The Empty Plinth: Iconoclasm, Memory, and Symbolic Dispute in Plaza Italia/Dignidad

Abstract

Introduction: This article analyzes the phenomenon of the empty plinth in downtown Santiago, Chile—specifically in Plaza Italia, popularly renamed Plaza Dignidad—following the removal in March 2021 of the equestrian statue of General Manuel Baquedano, an emblematic figure of Chilean military nationalism. The void is interpreted not as deterioration or vandalism, but as a contemporary counter-monument that subverts traditional monumentality and activates processes of critical memory, political performativity, and symbolic contestation in Chilean public space. Additionally, the plinth is examined as a cultural and symbolic object that enables new forms of reading, writing, and resignifying public space as an open, contested text.

Methods: The study adopts a qualitative, critical-discursive methodology based on a transdisciplinary approach that combines memory theory, urban studies, political philosophy, aesthetic analysis, and cultural criticism.

Results: The analysis demonstrates that the persistence of the empty plinth functions as an active form of democratic counter-memory. Rather than implying oblivion, this space enables dissent, civic resignification, and the emergence of multiple historical narratives in tension with the hegemonic state discourse.

Conclusions: In light of governmental proposals to reinstall General Baquedano's statue—possibly alongside a female figure such as poet Gabriela Mistral—the article argues that institutionalizing the void may represent a more democratic and meaningful option. Instead of resolving the conflict with new marble symbols, the empty plinth sustains an open question about who and how we should represent in public memory, inviting a plural, critical, and situated construction of history.