ABSTRACT
During the social explosion, the barricade was a ubiquitous phenomenon. Present at nearly every demonstration, the barricade in many ways serves as a symbol of the protests. This chapter investigates what the barricade signifies within the context of the social explosion, arguing that from the perspective of the subaltern the barricade was a poetic expression that forced Chilean elites to recognize the lives of those who had been relegated to an undignified life as a result of the State’s dedication to neoliberalism, patriarchy, settler colonialism, and environmental extractivism. Through an analysis of street art in the Chilean coastal city of Valparaíso during the social explosion, I argue that, when read from the bottom up, igniting barricades was a subaltern mode of asserting agency and dignity through the act of rebelling. Against common theories of social movements based on State-based political process and resource mobilization, the barricade and the counter-revolutionary response to the barricade represent a cultural struggle over whose voice has agency in establishing the rules of the game for Chilean social relations.
