Imagining a Different Chile: Northern Migration in Ciudad Berraca (2018)

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to study the relevance of imagination as a narrative form of experiencing
displacement and the material reality of the migrant in the work Ciudad berraca (2018), particularly in its
protagonist, Jean, a young Colombian who migrates with his family to Antofagasta. It is proposed that one of
the relevant narrative strategies of the story is the use of mass culture and mass media to which Jean resorts as an imaginative exercise to experience his migration from Colombia to northern Chile. Consequently,
imagination generates an intimate reality that, at first, allows Jean to cope with the violence he experiences in
his material reality, but later serves as a tool of defense and confrontation. In order to do so, first, some
theoretical foundations on the imagination and the positioning of this research from a materialist perspective will be established. Second, the way in which Jean's material reality is represented both in his migratory transit and in his settlement in Chile will be examined. Third, these elements will be contrasted with Jean's imaginative exercise that uses mass culture and the media as a way to respond to the violence received from Chileans. And fourth, it will reflect on the imagination as a resource of appropriation and confrontation to the material reality, both as a rhetorical strategy of the novel and as a way of thinking projectively about contemporary migration in/to Chile.