Wild and rugged nature: The imaginaries of nature in the construction of the camino longitudinal austral, Chile 1976-1990

Abstract

The article studies the link between imaginaries of nature and the construction of the Southern Longitudinal Road (Patagonia-Aysen, Chile) during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1976-1990). Without detracting the importance of geopolitical issues in the material and symbolic production of the road, we seek to show the role that discursively understood nature plays in historical-spatial processes. In this sense, it is argued that the imaginaries of nature were significant in the construction work of the Southern Longitudinal Road because, on the one hand, the notion of a wild and rugged nature and the efforts made to dominate it through this infrastructure linked to the idea of development worked as a strategy that the government used to legitimize itself socially and appear as a modern solution to the country's problems, and, on the other hand, because these references to nature were aligned and reproduced a discourse of unity and national identity.