Memories and Childhood: Play, Toys, and Dictatorship. Uruguay, 1970–1985

Abstract

This article presents preliminary findings from an ongoing doctoral research project on childhood, memory, toys, and dictatorship. Within this study, one question emerges as particularly significant: what did imprisoned mothers seek to convey, through the games and toys they crafted in prison, to children who were born into political captivity? Games and toys are understood as mediators of educational processes within a context that shaped the relationship between the adult generation and those newly entering the world in distinctive ways. The study focuses on the period between 1970 and 1985. One of the mechanisms employed by the Uruguayan regime to remove political opponents from public life was imprisonment, a strategy of exclusion that became firmly established during the 1970s. This article focuses on prison visits and on the games that mothers prepared in order to receive their daughters and sons during those visits. From this perspective, playful memory becomes central as a shared experience between children and adults, in which bodies subjected to different conditions came together to create moments of connection. Playful memory thus constitutes a productive lens through which to examine intergenerational relationships, the meanings mothers sought to convey during prison visits, their aspirations for their children, and the strategies they developed to endure imprisonment while preserving their bonds with their daughters and sons. The analysis draws on interviews conducted with mothers, daughters, and sons, as well as on the toys crafted by the mothers themselves.