The Invention of the Toma: Informality and Mobilization in Santiago de Chile, 1945–1957

When and why did the tomas (land occupations) begin? Despite the widespread belief that La Victoria, in 1957, was the first toma in Chile, and even in Latin America, many scholars affirm that this phenomenon began in the mid-forties. In this chapter, through a press analysis and a review of documentary sources, we study the land occupations that were carried out in Santiago de Chile between 1945 and 1957. Our thesis is that the toma was a particular form of occupation that took on definite features in the mid-1950s, when land occupations evolved from silent and direct actions carried out to obtain a place to live into collective protests displayed in the public space. In this way, it became a claim-making performance. This shift in the mobilization of the “pobladores” (a term that stand for low-income neighborhood residents, squatters and homeless) can be explained by the political context, as well as by the changing role of the state in relation to housing and urban growth. Thus, the process that led to the "invention" of the toma sheds light on some broader issues: how poor people's access to land changed in tandem with urban regulation; how specific categories of urban informality emerged from a political context in which tolerance for informal settlements decreased significantly; and how those transformations impacted the ways in which the sin casa organized and mobilized, fueling a shift from the defense of settlements threatened with eviction to performative occupations that demanded housing rights from the government.