Territory and Politics: Social Dispute and Historical Memory. The Defense of the Railway Station as a Public Space, Mendoza, 2006–2008

Abstract

This paper seeks to contribute to the analysis of the process of spatialization of class struggle; that is, the marks left on physical space by the currently hegemonic tendency toward the privatization of public spaces and the symbolic constructions produced to signify that process.

To this end, I propose to analyze the conflict that unfolded around the lands of the former General San Martín Railway Station in Mendoza between 2006 and 2008. Closed during the 1990s as part of the neoliberal policies implemented in our country, these lands are currently the object of new privatization projects, among which a real estate venture led by the Corporación Antiguo Puerto Madero stands out. Faced with this new privatizing attempt, three social organizations initiated a process of resistance and struggle in defense of these lands as public space. Specifically, the article pays special attention to the dispute that opens up among the different meanings constructed around the image of the station and the city.

The paper points out that this semantic dispute between opposing meanings refers, on the one hand, to its historical inscription: the rearticulations of meaning produced among past, present, and future. On the other hand, it emphasizes that what is at stake is not a problem of pure “signification”, but rather one that refers to the density of experience and to the importance that the dimension of practices acquires in the subjectivity of the subjects.

The methodology employed corresponds to a qualitative analysis strategy: participant observation, in-depth interviews, and secondary sources.