Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
ABSTRACT
After 150 years of coal mining and industrial production, the southern Chilean town
of Lota entered during the 70's a twofold process of continuous symbolic and
material decline. Under the guidance of trade-unions and the Comunist Party, which
provided the ideological basis that shaped the miners striving, the city's population
is renowned for its struggle against poverty and social injustice. The declining
process, still underway after 40 years, has been taken over by adversity ever since
the closure of the coal mines, namely: the military dictatorship that devastated the
country during twenty years; the demise of most socialist regimes that sustained
the miners quest for social justice; the enfeeblement of both the political parties
and trade unions, among other events, have undermined social determination,
forcing a redrafting of the relationship with both past and future. Through an
ethnographic approach, based on interviews with former miners, women and local
authorities, together with a thorough review of secondary sources, this article
examines the productive, social, political, cultural and architectural transformations
that speak for a town immersed in pain and longing for a redefined social utopia.