Monstruos urbanos, cardinal figures of everyday santiaguiano ́s experience

Abstract

This article comes from a research leading to the multiple aspects related to the urban imagery of the City of Santiago, in Chile. Looking out on this, instead of to consider the official statements, exogenous meanings or the speeches dropped out by the urban marketing, it was given priority to the “citizen’s sense”. The  preferred subject of study was the “corpus” of more than 18,000 short written tales, which of them – in 2005 – had participates in the entry “100words about Santiago”. Resulting from overall analysis it was being true at least two assumptions. First the evidence that the citizen of Santiago would be settled in the city, but he still doesn’t know how to live in. For this reason Santiago looks to him as a violent and outsider, and for the same reason people idealize the natural as a pure and a real territory dreaming on refund it. The second important subject, discussed in this article, is an attempt to answer to the question on why, notwithstanding, the citizen don’t leave the city. The figure of a second class citizen or the shape of a common destiny would inform a possible response.