Diagnóstico y prospectiva de la infraestructura cultural de Barranquilla (Colombia)

Abstract

This paper examines how the cultural infrastructure of a city (its presence or absence) relates to the cultural discourse that such city has developed. In this sense, three cultural moments are suggested in the history of Barranquilla: An anticipated modernity; the discourse of nostalgia; and the late modernity. Based on these cultural moments, some elements of the cultural infrastructre of the city were tallied and interpreted. In this third moment, it is shown how the city has been unable to construct a cultural discourse (therefore a cultural infrastructure) that will reveal the multiple cities that make up Barranquilla and how the mass media (privileged space in the modern cultural discourse and therefore defining element in a cultural infrastructure) construct a fragmented and unequivocal discourse capable of representing the pluralistic city that Barranquilla is today and to stimulate a cultural sphere that contributes to the production, creation or simply enjoyment of the city.