Abstract

This article analyses the forms of food resistance developed by nighttime street food vendors in the cities of Temuco and Mai-p & uacute;, Chile. In the context of growing urban foodification, promo-ted by regulatory policies that favour gourmet gastronomic de-vices, this study focuses on how the night becomes a condition of possibility for sustaining popular, autonomous and tolerated labour practices. Based on intensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2022 and 2024 with two family-run street vending units, the research examines food-related decisions, territorial bonds and informal nocturnal organisation. The fin-dings reveal that these vendors construct accessible, affective and functional food landscapes, in contrast to stylised consump-tion models associated with food trucks. Far from reflecting di-sorganisation, these practices embody a situated, adaptive ra-tionality that contests the normative and aesthetic regimes of neoliberal urbanism. The article concludes that incorporating night as an analytical category enhances our understanding of urban informality and contributes to a more complex reading of spatial and food justice in Latin America.