From hope to disappointment: memories of the struggle for democracy in the shantytown of Santiago (1983-1988)

Abstract

The paper aims to contrast the forms and contents in which the official history of the fight for democracy was written, by using the memoirs of two Santiago residents. Through the remembrance of a woman committed to the social organization and those of a young socialist militant, we seek to rescue the way in which their memories connect and/or clash with the collective memory of that period, analyzing the meaning that they assign to their fight for democracy, the hope they instill in that process, and of disaffection that pervades them when they install a limited mode of democracy. We show the latent tension between the democratic imaginaries that lie underneath the pobladores and the model that was ultimately established. Our goal is to attest the social rupture that the opposition suffered on its way to democracy, a rupture that also defined the way in which the Chilean democratic system was built.