Entwined Tellings

This chapter takes the reader on a journey to “return” to stories of past violence, opening with the trip the author made to Chacabuco, an abandoned nitrate mining town in the Atacama Desert, some 100 kilometers from the coastal town of Antofagasta, which was used by Pinochet regime in 1973–74 to house an estimated 1,200 political prisoners. If the purpose of that trip was to search for stories, for how places “hold” stories, it became more about the complexities of how stories are articulated and passed on, how accounts of the past—along with the objects, photographs, even ghosts that may also be said to preserve stories—have to appear, be perceived, be invited, or be made to speak.