Cinélatino: Carmen Castillo, memory is combined with the present and the future
Carmen Castillo, author and director (Cinélatino archive).
© Laura Morsch for Cinélatino
Text by: Isabelle Le Gonidec
7 mins
Director and author, Carmen Castillo is part of the “family” of the Rencontres Cinélatino de Toulouse.
She came at the festival's invitation to present her latest book
, Un jour d' octobre à Santiago,
published by Verdier.
The opportunity to take stock of the major political and constitutional change currently underway in Chile and in particular the role of women.
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From our special correspondent in Toulouse,
Driven out of Chile in October 1974 while living in hiding since the September 11, 1973 coup with her companion, the leader of the MIR, Miguel Enriquez, Carmen Castillo has never ceased to testify, to militate.
A history teacher before 1973, she worked with former President Salvador Allende, following in the footsteps of the new Head of State Gabriel Boric.
“
As Salvador Allende predicted almost 50 years ago, here we are again, dear compatriots, opening up great avenues where free men and women will pass to build a better society.
Long live Chile!
“Launched the young head of state at the end of his address to the nation before the presidency on March 12.
Carmen Castillo writes and films to transmit the memory of those who have been gagged, that of the struggles of past generations, but it is a living memory, one that nourishes future battles.
One October Day in Santiago
, was first published by Stock and then republished in 1988 with
Lignes de loin
, which recounts Carmen Castillo's first return to Santiago in 1987. Both texts have just been republished by Verdier.
Books that it was absolutely necessary for me to write at that time, says Carmen Castillo.
It was about “
re-establishing ties with the dead, simply to live... But this company of the dead is not nostalgic or deadly, it is a strength!
The political struggle today is also strong on these deaths.
"
The angel of Walter Benjamin's story has become the angel of the barricade
", according to Carmen Castillo referring to the election and investiture of Gabriel Boric.
“
The youth in power today in Chile remembers the vanquished, they know our books and our films
,” said the director during her meeting with the large audience invited to the Ombres blanches bookstore in Toulouse.
And she also quotes the films of
Patricio Guzman
, who carries out a tireless work of memory and investigation and to whom the festival pays homage.
"
The works do not change the world, they illuminate it differently
", writes Jospeh Andras, in his beautiful preface to the book by Carmen Castillo.
It is a memory that forms the basis and cement despite political repression, the complicit silence of the main media and the revisionism of history textbooks.
Cinélatino meetings: Carmen Castillo during the meeting-debate at the Ombres blanches bookstore in Toulouse, on March 28.
© Mathis Lenoir for Cinelatino
Women at the heart of social struggles...
Bearers of this memory, women from working-class neighborhoods were at the heart of the "
protests
" of the years 1983-84 and the linchpins of the fight for human rights during the dictatorship, for example in the collectives of mothers of the disappeared or the solidarity of neighborhoods that have set themselves up to resist, simply to survive in the face of the neoliberal economic policies put in place by the military dictatorship.
Carmen Castillo reminds us that young girls were at the heart of the battles in the 2000s: occupation of high schools in 2006, then in the
high school and student mobilizations of 2011
for a quality public service in education.
A time when feminist collectives multiply and emerge the figures of Camila Vallejo - who has the 3rd post in government, that of secretary general - and Karol Cariola, now a deputy.
Same generation and close to the new president Gabriel Boric who made his classes in the same movement.
Students from the conservative "Catholic University" of Chile, in Santiago, demonstrate against violence against women, May 25, 2018. REUTERS / Ivan Alvarado
Then in 2018, there were the occupations of universities by female students to denounce gender discrimination and violence and a
big march in Santiago in May
.
A movement started in
Valdivia, in the South
, when the students learned that a university professor was simply going to be transferred after an accusation of sexual harassment from an employee of the establishment.
This anger gave its color, its aesthetics, its strength to the broad social movement of 2019 with - among other things - the performance of the group LasTesis of Valparaiso which mobilized women from all over the world, recalls Carmen Castillo.
►
To read also: "Chile despertó!"
and Chile awoke!
“
Chilean politics can no longer be conceived without the thought and actions of feminists, it is impossible.
We obtained parity in the Constituent Convention and Boric's government - with its parity - only reminds us of what we owe to feminist movements
”.
And all the more so since the studies - "
which I read before returning
" emphasizes Carmen Castillo - who has just returned from Chile where she had been staying since October - show that between the two rounds, the million The votes of the abstainers who gave victory to Gabriel Boric were mainly those of young women, under thirty, from working-class backgrounds.
“
There is a total coherence, a fundamental movement that comes from afar
”.
... and now in power
Of the 24 ministers in the government of Gabriel Boric, 14 are women and they occupy the sovereign posts of the Interior, Defense or Foreign Affairs.
Women who have grown politically in social struggles for some of them and have become central figures in Chilean politics like Izkia Sitches, intern doctor in a public hospital, "
during the pandemic, very young, at the head of the equivalent of the College of Physicians, she saved the country
".
Denouncing the deeply unequal Chilean healthcare system, she had tirelessly pleaded with the government to adopt a strategy that had proven itself elsewhere, combining tests, traceability and isolation, multiplying opportunities for education in the media and on social networks. social... and now "
she is in the most difficult position, that of Minister of the Interior
", underlines Carmen Castillo.
Another emblematic figure of this generation, the mayor of the capital Santiago,
Iraci Hassler
, elected in May 2021, also in her thirties and also from the Communist Party and student activist in 2011. In a television program, she recently put a well-known presenter who spoke to her condescendingly because she was young and because she was a woman.
The
video has since gone viral
.
Another emblematic personality of this new power, Maya Fernandez, daughter of Beatriz and granddaughter of Salvador Allende, appointed Minister of Defense, "
a personality, a character
".
We can also mention the two presidents of the Constituent Assembly, Elisa Loncon and
Maria Elisa Quinteros
, who succeeded him.
This evolution was in the making, “
it could not be otherwise
”, according to Carmen Castillo.
Women who are the heirs of those -companions in struggle and life- evoked by Carmen Castillo in her book like Luisa, alias
Lumi Videla
, assassinated by the military dictatorship.
An open and non-dogmatic left.
"
Left-wing women, who enrich left-wing thought by recalling that the word 'equality' does not mean uniformity
", emphasizes Carmen Castillo, therefore open to sexual diversity and identity claims like Gabriel Boric who, during his swearing in, swore, according to the tradition of respecting the Constitution "
before the Chilean people
", but adding "
all the Chilean peoples
", in reference to the indigenous peoples, in particular Mapuches.
The memory of the vanquished is the energy of the present
... said
Walter Benjamin
, and therefore of the future, explains Carmen Castillo: the liberation struggles of the present find their inspiration in the sacrifice of the vanquished generations, in the memory of the martyrs of the past.
What is happening is major, “
we have won
”, concludes Carmen Castillo, for whom too little has been done during the previous governments.
But "
without romanticism
", without the roar of "
the final victory
", in the still vague outline of a society "
not very well drawn
".
Thanks first to the construction of the new Constitution and now to this new democratically elected government.
She pays tribute to the new president:
he is someone who is vulnerable, who recognizes that he does not know, that he will have to listen, be close to people
.
And he will have to deal with a difficult Parliament, with strong opposition, because if "
Pinochetist fascism has been defeated
(at the polls)
, it is preparing attacks against the Constituent Assembly
".
It will be necessary to accompany the work of the Constituent Assembly, of this government to ensure that Chile is no longer this “
cruel
” country that it denounces, in the footsteps of Raul Ruiz.
►
To read also
:
"We are alive", the profession of faith of Carmen Castillo
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