The ambivalent representation of the figure of roto in Chilean popular poetry

Abstract

This article examines the ambivalent representation of the figure of the "roto" in Chilean popular poetry printed between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In here it is questioned how this is built-not from the official, but from the popular culture- on one side there is a celebration of the popular figure of the "roto" as a representative of the nation (as the anonymous soldier who fights against foreign threats) and on the other, a rejection within his same social group (since it is associated with vagrancy, theft and instability). We note, in this way, that the representation of the "roto" in these poems is another example of the complex identity in these texts of the subjects of enunciation called themselves "popular".