Independence, do-it-yourself, literature and reality in the chilean magazine La Calabaza del Diablo (1998-2004)

Abstract

This article reviews the Chilean cultural magazine La Calabaza del Diablo (1998-2004) with the objective of demonstrating how its appearance gave rise to the implementation of an alternative, multi-thronged cultural project with a do-it-yourself attitude that brought together a group of young poets, journalists and artists who hadn’t found a place for themselves in the frameworks granted by existing cultural institutions of the Chilean postdictatorship period. I maintain that this magazine, through the literary and cultural criticism, turned into a space to establish connections with the national situation of the moment to make visible one of the most eclipsed genres during the nineties: poetry.