Remodeling Bustamante Park and the Social Frontier "Undesirable" uses increased as Santiago industrialized and migrants arrived from the regions. The 1930s crisis had a significant impact on this process, overflowing the city with misery, especially on the fringes of La Chimba, Zanjón de la Aguada, and Chuchunco. Once again, what was then known as Plaza Italia, formerly Plaza La Serena, was left out of this dynamic, partly because there were no pre-existing uses, but also because, in 1930, what would become the largest industrial reconversion project in history began: the demolition of Pirque station, built only 40 years earlier, and the transformation of the rail yards into Bustamante Park.
In retrospect, it was impressive what the State was doing in a poor country severely affected by the economic and saltpeter crisis. However this fact, added to the law of autonomous communities and the appearance of the "Real Estate Speculator" mayors, described by historian Armando de Ramón, made the east, protected by the riverbanks, beautified by the Bustamante Park, and with few undesired uses, became the perfect territory to move the upscale neighborhoods from República and Concha y Toro sectors, towards the nuns' agricultural fields. Real estate operations of enormous size also advanced in Ñuñoa, with large real estate developers who also acted as politicians and managed to build horse-drawn trams with public resources to connect their fields. Ricardo Lyon, a mayor-real estate speculator, was the most outstanding, since he increased the value of his properties, transforming them into a sales success. The upscale district moved from the nineteenth-century city of Vicuña Mackenna to the modern "garden city" of Providencia, and Plaza Italia became the border to cross to access upstream modernity and the pain and crisis downstream. Curiously, in 1928, the place had already changed its name again. President Ibáñez del Campo decided to rename it to honor a military man like him, General Manuel Baquedano, a popular hero much loved and admired by the people due to his role as commander of the Pacific War troops, from which Chile obtained important resources to alleviate the crisis it was going through. In the 1930s the statue of General Baquedano looked splendid on his horse, and the plaza was enlarged and modernized, very much inspired by Paris´ roundabouts, becoming a meeting focal point between large avenues such as the Alameda extension to the east, and Vicuña Mackenna, which occupied the land freed by the railroad to Pirque. The upscale district moved from the nineteenth-century city of Vicuña Mackenna to the modern "garden city" of Providencia, and Plaza Italia became the border to cross to access upstream modernity and the pain and crisis downstream. The social unrests’ epicenter In October 2019, the social unrest that shook Chile made this location the center of the demonstrations as it had already happened decades ago. According to the publication "La ciudad y sus arquitectos", this role of receiving crowds was only strengthened during the Pinochet dictatorship when Paseo Bulnes, which was the venue of the previous demonstration, was guarded by military forces to protect the Flame of Freedom that the dictator placed next to the O'Higgins memorial. This reportedly shifted the demonstrations to Baquedano, which by that time had little of the Parisian plaza inaugurated by Ibáñez del Campo. With the passage of time, road extensions made with an excessive engineering criterion were transforming this traffic circle into a road oval, and its use was limited to an ornamental theme.
↧ Plaza Baquedano, 1930.
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Reportaje / Feature Article
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