds of cows i cannot have milk or cream
i realize that corporations don’t even have to advertise anymore
they can limit our options……..and do
i think the occupy wall street people are on the right tract
i’d like to drink a cuppa joe with them
oscar