Chile helps Chile: exploring the effects of earthquake Chile 2010

The purpose of the present paper is to explore the political discourse present in the show Chile Ayuda a Chile [Chile helps Chile] to support the survivors and victims of the last earthquake hit Chile in 2010. Based on the belief that nationalism plays a vital role in cementing the process of recovery by making survivors believe that they, after all, have a new opportunity to be on feet again.

The visual methodology (enrooted in the analysis of content) is the chosen technique to develop five indicators which replicates the nationalist sentiment of Chileans post-disaster context. The archetype of nationalism is activated whenever the community is in danger.

As Baudrillard put it, the post-modernity is witness of a much wider nation-state’s declination. Nonetheless, current information presented in this report very well contrasts a thesis of this caliber. Far-away of being experiencing a decrease of Nationalism, we argue that in contexts of emergency and chaos, nationality plays an important role to maintain a firm bondage and prevent social fragmentation. Five indicators are found in the discourse of Chile helps Chile, beautiness, sport, coercion, stratification and materiality.

The outcome of this research, because of its qualitative nature, does not allows statistical or broader inferences. For this, further investigation is needed.

Much of disaster-related texts have been influenced by Jean Baudrillard and his thesis of nation state decline. The originality of this research shows the opposite. As a process of resiliency, the national being still plays a crucial role in revitalizing the social tenets of community in context of uncertainness.