Memory and Neoliberal Discourses in Chile

Abstract

Deemed "The Chilean Miracle," President Pinochet under a campaign of violence and terror effectively transitioned the socialist Chilean economy to one of South America's most prosperous capitalist economies. Most recently, Chilean entrepreneur, Sebastían Piñera, won the country's executive office on a campaign of neoliberal expansion in hopes of economic growth and the elimination of poverty. If this election is an indication of Chile's acceptance of aggressive neoliberal policies, then how has the memory of neoliberalism become detached from its violent beginning? Has Pinochet's legacy been (re)constructed in Chilean collective memory? This paper aims to explore this question in two ways. First, it examines ideological formations in Chilean political rhetoric that serve to conceal and transform political memory through discursive structures. Second, it investigates how political rhetoric transformed state violence through a re-narrativization of neoliberalism, which effectively detached neoliberalism from its violent initiation and (re)constructed it as a means of reconciliation and recovery. The findings of this paper suggest that Chilean memory has been (re)constructed for political and economic purposes, which conceal reality and deny alterity.