Divergent disaster events? The politics of post-disaster memory on the urban margin

Abstract

Rather than one-time events, disasters are processual phenomena driven by multiple drivers of disaster risk and that leave a myriad of traces on affected areas. Remembering such traces can help local communities to deal with disaster impacts. Memorialisation is not neutral, however, as memory by definition selects certain symbols and excludes others, rendering this a contentious process. By focusing on the politics of disaster memory, I show how these processes reveal divergent interpretations of ‘ongoing’ disasters. Based on ethnographic methods, I analyse post-disaster memorialisation in a marginal area of the foothills of Santiago, Chile, where on 3 May 1993, a rain-induced landslide destroyed 300 houses and left almost 4000 victims including 26 people killed. Since then, a particular landscape of memory consisting of symbols, memorials and practices has emerged. Drawing on a notion of landscape as an ‘arena’, I describe how this memorialisation perpetuates the 1993 disaster and produces contested interpretations of it. Besides contrasting the views of state and non-state actors, as well as long-time residents and newcomers, I expand on a more explicit confrontation between two local groups. While both parties agree that the disaster is not a past ‘event’ but a processual phenomenon, they differ in the content of their interpretations: for some, memory is anchored in the past and their responsibility is to be united in commemoration; for others, remembrance practices can support calls for justice regarding ongoing disaster vulnerability. As such, disaster memory has different political implications: symbols and practices can prescribe ways of either maintaining the status quo or addressing the root causes of disasters. I show that post-disaster landscapes of memory are not only multiple and diverse, but also open and remade through practices and discourses that can directly contest disaster risk creation.