Abstract

This article illustrates the connection between the rise of social movements and the profound transformations in the ways post-conflict societies symbolize their difficult past. It examines how the 2011 Chilean student movement developed an alternative memory about Chile's Pinochet regime. I show how the movement claimed fundamental changes within the educational and political systems, framing its demands as a critical response to the socioeconomic neoliberal transformations set in motion by the Pinochet military regime. Through an empirical analysis of the 2011 student movement that combines 60 in-depth interviews with young activists with archival research, this article demonstrates how an alternative version of the dictatorial past was closely linked to the movement's goals and affected internal dynamics of belonging. The results indicate that participants managed to go beyond traumatic narratives concerning human rights crimes that had been dominant in the Chilean public memory about the dictatorship. Therefore, they presented a change that constituted a major challenge to the future of the politics of memory in Chile.