1 Introduction
“The walls are the printing house of the poor,” states the title of a publication by DUDO Ediciones from 2021. This book serves as a visual testimony to the social revolt in Chile in October 2019 and is the starting point for this chapter. The phrase places the book in a wider South American tradition as it references the slogan “The walls are the printing house of the people,” attributed to Rodolfo Walsh (1927–77), a writer and journalist who was disappeared during the last Argentine dictatorship. The book brings together 192 photographs of walls in the cities of Santiago, Valparaíso, Concepción, and Talca from October 2019 until October 2021, demonstrating both the diversity of the uprising’s demands and the central role played by city walls in expressing them. These photographs reveal the significance of urban spaces as a means of expression. On the one hand, they show a considerable amount of graffiti that may be perceived as mere daubing but which, in its phrasing and appearance, reveals social dissatisfaction; on the other hand, they contain paste-ups by artists such as Rosita Beas, Paloma Rodríguez and Caiozzama. As this chapter will unpack, there was a symbiosis between the graffiti and visual art of 2019/20, particularly in their use of words and phrases, that influenced the expressive potential of both. Walls became a huge shared canvas, on which discontent, anger, fear, and common sense were expressed in new ways that were nevertheless rooted in the past.
The social revolt of 2019/20, also known as the awakening, uprising or insurrection, is an excellent case study for analysing the workings of the memory-activism nexus (Rigney 2021, 299). From its inception, protestors chanted: “It’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years.” Though it was prompted by a planned subway fare increase, from the first day, the protests were not just about money, but about memory as well: 30 years had passed since the end of the dictatorship that overthrew President Salvador Allende (1908–73) and his government coalition Unidad Popular (UP) [Popular Unity]. This slogan shows
The memory of Allende loomed large during the revolt. The democratically elected socialist, who only lasted around 1,000 days in office, has had a long-standing influence on the demands of the streets. Today, the context of historical transformations in which Allende governed is often reflected in the aspirations of contemporary social movements. That is one reason why Allende’s image – along with several other figures such as Víctor Jara, Pedro Lemebel, Violeta Parra or Gladys Marín – persists in various forms of homage, including graffiti bearing slogans such as “Allende lives,” “Allende’s dream lives” or “Allende is/resides within the people.”2 In 2019, one often-heard cry was “It can be felt, it can be felt, Allende is present!”.3 Slogans like these are not only invocations of Allende but also direct references to the protests that took place between 1970 and 1973, when the streets were filled with chants of “Allende, Allende, the people defend you!” or “Chicho, don’t worry, the people are with you!”.4 Allende, with his unmistakable black horn-rimmed glasses, also graces the cover of The Walls Are the Printing House of the Poor. Notably, the paste-up depicting him, titled “Allende Lives,” has reimagined him as a contemporary protestor. He holds a cooking pot in his hand, a typical symbol of protest in the Southern Cone, and at his feet lies the iconic Negro Matapacos, a black dog wearing a red bandana that became a central symbol of the 2019/20 protests.5
Two elements of Allende’s legacy are recalled particularly prominently, which have everything to do with the relationship between language, art, and
It is important to note that the memory of Allende cannot be taken for granted, as his figure has only recently reappeared prominently in memory narratives, with the 2019 revolt and, even stronger, with the 50th anniversary of the coup in 2023. When the military dictatorship ended in 1990, heterogeneous memories were repressed in service of an official hegemonic memory geared towards consensus (Richard 2002, 189). Official memory discourse was about the “recovery and normalization of a democratic order,” which was supposed to make the “multiple fissures and dislocations of signs produced during the dictatorship” disappear (Richard 2004, 16). Consequently, the legacy of Allende was one of the “rebellious memories” that was targeted (López et al. 2020a, 31). In the end, these memories made their way back to the streets with a vengeance and their very mention functioned as a form of critique of the dominant order. Allende’s ideas regarding social politics and what he called a “democratic socialist revolution” were present in the demands of 2019, alongside echoes of the Unidad Popular (Cabezas 2022, 128). The revolt may not even have taken place without the transgenerational memory of the 1960s and the years 1970–73. The re-politicisation of Allende was, however, strongly personalised and homogenised.7 In the process of transforming his person into an icon,
Against this background, this article presents two arguments. Firstly, it makes the case that city walls were transformed into canvases exhibiting the desire for change in 2019, becoming the main point of expression during this revolt while vividly showcasing the complexities of social dialogue. The public space in general was reclaimed as a forum for everyone, providing alternative ways to communicate, express disapproval and educate. As such, it became a central arena for debate as well as for suppression. While artists and activists articulated criticisms of the regime, those who opposed the social revolt resorted to censorship, repainting the walls in grey or white, and cross-fading light projections. Secondly, this article claims that the 2019/20 revolt used keywords from the UP era to demand the rebuilding of cultural traditions that were decimated during the civil-military dictatorship. Moreover, by reclaiming this language, artistic interventions shifted away from hegemonic narratives and established an alternative public memory culture in which the UP and its historical context took centre stage. Prominent among the keywords they used was el pueblo [the people],8 which not only serves as an umbrella term encapsulating cohesion, unity and solidarity but also strongly invokes Allende himself.
Without grasping this strong footing in memory, el pueblo may seem a problematically ambiguous word, especially given the nuanced layers of meaning it has in Spanish, which can be difficult to convey accurately in translation. From an analytical standpoint, the invocation of el pueblo can be considered part of left-wing identity politics as described by Lea Susemichel and Jens Kastner, as it is associated with integration rather than exclusivity and exclusion. It implies a new pattern of solidarity that is to be understood as a “‘solidarity against’, which is always ‘against a superior power (capital, patriarchy, white supremacy …)’” (Susemichel and Kastner 2021, 46). Also, it may be added that
In what follows I will elaborate on two cases, Delight Lab’s projections and the wall newspaper Mercvria, which I consider outstanding examples of the artistic interventions that arose during the revolt from 2019/20. Works like Delight Lab and Mercvria evoke memories that have been dismissed for decades in sophisticated ways. The memory work carried out by these contemporary artists in the streets is crucial to expand the current discourses of remembrance, to highlight opposition to the legacy of the dictatorship and to formulate ideas of a (different) future. Before starting this analysis, however, a sense is needed of the intertwined histories of Allende’s troubled presidency and the term el pueblo.
2 The Thousand Days of Salvador Allende – el pueblo and its Representation
Salvador Allende, a medical doctor, co-founder of the Socialist Party in 1933 and a member of parliament since 1937, had unsuccessfully run for the highest political office of the presidential democracy in 1952, 1958 and 1964. By the time he was finally elected president of Chile on 4 September 1970, the country
The 1970s were a time of many important transformations, which are sometimes described as a “revolution from below” (Winn 2020b, 576). Allende’s ascent to power as well as his sweeping reforms, marked the onset of what some refer to as a “revolution from above” which complemented the grassroots movements. These movements were composed of diverse social and political actors, including the pobladores [shantytown dwellers], farmers and indigenous people, who transcended the confines of institutional norms. They pioneered novel modes of activism, exemplified by land and factory occupations [known as tomas] (Winn 2020b, 575–576), which reached their apogee during Allende’s term in office.
The UP sought to facilitate these grassroots initiatives, hoping to pave the so-called ‘third way’ to socialism by creating certain cultural and social conditions (López and Peris Blanes 2021, 6). Their cultural-political programme, supported by many artists and state institutions (Errázuriz and Leiva Quijada 2012, 13), aimed to guarantee access to cultural products and to support the development of a new culture (Anwandter 2022, 7). In doing so, it contributed to the meaning and central importance of el pueblo in later times, which is discussed in further detail below. One remarkable example of this ambition is the publishing house Quimantú. On 12 February 1971, the State of Chile acquired all the assets of Editorial Zig-Zag and around April 1971, Sociedad Empresa Editora Quimantú Limitada was formally established. The company was divided into seven sections, including an Editorial Division, a Journalistic Division (responsible for informative magazines), a Children’s and Educational Publications Division, a Commercial Division, a Finance Division, a Personnel and Administration Division, and a Technical Division that corresponded to the printing workshops. Quimantú books were distributed by unions and sold at kiosks at a price comparable to a pack of cigarettes to spread the values of the “the new man” (Anwandter 2022, 7).
Moreover, art was marked as a tool for emancipation and considered central to the structural transformation of social and political processes (Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos 2021, 47). The walls were designated as a
In light of the aforementioned circumstances, el pueblo should not be seen solely in terms of the working classes, nor viewed as a term that emerged just during Allende’s presidency. Rather, the concept expresses the combined struggle between revolutions coming from different directions (Winn 2020b, 580), and as such functioned as a powerful keyword for Allende and within the UP’s rhetoric. In public speeches, Allende frequently referred to el pueblo. For instance, on 5 November 1970, the president declared that his triumph was owed to the Chilean pueblo, who had entered the Presidential Palace with him (Allende Gossens 2020a, 28). He continued by describing himself as a “comrade president” (Allende Gossens 2020a, 29). For the analysis of the meaning
A similar move to define the referent of el pueblo is seen in the photo reports and texts published by Quimantú, which articulated the term in connection to socialist values. This publication associated el pueblo with a certain nationalist and developmentalist discourse that linked territorial sovereignty to the value of labour and economic productivity, thus shaping the category of el pueblo during this period (Anwandter 2022, 9). The photo collection “Who is Chile? We, the Chileans”11 presented a history of the country, its diverse landscape, its cultural achievements, its personalities from the arts, and its workers, and thematised the role of women and indigenous traditions. One aim was to ensure a media representation of the working class framed as the sujetos populares [popular subjects] that had not existed until then, and to show them as “symbols of the people [pueblo] and the nation [nación]” (Anwandter 2022, 10). Since the existence of popular representatives of el pueblo was already assumed in UP discourse, it was possible to go in search of these bodies and images that corresponded to this idea. This led to photographs of workers, often deprived of their individual identity, standing in as representatives of el pueblo (Anwandter 2022, 11).
3 Operation Clean-Up: the Erasure of el pueblo and the Creation of chilenidad during the Civil-Military Dictatorship
On 11 September 1973, the military bombed the Presidential Palace La Moneda, the president’s home and the radio stations loyal to the government. The dictatorship started by enforcing silence. In the following days, not only were
In order to promote unity and construct a new national identity, in contradistinction to the previous encompassing conceptualisation of el pueblo, a nationalist discourse was established in the dictatorship which promoted chilenidad [chileness] by a change of keywords (Errázuriz and Leiva Quijada 2012, 11). The whole shift was designed to erase the memory of the UP. To this end, the military actively intervened in language use, enforcing the replacement of not only el pueblo but also, for example, the word obrero [labourer/worker], with trabajador manual [manual worker]. They also banned the use of the word compañero [comrade/companion] (Heynowski and Scheumann 1974, 85), which was strongly linked to the UP experience and fulfilled certain political functions in this context (see also Villarroel and Riveros in this volume).
The end of the dictatorship and transition towards democracy in 1990 occurred under Pinochet’s conditions and is also referred to as a “negotiated transition” (Passmore 2016, 174).14 No significant transformation within the political institutions took place in this period, given that former dictator Augusto Pinochet remained army chief and later lifetime senator, and the
4 The 2019 Revolt – ‘We Call Ourselves the People Again’
When the revolt gripped the country on 18 October 2019, most public media, especially television stations, implicitly allied themselves with the government of then-president Sebastián Piñera (1949-2024) (Garcés Durán 2020, 27–28), a businessman and one of Chile’s richest people. They did not address the causes of the riots or the protestors’ grievances but only covered violence and looting. Consequently, community radios and social media became key sources of information (Garcés Durán 2020, 27–28). Additionally, the various artistic expressions on the city walls served as an important means of communication, expressing unity among dissidents as well as opposition to the monopolised media landscape.
The streets saw an outpouring of harsh criticism of the extreme social inequality that continues to mark Chile, the policies that disadvantage the majority of the population, and the lack of political representation for el pueblo. Much in line with Donatella Della Porta and Mario Diani’s definition of social movements as “networks which may either include formal organizations or not” (2006, 25), there was no previously organised group leading the activities, nor any political leader or spokesperson. The first post-dictatorial
Restoring keywords from the past, like el pueblo, expressed a vision of society that had once existed in Chile, and functioned as a mobilising strategy in October 2019. Keying passers-by into the history of the UP, they conjured a “hopeful memory” (Richard 2019, 124), as Nelly Richard pointed out in reference to one of the documentaries of Las Batallas de Chile by Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán. With this sense of possibility in mind, it does not come as a surprise that Guzmán, in his last film Mi país imaginario [My imaginary country], says: “Young people come here [Plaza Dignidad] to transform this space into a theatre of the future” (2022). Both in Chile and beyond, it is the emotive memory of hope, as well as of loss and defeat in which “mourning is inseparable from hope” (Traverso 2021, 48), which motivates the construction of new visions of society.16
5 Delight Lab – New Representations of Past Discourses
Within this context, on 19 October 2019, the art and design collective Delight Lab, formed by the siblings Andrea and Octavio Gana, started their first projection on the façade of the high-rise building Torre Telefónica on the central square of the city, informally renamed Plaza Dignidad. Passers-by could read the word “Dignity” in giant letters. However abstract the concept may seem,
Delight Lab further used several verbal and symbolic means, anchored in Chilean left-wing tradition, to visualise and represent this social unity. In this projection, cohesion was symbolised by the raised fist projected at the end of the sentence. This internationally known symbol, particularly associated with labour unions and black liberation movements (Davidson and Blair 2019), calls for solidarity in resisting unjust and oppressive conditions. Furthermore, the raised fist was a prominent feature in the murals by the Brigadas Ramona Parra from the 1960s and 70s and could be found in the urban sphere, including as part of the unofficial memorial site to the victims of the 2019 revolt located on a central avenue of Santiago in 2023. This raised fist reads “No one will be
Other projections by Delight Lab alluded to the political reawakening of a sense of unity, such as “For a new country, Chile woke up” (25 October 2019).19 The second part of this phrase was present in all the protests and is linked to the politics of the post-dictatorship. It implies that the country has been asleep or even paralysed since the day of the coup in 1973, unable to fight for real democratisation. On 14 November 2019, the Lab projected “Let the people [el pueblo] define their future”20 on the façade of the National Congress in Valparaíso, once the most important coastal city near the capital.
That very night, the Congress was to discuss the agreement to hold a referendum on a new constitution. Through their projection, Delight Lab revived the concept of el pueblo and through its historical reference, forged a link to a possible, different future. Several months later, during the pandemic lockdown, on 23 July 2020 Delight Lab once again projected pueblo on the façade of the Torre Telefónica, the hopeful short-hand reference now building on the unifying projections of the previous year.
In general terms, what Delight Lab projects is open-ended. Their work is collective but not anonymous, encouraging the public to continue thinking and inviting other artists to join in. They promote protest slogans which come from the streets and are meant to be completed there. It is not the artists themselves but the social movement that fuels these verbal and visual interventions in the urban space. Part of a generation that did not directly experience the Unidad Popular era, they engage in a reinterpretation of historical discourses and recycle terminology associated with the old left. They condense years of social and political struggle into concise messages that underscore the significance of words as “a ‘strategic’ memory of past emancipatory struggles, a future-oriented memory” (Traverso 2021, xiv). In this process, they reinvigorate the words they employ, such as el pueblo, by recontextualising and updating their significance. In 2019, this involved contrasting these terms with Piñera’s discourse of war while concurrently expressing hopes for a 21st-century future.
Delight Lab, QUE EL PUEBLO DEFINA SU FUTURO, Facade of the National Congress, Valparaíso, Chile, 14 November 2019
COPYRIGHTS: DELIGHT LAB. THE PROJECTION IS ON THE NATIONAL CONGRESS BUILDING IN THE CITY OF VALPARAÍSO. THAT SAME NIGHT, THE CONGRESS APPROVED THE “ACUERDO POR LA PAZ SOCIAL Y LA NUEVA CONSTITUCIÓN” [AGREEMENT FOR SOCIAL PEACE AND THE NEW CONSTITUTION], WHICH WAS SIGNED ON 15 NOVEMBER 2019
My second example is an edition of the wall newspaper created by Antonia Taulis. Joining decades of criticism of the media landscape linked to the ruling establishment, Antonia Taulis named her project Mercvria, after the establishment newspaper El Mercurio, using it as a counter-informational medium placed in the streets.21 Taulis’ compilations bring together different media as well as different times and eras. She combines quotes, illustrations, music, performances, and exclamations into what she terms a “wall newspaper.” Printed in A0 format, she offers the newspaper for download and distribution, and pastes them on walls. Inspired by Quebrantahuesos [vulture and/or an annoying person], experimental poetry interventions with newspaper clippings placed on the walls of Santiago, by Nicanor Parra, Enrique Lihn and Alejandro Jodorowsky from 1952, Taulis sees art as a form of communication, and she distributes it like advertising in the city (interview with Taulis, 22 February 2023).
Mercvria shares common ground with Delight Lab and other artistic interventions in that she reacted quickly to the 2019/20 revolt. Taulis has taken up a variety of aspects and reflects on the diversity of demands. The first issue she published is from October/November 2019 and is called Leaflet. The concept of el pueblo is particularly evident in the 12 Décimas, the classical ten-line stanza of poetry, by singer Nano Stern in this edition. Here, too, intermedial memory plays a pivotal role, as he quotes from the Inti Illimani’s song “Canción del Poder Popular.”22
Since this edition’s first publication, the newspaper has focused on themes like protest, resistance and unity, linking the contingency of the moment with a range of thinkers from across the continent. Of special interest here is the
Mercvria, N°1 Matria, 2020, offset print, 100,0 x 70,0 cm. Mercvria. The second edition of the Mercvria wall newspaper was produced on the occasion of International Women’s Day 2020. The Carabineros indicated that 150,000 people attended. The Coordinadora Feminista 8M, however, asserted that the number was significantly higher than that, reaching two million in Santiago.
It appeared just before the pandemic ended all protest activities, designed fully in red. In capital letters, the words “Matria” and “Machi” catch the eye first, the former being a response to ‘Patria,’ the fatherland, which thus is transformed into ‘motherland.’ The latter comes from Mapundungun, the language of the indigenous Mapuche, and can be translated as healer.
Prominently displayed in the issue is a quote from Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957), the Chilean writer, diplomat and Nobel Prize winner, which was revived as an important symbol during the revolt. It reads: “We, the women of the three social classes of this country, purge the guilt of never having looked each other in the face. Love lives on knowledge.” Taken from an article Mistral published in the newspaper El Mercurio in 1925, the quote brings to the fore the issue of class, a pervasive issue in Chile’s deeply unequal society (Hadzi-Vaskov and Ricci 2021, 9). The collective’s feminisation in the quote also presents a further critique of any homogenous notion of unity; it trisects el pueblo intersectionally, pointing towards axes of class as well as gender and raising the issue of discrimination.
Another quote on Matria further foregrounds the critique of discrimination by stating: “We23 do not want to die. But we are not afraid. Because we are part of the earth. And the earth is not afraid of anyone.” This quote is from Soraya Maicoño, a spokesperson of the indigenous Mapuche community. In line with feminist critique, she is concerned with class issues but also ethnicity: the indigenous communities, los pueblos originarios, have, for centuries, experienced discrimination, expropriation, violence, and death.24 Mercvria powerfully amplifies this perspective, magnifying nuanced layers of meaning embedded within unifying terms like el pueblo. Going beyond a simple call back to the period before the dictatorship, Matria thus unveils the inscription of implicit meanings into terms that refer to the collective, shedding light on marginalised voices within the societal fabric in a way that resonates with contemporary realities.
Another quote by Mistral, from her book El voto femenino (1928), is to be found on the left side of Matria: “I don’t believe in the women’s parliament, because I don’t believe in the men’s parliament either.” Nearly a hundred years
Of particular interest to this article’s exploration of the mobilisation of memories through words is the edition’s inclusion of Cecilia Vicuña’s artwork Palabrarmas. This title is a portmanteau, based on a play on words from palabra [word], armas [weapons], labrar [to carve], and más [more] and has come to signify the type of hybrid neologisms that first appeared as a book in Buenos Aires in 1984, with a cover drawn by Vicuña during her time in exile in 1974. Taulis chose several word combinations to include in Matria, such as COnRAZÓN, meaning both ‘with reason’ [con razón] and ‘heart’ [corazón], CAdaERror, ‘every mistake’ [cada error] and ‘to fall’ [caer], and ORGANicamenteIZAR, ‘organically’ [orgánicamente] and ‘organise’ [organizar].26
One sentence used both by Delight Lab and Mercvria points to their common desire for fundamental and systemic change: “Destroy the logic of the system in our hearts.” This sentence was written by José Angel Cuevas, a Chilean
Mercvria, N°1 Matria, 2020, offset print, 100,0 x 70,0 cm, José Miguel de la Barra, Santiago de Chile
PHOTOGRAPHY: ANTONIA TAULIS, COPYRIGHTS: MERCVRIA. THE WALL MAGAZINE HAS BEEN INTERVENED IN. IT SAYS “APRUEBO,” MEANING “I AGREE,” REFERRING TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL REFERENDUM ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED FOR 26 APRIL 2020 AND POSTPONED TO 25 OCTOBER DUE TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
7 Conclusion
The artistic interventions of recent decades in Chile demonstrate that they are not just a by-product of social movements, but that they play a significant role in the representation and realisation of a new social order. The muralist brigades, including the Brigadas Ramona Parra, graphic designers like Vicente and Antonio Larrea, and writers such as Antonio Skármeta and Pablo Neruda, contributed to a unique imaginary in support of the political project of the UP. During the dictatorship that followed, more performative actions, such as those carried out by CADA, expressed resistance to state violence. These diverse aesthetic and social visions serve as examples for contemporary artists. Even though the landscape of artistic interventions in urban streets has evolved significantly since the decades of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, amid this transformation, the enduring essence of their messages, hopes and ideas remains palpable. Delight Lab, Mercvria, and others have used various means to bring the words, slogans, signs, and symbols of these previous artists back to the streets in support of the protests that began in October 2019.
This chapter argued that specific keywords can function as a powerful means by which artists and activists associate contemporary protests with earlier social struggles. Most of Delight Lab’s and Mercvria’s interventions depend on the remediation of well-known expressions of protest, which allow their artistic interventions to include memories “across space and time” as well as a movement “from one medium to another” (Erll 2018, 312). By singling out and re-contextualising words and phrases from the streets, they amplify, at least temporarily, their impact and significance. In doing this, the arts offer an opportunity for dialogue, serving as a nexus where different perspectives converge and intermingle. Within the fractures of representation (Richard 2020, 105),
This chapter has demonstrated that the term el pueblo, featuring prominently in artistic interventions and graffiti, was closely linked to the hopeful period of the Unidad Popular and the figure of Allende. If it is indeed undeniable that “Salvador Allende’s government was a celebration, sparked by the transformations brought about by the Unidad Popular” (Moulián 2020, 11), the memory of this era has great potential to inspire new activism. Given that negating discourses regarding the 1973 military coup are still prevalent, el pueblo proves to be a crucial keyword, pointing back to the exceptional time in which ‘the people’ found political representation. Memories of the UP and Allende’s visions of society, brought into the public space by grassroots campaigns but consolidated through the arts, have a powerful mobilising effect, as they express a historically-grounded, and therefore thinkable, sense of unity and solidarity. Yet this powerful effect was created, not inherited. With the socio-political upheaval following the failure of the UP, the rupture caused by the coup d’état and the subsequent dictatorship, the referendum of 1988 and the re-democratisation, common memory narratives of the UP have been lacking (Garretón 2003, 215–16). This absence of a shared history has notoriously hindered the formation of a national community. El pueblo, then, did not primarily serve to establish a common memory, but to cultivate a community in the present, and to redraw the boundaries of the heterogeneous community of protesters and dissenters.
The specific cases examined in this article demonstrate various aspects of the ‘word work’ of the 2019 revolt. Delight Lab’s light projections excel in capturing, condensing, and emphasising crucial words and ideas during protests, presenting them on a massive scale. By rendering the words easily readable and accessible to all, they successfully created a foundation for novel forms of collectivity. Mercvria, on the other hand, offers a distinctive level of detail, with its composition of literature, protest slogans, music, and visual art. Through the reworking of well-known leftist words and phrases, its various issues illustrate how different aspects of unity and solidarity associated with el pueblo can be represented. These interventions demonstrate that cultural work is “a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to change dominant narratives” (Rigney 2021, 19).
Mercvria and Delight Lab responded to the denial of an open debate in 2019 and 2020, and showed that “the creative arts can be seen as catalysts in creating new memories” (Rigney 2021, 12). Their means for doing so were derived directly from the protests, and built on a diversity of symbols from the UP era. In doing so, both art initiatives foregrounded the harsh fact that, even after 30
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I would like to thank Alexander Ulrich Thygesen, who commented on an early draft of this chapter. My special thanks go to Gloria Elgueta Pinto, whose comments and advice in countless conversations were central to the development of my thoughts for this chapter.
Phrases in graffiti like “Allende vive,” “El sueño de Allende vive” or “Allende vive en el pueblo” were already present directly after the end of the dictatorship in 1990. This phenomenon was evident again during the commemorative acts for the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état on 10 and 11 September 2023. Unless indicated otherwise, all translations from Spanish are my own.
“¡Se siente, se siente, Allende está presente!”
“¡Allende, Allende, el pueblo te defiende!” or “¡Chicho, tranquilo, el pueblo está contigo!” as documented for instance in Patricio Guzmán’s documentaries La batalla de Chile (Guzmán 1979) and Salvador Allende (Guzmán 2004).
It is difficult to translate the name of the dog, even if negro means black and the real dog had black fur, it can also be a nickname. Matapacos is composed of matar [to kill] and paco, a colloquial term for the Carabineros de Chile, the military police. I am grateful to Leandro Cappetto for bringing this translation problem to my attention. The paste-up was made by Franco Flores (alias impagano) and is called “Allende vive.” It was realised twice on walls in Santiago in 2020.
“La historia es nuestra y la hacen los pueblos”; “Sigan ustedes sabiendo que, mucho más temprano que tarde, de nuevo, [se] abrirán las grandes alamedas por donde pase el hombre libre, para construir una sociedad mejor.” It is important to note that the version I am quoting here, which is the one most widely used, contains a reflexive verb ‘se abrirán the subsequent addition of the pronoun was intentional, but it does depersonalise the sentence’s message.
Already at the time of the student movement in 2011, the governing coalition Concertación was criticised for depoliticising el pueblo and for its rehabilitation of Allende only in terms of its musealisation (Winn 2020a, 36).
Translating the Spanish term el pueblo into English is a delicate task. The distinction between el pueblo, las personas and la gente also proves to be problematic. While the first could be translated as ‘people,’ the second as ‘persons’ and the third as ‘humans,’ this no longer works if the sentence is to be translated as “Gana la gente,” a phrase coined by Patricio Aylwin, the first president after the end of the dictatorship. As Rodrigo Karmy rightly pointed out, el pueblo no longer exists in the 1990s. Later, the term ‘citizenship’ would be added to refer to the civic mass that acts through state institutions (2023, 159–160). For a discussion on the problems of translating el pueblo to German, see Kastner (2022). For a discussion of the term ‘the people’ in the English and/or Francophone contexts, see Badiou; Bourdieu; Butler, et al. (2016).
The relevance of Allende’s social politics and the historical experiences of the UP in contemporary Chile has been studied extensively. See, for example, the two volumes La vía chilena al socialismo 50 años después. Tomo I. Historia and Tomo II. Historia, edited by Austin Henry, Salém Vasconcelos, and Canibilo Ramírez, published in 2020 by CLASCO in Buenos Aires. Thus, the aim of this article is not to present a fundamentally new analysis of the term el pueblo, which would be pretentious, but to analyse its role as a mobiliser of memories in the artistic interventions displayed on the city’s walls.
The feminist critique within the left, which criticised the paradigm of masculinity that shaped the concept of revolution, should be considered here (Traverso 2021, 5).
Available at: https://nosotrosloschilenos.cl/archivo/quien-es-chile/ (accessed 23 April 2024).
Their interventions, informed by the ideas of Conceptualism, Fluxus and Performance Art, differed markedly from the aesthetic principles dominant during the Unidad Popular. As a result, they were not easily recognised or understood as acts of critique, which allowed them to effectively evade censorship.
Junta Militar Bando N°15, Censura y Clausura de Medios de Prensa. The only newspapers that were allowed to show images were El Mercurio and La Tercera de La Hora.
For that reason, it is also preferable to use the term ‘post-dictatorship’ instead of ‘transition’.
“Gana la gente! – Aylwin Presidente” [The people win! – Aylwin President]
Notwithstanding its positive impression, it is worth noting that this social revolt came to a definitive end with the rejection of the new constitution in 2022. The new constitution was rejected in a plebiscite on 4 September 2022, whereupon a new constitution was written by a “group of experts”. This second new version was subject to a vote on 17 December 2023 and was also rejected. Thus, the 1980 Constitution remains in effect. Some scholars argue that the collapse of democracy in 1973 and the termination of the dictatorship in 1989/90 are regarded equally as failures (Marchant 2000, 213). In that sense, it is plausible to view 2022 as part of this continuum of setbacks and disappointments.
The phrase “Until dignity becomes a habit” was first proclaimed in Mexico by Estela Hernández in 2017, when the Mexican state asked the hñáhñú community for forgiveness. More recently, Francia Márquez, Colombia’s vice president, has used the phrase several times.
A common chant during the protests is: “Piñera, conchetumadre, asesino, igual que Pinochet.” [Piñera, motherfucker, murderer, just like Pinochet]. In addition, several paste-ups and stencils were placed around the capital, merging the two men’s faces or showing Piñera sitting on Pinochet’s lap.
Delight Lab projected onto the Torre Telefónica every day from 19 to 25 October 2019. The other sentences were: “Where is the reason?” (22 October), “Let their faces cover the horizon. Romario Veloz, Alex Núñez, Kevin Gómez, Manuel Rebolledo, José M. Uribe” (23 October) and “What do you understand by democracy?” (24 October).
“Qué el pueblo defina su future.”
Mercvria refers to the significant Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, which was founded in 1827 in Valparaíso, making it the oldest Spanish-language newspaper on the continent. Agustín Edwards Eastman (1927–2017), the influential publisher who inherited the family’s newspaper business, played a role in the social polarisation of the 1960s and supported the coup (Kornbluh 2023, 47–49, 83–93).
Inti Illimani: “Porque esta vez no se trata de cambiar un presidente, será el pueblo quien construya un Chile bien diferente. Todos vénganse a juntar, tenemos la puerta abierta, y la Unidad Popular es para todo el que quiera.” [Because this time it is not about changing a president, it will be el pueblo who will build a very different Chile. Everyone come together, we have the door open, and the Unidad Popular is for everyone who wants to join.] Nano Stern: “Porque esta vez no se trata de cambiar un presidente. Ha llegado la hora urgente de que el pueblo constituya: Será el pueblo quien construya un Chile bien diferente.” [Because this time it is not about changing a president. The urgent time has come for el pueblo to constitute: It will be el pueblo who will build a very different Chile.]
Spanish has a grammatical gender in which the first-person plural pronoun ‘we’ can be ‘nosotros’ or ‘nosotras.’ Here the feminine form ‘nosotras’ is used.
A first moment of institutional representation for the Mapuche community was the Constitutional Convention that came together in 2021 led first by president Elisa Loncón.
This perspective oversimplifies the involvement of the indigenous Mapuche, who also played a pivotal role in the tomas (occupations) during the 1960s and early 1970s as mentioned above (Winn 2020a, 23).
On the occasion of a solo exhibition by Vicuña in Santiago in May 2023, the two women collaborated directly. As a result, several drawings that Vicuña had made in London in 1974 found their way into the urban space. One of them is the painting PALABRARmas.
This resurgence of specific words was also strongly evident in the music that accompanied the revolt in 2019/20, where the three most frequently sung songs came from previous decades: “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido” [The people united will never be defeated], written by Sergio Ortega and the band Quilapayún in 1973 (this even turned into a famous protest song throughout the whole continent), Víctor Jara’s “El derecho de vivir en paz” [The right to live in peace] from 1971 and “El baile de los que sobran” [The dance of those who are left out] by Los Prisioneros from 1986, the latter of which originated in the resistance to the dictatorship.