THE CONTEMPORARY CONSTRUCTION OF AN IMAGINARY OF IDENTITY. Public space in La Araucanía, Chile

Abstract

Urban and geographical imaginaries seem to be bearers of the local elite’s cultural ideologies in their search to organize territories. During the 19th century, the Chilean state began a territorial occupation process in Araucania under a civilizing ideal and an empty conception of space, using a group of actions linked by the railroad. These matters were at the base of the Nation-State’s consolidation (Pinto, 2003). The research questions the insistence to evoke railroad elements in the design of public spaces during different temporalities, and in return, to reflect on remembering the elements of Mapuche culture as a response to the imposition of hegemonic urban imaginaries. This work, from a quantitative approach, has the purpose of comparatively analyzing public spaces in Araucania’s coastal and mountain cities and examining their contextual imaginaries.