Abstract

This article focuses on the relationship between the categories of democracy and citizenship in Valparaíso during the last postdictatorship decade from a critical perspective. The main assumption of the text relates to the impossibility of conceptual analysis on democracy without including in its discussion the tension between the position and the exercise of the demanding, involved citizenship in this process. The proposed analysis brings face to face the hegemonic imaginaries established during the post-dictatorship period and the establishing imaginaries that arise from the secondary school movements for defending public education in Valparaiso. These imaginaries are expressed in forms of organization within the public circle, through the role that plays the radical imaginary, which challenge the construction of a captured citizenship and a democracy under custody.