Violeta Parra: Her museum and Carpa as spaces of nostalgia

Abstract

Since her death in 1967, Violeta Parra has inhabited two meta/physical geographical spaces in Santiago: a Carpa (tent) and her tomb in the General Cemetery. Now, she also has her own museum. In the Carpa, she struggled for visitors' attention; in her museum, she achieves a final ascendancy. Studying Parra's Sixties-era Carpa over and against her new museum represents, then, a nostalgic voyage to a particular and meaning-filled pointin Chile's past, a time when the nation was on the verge of Allende's contentious presidential election (1970) and its violent aftermath. The larger goal, however, is to understand Parra's space in a nation that is still coming to terms with her life, death, and legacy.