'Downtown's gone bad': On the racialization of downtown Antofagasta

摘要

This article presents the results of a research project based on an ethnographical approach, aimed at analyzing the hostile manifestations towards migrants on a street in downtown Antofagasta, and interprets these as a process of local racialization. Since the on-going arrival of migrants from the Caribbean and countries in the northern part of South America (Dominicans, Colombians, Peruvians, Bolivians,) and their increased visibility on downtown streets, practices and discourses have developed that identify these people as malevolent subjects that have made the downtown area "go bad." Focusing the analysis on State institutions and engaging Marxist, anti-racist, critical race theory and black feminist perspectives, I posit that the "undesirable immigrant" emerges as a fetish and is converted into a commodity and an artifact exploited by some political sectors and the State itself to justify their existence and reinforce immigration policies. Practices such as the racial fencing of downtown Antofagasta are used to explain the rejection of immigrants as a tabula rasa, the symbolic and material conservation of national hegemony and performances of national order. Antofagasta's downtown area and Condell Street have become the backdrop for a process of racialization based on the fantasy of insecurity.