The pobladores movement and La Victoria settlement (Chile): exemplarity, social movements and the right to the city

Abstract

The take-over of land that gave birth to the squatter settlement known as La Victoria (Santiago, Chile) has been considered the starting point of the Chilean pobladores movement, because with it the pobladores came on the scene, anticipating a repertory that became generalized in the 1970s. La VictoriaÍ€™s trajectory appears then as a privileged experience to analyze both the pobladores movementÍ€™s development and the main theories that seek to understand it: the marginality theory, the urban social movements theory and the new social movements theory. This paper shows how the social sciences treatment of the pobladores oscillated between proclamations of the newness of the movement and its requiem, contrasting theses theories with some categories of the political opportunities theory and the critic geography, and indicating the need to rethink the pobladores movement under the light of La VictoriaÍ€™s experience.

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