Abstract

This article describes and interprets the construction of dwellings in border territories based on the translocal representations of Latin American immigrants. Patterns of migration in urban territories is of interest not only because of their relevance to the construction of civic identities but also translocal residential patterns. Starting with the study of representations -cognitive maps- of Peruvian immigrants of the XXI century, who were residents of La Chimba in Santiago de Chile, this paper explores these shifts and the local and global implications for the construction of dwellings in our cities. It concludes that it is the experience of translocal residence –neither as close nor as far- that builds the specificity of borderlands. That is, territories that are diverse, heterogeneous, and with hybrid cultures - through real and imaginary displacements- celebrate and enable the urban conditions of our cities. It therefore proposes an anthropology that digs into the silence and the memories of those itinerant and displaced individuals and groups without whose stories the urban condition will forever be incomplete.