Nacionalism and Social Question: A Subaltern Perspective from the “Lira Popular” (1891-1907)

Abstract

This article intends to perceive the process of adopting the nationalist speech by the lower classes from Santiago de Chile during the´ Social Question´ by the analysis of some poems contained in the “Lira Popular”. Through this creation of the popular poets we will observe the importance of the support of the “Literatura de Cordel” like the diffusion of the values of the nationalism belonging to the oligarquical Chile, and how these got complex in a period marked by the birth of the first proletarian organizations giving an account, in this way, of the appropriation and resignification of the nationalism into the ideas, mentalities, identities and actions of the popular sectors of the period.