Education and dictatorship: Traumatic memory in the films Machuca and La Lengua de las Mariposas

Abstract

In this paper we seek to contribute to the reflection about the period preceding the Spanish Civil War and the coup in Chile. Our purpose is to find out, through cinematography, how the debates in those societies experiencing coups anticipated the construction of social scission as the political, ideological and economic debates became fiercer among the population. It is common that historical moments that are traumatic for collective memory, such as dictatorships, fall into oblivion soon after their occurrence. The cinematography is one of the most effective means of transmitting information which gradually favors the resumption of refl ection by the cultural, theoretical and historical discourse on the traumatic period. To this end, we make a comparative analysis of the films La Lengua de las Mariposas by José Luis Cuerda and Machuca by Andrés Wood, focusing on the issues relating to education and authoritarianism. By working with cinema, we seek to enrich historical consciousness, since the films analyzed here, although fictional, contribute to the reflection on the political history that precedes the dictatorships in Chile and in Spain, leaving traces of the collective memory that is built from the wreckage left by the civil-military coups, here, in this particular case, in the school context.

Keywords: school education, collective memory, cinema, La Lengua de las Mariposas, Machuca.