Abstract

We reflect about the process of construction of the garden of resistance at the Baquedano Subway Station, an urban space transformed in the epicenter of the social protests that started on 18 October 2019 in Santiago de Chile. Based on the ethnographic observation work, we describe the social organization process that leads to the elaboration of this garden, and we analyze the dimensions that this space of nature offers to the construction of a third landscape in the middle of the city, that is, a landscape where native, medicinal and spontaneous plants grow amidst the ruins (subway), and which operates as a metaphor of the explosion of rage and violence deployed over the months of protest. Among debris, graffiti, artistic actions, and the toxicity of the protest, vegetation grows to commemorate the fallen and remind us of the resilient quality of life and how, like any third landscape, this is a space that does not express the power or submission to it, and therefore makes it possible to build an emotional community from rebellion and beauty. It is concluded that, as an unresolved fragment, the garden opens up the possibility for nature to take center stage and propose a new order, a joint, reciprocal, and horizontal evolution of the beings that inhabit it amidst disorder and blurring downtown.