Historical Context
For the “See my city” project I chose to focus on the center of Santiago, more specifically Barrio Lastarria and around Plaza Baquedano. This is where the 2019 social revolution took place and it’s where you can see most evidence of everything that happened.
The city’s historic quarter is the oldest part of Santiago and the place where Pedro de Valdivia founded the capital of Chile in 154, on the Santa Lucía Hill. In this area of the city are placed the main public administration and government buildings like “La Moneda” palace, the government house, the National Library, and also important historical and popular locations like the Central Market, the “Paseo Ahumada”, “Plaza de Armas”, “Cerro Santa Lucía”, and Baquedano Square.
Baquedano Square is a roundabout popularly known as the city’s point of division between rich and poor, so it’s considered a place of national gathering of all kinds of people, whenever there’s a celebration, protest, or important event. At its center, there’s the Monument of General Baquedano, the main Chilean leader during the Pacific Ocean War (1879-1884), where Chile defeated Peru and Bolivia. It is mostly known as “Plaza Italia” and after the social movement that started in October of last year, the name changed to “Plaza de la Dignidad” or Square of Dignity, in memory of what people were asking in the protests. The square was given a symbolism of opposition to the current president Sebastián Piñera and hundreds of protests took place in it and its surroundings, which resulted in damage and destruction of infrastructures and public and private property.
Near the square, we can find the Lastarria Barrio, which was remodeled in the 90s and became a place of bohemian and intellectual life. Currently, it’s filled with cafés, bars, cultural centers like the Gabriela Mistral Center and the Palace of Fine Arts. The neighborhood is filled with many artists and artisans selling their crafts on the streets and it’s also where the protests take place. After the social revolution, the place is now full of murals, as well as mosaics, pictures, bloody clothing hanging from the walls, and many phrases and writings.
Observation Findings
I went to the site with my best friend Cata. We got to the location at 2:00 pm on a Monday and stayed for a long period of time, we got out of the car on Baquedano square, then walked through Bustamante Park, the GAM, Lastarria Barrio, crossed the Mapocho river to grab some ice cream in Bellavista, and then went back to sit in one of the small parks around the main square.
The first thing I noticed was the number of cars and people walking. Even with coronavirus, that area of the city remains active and populated. It surprised me because I was expecting it to be almost empty. However, in Barrio Lastarria there’s always artists and artisans selling their crafts on the street and now it was completely empty so I was a bit disappointed in that because I love to walk through there and look at their art. That area was more empty than in the main square and we walked without crossing anyone for a while. Since the museums and most of the stores were closed it wasn’t a very popular area for people to be in. In spite of being almost empty, we encountered a woman singing around the area where there always artists and musicians hanging out.
I was expecting the walls to be empty and that the government would have painted over the protest writings, but in my surprise, we found that almost everything remained the same except for the Baquedano statue in the center of the square that was fully covered and the grass was replanted where it had run out because of all the people standing in it. Near the Gam, where most of the writings were when the movement began, the cops/government had painted over it once before, covering every writing, drawing, and painting with a thick coat of red paint, censoring all the evidence that all the protests left on the walls. Immediately after that the people drew, wrote, and painted over the walls again, so when we walked through there we could see the red paint below all the writings and cracked parts of the paint revealing the messages that were once there. It was amazing to see how people tied pieces of string, handkerchiefs, and other things to the walls of the GAM, making it more obvious that evidence of the protests remained hung up on the walls. Spoons and pots used for banging, bloody student uniforms, post-its, shoelaces, a string to tie pieces of the street on the walls.
The opposite thing happened with the monument in the center of Baquedano Square, I was expecting to see the writings and paintings but it was all covered up, just as if the movement had never happened, with the grass fixed and cops standing there to prevent anyone from getting close. The only reason the protests stopped this year was because of COVID and I’m sure the government expects that the people will just forget everything that they were protesting and all the violence and human rights violations that occurred, but I’m sure that won’t happen.
I missed the usual smell of the food of the restaurants and street vendors around that area that you would always get when you walked through the area before. Now it smelled empty. I’m eager to be able to go back once Corona is over and be a part of the protests that I missed last year. It was very emotional to go back to this place where so many horrible things happened as well as the magical union of the people against the injustices and repression of the Chilean government, and that unity is something that they will never be able to take away.
