Abstract

This article analyzes the satirical press produced by typographers in Chile between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The main results of a review of press archives, using the conceptualization of absent popular culture, reveal different characteristics of the analyzed cultural products regarding the self-representation of popular subjects and their role in the public sphere. This is differentiated from the conventional nineteenth-century Chilean political satire, which centered on the disputes of the oligarchs while making visible a popular subject (sender and receiver) that is much more complex and paradoxical than that of the dominant labor press. The findings are relevant to a current debate on popular others, how they have historically remained hidden, and how to bring them to the forefront for reflection on current political projects.