Heterotopias of Power Miners, Mapuche, and Soldiers in the Production of the Utopian Chile by Néstor Bravo Goldsmith A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Approved April 2011 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Tamara Underiner, Chair Carla Melo David Foster ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY May 2011 ABSTRACT Drawing from Foucault's notion of heterotopias, my dissertation identifies and examines three distinct but related events that resignified (re-imagined) Chile during 2010, the year of its Bicentenary, namely: the Rescue of the 33 Miners trapped in the San José mine, the Chilean Military Parade performed in celebration of Chilean Independence, and the Mapuche Hunger Strike of 32 indigenous people accused of terrorism by the Chilean State. My central hypothesis states that these three events constitute heterotopias with strong performative components that, by enacting a utopian and a dystopian nation, denounce the flaws of Chilean society. I understand heterotopias as those recursive systems that invert, perfect or contest the society they mirror. In other words: heterotopias are discursive constructions and material manifestations of social relations that dispute, support, or distort cultural assumptions, structures, and practices currently operating in the representational spaces of a given society. In addition to following the six heterotopological principles formulated by Foucault, these case studies have performance as the central constituent that defines their specificity and brings the heterotopias into existence. Due to the performative nature of these heterotopias, I have come to call them performance heterotopias , that is, sets of behaviors that enact utopias in the historical world, the place in which we live, the site in which “the erosion of our lives, our time and our history occurs,” as Foucault puts it. Here, performance would act as the interface, the point of interaction, and suture between the conceived, the perceived and the representational spaces each heterotopia articulates. Thus, a performance i heterotopia would be a particular type of heterotopia which is enacted through performance. A relevant aspect that emerged from my research is that heterotopic places not only mirror, contest, and compensate their own host society, but also refer to, and intersect with other contemporaneous heterotopias enacted in that society. In my conclusion I suggest that such interactions also happen between heterotopias that emerge in different countries and cultures. If so, the mapping of utopias enacted in the macro socio geographies of Latin American countries could offer new perspectives to understand the sociopolitical processes that are underway in the region. ii DEDICATION To my wife Liliana and my adorable daughter Mariana. Para mi querida esposa Liliana y mi adorable hija Mariana. A mis padres Néstor Alberto Bravo y Nelly Goldsmith. Para mis suegros Mirna Ducommun y Alex Salazar. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank all the people who made this work possible, especially my advisor, Dr. Tamara Underiner, for the support, friendship, guidance, and critical responses I received from her throughout the program, and especially during my dissertation journey. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. David W. Foster for his inspiring lectures on Latin American theatre and literature, and for introducing me to the field of cultural studies. I would like to thank Dr. Carla Melo, for introducing me to the work of Henri Lefebvre, and for the rich theoretical discussions we held in our seminar. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Tiffany Noell for reviewing and editing my dissertation, and for her permanent support. Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Mariana Bravo Salazar, for her thoughtful insights that helped me to express my ideas more fully. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 1 Performance Heterotopias .................................................................. 4 Heterotopias of Power ...................................................................... 10 Finding Heterotopias……………………………………………. 13 Heterotopologies ............................................................................... 16 Types of Heterotopias……………………………………………18 Research Strategy……………………………………………….. 20 The Sites of Performance……………………………………….. 23 Chapter Outline…………………………………………………. 26 2 CAMP HOPE HETEROTOPIA: CHRONICLE OF A DISASTER FORETOLD. .................................................................................. 30 First Act: Chronicle of a Disaster Foretold ...................................... 38 The Production of Camp Hope ......................................................... 43 First Climactic Moment: “Estamos bien en el refugio los 33” ........ 50 Second Act: Camp Hope .................................................................. 56 3 THE MAPUCHE HUNGER STRIKE: A HETEROTOPIA OF DEVIANCE .................................................................................... 74 Mapuches and Pinochet’s Antiterrorist Law .................................... 78 The Automatic Naturalization of the Naturals ................................. 88 v CHAPTER Page Back to the Hunger Strike ................................................................ 94 Panopticism ..................................................................................... 113 4 THE CHILEAN MILITARY PARADE: ENACTING THE ILLUSORY CHILE ..................................................................... 118 5 CONCLUSION .................................................................................. 166 Performance Heterotopias .............................................................. 168 Intersections .................................................................................... 174 A Last Reflection ............................................................................ 175 REFERENCES ...................................................................................................... 179 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Press conference at Camp Hope ......................................................... 58 2. Felipe Huenchullan ………………………………………………... 75 3. Panopticon. Plan of the Santiago Penitentiary .................................. 115 4. President Michelle Bachelet .............................................................. 128 5. “Five Centuries of History”………………………………………. 150 6. “The Chilean Army” Contest. Closing Ceremony 2008………….. 157 7. Mapuche in the MP 2010…………………………………………. 160 8. President Prieto arriving to the Pampilla…………………………..163 9. Heterotopias: Comparative Table………………………………… 167 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face […] a point where all points converge […] where all places are […] and whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere. (“The Aleph,” Jorge Luis Borges) Introduction Drawing from Foucault’s notion of heterotopias–those real sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of society (Foucault 24)– my dissertation identifies and examines three distinct but related events that resignified (re-imagined) Chile during 2010, the year of its Bicentenary, namely: the Rescue of the 33 Miners trapped in the San José mine, the Chilean Military Parade (MP) performed in celebration of the Chilean Independence, and the Mapuche Hunger Strike of 32 indigenous people accused of terrorism by the Chilean State. My central hypothesis states that these three events constitute heterotopias with strong performative components that, by enacting a utopian and a dystopian nation, present a perfected, deceptive, or critical version of Chilean society in a specific historical moment. Thus, the Chilean Military Parade is not an accurate reflection of reality, but a constructed, convenient representation of “reality,” staged according to the ideological agenda of the government in place. 1 Subsequently, the MP produces and presents to its audience the Chile that could be as if it already were. The Hunger Strike in turn, articulates a heterotopia of deviance that demonstrates the extremes of the situation of oppression the Mapuche are actually experiencing in their communities, and makes it visible for a national and international audience. Accordingly, this enacted dystopia reflects the nation as it is, while fostering a nation as it should be, at least according to movements for indigenous autonomy in Chile. Finally, the San José heterotopia enacts a utopian Chile through Camp Hope, which was an ideal and transitory “city-state,” conceived, and produced by its own political authorities as a place where incompatible political, ideological, and socioeconomic systems and views are harmonized in a way that is not seen in the everyday Chile. My research is also an attempt to test and further the notion of heterotopias that Foucault schematically formulated in a lecture he gave in March 1967, and that later was published by the French journal Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuite in October, 1984 as “Of Other Spaces.” There, Foucault formulated the idea that in any given society it