A new bill proposes to criminalize direct action for housing in Chile

The text across the houses reads: “no to the anti-occupations law.” Image by Paz Ahumada Berríos for Ojalá.

Opinion • July 14, 2023 • Claudia Hernández Aliaga • Leer en castellano

In March, Fundación Techo reported the existence of 1,290 informal housing settlements in Chile, with almost 114,000 families living in them. The number of encampments has exploded over the past three years, according to the report. Never before has such a large number of informal settlements been recorded in Chile.  

The encampments—similar to favelas or squatted neighborhoods, as they are called elsewhere in Latin America—are made up of housing built on land that is occupied or taken over in an irregular or illegal manner. At least initially, the housing is precarious and offers few services, especially in terms of access to basic supplies such as water, electricity or sanitation.

The erosion of economic conditions, rising living costs, low salaries and unstable incomes in the wake of the pandemic are key factors in the increase of encampments.

The occupation of land for encampments has historically been understood as a form of collective action that seeks to provide an immediate solution to the housing emergency. At the same time, it is conceived of as a specific strategy in the fight for housing.

The response of the neoliberal Chilean state to the housing crisis has been insufficient and limited. Chile does not guarantee the right to decent and adequate housing, nor does it have a housing policy aimed at solving this structural problem.

Over the past few months, a bill initially introduced by right-wing and extreme right-wing senators in early 2021 gained momentum in parliament. The proposal would establish prison sentences for all persons who participate in land or real estate seizures, whether public or private, and whether the occupations take place on a temporary or permanent basis.

The passage of this law, which is called the Usurpations Law, would mean the brutal criminalization of land occupations, and therefore of struggles for the right to decent and adequate housing.

In this context, it is worth remembering that land occupations are not new or recent events. There is a historical memory of struggles for housing in Chile, and now is an opportune moment to recover it.

Historic struggles for housing

In the 1960s, the emblematic La Victoria Occupation—now called La Victoria, in the south-central area of Santiago—set a precedent both in Chile and throughout Latin America. It was the first time people organized on a massive scale—1,200 families of unemployed and homeless workers—to take over a vacant area and build their own homes. Their struggle for decent housing led them to self-manage the community, creating their own livelihoods, and overseeing their own community protection and defense.

The experience was powerful, and it quickly found solidarity among diverse sectors. Students, workers, political and social organizations and even the Catholic Church responded to the call to hold up and defend the process initiated by people who were beginning to recognize themselves as residents in struggle. 

The La Victoria Occupation was an experience that was replicated over the following decades, laying the foundation for a movement of occupations that burst onto the political scene. It challenged the question of the "legality” of occupations and demonstrated the capacity for self-organization and self-construction not only of houses, but of community networks sustaining processes of struggle.

During the civil-military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1989) land occupations were, unsurprisingly, harshly repressed and fragmented. During the first decade of this traumatic period, there were no new land occupations. Community work within existing encampments was reduced to the maintenance of communal cooking projects and soup kitchens. 

The economic crisis of the 1980s triggered new housing shortages. A wave of occupations, protests and mobilizations reappeared on the national scene. The Cardenal Raúl Silva Henriquez and Monseñor Francisco Fresno encampments in Santiago’s south became home to almost 5,000 families from 1983-1985. 

Renewed mobilizations for the right to housing, together with the size and composition of the occupations at that time, pushed the housing problem in Chile back on the public agenda.

But the dictatorial regime did not negotiate with those who dared to challenge and upset one of the most sacred rights of the neoliberal order: the right to private property. Its response was eviction and the application of a series of increasingly violent repressive measures ranging from interventionism and persecution to raids and torture. This is how it is described by one of the leaders of the Silva Henríquez Occupation in the documentary "Chile 1983: Culture against fear".

The two occupations were finally destroyed by the government. The same fate would befall subsequent occupations. 

Neoliberal housing policy 

By the early 1980s, the Pinochet regime had already implemented the neoliberal model, both politically and economically. These regulations, including the famous Constitution of 1980—still in force today—constitute the foundations of neoliberalism in Chile.

At this time, housing policy was adjusted to prioritize the free market’s role in the provision of housing, and the government’s role became secondary. Many social rights were no longer legally enshrined, including the right to housing, which was not explicitly recognized in the Constitution.

Since then, housing policy has focused on increasing the number of houses built and improving the targeting of limited social programs. This system has been modified by post-dictatorship governments, who have in fact deepened it. The principle of individual responsibility for the housing crisis, which is structural, has remained intact. 

In the 1990s and 2000s, the number of housing debtors whose homes were being auctioned off grew exponentially. Over this period, debtors led powerful mobilizations for the right to keep their homes, allowing them to obtain the cancellation and repayment of their debts and avoid losing their homes.

The 1999 occupation of Peñalolén in Santiago marked a new milestone in housing activism. It was a massive occupation of land, another clear illustration of how the housing crisis is a permanent phenomenon within the neoliberal capitalist model of housing provision. Peñalolén came to be home to around 9,000 people, and became a point of reference in the struggle due to its organization and the capacities its residents developed to position their demands and negotiate with the government.

A dangerous anti-occupation bill awaits approval 

The explosive increase in land occupations in recent years has been of particular concern to large landowners. In alliance with right-wing parties, they have successfully positioned the need for a law to protect their land and a hard line against those who dare to hinder the exercise of their property rights in the public debate.

The Usurpations Law has advanced rapidly since it was introduced. It is currently being retooled according to instructions from the Executive, which seek to reduce prison sentences and eliminate the disproportionality of some measures in the original bill. Among them is "privileged self-defense," which would exempt police and civilians who evict an occupation from criminal responsibility. 

Despite these instructions, the spirit of the bill remains intact: criminalization and persecution of those who fight for their rights via occupations. It also reinforces repressive measures against the territorial claims of Mapuche people, and even threatens protest actions that occupy public spaces in order to make their demands heard, as in the emblematic student occupations.

The Usurpations Law is a regression to which the only comparison are the draconian measures adopted during the dictatorship. Today, this law is justified within a context of the need to further protect private land ownership. 

Participants in land occupations, encampments, and movements of occupiers in the different regions of Chile, as well as organized communities, housing committees, cooperatives and a heterogeneous group of social and community organizations have risen up with an urgent call to all people and sectors to protest this bill, and prevent it from criminalizing people in struggle.