The aim of the present article is to analyze two propaganda organizations and some of the murals which were produced by them in Chile during the government of the Popular Unit. At that time, the Chilean left attempted to develop the project of transition into socialism by peaceful means. The images were created with propagandistic ends by muralistic brigades, which belonged to the main government parties - the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. The ways in which they were structured and the pictorial and textual messages that were produced by these organizations allowed us to observe some aspects of the role the main government parties had in the political and cultural struggle they waged in favor of this common project. Our analysis is based on the assumption that the images created translate, as historical documents, the political and ideological values of the Popular Unit, as well as its internal political tensions. The aim of the muralistic brigades was to awaken society's political awareness and gain its support in order to transform Chile into a socialist country, which ultimately contributed to the construction of a socialist imaginary. The study of the ways in which Popular Unit’s visual propaganda disseminated that imaginary constitutes the central axis of the present work, which circumscribes itself, from a historiographical standpoint, in the field of the history of representation. It is our understanding that the analysis of the images expressed in the murals allows us to apprehend the meaning of the imaginary which directed the political practices of the Communist and Socialist Parties in Chile at that time.
Muralistic Brigades; Chilean Experience; Social Imaginaries