Abstract

Media outlets, through their own mediating dynamics, have gradually transformed into true agents of society’s memory. Following the deaths of former president Patricio Aylwin in 2016 and former socialist senator Carlos Altamirano in 2019—both pivotal political figures in Chile’s recent history—this research posits that the written press constructed a memory framed within two media narratives: Funerary Rite and Democratic Legacy. For this purpose, El Mercurio de Santiago and La Tercera were chosen as case studies, as both were significant political actors, opposing the Unidad Popular government, supportive of the Military Regime, and functioning within contemporary democracy. Through an inductive method and qualitative discourse analysis, it is concluded that, with their ideological characteristics and varied political stances in the past, the Chilean press promoted a memory that used these deaths to endorse normative lessons on the ideal conduct of politics within Chile’s current democracy.