Janey Program in Latin American Studies

2015/2016 JANEY ANNUAL WORKSHOP: GUILLERMINA ALTOMONTE AND MANUELA BADILLA

Monday, April 11th | 12 pm History Conference Room (Room 529, 5th Floor, 80 5th Avenue building).

Janey Fellows, Guillermina Altomonte and Manuela Badilla will be presenting their ongoing work based on the 2015/16 Janey Summer Fellowship they were awarded.

Guillermina Altomonte: Home or hotel? Legitimation of luxury institutional elder care in Chile: The case of Golden Residences
This paper explores the legitimation of a new industry in Chile: investor-owned, for profit luxury nursing homes. These institutions have to differentiate themselves from asilos or hogares, establishments that have traditionally cared for low-income, often abandoned, elderly people. Drawing on interviews with upper-level management at one of the first luxury nursing homes built in Santiago, I argue that such differentiation, and consequently the legitimation of high-end institutional long-term care operates through the hybridization of two discursive logics: the professionalized discourse of luxury services, and the informal rhetoric of the home. The luxury service discourse means that residents and their families are treated like entitled customers whose desires are constantly catered to, while the “home” logic rests upon the construction of residents as home-owners and of frontline care workers as servants. Both discourses thus reproduce residents’ privileged class position even in a situation of increasing dependence. Conversely, the ambiguity of institutional definition in luxury long-term care results in a greater cost for lower-tier workers. Not only is their caring labor devalued, as has been amply documented by literature on nursing homes, but they are also imposed with the symbolic and material subordination of historical relations of domestic labor that continue to permeate modern Chilean service organizations.

Manuela Badilla: Bringing back ‘la Resistencia’: The Chilean Student Movement as a turning point in the official narrative about the dictatorial past
This article explores the practices and symbols deployed to talk, think, and act in relation to the military dictatorship in Chile (1973-1989) during the Chilean Student Movement (2011-2013). This social movement, led by the post-dictatorship generation, is analyzed as the key trigger in questioning the official narrative of the dictatorial past that has emphasized the role of victimhood. It brought back the narratives, practices, and events of the resistance against the dictatorship,challenging the discourse of political stability and reconciliation fostered by transitional governments. The Student Movement stressed the necessity of remembering other forms of violence that came with the imposition of the neoliberal system during the dictatorship and were maintained during the transition.
Informed by 14 in-depth interviews, archival research, and discourse analysis, this paper explores the different symbols and rituals through which the events of the resistance were inhabited by the participants of this movement in order to strengthen and articulate the movement discourses, strategies, and repertoires of action and social mobilization. This work examines three forms in which the resistance has been inhabited: school and university strikes and occupations; the use of direct actions such as barricades, and ‘casserole’ pots and pans protests; and commemorative practices. Participants of this movement found a source of inspiration and legitimacy for their struggle in these events. The re-enactment of these events illustrates not only the strength of the events of the resistance themselves, but of the ongoing process by which these symbols and meanings move through history.