El barrio como lugar distópico: Narrativas nostálgicas en tres barrios de Valparaíso

The article explores the daily neighborhood experiences of senior citizens’ and how they think and live in their current neighborhood. It is based on the results of participatory research conducted in 2019 with 51 long-term residents of three neighborhoods in Valparaiso, Chile. Based on accounts of their past and current experiences, the paper focuses on the nostalgias they express for their old neighborhoods that, according to them, are no longer existing today. These nostalgias give rise to dystopian representations and imaginaries that they associate with their present neighborhoods. From the analysis of these dystopian representations and imaginaries, the article shows that these inhabitants’ neighborhood trajectory reveals a desired neighborhood community, linked to a past that never fully materialized. In this sense, the article poses that the neighborhood is thought and conceived as a dystopian place, in tension between desires and yearnings for an idealized past and disconformity for the current situation.