The Latin Art Of Political Symbolism

Today is election day here in Chile, it’s a tight race between two candidates who have been labeled as a Communist on one side and a Fascist on the other. I do not have enough understanding to comment on these accusations, my impression is only that they are somewhat exaggerated, but I can certainly see why each side makes the other nervous.

Fortunately, Chileans rarely seem to define their personal identities based on their politics–unlike many of my gringo countrymen–but even so, today will be a tense one. Already the reports are coming in of a public transportation calamity in Santiago, which smells suspiciously of voter suppression, but that’s not what I want to get into.

I have a rule on this blog, No Politics… at least no explicit politics. So I want to talk about something tangentially related yet still essential in its own way, something I find very interesting about the way people express their politics here: symbolism.

The liberals and conservatives, or the left and the right, (or whatever other reductive terms we must use to discuss this) have been battling each other with symbols as much as with actual action and policies. I can’t say how far back in history this goes, but in just the last few years I have witnessed quite a few instances of symbolism becoming the center of political discourse.

Baquedano:

The Baquedano monument, a statue on a tall pedestal in the heart of Santiago, commemorates a general who helped liberate Chile from Spain, but who also was instrumental in quashing a rebellion of indigenous people against the Chilean government... so right off the bat this guy’s legacy is divisive.

In much more recent times, the monument has been at the epicenter of socio-political conflict. Since the Social Crisis of 2019 it’s been the rallying point for hundreds of protests, including the largest in the nation’s history, which brought over one million people to the streets demanding a new constitution.

But then, when the pandemic shut down the whole city not long after, the monument was co-opted at one point by the (current) conservative president, when the streets were cleared and he posed in front of the monument as if to say, “I stand with the movement”, apparently oblivious to the fact that his administration was one of the main targets of that movement.

Well as the protest numbers dwindled during the pandemic, those who remained got more hardcore, and after the Baquedano statue, high up on its pedestal, was defaced and set on fire so many times, finally the city officials decided to take it down and put it in storage.

The sodding incident:

Just the other day, the supporters of the right wing presidential candidate covered the base of the Baqueno monument with sod (like patches of grass), but only on the right side of the base.

The left-wing protestors then responded to this by taking the grass patches off the monument and moving them across the street to an open-air rotunda—connected to the Baquedano metro station that had been so decimated by riots in 2019—and converting it into a vision of an urban garden oasis.

Here’s a source describing the whole incident (in Spanish).

This was all within the last few days, in the lead up to today’s election. I find it fascinating that this is the form that political discourse is taking—unlike the much more bald-faced, ham-fisted rhetoric we get from pundits, protestors, and politicians themselves in the U.S.

But there is also a longer history of this kind of symbolism.

Cacerolazos:

During the height of the Social Crisis, when the whole of Santiago was under curfew, the city was quiet at night except for the constant clinking of spoons on metal pots–taa taa ta-ta-taa–of people demonstrating their support for the uprising.

This was not just a random choice of rhythm or of instrument, the cacerolazos of 2019 were hearkening back to a long history of other protests. Apparently the tradition began as a protest to food shortages in the early 1970s, under the Salvador Allende administration, and was later revived as a form of protest to the Pinochet regime in the 1980s.

(And at least according to The House Of Spirits, as well as my wife, the practice was appropriated by the pro-Pinochet elite during his authoritarian crackdowns).

Despite the historical complexity, this is a rather mild example of political symbolism compared to one of my favorite cultural icons anywhere…

Negro Matapacos:

Matapacos was a dog who became famous during student protests back in 2011, when he was photographed fending off some riot cops, snarling and snapping at them fiercely. As the legend goes, he showed up at numerous protests during those years, a big black dog with his iconic red bandana, and fought alongside protestors against the police. The rumor I heard is that he was killed by a cop during one of these protests, though I haven’t been able to confirm this.

But death was not the end of Matapacos, in fact it turned him into a martyr. In 2019 his image became a popular symbol of standing against police brutality and state oppression. His face is on flags and t-shirts, spray-painted on walls, and featured in memes all over the internet. A massive metal statue was even installed in Parque Forestal for a time–until it was damaged and displaced (possibly by the police themselves).

I have a lot more I’d like to write about Matapacos—for instance, the fact that his name is literally Copkiller, and yet his image and his legend are overwhelmingly popular—but I will have to save it for another time.

In Summary:

The anthropologist in me wants to connect these instances of political symbolism to some bigger picture, to some upstream cause, though take this with a grain of salt as it is only speculation.

It appears to me that Chileans—and probably South Americans overall, diverse as they are—seem to be united by an artistic culture. They revere their poets and novelists, they respect and encourage street art on almost any blank surface, they have a love and affinity for almost every musical genre in existence, and the importance of dance cannot be overstated.

It could be due to this artistic life-perspective that they relate to politics through abstract symbolism, in a way that we gringos rarely do.

In the U.S., we take the names of real people, victims or heroes or both (or the opposite, depending on whom you ask) and use them as symbols. People rally behind names more so than concepts, and the ones that are more conceptual—like Occupy Wall Street for example—seem to wither quite easily in our weirdly literalist society.

One cooouuuld argue that we have conceptual symbolism in some of the alt-right campaign ads—like those depicting a certain unhinged congressional representative pointing a gun at my own congressional representative—but considering how literal some of that rhetoric became on January 6th, I don’t know if we can call it symbolism.

In any case, I am less worried about Chile spiraling into chaos after this election than I am my own country. It’s true that they had a dictator here not so long ago, but that also means that the memories of it are fresh, and therefore the worst mistakes are less likely to repeat themselves (I think). Whereas stateside we don’t have the same kind of reference point to keep us grounded (and most gringos disdain to look outward for any non-domestic reference points that might keep us grounded otherwise).

I don’t know if there are any lessons to take away from this, I don’t have any call to action here. It is just an observation, one that seems especially salient today.

I hope you are doing well, and not worrying too much about politics. I am crossing my fingers for a particular outcome today, but I don’t thiiiiink it will be a disaster if it goes the other way… but how about you? Do you agree with anything I’ve said here? Or am I talking nonsense? Let me know in the comments ;)

Peace,

Flib