Identidades sin espacios de memoria. El caso del área metropolitana de Barranquilla (Colombia)

Abstract

This research approaches some of the variables that, in the peripheries of the cities of the Third World, have an impact on the absence of an urban identity and a democratic political culture, using as specific example Soledad, a town in the department of Atlántico, Colombia. The first objective was to ask for the different meanings given to public sphere by the inhabitants, on the base that public space is the space of public affairs. In the first place, we made field trips to public spaces to create an inventory; and surveys to establish the uses given to these spaces. Secondly, we asked for the dynamics these people had created to insert themselves in urban life. The surveys confirmed the absence of channels of expression and participation making of non institutionalized forms of social identity the only alternative for the citizens, especially for young people. Due to this, the study centred its conclusions on the demands that these realities present to the State and on the dangers that these unfinished citizenships imply to the consolidation of the democracy.