On the pedagogical use of sites of commemoration: a visit of high school students to the Parque por la Paz ex Villa Grimaldi (Santiago, Chile)

Abstract

During Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship the Parque por la Paz ex-Villa Grimaldi was the setting of abhorrent violations to human rights; it is today an emblematic site of memory in Chile. Pursuing the goal of a "pedagogy of memory" an ethnographically oriented research stirred the historical memory of high school students. By means of some guided visits of students to the Parque por la Paz, of a previous and subsequent action in the classroom, and of a somewhat spontaneous work of memory inside the students' families -collected in interviews to some of the students involved in the experience- the results achieved by the research proved the importance of the sites of commemoration in the teaching of national history and in the ethical formation in human rights. They also accounted for the existence of a fragmented historical memory in Chile and for the persistence of frames of memory associated to conflicting interpretations on the traumatic recent Chilean past.