«Qué pena me da la pena»: mourning, grief and rituals of passage in relatives of the disappeared of the Pinochet dictatorship (Chile)

Abstract

In this work I will reflect on a permanent presence in the daily life of relatives of the detained-disappeared of the Pinochet dictatorship, which as a native category is called «sorrow» and refers to a state of sadness that can cause illness, but also leads to the action. What we will see is that, although the recovery of the bodies and the associated funerals allow us to face death, the closure of certain cycles, and the elaboration of mourning processes, these are not always crossed by overcoming the «sorrow» since. This derives from the experience of «cruelty» «dehumanization», torture, and the type of death suffered by their relatives I will propose the analytical concept of “root pain” since, as an entity in which a set of instances is anchored, it generates reciprocal attention because it is directly associated with the experience of the family member’s grief and the essence of the deceased subject that needs to continue to be cared for, despite the years that have passed. For this, I will work with the experiences of relatives of detained-disappeared in the framework of prolonged field work and I will focus on some cases in the North of Chile in which the relatives recovered the bodies.