Propriety and Popular Sovereignty: Insurgent Ownership and the Left in Allende's Chile

From the late 1960s until the military coup in September, 1973, more than ten percent of the population of Santiago, Chile took part in organized land seizures.  Leftist housing activists were the most important organizers of these seizures.  Through their work with squatters, these activists presented a revolutionary challenge to land tenure practices in the city and helped to reshape the urban landscape.  This paper argues that the act of squatting was an assertion of popular sovereignty, including a right to land and territory.  In a number of communities established by squatters, leftist leaders put in place neighborhood councils that sought to organize residents and create revolutionary, “new men” who would work for collective ends in reshaping their communities and Chilean society.  Yet an examination of the consolidation of neighborhoods established by squatters demonstrates that liberal understandings of proper behavior, citizenship, and homeownership tempered revolutionary activism.  Ultimately, the squatters took part in a process of insurgent ownership, in which they transgressed state authority in order to gain access to private property.  In order to stay on their lands, moreover, they had to demonstrate worth as proper citizens, often based on sensibilities long present within Chile’s capitalist state formation.  This dynamic intimately shaped both their communities and the emerging forms of popular sovereignty in revolutionary Chile.