In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

c a r m e n o q u e n d o -v i l l a r Dress for Success Fashion, Memory, and Media Representation of Augusto Pinochet O n 11 September 1973, a political earthquake rocked Chile, a country shaped over the eons by quakes of a more geological nature. From the shaken earth and architecture of the September coup, the strongman General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte emerged. But Pinochet, who until 1973 had been a non-actor on the national public stage, and practically unknown to the majority of Chileans, did not produce the coup: he was produced by it. The General emerged from the vacuum of power engendered by the coup, with the media serving as his principal scaffold. A closeknit group of media advisors, against whom Pinochet would rebel once in power, designed the coup’s communications strategy and stage-managed the overall mise-en-scène. In 1973, the principal forms of media—radio, television, and the printed press—gave corporality to his image, projection to his voice, and relevance to his words, generating a body for the dictator, upon which post-coup law would be constituted.1 After the coup, Pinochet led the longest government in the country’s history (1973–89), known both for its neoliberal economic model and for its massive human rights violations whereby thousands were killed, imprisoned, tortured, exiled, or “disappeared.” The regime would have been able neither to gain nor to hold power so long by force alone. It needed to manipulate perceptions and ideologies, and, to this end, clothes, in particular, made the man. The new regime aspired to a theatrics of order and discipline, where bodies—both civil and military—would be defined through signifying garments. The manner in 266 | carmen oquendo-villar which Pinochet, via the media, was able to exert authority by manipulating these symbols throughout his military and political career was not a static process, but rather one of transformation. One might think that the military uniform, because it served as a symbol of the strongest continuing institution in the country, would have been a stable referent in Chile. Yet it was through the very mutability of the uniform that Pinochet effected his migration from non-acting persona to persona of power, and it was that uniform which enabled him to prevail as a symbol of authority until his death. The word “avatar” derives from avatara, a Sanskrit term that breaks down into ava—“down”—and tarati—“he goes, passes beyond.” Together with his economic policies and successful institutionalization of the regime, the transformed uniform and the constantly evolving garments allowed Pinochet to create avatars that would allow him to “pass beyond” and adapt his image in a series of shifting historical-political contexts. However, as fellow Junta leader Fernando Matthei once stated, using fashion terms to refer to the 1980 Constitution: “Even custom-made shoes bind.”2 This chapter explores the transformation of Pinochet’s figure between two salient media events of his history: the 1973 military coup (the first media coup in Chile’s history and in Latin America in general) and his 2006 funeral (a mixed media event, in which emerging technologies and older ones appeared in a dynamic field). I pay particular attention to the role of military fashion in the iconic emergence of the dictator in 1973 televised and print media, and then in the 2006 public display of his embalmed body in both old and new media. Between these two dates (1973 and 2006), the uniform of the Commander in Chief went from being an autonomous entity, distinct from its wearer, to being indistinguishable from him, and then finally to achieving an autonomy that turned into a symbol in and of itself, detached from the specific body of the dictator. The uniform, which Pinochet alternated between civilian clothes and other garments, was a strong marketing device when he was alive, and played an equally great role in the disputed process of packaging the caudillo for posterity.3 The difference in mediascapes from 1973 to 2006 dramatically altered the way in which audiences related to the uniform. In 1973, Pinochet’s body, as well as his garments, was “self-generated,” displayed and disseminated in a unilateral manner by the Military Junta through a controlled media. Throughout much of his time in power, Pinochet himself rearranged his wardrobe and his public persona to adapt to new political contexts. In [3.141.31.209] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 07...

Share