The show, “Memorias: Geography of a Decade, Chile 1973-1983,” is in Smith Union’s Lamarche Gallery through May 31. Bowdoin is just one stop in its international tour. According to Wells, the exhibit “captures a tumultuous moment in Chile’s history,” from the overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973 to the first years of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.
Wells, who is Bowdoin’s Roger Howell, Jr. Professor of
Wells’ Latin American Revolutions class studied four revolutionary movements, including Salvador Allende’s democratic socialist experiment, which came to a brutal end on September 11, 1973.
In Baca’s class Environmental Politics of Latin America, students examined Latin America through its global interconnections of commodities, representations, and identities, from colonialism to the present. Baca said the Memorias exhibition culminated her Chile unit, which explored the country’s recent political history through the lens of working class and Mapuche struggles with the forest industry.
The Memorias exhibit is made up of prints by renowned Chilean painters who went into exile, and of posters that retrace a decade of European expressions of solidarity and resistance with the Chilean people. The show also includes photos of the 1973 coup from the Gamma press
Wells’ students each selected one or several of the pieces of art to analyze, grounding their analysis in the course readings. In the slideshow below are excerpts from some of those student papers.
