Pobladores’ struggle for la vida digna: Reframing the right to housing in Santiago, Chile

• In Event: The Banality of Neoliberalism: Precarious Lives, Ordinary Lives in Chile

Abstract

Current housing policies in Chile are predicated upon a number of neoliberal-oriented reforms implemented during Pinochet’s dictatorship. These reforms changed drastically the way Santiago’s pobladores (homeless, working-class subjects) obtain and envisage social housing: if in the 1960s and early 1970s pobladores used to become homeowners through collective practices of land occupations and autoconstruction, since the late 1970s la casa propia (one’s own home) has been construed as a commodity that the poor can get through both state subsidies and each family’s private savings. Although this subsidy-based policy has contributed significantly to reducing the quantitative housing deficit in the last two decades, it has been strongly criticized because of its segregationist character since social housing projects tend to be located in bad-equipped peripheral ghettos. Consequently, the massive allocation of subsidized housing has not necessarily improved the living conditions of the urban poor. This presentation analyzes ethnographically how contemporary pobladores, organized through state-regulated housing assemblies (comités de allegados), both make use of and question neoliberal urban policies by deploying new political narratives based on the notion of la vida digna (“life with dignity”). In doing so, I argue, Santiago’s pobladores not only reconceptualize the traditional claim for the right to housing, but also generate a set of novel political, ethical, and aesthetical judgments about what it means to be poblador. Finally, I point out that the rise of a dignity-based language in housing movements illuminates the intrinsic limitations of neoliberalism regarding its promises of social inclusion.

Author

• Miguel Pérez Ahumada, University of California, Berkeley