Abstract

The media helps to symbolically build the nation by its effect, mainly on culture and, through it, on the different sides and areas of the citizens’ activities. However, the means vary. Here we review and compare what was done by El Mercurio de Santiago with its first and canonic editorial in 1900, to what was done by another canonical publication, this time a Chilean labor press. The latter was written by one of the dignitaries of the Chilean syndicalism, Luis Emilio Recabarren.

The first kind of press indirectly talks to the readers about the Chile expected, whether on the second kind the message comes in an explicit and direct way, which leaves nothing to open interpretation. Our work is about two different ways to build a nation, which depend on the characteristics of both media and on the relevant style to their target public. Nevertheless, their styles are not simply a rhetoric issue.