Reclaiming and protecting Chile’s public spaces

18 March 2020

One striking constant in the nationwide Chilean protests calling for an end to the neoliberal politics plaguing the country since the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship is the unity between Chileans and the indigenous Mapuche population. It was the Mapuche activists who started purging Chilean public spaces of colonial legacies, toppling down monuments and statues glorifying the colonisers and making a statement about the recognition of their communities’ memory, massacres and persecution.

A minority of Chileans deemed the acts of reclaiming public spaces as vandalism and a loss of heritage. For the Mapuche people, as well as Chileans, the tearing down of colonial and military relics is a statement reflecting the determination to take an active part in the memory process of Chile. It is time, in other words, for the narrative of the oppressed to come from oppressed voices.

Across Chile, there are several reminders of the Pinochet dictatorship. In military institutions, monuments and photos of Manuel Contreras, Head of the National Intelligence Directorate during the Pinochet dictatorship, remain in place. Human rights organisations petitioned the Chilean courts for their removal and the military appealed the court’s decision, stating their inclusion is only to preserve the military’s historical records.

Since the start of the protests in 2019, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera attempted to describe the protests as acts of vandalism, following the initial protests in Santiago over an increase in bus fares — the trigger for a nation wide call to rise up against Pinera and neoliberalism in Chile.

In the context of the Chilean protests, the word vandalism has been appropriated by the right wing. The term has been used to demean the unified call for an equal and inclusive Chilean society. In Chile, democracy operates on dictatorship narratives, reflecting decades of government ineptitude and unwillingness since the transition to break away from Pinochet’s legacy.

However, recent acts of vandalism, which have resulted in a loss for Chilean collective memory, have escaped right wing scrutiny. In February this year, the Violeta Parra Museum in Santiago was targeted twice in an arson attack and the premises vandalised on the outside. In Punta Arenas, a human rights memory site was also the target of an arson attack. A few days later, the monument commemorating the execution of Chilean political prisoners of Magallanes, in the municipal cemetery, was vandalised with yellow paint, indicating right wing provocation and involvement in the destruction of Chilean memory.

'Indeed, military violence and the attacks

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Reclaiming and protecting Chile’s public spaces

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