In Chile, the term campamento (camp or tent city) is used to refer to shanty towns that emerged rapidly between the 1960s and 1980s. Synonymous terms for campamentos include "villas miserias" (misery slums), "colonias populares" (popular colonies), and "barrios marginales" (marginal neighborhoods). [1]
The non-governmental organization Un Techo para Chile defines a campamento as a group of basic and rudimentary dwellings that house at least eight families. These settlements lack at least one essential service, such as drinking water, electricity, or wastewater treatment, and are illegally occupying the land. [2] According to studies from Un Techo para Chile, 76% of homes of campamento status in Chile lack access to potable water, 91% lack plumbing, and 48% lack formal access to electricity. [3]
Campamentos often result from the influx of primarily rural workers who migrate to work for city industries. When these low-wage workers find that they cannot pay the high rents of city dwellings, this leads to an accumulation of casual housing, or shantytowns. Residents of campamentos are often temporary workers or laborers working for informal industries, frequently earning wages that are only 60% of the legal minimum wage. [3] Enzo Faletto (1964) explains that workers may come to campamentos with the intention of someday integrating in the city, but due to the poor quality and duration of their employment, they are left with further economic insecurity. [4]
In 2004, there were 531 campamentos in Chile, with 27,785 houses accommodating 32,371 families. An estimated 75% of this population lived below the national poverty line, and 41% were in extreme poverty. [2] By 2011, the number of campamentos had risen to 657, housing 27,378 families. In 2018, there were 822 campamentos, home to 46,423 families. [5] Between 2010 and 2020, the total number of campamentos increased by 22%, and as of 2023, there is currently 113,000 families living in 1,300 campamentos, indicating an increase of 142.06% between 2019 and 2023. This corresponds to campamentos accounting for 2% of all Chilean homes based on the 2017 census. [1] The highest growth was seen in cities such as Antofagasta, Calama, Copiapó, Iquique-Alto Hospicio, La Serena, Valparaíso, and Viña del Mar. [6]
Chile is the world's largest copper suppliers and one of the world's largest lithium suppliers, making mining an essential industry for the national economy. [7] Most of Chile's mining occurs in the Atacama Desert, and Antofagasta is viewed as Chile's economic hub due to its four international ports dedicated almost entirely to transporting minerals. Many Chileans and immigrants move to Antofagasta to work the mines, and this increase in demand causes rent prices in the city to rise and thus an accumulation of campamentos in the city's outskirts. Although these mining industries offer seemingly high wages, they are not substantial enough to sustain city living for these subcontracted workers. [7] According to the Catastro Nacional de Campamentos report from the non-profit TECHO-Chile, the number of campamentos in Chile has risen 51.7% from the period between 2020-2021 and 2022-2023. [1] This report explains that 91.9% of families living in campamentos cite high lease costs as a relevant reason for living there, while 79.3% of families cite low salaries as a relevant reason.
The augment of campamentos in Chile can be seen as an environmental justice issue. In recent decades, the economy of Chile has been expanding due to the expansion of mineral extraction within its borders. However, the benefits of this economic growth is not being distributed to the country at large, as demonstrated by the social exclusion of citizens of a certain class from Chilean cities. [1] Those who have no choice but to reside in campamentos are often the most vulnerable citizens in Chilean society, for reasons such as losing one's job, or economic/familial instability. [3] In addition, immigrants make up a disproportionate percentage of campamento residents.
It is often difficult for those already living in campamentos to find the means necessary to leave and pay for formal housing due to how most campamento residents can only obtain informal or temporary jobs. Furthermore, the liberal economy of Chile offers minimal to no state protections, thus causing further economic insecurity for campamento families. [4] Given the precarious living conditions that characterize these shantytowns, and the pollution that often accompanies informal housing due to close proximity to industrial industries, the rise of campamentos can be considered environmentally unjust.
An informal economy is the part of any economy that is neither taxed nor monitored by any form of government. Although the informal sector makes up a significant portion of the economies in developing countries, it is sometimes stigmatized as troublesome and unmanageable. However, the informal sector provides critical economic opportunities for the poor and has been expanding rapidly since the 1960s. Integrating the informal economy into the formal sector is an important policy challenge.
The Antofagasta Region is one of Chile's sixteen first-order administrative divisions. The second-largest region of Chile in area, it comprises three provinces, Antofagasta, El Loa and Tocopilla. It is bordered to the north by Tarapacá, by Atacama to the south, and to the east by Bolivia and Argentina. The region's capital is the port city of Antofagasta; another one of its important cities is Calama. The region's main economic activity is copper mining in its giant inland porphyry copper systems.
A slum is a highly populated urban residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are primarily inhabited by impoverished people. Although slums are usually located in urban areas, in some countries they can be located in suburban areas where housing quality is low and living conditions are poor. While slums differ in size and other characteristics, most lack reliable sanitation services, supply of clean water, reliable electricity, law enforcement, and other basic services. Slum residences vary from shanty houses to professionally built dwellings which, because of poor-quality construction or lack of basic maintenance, have deteriorated.
Chuquicamata is the largest open pit copper mine in terms of excavated volume in the world. It is located in the north of Chile, just outside Calama, at 2,850 m (9,350 ft) above sea level. It is 215 km (134 mi) northeast of Antofagasta and 1,240 km (770 mi) north of the capital, Santiago. Flotation and smelting facilities were installed in 1952, and expansion of the refining facilities in 1968 made 500,000 tons annual copper production possible in the late 1970s. Previously part of Anaconda Copper, the mine is now owned and operated by Codelco, a Chilean state enterprise, since the Chilean nationalization of copper in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Its depth of 850 metres (2,790 ft) makes it the second deepest open-pit mine in the world, after Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah, United States.
Mejillones is a Chilean port city and commune in Antofagasta Province in the Antofagasta Region. Its name is the plural form of the Spanish mejillón meaning "mussel", referring to a particularly abundant species and preferred staple food of its indigenous inhabitants. It is situated in the northern side of the Mejillones Peninsula, 60 km north of the city of Antofagasta. To the west, in the northern part of peninsula, is Punta Angamos, the site of the naval combat of the same name, fought during the War of the Pacific (1879-1883).
A company town is a place where practically all stores and housing are owned by the one company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schools, markets and recreation facilities.
Antofagasta is a port city in northern Chile, about 1,100 kilometres (700 mi) north of Santiago. It is the capital of Antofagasta Province and Antofagasta Region. According to the 2015 census, the city has a population of 402,669.
A shanty town, squatter area or squatter settlement is a settlement of improvised buildings known as shanties or shacks, typically made of materials such as mud and wood. A typical shanty town is squatted and in the beginning lacks adequate infrastructure, including proper sanitation, safe water supply, electricity and street drainage. Over time, shanty towns can develop their infrastructure and even change into middle class neighbourhoods. They can be small informal settlements or they can house millions of people.
Villa miseria, villa de emergencia or just villa, is the informal term used in Argentina for shanty towns.
In the United States, a colonia is a type of unincorporated, low-income, slum area located along the Mexico–United States border region that emerged with the advent of shanty towns. These colonias consist of peri-urban subdivisions of substandard housing lacking in basic services such as potable water, electricity, paved roads, proper drainage, and waste management. Often situated in geographically inferior locations, such as former agricultural floodplains, colonias suffer from associated issues like flooding. Furthermore, urbanization practices have amplified the issues, such as when developers strip topsoil from the ground in order to subdivide land, the resulting plains become breeding grounds for mosquitoes and disease. Traditional homeownership financing methods are rare amongst colonias residents, and therefore these areas consist of ramshackle housing units built incrementally with found material on expanses of undeveloped land. Colonias have a predominant Latino population where 85 percent of those Latinos under the age of 18 are United States citizens. The U.S. has viewed border communities as a place of lawlessness, poverty, backwardness, and ethnic difference.
The Santa María School massacre was a massacre of striking workers, mostly saltpeter works (nitrate) miners, along with wives and children, committed by the Chilean Army in Iquique, Chile on December 21, 1907. The number of victims is undetermined but is estimated to be over 2,000. The massacre occurred during the peak of the nitrate mining era, which coincided with the Parliamentary Period in Chilean political history (1891–1925). With the massacre and an ensuing reign of terror, not only was the strike broken, but the workers' movement was thrown into limbo for over a decade. For decades afterwards, there was official suppression of knowledge of the incident, but in 2007 the government conducted a highly publicized commemoration of its centenary, including an official national day of mourning and the reinterment of the victims' remains.
Hernán Rivera Letelier is a Chilean novelist. Until the age of 11 he lived in the Algorta saltpeter mining town, in the north of Chile. When it was closed down, he and his family moved to Antofagasta, where his mother died. His siblings went to live with his aunts. He stayed in Antofagasta, alone, until he was about 11. To survive, he sold newspapers. Later he worked as a messenger for Anglo Lautaro Nirate Company, until his thirst for adventure led him to spend three years traveling in Chile, Bolivia, Perú, Ecuador and Argentina. He returned to Antofagasta in 1973 and began to work at another company, Mantos Blancos. He married a 17-year-old girl when he was 24. Later he left for Pedro de Valdivia, another saltpeter mining town. He completed his seventh and eighth years of study at night school, and at the Inacap educational institute he earned his license as a secondary education instructor. Today he lives in Antofagasta with his wife and four children. He has received the Premio Consejo Nacional de Libro twice, in 1994 and 1996. His novel El arte de la resurrección won the Premio Alfaguara de Novela in Spain in 2010.
According to the Mexican government agency Conapo, Oaxaca is the third most economically marginalized states in Mexico. The state has 3.3% of the population but produces only 1.5% of the GNP. The main reason for this is the lack of infrastructure and education, especially in the interior of the state outside of the capital. Eighty percent of the state's municipalities do not meet federal minimums for housing and education. Most development projects are planned for the capital and the surrounding area. Little has been planned for the very rural areas and the state lacks the resources to implement them. The largest sector of Oaxaca's economy is agriculture, mostly done communally in ejidos or similar arrangements. About 31% of the population is employed in agriculture, about 50% in commerce and services and 22% in industry. The commerce sector dominates the gross domestic product at 65.4%, followed by industry/mining at 18.9% and agriculture at 15.7%.
A boomtown is a community that undergoes sudden and rapid population and economic growth, or that is started from scratch. The growth is normally attributed to the nearby discovery of a precious resource such as gold, silver, or oil, although the term can also be applied to communities growing very rapidly for different reasons, such as a proximity to a major metropolitan area, huge construction project, or attractive climate.
Mediagua, is the name given in Chile to a type of prefabricated house, constructed of wood panels, which can be erected in less than a day. The traditional model has an area of 18 square metres (190 sq ft).
Illegal immigration in Chile is a phenomenon that largely began in the 1990s as a result of economic growth and political stability in Chile. Most immigrants are South American, with the largest wave being Peruvian, although there has also been a significant amount of migration from the Caribbean. Illegal immigration is primarily caused by a lack of security or economic opportunities in the country of origin.
TECHO, also known as Un Techo para mi País (UTPMP), is a nonprofit organization that mobilizes youth volunteers to fight extreme poverty in Latin America, by constructing transitional housing and implementing social inclusion programs. It was founded by a Jesuit priest, and working with more than 720,000 volunteers, it has constructed houses for over 102,400 families in 19 countries in Latin American and the Caribbean and 2 offices located in Miami, Florida, US, and London, England, that work as funds hubs.
A komboni is a type of informal housing compound or shanty town common to Zambia, particularly the capital city of Lusaka. It is characterized by a low income and a high population density. Kombonis typically began as housing for employees of a particular company, estate, or mine. An estimated 35% of Zambians live in urban areas, and kombonis exist in many of them. It is estimated that 80% of the population of Lusaka live and work in these areas.
Informal housing or informal settlement can include any form of housing, shelter, or settlement which is illegal, falls outside of government control or regulation, or is not afforded protection by the state. As such, the informal housing industry is part of the informal sector.
Squatting in Chile is the occupation of unused land or derelict buildings without the permission of the owner. From the 1960s onwards, informal settlements known as callampas were permitted although there were also evictions such as the massacre of Puerto Montt in 1969. In the 1970s, the government of Salvador Allende encouraged occupations, then following the coup d'état, the military junta repressed squatting. Callampas then became known as campamentos.
