From a political to an im-political community: The end of the company town (Tocopilla, Chile, 1915-1996)

Abstract

By using a historical and anthropological methodology, this paper describes and analyzes the urban case study of Tocopilla, Chile, a city that, as a result of the industrialization of the Chuquicamata mine in 1915 by The Chile Exploration Company, saw the installation of a powerful thermoelectric power plant that included a Company town, which operated under the same rules as the Chuquicamata camp. The thermoelectric plant, nationalized in 1971, remained under the management of CODELCO, before being privatized in 1996. Thus, the new company dissociated itself from the paternalistic control of workers and their housing, permitting the emergence of a process that brought an end to the Company town. This paper looks to characterize the organizational, material, and semantic transition seen in the settlement since 1996, understood as a process that took place under a neoliberal setting, which the authors have called the transition from a political to an im-political community.