The Chile Reader Quotes

“The miner who suffers nature's wrath in explosions, landslides, falls, and silicosis, or black lung disease, has been a representative figure of Chilean nationhood, just as mining itself has fueled the economy since the nineteenth century. But the (always male) miner conquering (female) nature, overcoming danger and disaster to extract ore, the bounty granted to Chile by nature, has also been a source of national pride.”
― Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, The Chile Reader: History, Culture, Politics

“By some accounts, Chile's unstable borders and the history of violent national integration of frontier territories, from the Atacama to the Araucanía and Patagonia, have underwritten an exceptionally stable national identity and robust nationalism. As in the United States, Chile's exceptional place in the Americas has often been attributed to its frontier experiences and its aggressive expansionism since the mid-nineteenth century.”
― Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, The Chile Reader: History, Culture, Politics

“Frontiers, like nature more generally, have played a major role in Chile's national formation.”
― Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, The Chile Reader: History, Culture, Politics

“The history of Chile, like many other national histories south of the Rio Grande, provides an important vantage point from which U.S. readers may not only learn about this long, thin country, but also think critically about their own country—and its own claims to exceptionalism. As our Chilean colleagues have expressed so well, “history is projection. It is the social construction of future reality.”
― Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, The Chile Reader: History, Culture, Politics

“A Reader dedicated to a “national” history remains relevant in an increasingly global and transnational world: the story of Chile's emergence as a nation illustrates how deeply the story of nations is predicated on international flows of people, ideas, and capital.”
― Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, The Chile Reader: History, Culture, Politics

“Relegating indigenous populations and their histories either to the past as conquered peoples or marginalizing their significance in the present, Chilean nation-building has typically homogenized ethnic difference and left Mapuches and other native and African-descended groups out of the national narrative.”
― Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, The Chile Reader: History, Culture, Politics