Santiago has served as the capital of Chile since colonial times. The city was founded in 1541 under the name Santiago del Nuevo Extremo — meaning “Santiago of the New Frontier” — and grew steadily over the following centuries into the country’s political, cultural, and economic center. By the 1960s, Santiago was a city in motion, shaped by ambitious government development plans and a rapidly expanding urban population.
The decade brought visible change to the city’s infrastructure. In 1966, the Santiago Metropolitan Park was established on Cerro San Cristóbal, giving the city one of its most recognizable green spaces. The new International Airport Pudahuel opened in 1967, connecting Chile to the wider world. Then in 1969, construction began on the Santiago Metro, a project that would eventually reshape how millions of people moved through the city each day.
Photographer Marcelo Montecino documented all of this — not the ribbon-cuttings or the official announcements, but the human side of the city. His camera found children playing in the streets, neighbors leaning out of doorways, vendors at market stalls, and the quietly desperate scenes that official histories tend to leave out. The photographs below span three years of his work: 1962, 1964, and 1969.
Montecino’s 1962 work is some of his most striking. Many of these early images were taken in working-class districts and around landmark streets and stations. The neighborhood of Barrio Franklin, a historically poor and lively market district in southern Santiago, appears in several frames. He also photographed around Estación San Diego and along streets whose Spanish titles — “Calle de la desesperanza” (Street of Hopelessness), “Desesperanza” (Despair), “Indigence” — tell their own story without any further explanation.
The image titled “Angelito” — little angel — refers to a practice documented across Latin America in which the death of a young child was marked with a specific type of funeral photograph or ceremony. The child was dressed and posed as an angel, the belief being that a child who died before the age of reason went directly to heaven. This was not a hidden or shameful event but a recognized cultural ritual, and Montecino photographed it plainly.
Montecino’s visits to the Asylum for the Blind in 1962 produced images that are careful and close. The institution housed residents who had little visibility in the wider city, and his photographs bring them into focus — not as objects of pity, but as people living their daily routines within those walls.
Barrio Franklin sits in the commune of Santiago Centro and has long been known for its flea markets, repair shops, and dense street life. In the 1960s, it was a hub for working-class residents and street traders. Montecino’s four photographs from the neighborhood in 1962 show its texture: the crowded stalls, the worn facades, the people who spent their days buying, selling, and passing through.
Children appear throughout Montecino’s 1962 work in ways that reflect both the vitality and the hardship of working-class Santiago. Some photographs show kids in motion — playing, laughing, occupying their corner of the city. Others, like “Poor children” and “Descalzo” (Barefoot), document what poverty looked like for the city’s youngest residents.
Not all of Montecino’s street scenes carry heavy titles. “Compadres” — close male friends or godfather-bonded companions — shows a moment of camaraderie. “2 Drunk in the rain” is exactly what it says: a candid, unposed moment from a wet Santiago street. These photographs sit alongside the bleaker ones, making the full picture of city life something more than a single mood.
The title “Lazarillo” references a figure from Spanish literary tradition — a young guide who leads a blind person through the world. In 1962 Santiago, the image carries that same meaning: a sighted guide leading someone who cannot see, captured on an ordinary city street. It connects the daily reality of the city to a much older cultural reference without any need for explanation.
Plaza Italia — officially known as Plaza Baquedano — sits at the junction of several of Santiago’s major arteries and has historically been the gathering point for public celebrations and protests alike. Montecino photographed it in both 1962 and 1964, two years that bracketed a significant shift in Chilean politics leading up to the 1964 presidential election.
One of the most direct images from 1962 is a photograph of graffiti on a Santiago wall. The text reads: “The workers shouldn’t have children because they’ll always be poor.” It is a blunt statement of fatalism written by an unknown hand, and Montecino chose to photograph it without commentary. The image stands on its own.
By 1964, Montecino’s focus shifted slightly. The Mapocho River — which runs through the northern edge of the city center — appears in two photographs from that year. The Mapocho had long been a working waterway and a dividing line in the city’s geography. “The kiss by the Mapocho” and the straightforwardly titled “Mapocho” show the river as a place where ordinary life unfolded alongside it, not around it.
“The right, elections” from 1964 places Montecino’s lens directly on Chile’s political life. The 1964 presidential election was a defining contest in Chilean history, pitting Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Montalva against Socialist Salvador Allende. The right-wing vote consolidated behind Frei to block Allende. Montecino photographed campaigning as it appeared on the streets — posters, crowds, and the visible machinery of political persuasion.
The 1969 photographs show a different Santiago — one where construction on the Metro had just begun and the city’s population was pressing outward into new neighborhoods. Montecino photographed parks, religious gatherings, street photographers, and intimate moments across several districts. Quinta Normal, a western neighborhood built around a large public park, appears in three photographs. Parque Forestal and Parque Japonés also feature, showing how Santiaguinos used the city’s green spaces.
“Canutos” is Chilean slang for evangelical Protestants — a term used informally, sometimes affectionately, sometimes not. Montecino photographed evangelical gatherings in Quinta Normal in 1969, the same year he also captured a formal funeral and a religious ceremony under the title “Evangelicals.” Religious life in Santiago in the 1960s was not exclusively Catholic, and these photographs document that diversity.
Among the 1969 photographs, several feel distinctly personal. “My father” and “My neighbor” are titles that put Montecino himself inside the frame — not as an outside observer recording strangers, but as a man photographing the people closest to him. “First date” and “The sad kiss” are similarly intimate, catching private moments in public spaces.
Street photographers — professionals who took portraits of passersby for a small fee — were a common sight in mid-20th century Latin American cities. Montecino dedicated three photographs in 1969 to documenting them at work in Santiago. He also photographed a soda fountain on Vicuña Mackenna, one of Santiago’s main southern avenues, showing the commercial streetscape that residents moved through every day.
