Faced with the existing human housing crisis in the country, which causes a level of indignity and daily pain in millions of people, the failed state, in the hands of the political elite, takes a line that coincides with its permanent tendency to “punish”, in an effort to control the possible popular disobedience in the face of the situations of abandonment that these social strata suffer. In this context, the initiative of the Usurpations Law is communicated, in which the House committee approves it in general, with prison sentences for illegal occupations.
In practice, this criminalisation is similar to what happened during the Pinochet dictatorship with its State of Siege decree of November 1984 to control the population, where the situation of popular areas in the 1980s was the theme of the Ministry of the Interior, as it was characterised as a problem of national security.
There is a vast literature, studies and reports that show that this scourge of overcrowding began in the early 1900s, given the migrations from rural areas to the outskirts of the big cities, in peculiarity Santiago and Valparaíso, generating cordons of settlements in inhumane conditions, which in later decades, and based on the organisation of the people of those territories, set a direction towards the seizure of land which in the words of historian Gabriel Salazar “pursued two strategic objectives: (a) the illegal seizure of an urban site and, (b) integration into urban society through a self-integrating transgression promoted by the marginal (…); the ‘seizure’, in that sense, was not intended as a ‘war to the death’ action (where ‘war’ had and had meaning for its own sake) for here violence was calculated as a means to produce a non-violent end result: ‘legalisation’. ”
The installation of emblematic populations with this origin, in different territories, began in the 1950s with what we know today as the population of La Victoria and has continued up to the present day. In this sense, we can speak of a “tool” used by the marginalised popular world, and which today is criminalised, just at a time of impoverishment of the wage-earning strata and new waves of migrants, this time of people coming from some countries of the continent.
Today, the “dream of home ownership” is becoming more and more distant. At the end of the year 2022, a study by Fundación Techo with the Public Policy Centre of the Catholic University, indicates a deficit of more than 641,000 homes throughout the country, a figure similar to that recognised by the government, approximately 650,000; figures that include the 1,290 camps that currently exist in Chile (National Cadastre of Camps 2022-2023 of Fundación Techo). The study shows that the housing crisis has its visible face in the seizure of land, mainly by families who declare themselves affected by: the high cost of rent (74.8%), the need to break with their situation as “allegados” (73.6%) and the low income they receive (72.5%).
It is in this context that, almost a week ago, the Committee on Citizen Security of the Lower House, with four votes against, approved the advance of the Usurpations Law initiative mentioned above, an initiative presented by a group of mainly right-wing senators (supposedly motivated by the murder of a businessman involved in a dispute over illegally occupied land). Such a law initiative is urgently incorporated into the “fast track” of 31 projects prioritised – in agreement – by the government and the (right-wing) Congress, becoming one more of the strongly punitive and repressive measures, which are presented as proposals to solve long-standing social problems, and which leaves the pro-government conglomerate without a majority in the parliamentary chambers on a forced footing, by approving the modification to the Penal Code that allows legitimate self-defence against people who occupy illegally (inciting armed confrontation between civilians) and the level of penalisation with imprisonment for usurpation with and without violence.
For the Jesuit priest Héctor Guarda, chaplain of TECHO-Chile, this law “criminalises poverty” because it does not distinguish between exploitation and need, pointing out that “an abusive occupation of land is not the same as a seizure carried out by people in a precarious socio-economic situation”.
On the other hand, for Santiago Castillo, spokesperson for the Agrupación por la Vivienda Luchadores de Lo Hermida, “The housing problem is undoubtedly linked to the economic crisis that hundreds of thousands of these families are going through. The galloping inflation, price rises, the deterioration of real wages and the absence of measures to defend the pockets of the inhabitants are evidently destroying the possibility of access to housing” … “Inflation is rapidly translating into an increase in overcrowding, as it is increasingly difficult to pay rent”.
This law will obviously not be the right response for people suffering from the effects of the housing crisis in our country. Rather, it will aggravate the situation even more by not having a concrete solution after the eviction for a significant number of families who will once again wander around in search of a place to live (without ignoring its possible use in the land conflict in dispute between Mapuche communities and companies and “settlers”).
The “state offer” is that 60 thousand houses or flats will be built annually, the average annual increase in requirements is around 25 thousand units (the last 6 years); this gives a real advance over the deficit (650 thousand) of approximately 35 thousand houses per year, a dynamic that postpones the closing of the gap by almost 2 decades (if all goes well). This ensures that for at least the next 5 years there will be half a million families without housing, which they are trying to control with this new law of the garrotte.
This current reality, promoted by the country’s political elite, totally ignores the weight in Chile’s history of the movements that have arisen from these people in need of housing, who via “illegal” takeovers of public or private land, put pressure on local or national authorities to achieve land ownership, the incorporation of basic services, social and credit aid to achieve the so-called “self-built neighbourhood” as a no end in sight. This organised base, which also provided responses in the areas of food, health, education, and which was the real force of social and political power mobilised to overcome the dictatorship, and which, in general, governments of all stripes (except the UP), responded to their demands with repression, in order to hide, without assuming, their incapacity and negligence in prioritising the issue.
On the other hand, we firmly believe that this historical incidence of popular territorial organisation will re-emerge again and again in the immediate and medium future, overcoming the current infamy of the powerful, building from these spaces a dignified society, for all, without privileges and without exclusions.
Collaborators: M. Angélica Alvear Montecinos; Sandra Arriola Oporto; Ricardo Lisboa Henríquez; Guillermo Garcés Parada and César Anguita Sanhueza. Public Opinion Commission.