Solidarity and support to the homeless workers of Chile

bolivia / peru / ecuador / chile | community struggles | press release Tuesday March 14, 2006 00:37 by OSL - ORGANIZACION SOCIALISTA LIBERTARIA oslargentina at yahoo dot com dot ar

The Chilean popular organization Lucha y Vivienda [Struggle and Housing] urgently needs the maximum support and solidarity from all our social organizations.

Solidarity and support to the homeless workers of Chile

The Chilean popular organization Lucha y Vivienda [Struggle and Housing] urgently needs the maximum support and solidarity from all our social organizations.

Lucha y Vivienda was formed just over 2 years ago and is made up of approximately 200 families who are facing the problem of access to decent housing, a problem shared by many urban dwellers.

In the locality of Peñalolen alone, in Santiago, which has over 200,000 inhabitants, the Chilean Chamber of Construction estimates that 18,000 families are either living as mortgage debtors or as "allegados" (people living in cramped conditions with their relatives in households usually consisting of several families).

According to Lucha y Vivienda, the disgraceful situation that workers without a house are facing has been caused by the real estate companies (dedicated to the construction of housing for the bourgeoisie, completely out of reach to working-class families), large landowners (who speculate with prices) and the Chilean State (which blocks access to decent housing by the poorest and whose laws serve to give privilege to mortgage companies).

The Chilean State's much-vaunted Housing Law provides for the settling of workers' families in the outskirts of the major cities in "popular" homes of only 28 square metres.

The demands of Lucha y Vivienda are:

• The construction of "popular" homes of 60 square metres with 100 square metres of land.
• Rents no greater than 10% of the minimum wage.
• Special subsidies for cheaper lands.
• Real participation of working-class sectors in urban reform.
• No expulsion of the "homeless" from their area of residence.

The bourgeois media and officials of the Chilean State have begun a campaign to "denounce" the activities of Lucha y Vivienda, seeking to impede their operation, to criminalize their actions and to imprison their militants.

The Chilean State follows the activities of Lucha y Vivienda, and when the organization was preparing for the occupation of lands in Peñalolen on Saturday 26th March, security forces mounted an operation in order to block it.

The sentence for the crime of "usurpation" in Chile is two years in prison, but the Chilean State can also accuse members of the movement with "illegal association", which carries a sentence of up to thirty years.

However, like every struggle born of the most basic necessities of our poeple, it is a struggle that cannot be stopped through threats or orders. Its just demands must be met.

And just as Lucha y Vivienda will not abandon its demands, the comrades and our combative Chilean brothers and sisters appeal to all our popular organizations for support and solidarity for the occupation of lands that they have planned and carried out.

ORGANIZACION SOCIALISTA LIBERTARIA argentina
EN LA CALLE - anarchist journal
oslargentina@yahoo.com.ar
Buenos Aires: 15 de noviembre 1164, barrio de constitución.
Parana: orgalibertaria@hotmail.com

Translation by FdCA International Relations Office