What is security for the Chilean State: a discourse analysis 1990-2016

Abstract

The objective of this article is to show how security has been understood from the perspective of the Chilean State during the post-dictatorship period. To do this, we have analyzed a corpus of 55 documents prepared by different State instances, valid or created between the years 1990 to 2016. From the notions of discourse and dispositif of Foucault, we analyze these documents in diachronic perspective, identifying elements of continuity and change, outlining three ways of understanding the security that have been present during the studied period: the security of the State, the security of the people and their properties, and the security in tension with the Human Rights. The first of these forms, close to the theoretical notions of public order, predominates in the State's discourses of the first decade of post-dictatorship; however, it continues to apply currently as common sense. The second form is linked to citizen security studies, it incorporates the perceptions of the citizens and involves them in the position of victim. As a response to the vision of the security as a threat to Human Rights, there is a construction of a triad of equivalence: security=the police=right, that seeks to ally the audience against the enemy of this period: the protester, who opens the door to the aggressions against the police occured during the street protests.