Abstract

Since the early 1990s, Chilean democratic governments after Augusto Pinochet’s dic- tatorship have made an effort to allocate publicly subsidized housing to the lower classes. Nevertheless, the dominance of market principles in urban policies has contributed to the formation of highly segregated neighborhoods and the gentrification of peripheral neigh- borhoods. As a result, Chilean public opinion is witnessing the rearticulation of what in the mid-twentieth century was known as the pobladores movement—social mobiliza- tions demanding housing solutions for the poor. In the old working-class municipality of Peñalolén, severe gentrification since the late 1980s has triggered the appearance of auton- omous grassroots organizations such as the Movimiento de Pobladores en Lucha (MPL). The movement has been able to fight social and spatial injustice in Santiago through a subversive appropriation of state policies. Its experience reveals the potentialities of such mobilizations for democratizing cities under a neoliberal regime.