Marcas urbanas y sentidos sociales en disputa, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, 1966-1983

Abstract

San Carlos de Bariloche is the main tourist town in the Argentinean Patagonia. Its demographic growth has been nurtured by national and international migrations, the most important influence of the foreign population is from Latin American. This article studies the underestimate that covered the central migration of the city, the Chilean, during the second half of Twentieth Century. This exclusion growth between 1966 and 1983, because of State initiatives that increased local xenophobia, adding political persecutions, fragility in labor conditions, and changes in spatial organization, in the context of the dictatorial governments of this period. The authors analyze the urban marks in Bariloche, that were built taking into account the interests of the hegemonic sectors in the name of "Nation". At the same time, this construction was crossed by forms of resistance designed by different social sectors. Inside them, the activity of Chilean migrants involved the construct of a chapel in 1966, in a place known as “the Chilean neighborhood”, in devotion of the Patron of Chile, the Virgin of Carmen. The chapel and the devotion were erected in order to discuss the logics of pertinence, the ways of recognition and the social visibility.