Magic World: Walking through the rubble of a Chile that never existed

Emiliana Cereceda [ Email ]

Magic World was an amusement park opened in 1983 in Santiago, with public funding from Chile under the dictatorship. The Great Model of Miniature Chile, its main attraction, consisted of a 1:25 scale representation of the country, according to the regions recently imposed by the military regime. Two decades later, the park closed definitively due to financial problems. The land was abandoned; some miniatures were moved to warehouses, and others, more structural in material terms, remained there. More than 20 years later, this is a ruinous space where human, plant, and object life coexist. The following essay explores the question: How does it feel to walk among the ruins of Miniature Chile, considering its political ties through time? To carry out this reflection, I first contextualize the ideological plots of the military dictatorship in terms of culture and territory. In light of the above, along with the memories of a woman who has always lived near the former amusement park, I analyze the characteristics of The Great Model in its years of operation. I argue that the conceptual and aesthetic similarity with Disney World embodies the military fantasy of turning Chile into a small USA in the south of the Continent. Likewise, I argue that The Great Model was faithful to the nationalist ideology of the regime, which defines the territory as homogeneous, neoliberal and abundant in apologetic symbols for authoritarianism. I conclude by reflecting on the affects surrounding the ruined present of this fictional Chile, arguing that the decay that emanates from the remains refers to a broader sensation about a broken country.

Magic World was an amusement park opened in 1983 in Santiago, with public funding from Chile under the dictatorship. It was built specifically in Lo Prado, one of the city's poorest boroughs from then to the present (Social Development Ministry 2022). The Great Model of Miniature Chile (from now on The Great Model), its main attraction, consisted of a 1:25 scale representation of the country, according to the regions recently imposed by the military regime. Two decades later, the park closed definitively due to financial problems. The land was abandoned; some miniatures were moved to warehouses, and others, more structural in material terms, remained there. More than 20 years later, this is a ruinous space where human, plant, and object life coexist.

I met Beatriz[1] in the summer of 2022 at the entrance of the former park. We were both behind the fence, watching someone build a makeshift house with cardboard and sticks beneath what remained of the miniature Andes Mountains. As soon as we started talking, we discovered that, for very different reasons, we both had a long-standing affective relationship with that place. Beatriz has witnessed up close the transformations that have happened inside over time – as she has lived in the same house, five minutes away, all her life. After our first meeting, I visited her in the park and at her house four more times. On those occasions, she generously shared her memories and emotions with me, which are the basis of this essay's arguments.

The following essay explores the question: How does it feel to walk among the ruins of Miniature Chile, considering its political ties through time? To carry out this reflection, first of all, I contextualize the ideological plots of the military dictatorship in terms of culture and territory. In light of the above, along with Beatriz's memories, I analyze the characteristics of The Great Model in its years of operation. Finally, I explore the ruined present of this fictional Chile, articulating a reflection on affects and the passage of time based on the work of anthropologists Francisca Márquez (2019), Gastón Gordillo (2014) and Yael Navaro-Yashin (2012).

Between national identity and neoliberal fantasy

In 1973, Chile experienced a coup d'état, a stark contrast to the socialist ideals of Salvador Allende, the president at that time. The military regime introduced the "National Security Doctrine" (Junta Nacional de Gobierno 1974) –a declaration of their political and moral principles. It defined an anti-Marxist, nationalist, and authoritarian ideology, coupled with the implementation, funded by the USA, of a voracious and unprecedented neoliberalism in Latin America. For the scope of this essay, I will address two areas –cultural and territorial policies– of the regime's nation-building project, arguing that it established a North American-inspired arts and entertainment production while organizing the territory to maximize authoritarian power.

North American neoliberalism deeply penetrated the more subtle layers of military fantasy. As described in the book "The Aesthetic Coup d'état" (Leiva & Errázuriz 2012), the regime's measures of censorship, repression, and extermination –learned directly from the US military– also unfolded in the realm of artistic and cultural production. The dictatorial government only endorsed expressions that explicitly aligned with the regime, and those who expressed opposition risked their lives. Hence, in Chile during those years, the number of cultural activities drastically decreased, a phenomenon the opposition called a "cultural blackout" (Donoso 2019: 6), criticizing the regime for surrendering cultural content to international market flows and silencing dissenting media and cultural activities. In this scenario, the military allocated large sums of money to produce television and radio comedy programs, gossip magazines, and plays; all directly copied from American referents. As we will see later, the construction of Magic World fell precisely within this area of the military budget: investment in "culture" to make Chile the little USA in the South of the South American continent.

Nationalism was the second ideological pillar of the dictatorial government. Its discourse on Chilean identity emphasized the idea of national unity, flattening the diversity under the exclusive aesthetic of the central valley –a territory historically dominated by the right-wing– where Spanish colonizers and high-ranking military officials are idols of the nation and the Catholic Church is the religious and moral rule (Caro & Flores 2020: 81). Following this line of thought, in 1974, the government created the country's first regionalization, which completely transformed its geopolitical organization (Arenas 2009: 20). According to the military, the decision to administratively divide the country into thirteen regions paradoxically responded to the patriotic impulse to "unify the nation", which included ensuring security and strengthening borders (De Castro 1992: 57-63). The implicit objective, however, was to employ a political technology capable of organizing authoritarian power logistically, technically, and hierarchically by implementing a set of political-military institutions in each of the thirteen regions. In sum, this measure reinforced the structural sense and projected in the long term both neoliberalism and the reach of authoritarian power (Quiroz 2019: 218).

Dreaming of a Chilean Disney World: Magic World in its golden days

"When I was little, we did not have money to travel; it was impossible to think about going to the beach or the mountains, to a river... So, we would go to Magic World, and it was like stepping into a dream, feeling like you were really exploring the North and the South. I feel like that was the first time I got to know Chile" (Interview with Beatriz 2023), recounts Beatriz, as she flips through the pages of her childhood photo album from Magic World. Covered in a shiny purple fabric with illustrations of animals, the album holds at least 60 images of her and her sister, aged 10 and 12, respectively, posing hand in hand in front of the various landmarks of the country that composed The Great Model. Through those images, and in conjunction with written and photographic records from that time provided by the Municipality of Lo Prado, in this section, I reflect on the characteristics of this Chile in which Beatriz felt like travelling for the first time, arguing that it sought to disseminate the same ideological principles described earlier: between national identity and neoliberal fantasy. Finally, I reflect on the strategy of miniaturization, proposing that this is a metaphor for a military nation-building project that exceeds The Great Model.

The Great Model adapted to the Regionalization the military government undertook in 1974. A landmark represented each of the newly created regions. Beatriz describes the depicted Chile as a harmonious land, without social classes or political conflicts, and in perfect order. She remembers several churches surrounded by faithful followers, and the natural resources were depicted as abundant. Complementing her memory with the list of miniatures I could see, but not photograph, from the Lo Prado Municipal Archive, I visualize a beautiful and geographically diverse Chile, economically robust and industrialized, with grandiose architectures under a prominent European influence, appreciated and civilizing. Faithful in all its aspects to the nationalist vision of the military and the country-building project they sought.

"Progress and future" are the two words Beatriz chooses when I ask how she would define the Chile of the Great Model. Progress because industries repeatedly appear "despite how ugly they are" (Interview with Beatriz 2023), she tells me seriously. Amidst this strongly future-oriented temporality, the only allusion to the past corresponds to the territory's indigenous people: the miniature titled "Araucanian Reserve", representing a settlement of the ancient Mapuche people in the Araucanía Region. In this respect, it is important to mention that these communities declare themselves in a millennial war with the Chilean state, which has imposed violence on them since colonial times (Parra & Vergara 2005: 1-30). Furthermore, they have historically condemned the label "Araucanian", arguing that it was imposed and invented by colonizers –they have never been called that way (Bengoa 2011: 89). In the Model, they are represented stereotypically, dressed in ceremonial clothing and living in rukas[2] –which is far from the daily lives of these communities at the time of the model’s construction (Quilaqueo et al. 2007: 82). By showing them turned into archaeological heritage, this narrative argues that the origin of Chilean identity would not be founded on indigenous descent. Instead, the aesthetics of the Chilean countryside were privileged, historically linked to the Creole independence fighter's figure who rose against the Spanish Crown and, subsequently, against neighbouring countries that represented a threat.

On the other hand, Beatriz’s memories of the guidelines for exploring the Model speak of a particular type of fun: a contemplative attitude is required rather than an interactive one and a strictly regulated walk –you look, but you do not touch. In Beatriz’s memory, the restricted movement around The Great Model crystallized broader societal aspects: "A fence surrounded the miniatures; it was absolutely forbidden to touch them. I feel the fence as a symbol of the oppression of the time, in addition to the historical context, of parents who raised us like soldiers, too strict and with zero room for play" (Interview with Beatriz 2023). Aligned with this, she vividly remembers being seated with her mother and sister in a small train that transported them through the park, listening to a script recited by a guide about this fictional country's geographical and heritage data in complete silence.

"At seven years old, I thought The Great Model seemed beautiful and real. However, when I grew up a bit, I saw that it was quite forced. They tried to make it look like it was taken out of TV, magical. But to be honest, it was poor, you could tell there were not as many resources, everything was falling apart halfway, so that was sad" (Interview with Beatriz 2023). She tells this to me with an ironic laugh, showing a photograph where she is hugged by a person with a duck-shaped costume, which, to both her eyes and mine, looked out of a horror movie. Her words transported me to the front page of La Tercera newspaper (1983) on the day of the park's inauguration in 1983. In the inaugural speech, the architect heroically announced that The Great Model was just the first attraction and that five more would be built over the following years—a fantasy that never came true, probably due to financial problems. Their titles were the Spanish translation, without conceptual variation, of different sections of Disney World[3] –the world's most famous and largest chain of amusement parks. This illustrates the military admiration for North America and its fantasy of resembling this country in every possible way. However, Beatriz's account of the material precariousness of the "Chilean Disney World" sheds light on a profound truth: due to their enormous economic differences, the South and the North have never been able to have the same kind of fun.

In light of what has been said so far, I propose a theoretical reflection on the notion of miniature based on the foundational work of the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, Le Pensée Sauvage (1962). In the chapter La science du concret (11-49), Levi-Strauss studies the action of miniaturizing a referent through the example of toy cars, “bottled ships” and Japanese Gardens. He observes that reducing an object requires curating it: selecting specific sections and excluding others. Therefore, through this action, the creator feels power over the counterpart –the miniature– and the referent –the depicted object. This argument illuminates the aesthetic decisions of Mundo Mágico’s creators: the selection of miniaturization is not random and constitutes a powerful metaphor for thinking about the actions of the regime not only embodied in The Great Model but also in general. Take a socialist Chile, exercise power over it by selecting what is useful, discarding what is useless, and hiding information through a precarious make-up of reality –to build a new neoliberal society on its ruins.

Tragic World: the affects of walking through a broken country

In the early 2000s –in tandem with the return to democracy– the park closed its doors to the public due to economic problems. In this section, I take a tour through the ruins and debris of the former Magic World, arguing that it conveys an affective charge of sadness and decay that speaks to a broader affect towards the country's present. Likewise, I contrast Beatriz's affective experience with mine to reflect on how their nuances relate to our different positionalities.

Today, 24 years after the abandonment of the premises, the ruins of Magic World are a mixture of survival and transformation of a series of objects: among abundant garbage and a timid invasion of vegetation –despite the drought that threatens this area– most of the structures of The Great Model are still there. Mountains and oceans have been transformed into roomsfor unhoused people and bonfires to ward off the cold. The population has mobilized to demand that the Municipality turn it into a public park, concerned about the proliferation of crime and drugs around it. However, they have not succeeded (La Cuarta Newspaper 2012). In this scenario, a Chile in ruins is visible under multiple layers of use and disuse, houses, garbage, nature, and debris.

A group of Chilean anthropologists (Márquez et al. 2019: 121) distinguish between two types of ruin in Latin American cities, which is enlightening to analyse Magic World’s present. Certain ruins enjoy institutional heritage status. These are the ruins of modern nostalgia, considered the testimony of a lost time relevant to national identity. Therefore, complex maintenance and restoration techniques rescue them from the vital rhythm of abandonment and decay. On the other hand, Márquez refers to an opposite type of abandonment: the "ruins of oblivion" are not considered relevant, so they lend to the proliferation of garbage and illegality, which discomfort the functionality and aesthetics of the neoliberal city. These latter make visible Walter Benjamin's observations in 1982: the modern dynamic of development and progress is a giant factory for the production of ruins and waste. Applied to the Chilean context, ruins of oblivion reveal that neoliberalism builds at the expense of destruction.

Based on this distinction, one might ask: why isn't Magic World today a heritage ruin, a park, or a Municipal library, and instead is a chaotic and conflicted territory? Beatriz has a very clear answer; she stated it from the beginning of our first conversations. Her neighbourhood has been, is, and will always be very poor, and public institutions in low-income sectors do not have the disposition to solve issues like this. For Beatriz, these ruins are among countless other expressions of the Chilean state's abandonment of its economically vulnerable populations. Likewise, she feels a combination of threat and fury about the proliferation of crime and drug addiction that, under her perception, is encouraged by spaces like this. In our second meeting, a sweltering summer day in which we spent hours wandering inside the premises, she eloquently pointed out: "When the park closed, it was a brutal shock for me; for a while, I felt nostalgia for something that never was, for an ideal Chile that never existed. The truth is that this model hidden under garbage is quite similar to today's Chile. Now that so much time has passed, I do not care about Magic World anymore; what hurts is that a space that belongs to the Municipality, therefore public, is not used as a park, a nice place where neighbours can feel good. Instead, it feels increasingly hostile, so people just want to lock themselves in their houses. Here, in this corner of the World, everything rots. I see it with my own eyes every day" (Interview with Beatriz 2023).

These words reveal the affects that envelop Beatriz and the ruins. It is primarily a feeling of frustration and pain at the structural violence that permeates daily life in the urban margins, and it manifests materially in public spaces like this that worsen territorial segregation and tinge the environment with a sense of unhappiness and danger. In line with this, her statement "now that time has passed, I do not care about Magic World anymore", suggests that for her, the ideology and dictatorial context that gave rise to the park years ago are not determinants in her affective experience around the space today. Instead, what weighs on her today are the concrete consequences of abandonment that damage her neighbourhood's daily life.

In contrast, although my affects regarding the former park share a familiar tone with hers, some significant differences are worth noting. It is necessary to state my positionality to delve into this: I have never lived in Lo Prado, and due to my age, I could not visit Magic World in its “golden days”. My relationship with it comes from a political commitment to studying the dictatorial legacy in terms of intimacy due to my inheritance as the daughter, granddaughter, and niece of tortured, disappeared, and exiled people. In this scenario, as we walked on the faded concrete that once was the Pacific Ocean, I also felt the pain and decay that this broken Chile conveys. However, for me, each element carries the painful dictatorship's trace: in the miniature of the National State, I see the Detention and Torture Center that was established on said premises during the regime; in the Andes Mountain Range, I see the forest industries that were implemented at that time, causing the drought and ecocide that now threaten the central-southern region of the country (MODATIMA 2018); in the Patagonia Aysén, I see the construction of the Augusto Pinochet's Southern Highway, which has been denounced as part of the repression and torture mechanisms of the regime, due to the slave-like conditions and the high number of workers who died in the process (CNU 2013). To understand these differences and commonalities, I now reflect on the ethnographic work of Gastón Gordillo (2014) and Yael Navaro-Yashin (2012).

The distinction between ruin and debris (Gordillo 2014) sheds light on the temporal nuances that differentiate our ways of feeling the space. The author began his fieldwork in northern Argentina –a country adjacent to Chile where the space configuration is currently ruled by soybean agribusiness– to study inhabitants' perceptions of the abundant abandoned colonial architectures. However, shortly after, he realizes that the concept of ruin is rare for people (1). Instead, they define and use space based on its current materiality: pieces of concrete, tiles, rocks, and wood, among other materials. Consequently, Gordillo observes that in geographies constantly cracked by different types of destruction, abandoned architectures are in a constant process of ruination; therefore, "a more useful way to examine these spaces in their myriad forms is to conceptually disintegrate them and treat them as rubble" (2014: 2-3). From this perspective, ruins and debris are subtly different regarding the conception of time: the former is the footprint of something that once was and is no longer, and in this sense, it is subordinate to the past. Rubble, conversely, is the multifaceted and chaotic materiality in its present state. These two concepts are not incompatible; there are constant displacements and dialectical transformations between ruin and debris and vice versa. At certain times, people articulate, feel, and use space mainly based on its past, and at others, this loses relevance in the face of the debris of the present. Therefore, it is not about dismantling the notion of ruin but about removing its "glamour" (2014: 5), dissolving it into the node of debris that composes it. In light of this conceptual distinction, the marginal Chile debris perceived by Beatriz sometimes distances itself and, at others, approaches mine, a post-dictatorial Chile in ruins. Now the question arises: why are our affective experiences different?

Navaro-Yashin shares with the philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1996) the consideration that affect should not be understood purely as a projection of human subjectivity, in opposition to the psychoanalytic tradition that assimilates it with emotionality placing the human's inner world at the center of social analysis (Borch-Jacobsen 1993). Instead, affect emerges from many spheres, such as the environment and objects (Massumi 2002). However, her fieldwork in Northern Cyprus leads her to establish nuances. She observes that an atmosphere of ruin emanates a melancholic affect. At the same time, those who inhabit this space symbolise, politicise, and interpret said melancholy in their specific frames. Therefore, it is not possible to discard the subjective factor – affectivity is a midpoint where human interiority and the energy that objects emanate intersect, creating a continuum (2012: 42).

Under this definition, the ruined Great Model exudes a burden of decadence and sadness, which is the symptom of a larger-scale affect of perceiving the country as broken. Likewise, where our subjectivities and life stories diverge, Beatriz interprets and politicises the space based on the frustration and anger of her daily life in a poor borough where the state is absent; I feel the open wound of the military dictatorship; and another person, for example, a regime fanatic, could experience nostalgia for the imprint of a better past. In this sense, the dialectical transformation described by Gordillo between ruins and debris happens alongside an affective flow between the shared and the divergent, related to life stories and the specific wounds each carries.

Final reflections

Along these lines, I have approached Magic World in its extended temporality to analyze how walking among its ruins today feels. Firstly, I argued that the conceptual and aesthetic similarity – but with an infinitely smaller budget– with Disney World embodies the military fantasy of turning Chile into a small USA in the south of the Continent. Likewise, Beatriz's testimony and photographic archive reflect that The Great Model was faithful to the nationalist ideology of the regime, where the territory is defined as homogeneous, under Catholic influence, and abundant in apologetic symbols for authoritarianism. Therefore, the militia's decision to finance this park aimed to promote the installation of its ideological premises and, ultimately, its broad national project. In light of this, how Levi-Strauss (1962) understands miniaturization –as a mechanism in which the creator exercises power over a referent, deforming and recreating it at will– is relevant to think not only about the construction of the fictional Chile of The Great Model but also in the modus operandi of the regime on a larger scale.

The way the passage of time is perceived is at the centre of the last essay's section, which is about the affects that arise when walking through this space today. The former park has become a "ruin of oblivion" (Márquez et al. 2019: 121): instead of being a museum or a park, it resembles a garbage dump, which for Beatriz, expresses the structural violence that runs through the country's poor neighbourhoods. I have called the site in its current state "Tragic World", arguing that the decay that emanates from the remains refers to a broader sensation about a broken country. Therefore, the passage of time reflects a journey from magic –a little failed due to the material precariousness of the park, even in its "golden days"– towards tragedy. The tragic present appears through an affect of sadness and frustration, which Beatriz and I breathe in the air. Likewise, what for her is rubble that concretely affects her daily life, for me, are ruins –traces of dictatorial violence (Gordillo 2014). Therefore, our shared and divergent feelings speak of an affectivity that, as Navaro-Yashin (2012) described, is the meeting point between the energy that emanates from the environment and human interiority, where one's biography, with its wounds, its lights, and its shadows, has a determining role.

[1] Her real name has been pseudonymized.

[2] Ruca or ruka is the “Vernacular housing of the Mapuche built with vegetables (trunk structure and straw covers)” (Sepúlveda 2013: 315).

[3] Some of them were A Trip through the Jungle –conceptually identical to the Disney section called Adventureland–; The Sea Bottom –similar to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Submarine Voyage–; The Forty Miniatures of the World was similar to The Great Model – both of them inspired by Disney's It is a Small World.

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