International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 62 (2021) 102389

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International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijdrr

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

urban margin
Ricardo Fuentealba
Governance and Inclusive Development Research Programme Group, Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe
Achtergracht 166, 1018 WV, Room B4.01, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Rather than one-time events, disasters are processual phenomena driven by multiple drivers of disaster risk and
DRR that leave a myriad of traces on affected areas. Remembering such traces can help local communities to deal with
Disaster culture disaster impacts. Memorialisation is not neutral, however, as memory by definition selects certain symbols and
Disaster interpretations
excludes others, rendering this a contentious process. By focusing on the politics of disaster memory, I show how
Disaster memory
Landscape as arena
these processes reveal divergent interpretations of ‘ongoing’ disasters. Based on ethnographic methods, I analyse
Landscape of memory post-disaster memorialisation in a marginal area of the foothills of Santiago, Chile, where on 3 May 1993, a rain-
Urban disaster 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 pro­
duces 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 dis­
courses that can directly contest disaster risk creation.

1. Introduction overlap, for managing disasters. In these accounts, disasters represent a

“If we don’t assume that disaster is a discrete one-time event, then
how do we proceed with our policymaking, and our research? Take it
further and challenge the event itself—what was the ‘real’ disaster in
Hurricane Katrina: the wind, the water, the breach of the levees, the
failure of the pumps, the drownings, the failures of FEMA? When did
it begin and when did it end—and how many perspectives must we
collect to be sure?” [1]; p. 779).
In this quote, disaster historian Scott Knowles reflects on the diffi­
culties of defining disasters temporally. It contrasts with the classical
definition by Fritz ([2]; p. 655), for whom a disaster is “[an] event,
concentrated in time and space”. It also differs from the notion of the
disaster cycle [3,4], which presents a number of successive phases
(mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery), which sometimes
particular disruption – a nonroutine occurrence concentrated tempo­
rally and spatially. However, many have criticised this idea of disasters
as ‘events’, instead considering them to be normal “occurrences that
reflect the characteristics of the societies in which they occur” ([5]; p.
518) or “common expressions of underlying processes” that are “not
confined by boundaries of time and space” ([6]; p. 470). What they
criticise is the notion of both abnormality and objectively describing di­
sasters [7]. In the words of Greg Bankoff: “… disasters are not so much
objective events as subjective ones that can be privileged or erased ac­
cording to a sense of selective memory or collective amnesia” ([8]; p. 34,
emphasis added). Such selective memory is at the core of this paper:
What are disasters, if we unpack them from the social processes of re­
membrance? Echoing Knowles: When, from the perspective of the me­
morial practices of victims, is a disaster finished?
In this paper, I focus on the ‘eventness’ of disasters, analysing them

E-mail address: r.fuentealba@uva.nl.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102389
Received 27 March 2020; Received in revised form 15 March 2021; Accepted 28 May 2021
Available online 8 June 2021
2212-4209/© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
R. Fuentealba
through their associated politics of memory. This analysis is part of a
wider question on the relationship between disasters and culture [9–11]
and acknowledges the disputes between social groups in relation to
forgetting and remembering them [12,13]. It has been argued that
memorials can be catalysts of disaster education and enhance resilience
[14]. Drawing on explorations of the social roots of disasters [6,15], I
expand the literature on culture and disasters by addressing the pro­
cesses of remembrance in relation to disaster risk reduction (DRR) and
disaster risk creation (DRC) [16–18]. My objective is to analyse critically
the idea of ‘disasters as events’ based on the politics of disaster memory,
applying the ‘landscape as arena’ perspective [19]. This approach at­
tends to open-ended and potential confrontations within the production
of a landscape and considers calls for social justice. My focus therefore
lies on how disaster memory processes reflect divergent discourses and
practices that might question the (re)production of vulnerabilities.
Empirically, I focus on a post-disaster landscape of memory on the
margins of Santiago, Chile. This landscape emerges from the action of
different actors, including the state and the victims of a rain-induced
landslide that occurred on 3 May 1993. Following ethnographic
methods, I recount the emergence of symbols, memorials and practices
of commemoration, and analyse what these initiatives mean for different
groups and their contrasting interpretations of disaster risks. The
research question guiding the paper is: How do post-disaster landscapes
of memory reveal divergent interpretations of disaster ‘events’ and how
can these contest disaster risk creation?
The paper is organised into five further sections. I begin by reviewing
the literature on disaster culture and landscapes of memory before
describing the methodology. Section four contains my findings, organ­
ised into two dimensions of memory: emergence of the post-disaster
landscape and practices of commemoration. In section five, I discuss
the findings in relation to the literature. Section six concludes the paper.
2. Culture, memory and landscape
2.1. The politics of interpreting disasters
For decades, understanding disasters has centred on human experi­
ence and social causation, along long-standing academic interventions
[20–22]. Interpreting the causes of disasters can be categorised ac­
cording to a threefold typology: acts of God (i.e., supernatural forces
punishing humanity), acts of nature (i.e., external and non-human en­
tities) and acts of men and women [23]. In the latter view, an earthquake
is “a physical happening that does not have any social consequences
unless there are human beings who by their decisions and actions create
built environments that can be impacted” ([23]; p. 4). This typology
provides a general progression towards social causation but has been
criticised for its Eurocentric worldview that sees historical development
as linear and some societies as more advanced than others [24]. A
further problem is that certain forms of the naturalistic paradigm persist
in academic approaches to disasters [25,26]. This paradigm, developed
particularly within the physical sciences and engineering, remains
dominant in disaster studies [25,27].
In this frame, disasters are something abnormal, the result of some
‘un-ness’: they are unmanaged, unexpected, unprecedented, always
deriving “from natural processes or events that are highly uncertain”
([25]; p. 10 emphasis in original). The notion of an ‘event’ reinforces the
idea that disasters are bounded in time and space, implying that hazards
“are not viewed as integral parts of the spectrum of man-environment
relations or as directly dependent upon these” [25]. p.10). More
recently, Sliwinski [26] recognises that despite a formal assertion of the
importance of social inequalities in addressing and managing disasters, a
‘physicalist’ interpretation of the latter persists. This is critical, as these
interpretations are ingrained in DRR initiatives, many of which still view
disasters as “exogenous objective things instead of social processes”
([26]; p.274, emphasis in original). These naturalistic views ignore
wider social processes and fixate upon technological solutions. Evidence
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shows how politicians and the media continue to blame nature when
disasters occur [28–30]. This view depoliticises the latter by under­
standing nature as an essential entity that is not affected by power re­
lations [31–33] and has practical consequences in terms of relief,
recovery, and vulnerability reproduction [29,34,35].
Other approaches develop a more critical frame that positions di­
sasters within complex human-environmental relations, denaturalising
their explanation [21]. This view contests the notion of disasters as
natural by linking them to social development and highlighting different
levels of causation [6,25,36,37]. Acknowledgement of the root causes of
disaster risks is particularly important, as it enhances a critical under­
standing of more distant and structural factors. The Pressure and Release
(PAR) model developed by Wisner et al. [37] and the forensic frame­
work advanced by Oliver-Smith et al. [38] are examples. Here, it is
critical to focus on disasters as “systemic processes that unfold over
time” and whose “life history (…) begins prior to the appearance of a
specific event” ([6]; p. 471). Efforts must be centred on identifying
factors in long-term, complex processes, including histories of exploi­
tation and colonialism, in order to understand the impacts of a disaster.
This is assessed by Oliver-Smith in his study of Peru’s ‘Five-Hundred-­
Year earthquake’ [39]. Temporally, disasters are neither odd nor un­
likely catastrophes, but phenomena that unfold depending on a
particular society’s vulnerabilities; as Oliver-Smith and Hoffmann ([10];
p. 3) state, disasters are “processual phenomena rather than events that
are isolated and temporally demarcated in exact time frames”. In
delineating this tension, Oliver-Smith and Hoffmann [10] define a
disaster explicitly as ‘process/event’, accounting for the combination of
conditions of vulnerability with technological or natural hazards as
destructive agents that are embedded in both human and natural sys­
tems and which unfold over time.
According to anthropological work on disasters (e.g., Refs. [10,40,
41], culture reflects the ambivalence of ‘eventness’ and processual views
in particular ways. The extent to which vulnerable groups, disaster
victims and people at risk in general establish different interpretations of
their experience of disasters is relevant to their behaviours. Symbols and
practices describe the “perpetual presence” of disasters through “polit­
ical practices, social organization, landscapes, bodies, language, rituals,
material culture, memory, etc.” ([41]; p. 75). Disasters bring cultural
continuity and change, although it is hard to assess them in short time
spans [40]. In addition, assuming that communities are heterogeneous
and do not necessarily share a culture, their cultural framings are tra­
versed by power relations that generate potential clashes between
sub-cultures according to assets and resources [42,43]. Finally,
acknowledging the importance of culture for DRR, Lavell and Maskrey
([36]; p. 273) address the need to replace “an imaginary of extreme,
exogenous events with an imaginary of managing risks in day-to-day
development processes”. They acknowledge the need for cultural
changes in values and aspirations toward inclusive risk management for
vulnerable groups. This requires attention to disasters’ ‘perpetual pres­
ence’, including, as I describe next, the embodiment of cultural framings
by memory symbols in space.
2.2. Memory and space in disaster processes
Memory as a collective phenomenon relates to the work of Halbwachs
([44]; p. 38), for whom “individual thought places itself [in] social
frameworks for memory”. Through memory, social groups emerge as
individuals united by commonalities such as class, religion, gender and
location, invoking shared identities. Studies on memory expand how
national sentiments are constructed through public memorials and
monuments that help to recollect a common past [45,46]. Similarly,
disaster studies researchers have addressed the importance of memory
in understanding how groups share experiences of trauma [47,48].
Studies have shown the relevance of memory to recovery, disaster ed­
ucation, risk reduction and resilience [14,49–53]. Some show that me­
morials go beyond mere ‘mnemonic devices’, relating their presence to
R. Fuentealba
greater resilience [14], or show how social memory helps communities
to cope with ongoing socio-environmental crises through an ‘ethics of
endurance’ based on their experiences [51].
As a cultural product, disaster memorialisation (i.e., processes of
constructing memorials and/or performing commemorative rituals in
relation to past disasters) transcends myriad political issues. As an­
thropologist Susana Hoffman asserts, culture “can be utilized and
manipulated by different factions involved in a disaster and thus become
political” ([9]; p. 115). Nationalist, gender, religious or ethnic tensions
can emerge between dominant and dominated groups through such
memory processes [54–56]. Critically for my study, the role of disaster
victims – including their collective struggles and memory strategies – is
central to the outcomes of memorialisation. For example, Bos et al. [57]
analyse the role of communities of victims in setting and maintaining
disaster issues on the political agenda, which depends on their resources
and capacity to institutionalise particular claims. Zenobi [58]; in his
study of how families of victims and survivors of a fire present them­
selves publicly and mobilise to fight for justice, shows the extent to
which they associate with other organisations (e.g., human rights bodies
or political parties) and embrace different levels of politicisation or
depoliticisation.
Memorialisation also entails understanding the role of memorials
and commemoration. Simpson and de Alwis [56]; p. 12) compare the
processes of constructing memorials in Gujarat and Sri Lanka and their
associated disputes, concluding that memorials act as “nodal points of
contestation” for and against the state. Sandrine Revet [59] shows the
coexistence and clashes of two parallel commemorative processes
related to a series of mudslide disasters in Venezuela. In her account,
“official” events supported by institutions such as the Catholic Church
were contested by alternative performances and even served as a stage
for protesters to address wider national political tensions. Hence, com­
memorations themselves are political: as Katharyne Mitchell concludes
regarding a 9/11 commemorative event staged by George W. Bush, this
was “not just a memorial speech concerning a political, terrorist act, but
(…) an intensely political act in itself; an act building on the collective
memory of the recent past, but also producing that memory’s future
through a highly particular form of aestheticized, spectacularized poli­
tics” ([62], p. 443, emphasis added). Commemorations raise questions
relating to justice and political mobilisation, to identities and belonging,
and to collective definition of strategies and the terms of the struggle.
Many authors emphasise the spatial character of memory through
concepts such as sites – or lieux, in Nora’s formulation [60] – or land­
scapes with long-standing usage in historical and geographical schol­
arship [61–63]. A landscape is “an ordered assemblage of objects” acting
as “a signifying system through which a social system is communicated,
reproduced, experienced, and explored” ([64]; p. 17). In this sense, a
landscape is a text in which a set of meanings are inscribed. The ‘text’ is
not fixed, however, nor is it the material backdrop of a particular cul­
ture. Rather, “the spaces themselves constitute the meaning by
becoming both a physical location and a sightline of interpretation”
([46]; p. 316). Therefore, analysis of a landscape reveals both presences
and absences: it is simultaneously about remembering and forgetting – a
permanent struggle to include and exclude certain accounts [45].
Moreover, in order to attend to the power relations embedded in the
landscape, it is critical to understand it as a social product that en­
compasses particular agendas developed by certain actors (e.g., the state
in the case of war memorials, or disaster survivors in the construction of
a memorial to victims), resulting from a pragmatic set of actions [65].
My analysis of post-disaster landscapes of memory follows this
pragmatic and spatial character, while considering their contentious­
ness. The notion of ‘memoryscape’ used by Susann Ullberg [13,48,66] in
her analyses of the 2003 floods in Santa Fe, Argentina, centres on these
dynamics. For her, this concept highlights the ‘spatiotemporal’ nature of
memories, including their interactions and contestations. In her research
on social memory concerning the floods, there is an asymmetry in that
not all memories are equivalent and, moreover, oblivion is also relevant
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to the memoryscape. The role of flood victims (or inundados) according
to their multiple identities (e.g., as victims and vulnerable, but also as
politically active) is especially relevant to memory production [48]. She
suggests the concept of ‘embedded remembrance’ [12] to assess how
memory of the flooding is inscribed in the everyday practices of the most
vulnerable residents of hazardous areas. What is critical there is that
remembrance emerges not only through public commemoration of past
events, but also as part of the everyday livelihoods of inhabitants of this
part of suburban Santa Fe. For example, their engagement in informal
economies and practices of barter, reminiscent of the 2003 aid and re­
lief, renders the process of remembrance less visible but still present.
As with disaster vulnerability and exposure, post-disaster memoria­
lisation exists on top of historical processes of injustice and margin­
alisation of certain social groups. In an effort to explicitly account for
social justice issues in memory spaces, Alderman and Inwood [19]
propose the concept of ‘landscape as arena’. The idea of the ‘arena’
addresses the multiplicity of actors, processes and discourses at play,
which are constantly in contrast or opposition. This is a particular way of
describing “the contentious nature of remembering the past”, not by
addressing landscapes as finished products, but as “open-ended, condi­
tionally malleable systems” that are always “under constant recon­
struction and reinterpretation” ([19]; p. 193). From this perspective, a
landscape of memory is a place in which social groups with different
levels of power and resources “actively interpret and debate the meaning
of the past as part of larger struggles over recognition and the legacies of
discrimination and dispossession” ([19]; p. 193). They suggest that a
dualist notion between the dominant and dominated “blinds us to the
multiple agendas and identities that are often at work in memorialisa­
tion processes” ([19], p. 194). This includes overlooking the function of
memory spaces as ‘sites of counter-memory’ developed by ignored
groups that challenge dominant narratives, as well as other competing
discourses between and within communities.
In this paper, I use the notion of ‘landscape as arena’ to examine
memorialisation in the foothills of Santiago. By focusing on the politics
of interpreting disasters, this approach seeks to understand how memory
questions the processes that generate disaster vulnerability, or whether
this process assists in their reproduction and why. As such, the landscape
I describe involves both open confrontations concerning disaster risk
creation and other subtle claims regarding the past and the future. I
therefore use the notion of ‘landscape as arena’ to address contrasting
views within disaster memory processes and thus describe how symbols
in space and practices embody divergent interpretations of the same
historical disaster. As shown below, interpretations of the causation and
temporalities of disasters as events and/or processes take centre stage.
3. Methodology
The present research focuses on the memorialisation processes
associated with a rain-induced landslide that occurred in 1993 in the
foothills of the Andes, affecting a south-eastern sector of Santiago, Chile
(Fig. 1) [67]. Various floods had affected informal households during the
1980s, and prior to 1993, research had described the risks to the area
associated with climate and geophysical hazards [68]. The root causes of
vulnerabilities were unsustainable and exclusionary urban policies,
inadequate housing provision for low-income families, environmental
degradation, and lack of environmental knowledge [68–70]. Under the
civil-military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990), the
neoliberal urban policies implemented have generated marginalisation,
segregation and an urban development trend that is harmful to the poor
[71–73]. As such, natural processes were the triggers of a disaster that
had been incubating for far longer [68].
On 3 May 1993, a combination of high temperatures and heavy rain
elevated snowfall level, causing a landslide that dragged a considerable
amount of mud and debris down the Macul Ravine. Within a couple of
hours, roughly 10,000 square metres of debris had been deposited in the
populated area [70,74]. The highly exposed low-income settlements
R. Fuentealba
Fig. 1. The area of Santiago affected by the 1993 disaster. Source: author, based on IDE.cl.
along the sides of the Macul Ravine were the hardest hit. According to
the National Emergency Office (Oficina Nacional de Emergencias,
ONEMI), five poblaciones (neighbourhoods) were particularly affected:
El Progreso, Fernando Dominguez, El Esfuerzo, La Higuera and
Ampliación La Higuera [67], all located in the comuna of La Florida (one
of the 52 districts in the Santiago Metropolitan Region). The aluvión (or
debris and mudflow) destroyed 307 housing units and damaged 5,610,
and left 3800 victims including 26 people dead and eight missing [67].
While the mud and debris affected many eastern comunas, the localised
impacts make this a spatially concentrated disaster whose associated
practices remain local and intra-district.
Two historical characteristics of the area are contextually important.
First, the communities affected in 1993 share a history of social cohe­
sion. Some were the result of long-term struggles to access urban space,
involving squatting, self-construction and community organisation –
methods that were firmly embedded in left-wing political parties [75] –
during the 1960s and 1970s [68]. Many inhabitants participated in
grassroots resistance during the dictatorship [76] and the area even
became a focus for left-wing people returning from exile during the
1980s [77]. The second detail is the area’s considerable transformation
since 1993. In the aftermath of the disaster, victims were temporarily
relocated to an emergency encampment and later permanently to a new
housing project, the Santa Teresa Village [78]. A year later, the Metro­
politan Regulatory Plan for Santiago (PRMS), the main land use plan­
ning instrument that regulates all 52 of the region’s comunas, extended
the urban limit further east to encompass the foothills [79]. This trig­
gered intense capitalist urban growth as real estate companies densified
this formerly rural landscape with high-income residential projects and
gated communities, similar to other areas of eastern Santiago [80,81].
As a result, the semi-rural population of 5600 people has grown to 25,
000 since the late 1980s [68,82].
This context is critical for three reasons: (a) certain local symbols,
places, practices and interpretations are rooted in these communities’
shared past, including their grassroots experiences during the dictator­
ship; (b) densification of the foothills led to the settlement of a large
number of middle- and high-income residents who had not lived through
the disaster and were unaware of local hazards; and (c) the real estate-
led urban development process triggered major local mobilisation that
criticised this outcome and pushed for more democratic urban planning
[83,84]. The memory landscape described below references these
features.
In order to develop contextualised knowledge from the perspective
of the disaster victims and inhabitants of the foothills, my research is
based primarily on ethnographic methods. During eight months of
fieldwork in 2018–19, I conducted 48 in-depth interviews with current
residents of the foothills and informants such as politicians and people
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who experienced the hazard first-hand. In many cases, the interviews
sought to construct inhabitants’ life stories, with emphasis on their
attachment to the area, their experience of the disaster and of cultural
symbols, and their engagement with commemorative events. I followed
a snowballing approach for the selection and invitation of participants.
As shown below, emergent conflicts exist between communities, and
since I wish to avoid intensifying this friction, participant’s names – and
in some cases their neighbourhoods of origin – are not revealed. I also
conducted participant observation, attending community meetings and
public events. Finally, I assembled a number of secondary documents to
gain more information about the disaster and associated memory pro­
cesses. Newspaper and web articles, policy documentation and historical
archives were useful for understanding wider urban development and
the post-disaster memory process. Based on an inductive analysis of the
data and drawing on the notion of landscape as arena, in the next section
I begin by accounting for the production of a landscape of memory and
the contestations that emerge in the process, before describing
commemorative events and divergent discourses from different social
groups.
4. Findings
4.1. Perpetuating 3 May in space: emerging landscapes and identities
The inhabitants of the foothills remember vividly the odd weather on
the morning of 3 May 1993, when high temperatures accompanied
heavy rainfall. Informants also recall the time of the landslide or aluvión,
as the majority of residents were out at work on that Monday morning.
As the flow descended, the houses affected were occupied mainly by
elderly people and children. This situation is highlighted by informants
and scientific research alike in reference to the potential harm had the
hazard occurred during the weekend or, worse, at night [74]. Returning
from work, many inhabitants remember the ruined houses and neigh­
bourhoods surrounding the old Catholic church of Santa Teresa, which
remained standing and has become an icon of the disaster (see Fig. 2).
From the start, inhabitants assigned a hybrid responsibility for the
disaster. As an 87-year-old informant states: “This was part human, part
nature”. For him, the disaster relates to other historical environmental
processes: “every 30 years, the [Macul] Ravine ‘takes’ water” from the
mountains, “activating itself”. This processual understanding of the
disaster is well established among foothill inhabitants, who refer
constantly to the settlement of families in the area and account for the
environmental and human histories of the foothills [69].
Following that day, the area has undergone multiple trans­
formations. The state’s approach to risk management focused on the
physical dimension of the hazard, leading to initiatives involving (1) a
R. Fuentealba
Fig. 2. The church of Santa Teresa in the Fernando Dominguez neighbourhood, surrounded by debris after the flow, 3 May 1993. Source: URBATORIVM [85].
number of land use exclusion zones through the local master plan (the
Plan Regulador Comunal, PRC), and (2) mitigation infrastructure, namely
seven ponds that should retain future flows [79,86]. While these phys­
icalist interventions have so far protected the foothills, they make part of
a dominant mode of governance rendering risks a technical issue that
neglects the vulnerabilities that arise from ongoing real estate devel­
opment [87]. In contrast, long-time inhabitants of the foothills share a
common discourse relating to their historical rural upbringing, yearning
for a past in which they were closer to nature and to their neighbours – a
way of life that was dramatically disrupted by the disaster. In that sense,
in addition to physicalist interventions, a particular post-disaster land­
scape of memory emerged in which many symbols – names, objects,
memorials and practices – perpetuate the 1993 disaster. The landscape
helps residents to maintain certain traditions based on their
long-standing attachment to the area. However, beyond the aluvión it­
self, the real estate-led transformation of the foothills also works as a
source of detachment from their past. The process has not only shifted
their relationship with the environment and with disaster risks, but has
changed their social environment and transformed their traditional
bonds. In this sense, alongside a common identity as long-time, pre-­
disaster inhabitants of the foothills, there is resentment of new residents
for the loss of certain traditions.
This landscape of memory is diverse but concentrated in the area
impacted by the aluvión. Fig. 3 highlights in dark blue the current course
of the Macul Ravine and in light blue the area affected by debris in 1993.
The neighbourhoods hit are shown in yellow, including Fernando
Dominguez and El Progreso to the south of the Macul Ravine, which no
longer exist. The space surrounding the Macul Ravine is currently
excluded from development by the PRC, creating a set of localised in­
justices for inhabitants in the northern part [88]. Also shown are places
relevant to the memorialisation process, such as Santa Teresa Village
(the housing project where disaster victims were relocated) and the
CIQMA community centre, where a commemoration event is held
annually (see next sub-section).
The relief process influenced how victims and inhabitants now
remember the aluvión. The state made efforts to clean up the debris and
rehabilitate the area [67]; however, some of the scattered rocks were
overlooked and local residents now view them as testaments to the
disaster. Such items can be found around the foothills, many ‘deco­
rating’ public areas (Fig. 4 (a)). While long-time inhabitants recognise
the presence of the rocks as a consequence of the 1993 disaster (and a
failure of subsequent relief efforts), new residents do not make this
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connection. The rocks do not have plaques explaining their origin, so
they remain unknown and ‘silent’ to newcomers. Although there are no
open contestations concerning these artefacts, they reveal contrasting
interpretations of the materiality of the landscape.
The state also intended more explicit forms of remembrance during
the recovery process. After almost two years in an emergency camp, the
majority of victims were relocated to a new neighbourhood developed
by the housing authorities. This project, located roughly 200 m from
their original site, was named ‘3 de Mayo’ (3 May) by the Housing and
Planning Service (SERVIU) in reference to the date of the aluvión [89].
Built in a number of stages, it consisted of more than a thousand housing
units to accommodate around seven hundred families affected by the
disaster [78]. The name was questioned by residents from the outset and
informants claim never to have liked it, referring to the neighbourhood
as ‘Santa Teresa Village’ instead. As a current resident remembers:
“We’re just recovering from a huge problem that started on 3 May, we all
know and commemorate 3 May, and then they go and name the
población ‘3 de Mayo’! So the residents decided, without any official
change, to rename it ‘Santa Teresa’. We do not live in ‘3 de mayo’ – we
live in Santa Teresa Village. (…) We always wanted to change the name
officially but nobody calls it ‘3 de mayo’ anyway. It’s very strange for
someone to call it that – only electricity and water bills use it, no one else
(…). We changed the name immediately (…); nobody liked it … it was
too obvious”.
The inappropriate choice of name, resulting from the lack of
participation permitted by the neoliberal housing policy instruments
applied, became a contested matter for disaster victims and was exac­
erbated by a sense of forced resettlement. Many people resent the re­
covery process to this day. While they apparently want to leave the
disaster behind, their built environment is a daily reminder of the
landslide as a pivotal moment in their long-standing inhabitation of the
foothills. After losing their homes in 1993, they did not need help from
the state to remember the disaster by pointing to them when it happened.
This example shows how state efforts intended to memorialise a disaster
can be resisted by those who suffered its consequences.
These state initiatives contrast with other efforts by local organisa­
tions, which have constructed memorials to explicitly honour and
remember the victims. Just like the overlooked rocks, these memorials
are located in public parks and accessible spaces, allowing people to
mourn. Fig. 4 (b) shows a memorial constructed by the Neighbourhood
Associations (Union Comunal) of La Florida – a gift from an organisation
R. Fuentealba
Fig. 3. The current landscape of the research area in the foothills of La Florida. Source: author, based on IDE.cl and Corvalán et al. [70].
from outside the impacted area that represents all of the neighbourhood
associations from the district of La Florida. The memorial is located in
Solidarity Park, which now occupies the location of the destroyed El
Progreso población. Built four years after the disaster, it reads “In
memory of our brothers who fell during the aluvión of 3-5-93 due to the
adversity of Mother Nature1”. This explicit condemnation of nature il­
lustrates a naturalistic interpretation of the disaster that is less
commonly held by disaster victims and long-time foothill inhabitants
who, as mentioned, attribute responsibility more evenly to environ­
mental and human factors [69].
Fig. 4 (c) shows another memorial, in this case constructed directly
by the committees of the neighbourhoods affected by the disaster. The
inscription reads “We will always remember you” and is accompanied
by the word aluvión, the date of the disaster, and a list of the 23 local
people who died. This is regarded as the ‘official’ memorial and is
located within the CIQMA (Centro Intercultural Quebrada de Macul,
“Macul Ravine Intercultural Centre”) compound, an important place for
memory practices in this area of Santiago (Fig. 4 d). The CIQMA is
housed inside the Fernando Dominguez neighbourhood’s Catholic
church which, as mentioned previously, was left standing by the
mudflow and immediately became a place of great significance for local
inhabitants.
After 1993, the area surrounding the church was abandoned and
used as a refuse dump, but in the year 2000, residents of the El Esfuerzo
and Las Perdices neighbourhoods sought to turn the space into a com­
munity centre. Squatting it at first, they later regularised the tenancy
with the state and founded the CIQMA. Given its trajectory, the Centre is
deeply ingrained in the history of the La Florida foothills and the 1993
disaster. Although it is also used for recreational, cultural and educa­
tional activities, it hosts myriad symbols from the disaster. Besides the
‘official’ memorial, paintings on the building’s façade remember the
disaster, and 23 trees were planted by the community in memory of the
1
“En memoria a nuestros hermanos caídos en el aluvión 3 – 5 – 93 por la
adversidad de la madre naturaleza”. The word “hermanos” might include both
brothers and sisters (hermanos and hermanas in Spanish), but I prefer the literal
translation, which denotes the memorial’s genderised use of language.
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International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 62 (2021) 102389
people who died that day, although the latter initiative has been criti­
cised as a stunt by the local right-wing mayor [90]. Ultimately, the
CIQMA is the focus of the memorialisation of the 1993 disaster, and
remembrance practices and discourses emerge on each anniversary, as
covered in the next section.
4.2. Performing memory: practices and discourses for remembering the
disaster
Every 3 May, the CIQMA invites people from the foothills to come
together in commemoration of the aluvión. Given the area’s religious
roots, people gather to celebrate a Catholic mass involving various
speakers. The ritual is organised by the CIQMA’s managers, who are
members of families affected by the disaster, and assisted by other
neighbours and municipal officials. Many residents of this part of La
Florida feel obligated to attend the mass, and each year the venue is
packed (Fig. 5 (a)). The service has gradually become an ‘official’ and
‘institutionalised’ ritual of remembrance. Members of NGOs, public
sector workers and politicians accompany residents from all of the
neighbourhoods in the foothills. With a few exceptions, particularly
figures who worked alongside residents throughout the emergency, re­
lief and recovery phases, there is generalised criticism of attendance by
politicians. As one organiser recalls: “When there’re elections, a lot of
people turn up [to the mass] who want to address the public … and we’ve
never allowed them [to speak] (…), out of respect to the bereaved. (…) This is
not something political. We feel it, we live it …”. The latter is particularly
important, as the mass is presented as an event organised ‘by’ and ‘for’
the people, involving an emotional response to the tragedy and a
number of rituals (e.g., Fig. 5 (b)).
Some research participants question the unifying character of this
commemoration. One informant recalls that, traditionally, a long pro­
cession led from Santa Teresa to the CIQMA, and that people used to
bring candles and sing and pray their way to mass: “It was very beautiful.
It felt special; it was emotive”. However, with the passing of time “we are
losing all of that and [these feelings] are gradually being lost”. For her, this is
because the “official mass” has become a “mechanical” celebration where
politicians go to “seize the opportunity” and “appear in the photo”. In
response, parallel gatherings are organised with the aim of recovering a
R. Fuentealba
Fig. 4. (a) Rocks scattered around the foothills, remnants of the aluvión; (b) Memorial in Solidarity Park, built by the Union Comunal of La Florida; (c) Memorial to the
victims of the disaster; (d) The front façade of the CIQMA. Sources: (a, c, d) photos by author; (b) URBATORIVM [85].
more traditional sense of community and where local people can share
their emotions and openly mourn the aluvión:
“We light a fire in the park … (…) we meet around a rock, we light
candles and torches and ask [the park’s managers] that they don’t
turn on the lights. (…) We pray; we have the priest there and a guitar
as well. And there the people cry … there’s feeling”.
These parallel practices continue today but are less popular than
before and remain secondary to the ‘official’ mass. However, during the
2016 service, a group of people staged a protest outside the venue
against the unsustainability of development in the foothills, triggering a
division of opinion. The protestors were particularly concerned with
defending El Panul, a forested area of La Florida that a network of citi­
zens and organisations seeks to protect from real estate development in
order to turn it into a public park [83]. They strongly criticised La
Florida’s right-wing mayor for his ambivalence regarding conservation
of the forest, although the organisers of the mass took a critical stance
against the protest, which, according to them, blurred the unity of the
commemoration.
The organisers subsequently became stricter in keeping the cere­
mony peaceful. Despite attendance by important decision-makers, their
role is now to appear united as a disaster community, and they have
adopted a conservative position, more closely controlling what is said
and done during the event. For them, “it is a moment of prayer, reflection
and unity in pain”, and while they agree that there are problems in the
area, they “believe that any [public] manifestation will only blur the so­
lemnity of the act and will not bring solutions”. As such, before the
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International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 62 (2021) 102389
commemoration ceremony that I attended in 2018, the organisers asked
community members to refrain from any “political, social or personal
manifestations” during the service. For them, the ceremony should be a
cultural event in which they collectively contemplate their tragic past.
They should be united as a community, bound by this event that
occurred almost three decades ago.
The schism led to further disagreements between groups regarding
disaster memory. More conservative stances regularly entail a pessi­
mistic view of overcoming common tragedy, especially considering the
newcomers and wider changes in the foothills. One research participant
states that remembering helps them to “never forget that this disaster took
some of our neighbours and some of our houses … and that’s something you
never really recover from”. This somewhat defeatist discourse arises from
decades of exclusionary policies that trap them in a situation of social
disadvantage by comparison with new residents of the foothills. While
long-time inhabitants do not explicitly exclude newcomers, they high­
light a difference in terms of how they experienced the disaster and are
joined by that, unlike new residents. This type of discourse is also shared
by the managers of the CIQMA. For them:
“This is not something that happened one 3 May and a year later it was
over. People become impoverished and lose hope; families dissolve and
marriages separate. There’re people dying from sadness one, two, three
years later. So that’s why we remember [the disaster] every year. And
when the next 3 May comes and the church is full, you’ll see that we’re
united by that tragedy”.
In these interpretations, there is a temporal understanding of the
R. Fuentealba
Fig. 5. (a) The commemorative mass held at the CIQMA on 3 May 2018; (b) Candles and flowers beneath the ‘official’ memorial during the commemoration on 3
May 2018 in remembrance of the 23 dead. Source: photos by author.
disaster that goes beyond 3 May 1993. There is a sense of unity that
arises from a common negative experience that endures to this day. As
organisers of the mass, however, their current practices of controlling
speeches and keeping the event peaceful ensure that the dominant
discourse of commemoration is anchored in the past. Here, a particular
power tension arises: in their effort to ‘not politicise’ their practices of
memory, they depoliticise the foremost developmental trend that keeps
them at risk. By using the platform as a means of looking solely back to 3
May 1993, they disregard disasters that are currently incubating.
In contrast, another group of long-time foothill inhabitants have
pushed to politicise the commemoration, making explicit claims
regarding their situation. Ahead of the 2018 event, they approached the
organisers, requesting permission to read a speech during the service,
claiming that “this is the time to catch the attention of the authorities”
present. In the speech, they would criticise the state for its role in the
current condition of the foothills, emphasising, for example, a number of
ongoing problems and shortcomings in terms of road infrastructure,
environmental degradation and conservation, issues relating to water
and flood management, and disaster risk management in general. In the
words of a group informant:
“We need to stand up. After 25 years, this territory remains abandoned.
(…) Imagine if there were a new aluvión – how are they going to evacuate
all these people? In 1993 there were four hundred houses and a thousand
people; now there’re four thousand houses and fifteen thousand people.
Where? How? They’ll all be trapped (…) So the problem of the disaster
continues, you know?”
In their view, the annual commemoration should serve as a platform
for warnings about the future of the foothills and to educate residents in
the risks they face; however, “there’s nothing like that [because] the mass is
not organised by all of us”. These differences were made clear in the days
prior to the 2018 event, and the ceremony itself then became an arena
for contrasting understandings of disaster risk. Although for each group
the 1993 aluvión is ‘ongoing’, this does not mean the same thing for both,
and the latter group seeks to use the commemoration to criticise the
perpetuation of risks and vulnerability by wider governance structures.
Regardless of these criticisms, the commemorative mass of 2018
followed the organisers’ plan. The speeches highlighted a consensus
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International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 62 (2021) 102389
arising from a common tragedy, with frequent references to 3 May 1993
and the shared misfortune that unites them. A handful of people spoke,
including politicians and representatives of the organisation. The
speakers yearned for a lost past, called for remembrance of the dead and
care for their family members, and made explicit demands for respect for
the mass as a solemn act. A few appealed to the strength of the com­
munity and their efforts in standing up against adversity, particularly in
the context of the severe weather on the day of the tragedy. The current
urbanisation trend, the lack of disaster preparedness measures, or any
other contentious or divisive issues are absent from the event.
A year later, the more critical group of residents prepared and
circulated a pamphlet during the 2019 mass that reads:
“Today we remember our 23 neighbours whose lives were so abruptly cut
short by the aluvión of 3 May 1993. We remember them with love and
respect. But we must also remember other things. A people without
memory is a people destined to suffer the same calamities again and
again. We want to remember this and to remind those who make the
decisions of their devastating past, present and future effects on our lives.”
The pamphlet goes on to describe a number of urban and environ­
mental problems that emerged after the disaster and ends with a call for
change to the PRC and for the group’s participation in the process. The
document sought to launch a more critical discourse and to politicise
post-disaster development in the context of over two decades of
perceived exclusion. Moreover, it explicitly assigned blame to real estate
firms and to the local government and its planning instruments, iden­
tifying present conditions as a result of specific political decisions. As
such, its purpose was to generate a discourse of justice involving allo­
cation of responsibilities, participation in urban governance processes,
and reparations for what has been endured.
Ultimately, while the two groups view the events of 1993 as
extended over time and both refer to an ‘ongoing disaster’, they differ in
their approach to the political and practical elements of their shared
temporal discourse. Whereas the organisers of the commemoration
service struggle to maintain unity within the community based on the
tragedy they are still living, the other group mobilises a similar proc­
essual understanding of the disaster, but one that is more critical. For
them, the ‘ongoing’ disaster is a call to transform their current situation
R. Fuentealba
and resist the creation of further disaster risks. Although the commem­
oration takes place every year, the demands and voice of the foothills
have yet to be truly heard.
5. Discussion
The landslide that occurred on 3 May 1993 profoundly changed the
foothills of La Florida. The findings of this paper describe this from the
perspective of memory processes, focusing in particular on symbols and
practices of remembrance. While some of the literature on post-disaster
memory asserts that the presence of such symbols and practices is a
critical dimension of community resilience [14], I have shown that this
is not always the case. Symbols and commemoration events can lead to
contestation in which different ideas are at play. As assessed by Ullberg
[48]; remembering is a heterogeneous and unequal process. In her
analysis of a ‘memoryscape’ in Argentina, she shows that while some
practices might enhance resilience, others contribute to social vulnera­
bility [66]. This is consistent with my findings: In the foothills of San­
tiago, despite similar interpretations denoting an ‘ongoing’ disaster,
divergent meanings entail either a continuation of the status quo or
critical reflection on the root causes of risks. Discourses and practices of
memory are thus ingrained in various urban political claims regarding
the trajectories and futures of the foothills. These findings have rele­
vance for the literature on landscape, memory and DRR/DRC.
The landscape of memory in the foothills is spatially concentrated in
this area of south-eastern Santiago. This contrasts, for example, with
Revet’s [59] account of La Tragedia in Venezuela, when mudslides
destroyed multiple settlements in the north of the country, influencing
the emergence of symbols and rituals in a number of places. On the
margins of La Florida, meaning is associated with certain rocks and built
memorials, but also with absences. Examples include memories of set­
tlement in the foothills and shared struggles to access housing, of sharing
a rural livelihood that contrasts with the dense urban project of Santa
Teresa, and of the day of the aluvión and the ensuing recovery. All of
these are carried by inhabitants throughout their daily lives and alter­
native commemorative practices. The ability of long-time residents to
‘decipher’ the origins of scattered rocks illustrates how memory is
embedded in this historical trajectory of inhabitation. It is in this sense
that the alternative commemoration is perceived as ‘theirs’, contrasting
with the ‘official’ one at the CIQMA. This heterogeneity of rituals is also
assessed by Revet [59] in her description of an institutionalised
commemoration led by a Catholic priest and one led by communities
whose collective narrative is based on building an ‘us’. Thus,
post-disaster landscapes are not only multiple and diverse, but also open
and remade through these anniversary practices.
The landscape of memory in this marginal area of Santiago also in­
cludes narratives that are pressured by power, an issue upon which I
have expanded regarding the unintentionally political annual
commemoration service. The event brings together a diverse group of
residents and representatives of public and private organisations in re­
membrance of a tragedy that scarred the area. However, its failure to
address enduring hazard conditions means that this conservative cere­
mony does little more than perpetuate the status quo, a problem that lies
at the centre of emerging disputes between local groups. As addressed by
Zenobi [58]; depoliticisation is a strategy of some memory groups
depending on their interests and networks. As such, attendance by the
local right-wing mayor might be a motivator of such positions, as the
CIQMA organisers work closely with the local government. Hence, the
contested organisation of the ceremony – as well as the wider landscape
of memory – also reflects different attitudes towards the ideologies that
currently govern the foothills (from the right-wing Major of La Florida to
the wider capitalist urban development and technical management of
risks).
Herein lies the importance of the idea of landscape as arena. It is a
frame that explicitly aims to examine the contested claims emerging at
the level of ‘dominated’ groups. Disputes over the official
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International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 62 (2021) 102389
commemoration have increasingly made the event a space of friction
between divergent discourses. In particular, growing efforts by the
dissident group to disrupt the mass illustrate a desire to challenge a
dominant narrative. The post-disaster memory landscape is thus con­
tested in relation to critical concerns regarding the disaster itself and the
ongoing production of vulnerabilities. Disputes over disaster in­
terpretations and calls for justice are at the centre of the landscape of
memory. While the idea of still living the 1993 disaster is shared by the
groups in dispute, they differ in their views of the commemoration’s
potential to improve their situation. The 1993 aluvión is an ‘ongoing
event’ that enables some to lament a common tragedy but that mobilises
others to contest the production of risks. Although there are no struggles
for (re)defining the past tragedy, contestations exist in regard to
governance responsibilities for recreating disaster risks.
In this sense, the disaster is interpreted as both ‘event’ and process in
line with Oliver-Smith and Hoffman’s [10] definition. While some
naturalistic discourses exist in the foothills, such as on the stone me­
morial in Solidarity Park, the bulk of the communities that experienced
the disaster interpret it in processual terms, alluding to both
long-standing social and natural features. The differing approaches of
the commemoration organisers and the protest group illustrate how
interpretation of disasters as socially-embedded processes does not
necessarily constitute a more just way of dealing with disaster risk.
Despite apparently overcoming the naturalistic paradigm in disaster
memory, some interpretations still address disasters as exogenous things,
as Sliwinski [26] reminds us. It is hence possible for interpreting social
drivers of risks while externalising responsibility for the creation of
those conditions. Such a depoliticised view, as shown here, maintains
the status quo and existing vulnerabilities.
Denaturalisation of disasters through memory processes is not suf­
ficient per se to deliver more just risk management, and this has impli­
cations for DRR and DRC. The question is: How can memory processes
contribute to disaster preparedness, enhance emergency warnings, or
educate the local population on their risks to climate hazards? If DRR
initiatives should raise concerns about the complexity of risks – as the
United Nations Office for DRR states, risk is ‘everyone’s business’ [91,
92] – then cultural practices are an integral part. As shown in my
findings, particular discursive formations that explicitly confront natu­
ralising narratives are more likely to raise awareness. The issue is
therefore how disaster memory reflects the past or the future of disaster
risks – how the production of a landscape of memory brings together a
post-disaster community to deal with a shared tragedy but also to
question their current risk conditions. Such a process must recognise the
slow and complex cultural change needed to enhance DRR while
resisting DRC. Consequently, the competing interpretations that emerge
within disaster memorialisation can constitute a first step towards
transforming the structural conditions that create vulnerability.
6. Conclusion
In this paper, I have presented a particular perspective on the politics
of disaster memory. My aim was to understand how a landscape of
memory reflects divergent interpretations of disaster temporalities. I
focused on the foothills of Santiago and its symbols, practices and in­
terpretations of memorialisation, showing how disaster memory differs
between groups. Drawing on the idea of landscape as arena, I examined
the diverse agendas and contentious views involved in the construction
of disaster memory. Here, I described the presence of ongoing dis­
agreements between communities over disaster memory, considering
how these disputes address long-term development processes. More­
over, I argued that thematisation of such processes is a relevant concern
for memorialisation in terms of how questions of social justice are put
forward by post-disaster communities.
The work contributes to the literature on disasters and culture –
topics that are central to anthropology, geography and other interdis­
ciplinary perspectives in disaster studies. By following an ethnographic
R. Fuentealba
approach, we can see that memorialisation processes are open and that
post-disaster communities are diverse rather than homogeneous. Groups
of inhabitants who suffered the same disaster can participate in memory
practices while exhibiting varied interpretations of their current risk
experience. Hence, by showing these contested cultures on the ground,
memory researchers are able to reveal that despite concurring obser­
vations regarding disaster experiences (e.g., ‘we are still living the
disaster’), these can have manifold implications. As such, interpretation
of disasters as ‘unnatural’ or as ‘processes’ does not necessarily enhance
resilience.
In this sense, my work is socially relevant to understanding how post-
disaster communities deal with their ongoing vulnerabilities. Views of
disaster risk are heterogeneous across landscapes of memory. Symbols of
past disasters are present in different places and help to make sense of
this past. This, however, does not translate into an active discussion of a
current hazardous state. Different groups involved actively in a post-
disaster landscape of memory might describe the persistence of
disaster experiences at the local level but will not necessarily discuss and
seek to reduce the risk to which they are exposed. I argue that to do so
would constitute a more socially just form of DRR, as claims concerning
recognition, redistribution and reparations are made in relation to cur­
rent disaster risk production. Ultimately, a strict focus on memoriali­
sation is limited, as symbols and practices change only slowly, while
other community-based organisations might enhance DRR but fail to
engage in memory. It therefore remains to be seen how these organi­
sations relate to disaster risks in general and to the landscape of memory
in particular, either maintaining the status quo or seeking to disrupt the
root causes of risk.
Declaration of competing interest
The author declares that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work has been supported financially by Becas Chile Doctoral
Programme Scholarship #72170272 from the Government of Chile. I
would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their comments,
Isabelle Desportes for her input on a previous version of the paper, and
Robert Coates and Jeroen Warner for putting together the session
‘Calamitous ‘events’? Exploring perceptions of disaster timeframes’ at
the RGS-IBG 2019 in London.
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