Race, memory and the politics of representation in The Pearl Button (2015)

This article will examine Patricio Guzmán’s recent documentary film El botón de nácar/The Pearl Button (Guzmán, 2015). In El botón de nácar, Guzmán focuses on the disappearance of the indigenous population of the Chilean Patagonia and the annihilation of political prisoners during Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship (1973–90). This article will demonstrate how Guzmán, by linking these two experiences of extermination, perhaps unwittingly perpetuates problematic racial representation of the first inhabitants o9f the Chilean Patagonia (Aónikenk, Selknam, Haush, Kawésqar and Yagán). It will point out the unexpected representational consequences for the discursive construction of the Fuegians as racial Others of linking their disappearance with the memory of Chile’s recent traumatic experience of human rights violations. Thus, I hope to reread cultural productions about Chile’s indigenous population and the Chilean memory of state terrorism through the perspective of racial representation and its challenging articulation with other political agendas.