Orden y patria es nuestro lema : construcción de alteridad en la gramática del legalismo y del enemigo interno en Chile

Abstract

The legalistic tradition of Chile has become a cliché in discourses on the identity of the country and the character of its people. Chileans are proud of their traditional respect for the law, their institutions and the authority. Chileans distinguish themselves from their neighbouring countries in terms of the construction of a homogeneous and stable institutional order. On the other hand, the legalist tradition is perceived in Chile as an excessive punitive control that acts as an exclusionary internal discipline. Traditionally, this discipline has been applied to certain social segments that are seen as potentially disruptive of the order. Those social segments are groups of subjects associated to marginality, insecurity, lawlessness and conflict, and who would conform in the same logic, another category of the other as an internal enemy. The outsider as the other is a category that rises in relation to the sp ace of the nation. These discursive traditions were shared by the elite in the 19th century and achieved a clear consolidation and national legitimacy during the 20th century, crystallizing in a citizenship linked to development and modernity. The internal enemy constitutes a biopolitical perspective, conceived from the keys of the social and political coexistence.