From Penal Institution to Shopping Mecca: The Economics of Memory and the Case of Punta Carretas

Abstract

From Penal Institution to Shopping Mecca:The Economics of Memory and the Case of Punta Carretas Victoria Ruetalo (bio) As the 1980s drew an end to the repressive rule of the dictatorship in Uruguay (1973–1985), the doors to one of the state's powerful ideological apparatuses, Punta Carretas Penitentiary, closed. The paranoid, bureaucratic structure, as theorized by Michel Foucault and others, suddenly became a fast-paced, neon-signed, food-chained Baudrillardian postmodern mall, an emblem for the newly democratic nation caught in globalization's zeal. Today the new mall not only replaces the old prison space but recreates the original facade of the facility. Although at first glance they may bear no correlation to each other, the shopping mall and the prison do indeed share a common bond, one that may help to discern greater social trends. In the 1970s, as Mike Davis explains, Jeremy Bentham's prison model inspired developer Alexander Haager in the design of more than forty shopping centers in low-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Haager borrowed both blueprint and logic from the panopticon, theorized by his eighteenth-century colleague at the birth of capitalism, to maintain a sense of order and discipline within a different late capitalist context. With the installation of closed-circuit video, the electronic eye of the camera replaced the gaze of the guard surveillance in what Davis labels the "Panoptican Mall" (240–44). The main architect of the Punta Carretas project, Juan Carlos López, shares the same enthusiasm as he effortlessly makes this connection in an interview: "When I first entered the space of the ex-prison, I was impressed because it had three levels with rails facing a central corridor and I said to myself this is a mall, a mall of prisoners, and there sprouted the seed of a special idea that I couldn't put out of my mind." Estela Porada, another architect on the project, concurs: "At first we wanted to preserve more sections . . . but necessity led us to demolish certain parts, and, in function of [End Page 38] the shopping mall, what we did was keep its spirit" (quoted in Achugar; emphasis added).1 Are the architects suggesting that this mall of prisoners keeps the spirit of the penitentiary? These quotes from those directly involved in the renovation of the space not only underscore Davis's observation about the interconnection between prisons and malls, particularly in their normalization function, they also raise underlying questions about the type of memory inscribed in the reincarnation of the prison as a shopping mall. What is forgotten or disavowed in the present recycling of the Punta Carretas building as a shopping center? What does this shift from prison to mall imply about the historical process, and how it is remembered in Uruguay? What are the economic and ideological implications of this architectural conversion? In this article I would like to consider the repercussions such recycling has had for Uruguay as it grapples with the past, exploring some of the reasons behind such practices of memory (de)construction, explained by both economic and ideological impulses, an ideology that is not necessarily limited to the modern political categories of left and right.2 The dictatorship imposed a conscious political crusade to forget, marked by what Argentine critic Josefina Ludmer calls a mod-ernizing leap, a blind jump into the future that negates the national past (7). Such a drive is clearly echoed in the most recent look and feel of Montevideo, Uruguay's capital city, which for twelve years experienced the destructive pen of the authorities. The problem of architectural deterioration in this period was publicly exposed in the audiovisual show Una ciudad sin memoria (A City without Memory) produced by the Grupo de Estudios Urbanos (Urban Studies Group) in 1980.3 This representation, as Gustavo Remedi argues, provided an insight into architectural practices introduced by the military government motivated by economic reasons to meet the demands of the neoliberal city. It documented the demolition of historic buildings, the deterioration of patrimonial monuments, the precipitated edification of skyscrapers, the new construction of shopping centers in residential areas, and the sprawl of shantytowns, particularly into outskirt zones lacking basic public services...