«El genio de la matanza»: Los soldados chilenos y la violencia del combate en la Guerra del Pacífico (1879-1884)

In several testimonies left by Chilean veterans of the Pacific War, it is possible to unveil situations in which the soldiers, alongside their companions, took the lives of their opponents in the heat of battle. In these memories, the extreme violence inflicted or experienced is obscured, since the...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: González Puebla, Cristián, Llantén Quiroz, Nicolás Fernando
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:Perú
Institución:Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
Repositorio:PUCP-Institucional
Idioma:español
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.pucp.edu.pe:20.500.14657/199723
Acceso en línea:https://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/historica/article/view/28725/26369
https://doi.org/10.18800/historica.202302.004
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Combat
Battlefield
Emotional community
Pacific war
Combate
Campo de batalla
Comunidad emocional
Guerra del Pacífico
https://purl.org/pe-repo/ocde/ford#6.01.01
Descripción
Sumario:In several testimonies left by Chilean veterans of the Pacific War, it is possible to unveil situations in which the soldiers, alongside their companions, took the lives of their opponents in the heat of battle. In these memories, the extreme violence inflicted or experienced is obscured, since the actions of combat are generally attributed to a third person. However, these testimonies allow us to understand and approach the collective memory of Chilean fighters in the conflict of 1879-1884. They also allow us to see the soldiers as members of an emotional community that internalizes elements of combat psychology and physiology, which are vital in understanding the act of killing. All of this ends up highlighting terrible concrete experiences of the horrors of the battlefield, which represent a topic so far very little addressed in the historiography.