A Brief History of the Street Art Scene in Santiago, Chile

We asked ourselves in the beginning, “What do we think of when we hear about graffiti or street art?” Perhaps cities like São Paulo, New York, Paris, or Berlin come to mind. But the truth is that Santiago, Chile, has one of the richest and most authentic graffiti and street art scenes in the world. Perhaps this is due to the city’s simultaneous isolation from and connection with the rest of the world. We must recall that Chile was a battlefield during the Cold War, when it became, in 1970, the first Western country to elect a socialist president, Salvador Allende, in a democratic election. Many muralist brigades helped to expand the message of socialist idealism by painting images and symbols of power and the Popular Unity coalition on walls. A few years later, when General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship began, muralism became a clandestine weapon of resistance of the lower classes of Santiago who were strongly repressed by military and intelligence organizations. Toward the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, political and Latin American-themed muralism continued to be popular in the neighborhoods of the city that held a combative identity. At the same time, a certain discontent towards politics and political parties began to grow, mainly among young people.

With the return to democracy in 1990, Chile opened up to economic globalization and the cultural influence of Western epicenters, like North America and Europe. Mass media, such as television and film, played an important role in spreading new values and trends in popular culture to youth, such as hip hop, break dance, and graffiti. Chile, once characterized by strong ideological polarization and economic inequality, didn’t hesitate to adopt and reinterpret rap as a form of counterculture resistance, especially among youth from low-income neighborhoods who continued to be discriminated against, sometimes solely on the basis of how they looked or where they lived.

At the same time, many political exiles began returning to the country, many bringing with them their children who had been born and raised in foreign lands. These children brought with them new practices, knowledge, and lifestyles, including graffiti. The influence of these kids at the beginning of Santiago’s street art scene was crucial. From the beginning, street art in Chile didn’t simply reflect what was happening in North America or Europe but instead displayed its own identity. For example, the extensive use of the paint brush and the paint roller derived from the use of these tools in the muralist brigades and also came about because of easy access to latex, toners, and tints. From an early stage, the Santiago scene was characterized by experimentation with different methods than those used in New York and Europe. Chile developed a strong bombing scene with a marked tendency to develop characters, influenced in part by early contact with another important global scene, that of São Paulo, Brazil. A few years after the rise of street art in Santiago, a conference on graffiti was organized and some of the best artists in the São Paulo scene were invited. This international exchange left an impression on many young Chilean artists who later became major influences on the following generations.