Browsing by Author "Gil, Magdalena"

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    Disasters as Critical Junctures: State Building and Industrialization in Chile after the Chillán Earthquake of 1939
    (2022) Gil, Magdalena
    In 1939 an earthquake destroyed south-central Chile, especially the city of Chillán. This event was arguably the most catastrophic socio-natural disaster in Chilean history, yet it has been mostly ignored in historical research. This article shows that the earthquake triggered a critical juncture for the Chilean state and was a determining factor in some of the most important institutional developments of the period. Using primary sources, the article describes this juncture, focusing on the destabilizing effect of the earthquake and linking it to the creation of two new state institutions, the Production Development Corporation (CORFO) and the Reconstruction and Assistantship Corporation (CRA), together with other important changes in state capacities. It concludes that the disaster is crucial in understanding the Chilean transition from an exporting economy to an import-substituting one after 1940, and to account for the strength of the Chilean state in the decades to come.
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    Figuring disasters, an experiment on thinking disruptions as methods
    (2019) Tironi, Manuel; Bacigalupe, Gonzalo; Knowles, Scott Gabriel; Dickinson, Simon; Gil, Magdalena; Kelly, Sarah; Ludwig, Jason; Moesch, Jarah; Molina, Francisco; Palma, Karla; Siddiqi, Ayesha; Waldmueller,Johannes
    In this report, we reflect on the 2-day thinkshop ‘Figuring disasters: methodological speculations in exorbitant worlds’ held in Valparaíso, Chile. The thinkshop aimed at discussing the possibility of inventing new genres for the figuration, representation and visualisation of distributed and processual geoclimatic disruptions. For this report, we assembled a choral essay in which each one of the participants selected one object of our visit to Messana—an informal settlement in the outskirts of Valparaíso that was severely damaged by the 2017 fires—and knit around, from and with it a reflection on the thinkshop and its questions. The report is thus fractionary. We do not look for wholes, perhaps as disasters themselves problematise linear narratives. We prefer to be attentive to what each one of us inherited from Messana and to stage that sensibility in a multiplicity, though adventures into what disasters as methods can and should be.
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    Gran Laboratorio de Resiliencia Frente a Desastres de Origen Natural
    (2018) de la Llera, Juan Carlos; Rivera, F; Gil, Magdalena
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    THE RECONSTRUCTION OF VALPARAISO'S URBAN VALUE AFTER THE 1906 EARTHQUAKE
    (PONTIFICIA UNIV CATOLICA CHILE, ESCUELA ARQUITECTURA, 2017) Gil, Magdalena
    The idea that disasters become an opportunity is almost a cliche; what we never know is who or what will benefit from it. Based on the debates following the 1906 earthquake in Valparaiso, this text argues that when a city is ruined and decisions to rebuild must be taken, the difference between what is valued and what is not is clearly shown. The opportunity, then, becomes a discussion on values.