“Zig-Zag paper city”: Chilenizing the North border: ARICA 1910-1930 “Ciudad de papel zig-zag”: Chilenizando la frontera norte: ARICA 1910-1930

Abstract

The article analyzes the speech of the Zig-Zag magazine in relation to the city of Arica, as a collaborator in a propaganda policy of Chileanization, in the context in which Peru and Chile must prepare for the Treaty that will resolve the geopolitical and sovereignty conflict over the cities of Tacna and Arica. From this perspective, the research question is: How do the reproduction and dissemination of the Zig-Zag’s photographs collaborate, and what lies behind the news regarding the city of Arica between 1910 and 1930 in the construction of the Chileanizing discourse? From this city? In this line the news and photographic images of the Zig-Zag magazine referring to the city of Arica, referred to a systematic violence towards the Peruvian population of the area, focused on the invisibility of the original inhabitants and the negative and derogatory language towards the Peruvians. Granting an exorbitant relevance: to the actions of the Chilean State in the area, to the objectivity and rationality of its political authorities to resolve the conflict with Peru, and to repeatedly expose the Chilean army as the greatest military force prepared in Latin America. For this purpose, the conceptualization of Chileanization as a state policy and the participation of private agents of civil society is analyzed, particularly the subject of this study, the Zig-Zag magazine, within the media of the country’s cultural industry at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Mainly, how it articulates its textual discourse centered on derogatory and offensive social representations towards the Peruvian population of the area fused with a reinforced chileanizer visual discourse of patriotism and militarism.