“Between Fright and Affection”: Voices of Betrayal and Resistance in the Chilean Transition to Democracy

Abstract

The present article seeks to study the film La Flaca Alejandra: vidas y muertes de una mujer chilena, made by Carmen Castillo and Guy Girard in 1994. Produced during the period of the democratic transition, the film focus on the figure of Marcia Merino (political name “La Flaca Alejandra”), far-left militant who became a collaborator of Pinochet’s regime under torture. Throughout the text, it will be argued that Castillo’s film functions as a site for the establishing of a double “mise en scène” of the ‘self’; a place where two divergent life trajectories intersect with each other: that of the filmmaker, present as well in the image, and that of the filmed subject, the “symbol of treason” Marcia Merino. As an instance of a two-fold return to the scene of the trauma, the endeavor of La Flaca Alejandra will finally be understood as an attempt to put into contact, albeit without forcing them to reach a synthesis, two irreconcilable testimonial voices.