Since 2016, Los Arenales, an informal settlement of 2,000 families in Antofagasta, the capital of resource extraction of northern Chile, has been transforming from an illegal occupation of public land into an urban subcenter project with housing and services. The process is led by a community organization, driven by the resistance of a group of women—local leaders—through intercultural initiatives, ongoing education to realize the right to the city, the management of basic services, and negotiations with the government. It has evolved from facing eviction threats to becoming a pilot neighborhood improvement plan for Chile’s housing policy.

This practice improves the living conditions of:

• 15,000 families in the La Bonilla sector—an area of run-down public housing built thirty years ago—through the urban sub-center proposal;
• the communities of the “Los Arenales” informal settlement, comprising 2,000 families from Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, Peru, and Venezuela (75% of families are not Chilean);
• 44 local leaders from these nationalities who are spearheading the process;
• local social organizations and other related groups;
• staff from public, private, and academic institutions at the national, regional, sectoral, and municipal levels.

The macrocampamento is organized into 15 committees, with representatives united under a single legal entity, “Rompiendo Barreras”; it has a spokesperson and delegations recognized by the State—finally, after 10 years of struggling to raise awareness of the process—under the leadership of 42 women and 2 men; with a leading role played by the coordinator of the 94 informal settlements of the Antofagasta Region, and a national voice in the Movement for Decent Housing for Residents and in the Latin American network SELVIHP (Latin American Secretariat for Housing and Popular Habitat).

Over the course of 10 years, the process of self-managed education and organising has led to the situation evolving from one of imminent eviction, to becoming a pilot project for the Chilean government aimed at transforming a precarious and criminalized settlement into a neighborhood that provides housing services and functions as an urban sub-center for a deprived area on the outskirts of the city.

Defense of the rights of migrants, women, and the right to habitat (land, adequate housing, water, and sanitation), recognized by the National Institute of Human Rights (INDH) through the National Human Rights Award (2022) presented to Elizabeth Andrade, spokesperson for Los Arenales and member of the Network on Human Rights and Evictions in Chile.

In the tradition of HIC: human rights to land and housing; empowerment through gender equality; the active role of residents in the development and management of neighborhoods; the right to the city and to sustainable territories; ongoing training of social agents for city-building processes; solidarity with the struggle for safe places to live in peace and with dignity; and a good life for all.

The Los Arenales community, “Rompiendo Barreras,” from 2017 to 2023, during a period of significant migration, has been the victim of criminalization and exclusionary policies. The families, mostly migrants, moved to the settlement due to rising rents; they chose “illegal” housing to cover food and education expenses. 

Challenges were addressed through community organizing, street protests, political and solidarity alliances, self-education and women’s empowerment, mutual aid, and self-management.

With committed and supportive professional guidance to facilitate: 

• conceptual and technical learning: the right to the city, land-use planning, project management, and dialogue and negotiation with public authorities; 
• public recognition of the leading role played by local actors in defending human rights and transforming a low-income, precarious, irregular, “illegal,” and highly densely populated settlement into a neighborhood fully integrated into the city.

Between 2016 and 2023, the transformation process in Los Arenales has achieved, among other things: community centers, sports fields, and gardens/farms;

• a worker-owned cooperative and an industrial bakery;
• preschools and a leadership training school;
• drinking water and sewer service for 2,000 housing units;
• electricity meters in every home and lighting in all alleys;
• during the pandemic, for 18 months, 700 lunches served daily;
• waste management and trash collection;
• stabilization of the sandy soil,
• urban development of the area (2018) and Roadmap toward #Settlement #BuildingACity (2023).

Since 2024, with the involvement of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and the Regional Government: 

• master plan for the settlement, including a civic, cultural, and care subcenter;
• management plan for implementing the urbanization process and construction projects;
• registration of public lands with the Regional Housing and Urbanization Service for the development of the master plan, including 1,500 housing units in high-density buildings. 

The most important lesson from this ongoing process is that the struggle is a very long one.

“When the State disappears, self-management and solidarity flourish […]. To build Chile’s first Latin American city, we organized ourselves, practiced self-care techniques, and, every day, solve the problems of life in the macrocampamento […]. We are empowered women and we need support; that is why we want professionals who can envision what we dream of […] We have defined our concept of the right to the city—the ideal city of Los Arenales, which does not yet exist, but in which we are the protagonists because, day after day, without stopping and at the expense of our health, we contribute to its realization.”

—Quotes from Elizabeth Andrade Huaringa, recipient of the National Human Rights Award and spokesperson for the Los Arenales Macro-Camp.

The city is built through long and bumpy processes; it is not static. It can be understood as a space of encounter and conflict between multiple personal issues and public problems. 

Local social organization can transform a precarious informal settlement into a dignified neighborhood, as is happening in the Los Arenales macrocampamento. It is another step toward moving from individual precarity to collective proposals. It describes a sequence of moments where need and opportunity converge. 

It highlights learnings and solidarity-based forms of technical assistance, as well as signs of the consolidation of local organization, despite the uncertain context marked by both threats and promises. It may or may not represent—depending largely on the sustainability of the organizational dynamics—a roadmap toward the fulfillment of human rights within the specific context of vulnerable territories.