Arturo Alessandri Palma y la teatralidad de lo politico durante su segundo gobierno: La estatua de Manuel Bulnes y el Barrio Civico (Santiago de Chile, 1937)

Abstract

This article analyzes the inauguration of the equestrian statue of Manuel Bulnes, organized by the second government of Arturo Alessandri Palma, in the core of the Civic Quarter. Through a discursive and sociopolitical analysis, we propose that the ceremony around the event had an evident intention of political legitimization: both of his government, and of the liberal order established by the 1925 Constitution. Also, the arguments to place the monument in the Civic Quarter relate to a major project that aimed to bring the nation to public space and identify the chilean population with that imaginary. With regard to the construction of the official narrative surrounding the ceremony, we argue that the historian Guillermo Feliú Cruz was primarily responsible.