Nation and rituals in the Chilean desert. Representations and national discourses in Iquique (1900 - 1930)

Abstract

This article aims at discussing the role that civic ceremonies and monuments played in the early 20th century, as dynamic mechanisms for the “chileanization” in the Tarapacá desert, especially in the port of Iquique. This work thinks from a social historical perspective, about the public celebrations as symbolic rites, where integration and/or belonging to the national community is materialized. These civic events were no lesspersuasive than other rather “violent” ways of promoting the sense of nation in the new territories added to the Chilean state.