From the caricature of the foreign press to the National Historical Museum. Some historical background on the controversy over the representation of Augusto Pinochet in the public space.

Abstract

This article argues that the controversy that arose regarding the mention of Augusto Pinochet in the 2018 Museo Histórico Nacional (Chile) exhibition cannot be understood without taking into account the international historically constructed image of the character since 1973. Relying on a corpus of press cartoons from various foreign written media, this paper explores how this image was built, and the existing and growing difficulties of showing Augusto Pinochet in the national public space. A diachronic and iconographic analysis allows us to demonstrate the gradual coincidence between the international negative image of Pinochet with the locally built representation.