Arpilleras: Talk and Workshop
Join curator and art historian Isabel Rojas-Williams and artist educator Gabriela Martínez to learn about the Arpillera movement where communities of women produced and globally circulated hand-embroidered textiles depicting scenes of Chilean oppression and hardship under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The presentation will be followed by a workshop of LA-based arpilleristas, including Rojas-Williams, who are former members of the international activist organization Movimiento por la Emancipación de las Mujeres de Chile/Movement for the Emancipation of Chilean Woman (MEMCH).
Examples of historic arpilleras from the family collection of artist Franciso Letelier will be on view during the program.
In addition to Isabel Rojas-Williams, the following LA-based Arpilleristas will be part of the program and workshop:
Ana María Cobos & Ana Lya Sater came to California from Chile as immigrants in the mid 1960s. Both have masters degrees in librarianship and Latin American Studies from UCLA. They are both retired, having worked at UCLA, Stanford and LA City College and Saddleback College. Ana María and Ana Lya have presented and published studies about the Chilean exile experience and they have collaborated with the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile. In 2019-2020 they were active participants in an extensive exhibition of arpilleras at MOLAA in Long Beach.
Juani Fúnez-González was born and raised in Chile. Three years after Pinochet’s coup d’état, in 1976, she and her husband, who had been imprisoned since September 1973, became political exiles in California. Juani continued her professional career, obtained Masters degrees in History and Sociology/Ethnic Studies and eventually completed a Ph.D. in Social Sciences. She was a part-time instructor at the University of California, Irvine and held a full-time position at Orange Coast College teaching U.S. History and Ethnic Studies. She retired in 2022. With a group of Chilean friends, she made her first arpillera in 2019 that was part of a large exhibit of arpilleras at MOLAA in Long Beach. Juani’s books, Agapi, the Fence of Hope (2024) and Surviving the Dictatorship in Chile, 1973-1976 (2025), speak of her experience of living through the clutches of the Pinochet’s dictatorship.
Mary Gamboa was born in Santiago, Chile. Her father was a textile technician and union leader and her mother a housewife, an atheist, and feminist ahead of her time. In September 1973, she was in the last year of high school. After the military coup on September 11, her school was never the same. Teachers and students went missing and never returned. As the days went by, we learned that some were detained, others were disappeared or murdered. Twenty-five years ago, she came to California with her husband and sons, knowing how difficult it would be to give her children a university education.
Betsabé Mazzolotti was born in Coquimbo, a town in the central-north region of Chile. She received her teaching degree and taught in primary school children for 12 years until the civil-military coup of 1973 when she lost her job. In 1975, her family (husband and two small children) were issued a refugee visa to travel to the United States, where they begun their exile. In 1987, she obtained a TEFL License from UCLA, which allowed her to teach English when she returned to Chile. She became Academic Director of the Chilean-North American Institute, a binational center in La Serena. Her work with arpilleras began soon after arriving in the US, collecting them and supporting the work of the first Chilean arpilleristas protected by the Vicariate of Solidarity of the Catholic Church. Betsabé was MEMCH Los Angeles’ president (Movement for the Emancipation of the Chilean Women) for almost two decades. In 2019, as member of MEMCH, she was part of the exhibition Arte Mujer y Memoria: Arpilleras from Chile at MOLAA in Long Beach. As part of this project, she made her first arpillera that depicted a memory when her children first attended school in the USA.
Nancy Rivera was born in Chuquicamata, in northern Chile, she’s the daughter of a mining family.In 1973, she was completing her Public Accounting/Auditor degree at the Universidad Católica del Norte in Antofagasta. The military coup of September 11, 1973 changed her life and that of her husband. He became a political prisoner, and through the efforts of various international organizations, his status was changed and he was allowed to go into exile. They came to California in 1976. In 1977, she became a bank a teller and in 1981 joined UCLA’s Payroll office. Within a few years she became a Fiscal Supervisor with the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. She retired after 25 years. With a group of Chilean friends, she made her first arpillera in 2019 that was part of a large exhibit of arpilleras at MOLAA in Long Beach.
