Paper Short Abstract:

With an ethnography of a ‘haunted house’ and the presidential residency in inner city Santiago we analyze articulation of experiences of insecurity with crime and violence and the expectations of socio-economic mobility. Here, crime jinxes the unspoken expectations of gentrification

Paper Abstract:

The paper focuses on two houses that are situated in Barrio Yungay, a central historic neighborhood in Santiago de Chile, predominately inhabited by lower to middle income families that coexist with poorer migrants and professionals and artists that are drawn to the area due to its heritage status as ‘typical zone’ and the constant, albeit paradoxically unfulfilled hopes of gentrification. The first is, la casa tomada, which is one of the neighborhood's occupied houses and a feared site because it is associated with the drug economy, prostitution and other illegal activities. The second house, located nearby the casa tomada, is the home of Gabriel Boric, Chile’s president who surprisingly decided to live in Yungay.

We use the houses as ethnographic heuristics to analyze the tense articulation of experiences of insecurity with crime and violence and the expectations of socio-economic mobility. Both topics are key arenas in Chile: fear of crime has been a constant since the end of the dictatorship and many consider democratic rule as an impediment for controlling crime. On the other hand, people expect that democratic rule will lead to a reduction of inequality and they hold high hopes of social mobility. We argue that these intersecting feelings become spatialized sensorial experiences and a concrete lived materiality. The houses are material indexes of lived fear, hope and unfulfilled expectations that people refer to, engage with and seek to interpret - most with the purpose of staying safe and others in order to safeguard their economic investments.