Memory, postmemory and gender in letters by women to executed and disappeared women during the 1973–1990 Chilean dictatorship

This article examines the 2021 corpus of Epistolario de la memoria ( EM ; Epistle of memories), a digital project by the Museum of Memory and Human Rights that aggregates letters addressed to victims of Chile’s 1973–1990 civic-military dictatorship. Using critical discourse analysis, I examined the salient discourses of 27 letters from women to 19 disappeared or executed women, how they triggered and manifested memory and postmemory, and the presence/absence of gendered discourse. The results show that, for these writers, the victims are a constant, desired presence in their everyday life. They are portrayed in their memories and postmemories as active, influential and strong, thus challenging the conventional gaze of women as passive and helpless victims. They are also described as a model for younger generations, who in their letters bridge the present with the past, articulating the need to continue fighting long-standing gender inequalities. The further emphasis on the political commitment of these militant women and their subjection to gender violence is a conscious response to their lack of visibility in the literature, history and reports of the region until recently. This study informs the fields of trauma and memory studies, digital memory studies and discourse studies.