On May 31th of 2023, the presentation of de-industrialization studies that arise from different parts of the world began. In this context, the Doctor María Esperanza Rock, in the company of the Doctor Irene Díaz Martínez, were part of the international conference to represent Lota and Asturias.

This project is part of the counsel of the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID) through the FONDECYT initiation «Memories of urban and cultural transformations of deindustrialization of the Global North and South». The head of the study is Doctor Rock and remains in development at the University of Concepción.

In addition, Doctor Irene Díaz, who coordinates the “Oral Archive for the sources of the social history of Asturias”, that hosts collections of oral testimonies of former workers of the coal basin of Asturias, will hold a research stay during November in the Biobío region with the Doctor Rock.

The study presented on the cultural representations of industrial memory in present times, emerges from the visibility of differences and similarities from a critical study of deindustrialization with a comparative perspective of the global north and south.

The forum had that aime to publicize the different studies of deindustrialization in different parts of the world, indicate that deindustrialization was often connected to the forms of reindustrialization.

«The concept of deindustrialization in Chile is put in crisis, due to the massive development of extractive transnational companies in our territory, therefore, we must look critically and analytically at what happened in the coal zones that today are transformed into slaughter zones», said Doctor Rock.

In this line, it was explained how the transformations associated with deindustrialization did not lead to the complete devastation of industrial centers and abandonment of urban environments. This process is continuously associated with the rust belt of the United States and the centers of heavy industry in formerly socialist countries.