Women's Memories of the Day of the Chilean Coup in the City of Valparaiso

This article reconstructs and analyzes the memories of women who were in the city of Valparaiso on September 11, 1973, the day of the coup d'etat in Chile. Research participants were six women from the Valparaiso region, militants of leftist parties, and survivors of political imprisonment and torture during the Chilean civil-military dictatorship. We conducted a focus group and two semi-structured individual interviews. Data analysis was carried out in two stages: the first one phenomenological-hermeneutic and the second one based on Grounded Theory. The research results show that the day of the coup d'etat in Valparaiso is remembered by women as a mighty and irrevocable milestone, functioning as a biographical event. The coup d'etat means a before and after in civic experiences in social, political, and historical aspects and in the dwelling manners of the city.