Rio Mapocho analysis - Lily Erickson
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Part of Analysis of Rio Mapocho arpillera
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- Rio Mapocho analysis - Lily Erickson
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Lily Erickson
GEOG 331
Revised Arpillera Analysis
The Arpillera I chose to look at is a scene depicting members of the military
putting men in a river who seem to be bleeding and, if not dead, are suffering. From
what I can tell every soldier in the arpillera has a smile on their face and they seem to
be enjoying what they are doing to these men. This seems to be a very intentional
choice from the artist since their mouths are done with string and are very detailed in
terms of how it was stitched. This could have been done because the artist must have
either seen the reactions from the soldiers when doing things like this or it was the only
way for her to make sense of how someone could possibly do this to another human
being. When looking at the choices of materials used for the arpillera I notice that the
cloth used for everything besides the houses seems to be of a shirt material. The
houses however look to be made of cloth typically seen on pants. There is also a lot of
string used for small details like windows, faces, hair, waves, blood, stars, and the rays
of the sun peeking out over the mountains. This attention to detail is beautiful but at the
same time, horribly sad. The detail of the blood in the river and on the men being
drowned isn't just accidental. It's very deliberately stitched into where the men seem to
have been injured. When looking more at who is in the scene, it looks to be only
soldiers and the bodies that are being thrown into the river. I think that the time of day
being very early in the morning was also intentional since, considering the historical
context, they didn't want people to see what was happening to the people who spoke
out. They wanted their families to consider them missing and not dead. This is why the
soldiers would do something like this at night rather than during the day when everyone
could see what was happening. Besides the men, there is also a military truck that the
soldiers are taking the bodies out of. The question I still have when looking at this
arpillera is if the men that are bleeding and being put in the river are already dead or, if
they are trying to drown them. Knowing this information feels important since so many
women are left with the thought of not knowing what happened to their loved ones.