“UN PUEBLO SIN MEMORIA, ES UN PUEBLO SIN FUTURO:” MEMORIES OF MODERNISM AND VIOLENCE AT THE NATIONAL STADIUM OF CHILE

This paper examines the dictatorial transformations of one of Chile’s most iconic modernist buildings, the National Stadium in Santiago. First, it reveals how the military neoliberal project, armed with strategies of terror, amnesia, and deregulation, has shaped local memory culture. Second, it looks at the long history of the National Stadium’s 86 years of existence, to illuminate how gender stereotypes, material obsolescence, and subversive memories have transformed both the meaning and the uses of the modernist stadium. Still standing today, the National Stadium bares traces of institutionalized forgetfulness, as well as the oppositional tactics of memorialization organizations protesting menaces of demolition and privatization.