The land seizure tha imposed the right to the city in the southern cone: the case of Esperanza Andina de Peñalolen (1992-1998)

Abstract

The article shows that the last great land seizure by homeless people in Chile in 1992 became, at the same time, the first in Chile and in the Southern Cone to reclaim the right to the city, understood as living in consolidated areas with urban services instead of being eradicated to suburbs outside the city with serious problems of mobility and essential services. While in Brazil, Peru, Venezuela or Paraguay the consolidation of popular neighborhoods in central, tourist and even residential areas is quite common, in the "orderly" Southern Cone of Santiago, Buenos Aires or Montevideo, what was achieved by the residents of Esperanza Andina was a qualitative shift that foreshadowed a new conception of habitability and raised the standards in what the XXI century has polarized as a right to the city.