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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research after Chile’s 2024 megafire, this paper examines how residents of Pompeya, Quilpué, mobilize the category of being "burned” to move from disaster victims to political subjects, transforming claims for aid into demands for recognition, reparation, and territorial righ

Paper long abstract

Based on ethnographic research conducted in slums of Pompeya, Quilpué, following Chile’s 2024 Valparaíso megafire, this paper examines how residents affected by the disaster conceptualize their experience and position themselves before state institutions. The fire, which killed at least 135 people and affected more than 8,000 households, was publicly framed as an intentional act, with state investigations identifying perpetrators among disaster-response personnel. In this context, residents developed a distinctive political language centered on the notion of being “burned”, a category that exceeds the administrative label of damnificados commonly used in post-disaster governance.

We argue that “being burned” operates as a performative political subjectivity through which residents transform experiences of loss and abandonment into claims for recognition, reparation, and territorial rights. Rather than seeking aid as beneficiaries of state assistance, affected residents invoke victimhood to demand accountability from institutions they perceive as implicated in both the causes of the fire and the failures of reconstruction. The category also functions as an operator of equivalence, enabling residents across formal and informal sectors to assert shared entitlement to recovery regardless of property status.

Drawing on fieldwork conducted in neighborhoods, government offices, and congressional commissions, the paper traces how this political subjectivity is strategically mobilized, transformed, and contested across different institutional encounters. Ultimately, we contend that “being burned” is not simply a way of narrating suffering but a political act that converts need into right and assistance into obligation. In doing so, residents challenge dominant post-disaster frameworks and expose the limits of reconstruction policies.