Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love: The Arpillera Movement in Chile

In the Chilean autumn of 1974, a dozen women took part in a workshop to make handicrafts. The women shared a search for missing relatives who had been detained and “disappeared” by the authoritarian regime of Augusto Pinochet. Under the auspices of the Catholic Church these women created arpilleras, or appliquéd burlap tapestries. Marjorie Agosín’s book tells the story of this artwork and its development into an internationally recognized denunciation of the dictatorship. In arpillera workshops, women came together in search of information, income, and a vehicle to publicize their plight. They went on to form the nucleus of the Association of the Families of the Detained-Disappeared, an organization that protested human rights abuses committed by the regime. The appearance of the book’s second edition is a testament to Agosín’s eloquent portrayal of their struggles. It is divided into an analysis of the workshops, the author’s personal story of...