Voices at the Margins of Victimhood: Jorge Díaz’s Náufragos de la memoria

Abstract

After decades of political and ideological persecution, the process of Chilean national reconciliation requires the careful examination of a problematic dialectic: on the one hand, forgiving and forgetting, on the other, bringing the guilty to justice. However, decades after Chile’s transition from dictatorship to democracy, the boundaries between forgiveness and condemnation remain porous. This is partially due to the fact that some of the survivors have not been able to express their personal injuries. In the eyes of the famous Chilean playwright Jorge Díaz – whose last collection of plays Náufragos de la memoria [Castaways of Memory] (2007) is the subject of this article – this social dynamic of silence imposed on the defeated converts society into one more link in the chain of guilt. This article seeks to shed light on the diverse intimate experiences of victimhood as represented theatrically in Díaz’s pieces, from the perspective of survivors who are dwelling at the periphery of postdictatorship society. Following Ana Longoni’s proposal of the marginalization of this particular group through their classification as “traitors”, I will argue that through the dynamic employment of silences, irony, and of physical space(s), these plays blur the categories of victim and perpetrator. This breaking of rigid classifications reveals Díaz’s main criticism about his country’s controversial attitude and debatable strategies of reconciliation, and opens up the possibility of a dialogue about traumatic memory – including those most intimately touched by this memory.