From Rural Haven to Civil Political Project: Utopian Ideals and Environmental Protection in the Precordillera, Santiago, Chile

This article describes the origin and development of local political culture in the La Florida commune (Lo Cañas neighborhood), located in the foothills of the Andes, on the edge of Santiago, Chile. It presents an ethnography of la Red, a civil association created in 2006 to 'protect' the foothills from real estate development. First, this work analyses how nature's destruction is experienced as a threat to the way of life and utopian project of residents and Red members. The construction of the neighborhood is intimately related to the configuration of this political project. Different ideals of what the environment means were studied in order to analyze the construction of, and the engagement with, this space. Through this case study, we consider two different utopias: the community project as a common savoir-vivre in the precordillera and, later, the creation of a civil-political project aimed at producing political changes and maintaining a way of life. Résumé Cet article décrit l'origine et le développement de la culture politique locale dans la commune de La Florida (Lo quartier Cañas), situé dans les piedmonts de la Cordillère des Andes, sur le bord de Santiago, au Chili. Il présente une ethnographie de la Red, une association civile créée en 2006 pour «protéger» les piedmonts de développement immobilier. Tout d'abord, ce travail analyse la façon dont la destruction de la nature est vécue comme une menace pour le mode de vie et le projet utopique des résidents et des membres de Red. La construction du quartier est intimement liée à la configuration de ce projet politique. Pour analyser la construction de, et l'engagement avec, cet espace j'explore les différents «sens» de l'environnement. Grâce à cette étude de cas, nous considérons deux utopies différents: le projet de la communauté comme un savoir-vivre commun dans la précordillère et, plus tard, la création d'un projet civil-politique visant à la production des changements politiques et le maintien d'un mode de vie. Resumen Este articulo describe el origen y desarrollo de la cultura política en la Comuna de La Florida (barrio de Lo Chile. Email: cbiskupovic "at" gmail.com. Acknowledgements: I would like to thank the reviewers for their diligent reading and suggestions, as well as Christian Anwandter for his precious help in translating and revising this article. I would also like to thank Constanza Parra and Casey Walsh who made publication possible.


Introduction
Figure 1: Santiago and its geography.Drawing by Rodolfo Hoffman, 1997, Chilean National Library.Source: http://www.memoriachilena.clThis article tries to understand 'environmental defense' on a daily level, through a study of microprocesses rather than large-scale events or national-level campaigns.This 'defense' is by a small group of neighbors living in the Andean precordillera2 on the outskirts of Santiago, capital of Chile, in the commune of La Florida.Since 2006 these neighbors have formed a civil association that here I will call the Red. 3 The participants in the Red arrived in the precordillera in pursuit of a rural utopia on the edge of the city.Living in a natural environment implied getting away from the city, and when this utopia was threatened by urban growth, their political mode became engagement.This engagement not only implied a personal effort, but also a critique of dominant way of seeing and considering environmental protection in Chile.Nowadays, the utopia envisioned by Red members has to do with a fundamentally different way of protecting the environment.Even if they oppose the established ways of governing and exploiting nature, they have had to learn to use the same legal tools that this model puts at their disposal.For the Red, utopia no longer implies creating an 'alternative' way of life on the margins of the dominant model, and Red members no longer seek a rupture with this model.

The setting
La Florida is a commune -the smallest administrative subdivision in Chile, with a civil service administration known as a municipality (municipalidad) -with a population of 397,497 inhabitants, located in Santiago Province (Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile 2012). 4La Florida commune is part of Santiago's Metropolitan Region (Región Metropolitana de Santiago or RMS), the most populated one in the country. 5In fact, in Santiago's Metropolitan Area (AMS) 6 , 95% of the population is urban.However, the presence of nature is overwhelming, considering that it is completely surrounded not only by the Andes Mountains but also by the Coast Mountains.La Florida and some other communes of the Metropolitan Region -such as Lo Barnechea, Las Condes, La Reina, Puente Alto and Peñalolén -are located in the Andes foothills, a zone better known as the precordillera (as shown in Figure 2).
Another defining characteristic of this region is social inequality and urban segregation 7 , which result in a high level of "urban fragmentation" (Dammert 2004).Even if there has been economic growth for more than twenty years in Chile, socioeconomic inequality is rising and this is particularly evident in Santiago, where the richest groups are concentrated in only six of the thirty-four communes of the AMS (Dockemdorff, Rodriguez, and Winchester 2000).The liberal model implemented during Pinochet's dictatorships (1973)(1974)(1975)(1976)(1977)(1978)(1979)(1980)(1981)(1982)(1983)(1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990) continues to hold sway, considerably affecting many people's living conditions by transferring the cost and responsibility of health, education, social care, and public transport -covered by the State for much of the twentieth century -directly to citizens.As a consequence, poorer communes have relatively bad access to public services and -when they exist -these services are of poor quality (Barozet and Biskupovic 2012).
Because of these geographical and social characteristics, designing a research project in Santiago's precordillera required ethnography that could overcome these boundaries by going beyond one neighborhood, and that avoided pre-existing divisions (institutional as well as symbolic).The project therefore focused on an intangible subject rather than one that was territorially defined and spatially limited; how the protection of the precordillera is configured, more than the neighborhoods themselves in which this takes place.A multi-sited ethnography allowed me to interview actors from different areas of Santiago, implied in the defense of nature and, more specifically, with the precordillera's protection. 84 There are fifteen regions in Chile.Each one of them is divided into provinces, divided into communes.In total, there are fifty-four provinces in the country divided into 346 communes.The Metropolitan region is composed of six provinces.One of them is Santiago Province, which has thirty-two.Each one of them has an autonomous municipality (Gobierno Regional Metropolitano de Santiago 2006). 5Even if Santiago's Metropolitan Region is the smallest region in the country, with a surface of 15,403.2km², it's by far the most populated (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas 2010).In 2005 the population was 6,527,903 inhabitants, 40 % of the country's total population (Gobierno Regional Metropolitano de Santiago 2006). 6When discussing Santiago, some confusion might arise.Santiago doesn't correspond to any political-administrative entity.Some refer to 'Santiago's Metropolitan Area' or AMS (Orellana 2009), to designate the sum of all the autonomous municipalities belonging to Santiago, an agglomeration of sovereign municipalities with more than 6.2 million inhabitants (Heinrichs, Nuissl and Rodríguez 2009). 7Works about this subject are numerous, and it is impossible to address them all here, especially because specialists from different disciplines have addressed urban segregation: they include architects and urbanists (Carlos de Mattos 2006Mattos , 1999aMattos , 2004a;;Ducci 2 004;Greene 2005;Sabatini and Brain 2008;Sabatini and Wormald 2004); geologists ( Hidalgo et al. 2005;Hidalgo 2007Hidalgo , 2009;;Pereira and Hidalgo 2008;Romero and Vásquez 2005;Vásquez and Salgado 2009) ; social scientists (Alvarez, 2008;Dammert, 2004;Espinoza, 1988Espinoza, , 1998;;Márquez et al., 1999;Márquez and Pérez, 2008;Stillerman, 2006). 8Between 2007 and 2011, I carried out an ethnographic study of various social movements in Chile's capital.The methodology was adapted to each group but generally I participated actively in the activities of the Red (Biskupovic 2011).Intermittently, and more superficially, I interviewed members belonging to other associations, neighborhoods or spontaneous groups such as Defendamos la Ciudad, Comunidad Ecológica de Peñalolén, Salvemos El Manquehue, Unión Comunal de Juntas de Vecinos de Providencia, Asociación Gremial de Huerteros de La Pintana, Acción Ecológica) and Por un Santiago a Escala Humana.The Red the only group with which I carried out a long term and engaged ethnography.I met and interviewed different authorities, key people, experts, and NGO members with relationships to the precordillera.In total, I conducted fifty-seven interviews (thirty-six of them were recorded).I participated in thirty-seven The 'environmental defense' discussed here took shape in Lo Cañas, a place with no clear administrative boundaries or territory.Its rural character contrasts strongly with downtown La Florida, where there are two big shopping centers, and nearby areas where since the 1990s many gated communities have been built (Meyer and Bahr 2004).Thus, above La Florida's downtown -one of the most populated communes of Chile (Flores 2007: 34) -and below the booming real estate projects, neighbors of Lo Cañas own relatively large parcels of land (parcelas 9 ), vegetable gardens, and rural roads.The inhabitants included in this ethnography know each other well and some organized themselves to defend the precordillera and to preserve this rural character of the neighborhood.
In the rest of this article I discuss, first, how the configuration of the precordillera's struggles takes on multiple meanings.Then I examine how a political project can emerge in this setting in which different conceptions of the environment clash, as well as the role of community in forging a concept of 'their own environment.'Finally, I analyze how the utopian vision that guided the original effort to create an alternate space has transformed into an engagement with the institutions of politics, and I stress the importance of technical arguments in this process.
Figure 2: Lo Cañas, in Santiago.The darker zones are the most urbanized areas.In this picture of Santiago, we can see how the growth of the city reaches the feet of the Andes.North to top.Source: http://geology.commeetings and twenty-eight activities ranging from conferences, telephone conversations, hill walking, seminars, exhibitions, etc.). 9These parcelas were created when the old haciendas (farms) that existed in La Florida's precordillera were divided and sold in lots of 5,000 and 10,000 square meters.

The configuration of the 'defense of the precordillera'
When I decided to focus my fieldwork research on Santiago it was principally because I was interested in how the inhabitants lives on the margins of this city, where nature is so present in the 'natural frontier' of the Andes (Paulina Ahumada 2012).I was intrigued by how the inhabitants interact with nature, how is it 'lived' under the Andes.A newspaper article about the Red and their fight "to save a forest near their houses, El Panul" directed me to them in 2007.10I wrote an email to Laure11 (a freelance translator, sixty-five years old), president of the Red, and after a long conversation with her, she invited me to a meeting in María's house (a freelance journalist, around sixty years old).In 2008 I started meeting other members of the Red, including some fully engaged participants as well as more irregular ones.In all there were between 10 or 15 members, but five of them were most active: Laure, María, Camila (medical technologist, approximately sixty years old), Juan (around sixty years old, self-employed) and Cristóbal (a young lawyer, less than thirty years old).Since the 1990s the Red has been working to stop real estate development in the foothills of the Andes.According to the members of the Red, nature is in danger because of the proliferation of gated communities over the last twenty years.The members of Red question the absence of urban policies to protect the precordillera and they accuse the authorities of promoting the growth of new private real estate projects.
When the inhabitants talk about the precordillera the term evokes a multidimensional configuration that includes the inhabitants' experiences emotions and engagements, the technical definitions of the precordillera, administrative delimitations, interactions between nature and humans, and more.When we refer to this part of the city, it is impossible to separate out the motives that encourage some of the inhabitants who are motivated to conserve it; different aspects must be considered, and the environmental context from where they emerge (Cefaï 2011: 560).There is also a certain level of confrontation between inhabitants belonging to different contexts: while the precordillera in La Florida is experiencing progressive gentrification, poor neighborhoods still exist in the upper parts of La Florida (Romero et al. 2010: 161).On the other side, the precordillera has become more and more desired by real estate companies and by the potential inhabitants of their projects seeking an "amenity lifestyle" within easy reach of the city (Collins 2008).
One element of the argument made by Red members against real estate development in the foothills concerns vulnerability and the potential for natural disasters such as landslides or flooding (Ebert et al. 2010).Many of them, as a matter of fact, lived the so-called 'disaster of 1993 (El Mercurio, 1993) in which several landslides provoked the death of twenty-six people, 356 families that lost everything, and eight people who went missing (La Nación 1993).For Santiago's inhabitants the Andes are generally through of as stable, unchangeable.This is part of collective memory and a frequent representation of the city's surroundings.The Andes appear on postcards and tourist images, even in people do not have a direct or daily experience of them.After the 1990s, however, the arrival of new gated communities with their related infrastructure (roads, shopping centers, private schools, supermarkets, etc.) changed the situation and challenged this assumption of stability.
It is in this context that the Red was formed to confront the arrival of new real estate projects in Lo Cañas precordillera.In 1995, a project of 3,900 houses was begun to the north, a few steps away from the place where the 1993 landslide occurred.The inhabitants mobilized unsuccessfullyto stop the construction of this project.Then, in 2004, another real estate project, El Panul, of about 1,500 houses in a local open, forested space, was presented to the authorities of La Florida (Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos 2012).When in 2005 the group of neighbors that would later form the Red discovered the existence of El Panul, they were surprised but also shocked that the area was slated for development.It was after this double discovery that they decided to organize themselves to defend the precordillera.The Red emerged among neighbors with a narrow and local goal, and is thus different from multi-campaign or less localized NGOs.The local territory is the place neighbors seek to defend and protect.

Living with and within nature: the civil political project
Until the 1980s La Florida's political economy was mainly agricultural, and it was still considered a rural commune, which is what attracted the original settlers to relocate to the area from Santiago.Some of the members of the Red were among these first inhabitants of Lo Cañas.Starting in the late 1950s, they arrived in order to live far away from the urban world, a rural life where they could build their own houses on large plots (parcelas).Bordered only by other parcelas and the Andean mountains, they started building roads and gardens, and organizing a new neighborhood in a place that was still difficult to access and far from the city.Over time these parcelas were progressively integrated into the urban fabric, public roads were built, and residents had to adapt to the arrival of new neighbors.This became problematic, especially for the first inhabitants who were used to the privileges of distance from the city: open space, surrounded by nature, little noise and pollution, no crime, and knowing your neighbors (important since burglaries are very common in upper-class neighborhoods in Santiago).Camila and Laure live in Lo Cañas; Juan and María in the next settlement over, known as Comunidad Ecológica.They settled towards the end of the 1960s and at the beginning of the 1980s.When they arrived, there was absolutely no infrastructure, so they built from the ground up: obtaining drinkable water, building access roads, establishing a school.Moreover, all this was taking place during Pinochet's dictatorship and some of them were returning from exile and searching for a place that could serve as an autonomous refuge where they could build "their own places"… It was marvelous, imagine, summer.We were just starting to build the house, and I was enthralled.There was no public transport…there still isn't any….I arrived in October 1979 to live here.There were almost no schools, there was no way of getting down to the city….During many years I was here just opening a road, worried about the construction ….Everything was done like this, it was pure effort.(interview, 5/22/08).
During the 1990s, new urban projects started unfolding in the precordillera, following a different model of community, the gated community.The arrival of gated communities and condominiums, often on shared land (Márquez and Pérez, 2008), placed them face to face with the 'community model' that had guided the creation of Lo Cañas.Camila, Juan, Laure, María and other neighbors organized against these real estate projects because they considered them a threat to the neighborhood's identity, breaking the environmental stability and relative isolation they had enjoyed until that moment.
The members of the Red say they live according to a savoir vivre that is incompatible with, and radically opposed to the new real estate projects.Confronted by outsiders (those newly arrived to the neighborhood as well as other established residents who are not engaged in the network), the members of la Red constructed a utopian discourse evoking the 'public' sphere.To them, new projects represent the visible and negative face of the damage caused by capitalism, the enemy of their utopia.Guided by this discourse, they have followed a 'technical' strategy: they try to develop technical knowledge, in both legal and scientific matters, between themselves and through interactions with researchers and scientists (geographers, geologists, urban planners, architects, lawyers, biologists and engineers).Little by little, armed with this knowledge, environmental and neighborhood collective action moves to protect the spaces that, according to them, are theirs, and in the process, they forge new public ways of acting.
Another threat encountered by la Red was the indifference of their neighbors.Particularly at the beginning of fieldwork (2007)(2008), I observed that only a few inhabitants from Lo Cañas were engaged in environmental politics.The meetings always included between five and ten people, and the scant participation reduced the association's will and its capacity for action.I met Laure's oldest daughter in 2008, in a meeting held in Laure's house.12She was very critical of all that her mother was doing, and asked her to "slow down, because it's too much."She thought the Red would not achieve much and that El Panul "would be destroyed anyway."This kind of fatalism was even evident among Red members who, during the first campaigns, did not carry out the concrete engagements or small actions that the Red's leaders like Laure asked of them (attending public events, for example).Some justified their inaction by arguing that the real estate projects would be approved regardless of the opinion of a minority of citizens opposed to them.
Members were not interested in large scale campaigns, and the more active members like Camila prefer to retain control of each activity.Small working meetings with professionals and academics are preferred over public protests.Laure once gave me an impressive number of documents about the forest and the commune of La Florida.She told me she had been compiling these since the 90s, mostly after the 1993 landslide disaster.This bibliographic work includes a wide range of information related to the precordillera, to risk13 , the history of the commune, and an enormous register of different newspaper clippings.
What has made the participants in the Red take a different political approach to the popular mobilizations common in Chile since 2006, such as student protests?An important point to consider is that the experience of the original colons such as Camila, María, Juan and Laure influenced their subsequent engagement.Since the beginning, their socialization was around urban development issues including water supply, electricity and roads.Today, sociability between the 'old' members is refocused on protecting the last green spaces that have not fallen to real estate development.In this sense, the first utopia -to live in natureserves to develop collective action, and to articulate and strengthen a second utopian vision -to build a civil political project in the foothills of Santiago.
When Camila says that the Red is about defending all that they have built, it is from this basis; the time when they actually built their surroundings."Part of our life here is always about planting, protecting" she stated (interview, 14/05/08).Actions undertaken to defend the neighborhood and its environment are part of building this ideal place.Creating and maintaining place is deemed much more important than all the difficulties and challenges encountered.It was after the discovery of the El Panul development plans that the Red was formally established.In fact, the El Panul forest represents their ideal of a preserved precordillera, where autochthonous flora and fauna may survive without the threat of major development.
When Laure explained to me how the Red was formed, she pointed out that people from different origins (socioeconomically and geographically) participated, underlining that the 'problem' concerning the precordillera is something anyone can understand: The Red is formed by different neighbor board meetings and by neighbors from different parts that don't live in Santa Sofía or in Lo Cañas and that also participate, and there are a lot of people that are not from La Florida and are also interested in the matter . . . .regardless of their cultural level.For example I've met housewives without university education.They have barely a few years of secondary school, and they fully understand the problem . . . .That means people have conscience because they are experiencing the problem (Interview, 14/05/08).
It is not necessary to experience directly and physically the problem in the precordillera in order to understand it.Camila believes that development pressures concern a great majority of people, and tries to make others feel concerned, even if she prefers that collective action is carried out by a small group.The Red's defense of El Panul became a project to turn it into a public park.Including the public as potential users allowed them to deflect accusations that they were a small elite defending their own backyard. 14he consensus among Red members concerning the defense of nature is the result of a feeling of union.In the process of campaigning, all members are equal; everyone participates, even when, according to Laure, people from outside Lo Cañas went to the meetings (in this first period of fieldwork, only Cristóbal lived outside Lo Cañas).Red members feel united in relation to the place they live in, and to the way in which they constructed it.They feel "part of it", as one of the members said in one meeting.When members recall neighborhood establishment, they often speak about the common interests that united them: their love for a rural mode of life and nature.Juan, for example, says there were many reasons to live in the place, but "…what united them all [the neighbors] was nature" (interview, 5/29/2008).Even if they were just a few kilometers away from Santiago, they all wanted to "live in the countryside", according to Laure (interview, 5/7/2008).At the same time, after escaping the city, through dwelling, of engaging and creating the Red, nature acquired new meanings for them.As Camila says, when she discovered El Panul she "took it as an important thing [and] started going more frequently with my husband to the hill" (interview, 05/14/08).
Living in the precordillera has been a utopian enterprise from the beginning, an ideal that continuously evolved as new challenges appeared.Today, challenges and utopian responses articulate around El Panul and this gives a meaning to the relationship inhabitants have with their surroundings.For example, for Camila civic and political engagement "is produced in personal or individual terms.Or in interaction with the forest.It's not because of group solidarity or consolidation…."For her this means their engagement around El Panul goes beyond selfish and utilitarian goals.She explained that: …there are other neighbors that live further up and that know that if this forest or this land is transformed or sold in order to build houses or a new gated communities, they know that the new streets would go through their properties.That is a utilitarian reason.
Camila takes some time before trying to explain me that her engagement is different, because it is directly related to the importance of the precordillera, to the natural characteristics of a place, a neighborhood and a city.However, the utopia of preserving or building an undamaged, risk-free nature is also related to the possibilities afforded by living in that place.Camila's utopia is configured through relationships between neighbors as inhabitants of the place, and the place the surroundings, with all that makes it unique, its characteristics, risks, problems and challenges.
A second utopia has emerged from the first, forged by the early settlement of the precordillera: political participation as a way to produce institutional changes, not in the 'utilitarian' terms that Camila identified with gated communities, but in social ones.Specifically, the members of the Red try to preserve El Panul in order to transform it into a public resource.They have decided to create their own civil political project to maintain their place, their environment and a specific way of living in it.

'Environment' as a multifunctional category
Recently in Chile there has been a new national context of civil demands, with an important rise in the numbers of conflicts that center on the environment or nature.Since 2000, collective action carried out by concerned publics is questioning how the State manages natural resources and environmental issues, and it has grown to an unprecedented level.Sociologists researching mobilizations in Chile have compiled a 'social history' of conflicts and actors, and have elaborated general theories about social movements that take the Chilean case as a paradigm (Salazar, 2012) or have included it in a broader Latin American context (Garcés 2012;Garretón 2013).Another academic response has been to criticize the existing political system (Mayol, 2012).Studies of popular mobilizations in Santiago are dominant (Oxhorn 1995;Sabatini and Wormald 2004;Salazar 1990;Tironi and Perez 2009) yet there are few ethnographic analyses of collective action, its local political effects, and how movements have made their demands heard.
In the mobilization of the Red, the meaning ascribed to nature and local space are constructed through collective action.In this sense, mobilization is better explained by the local context and scale, that by global factors.For the Red's members, the environment is a common discursive and physical space created by collectives.The construction of spaces people consider their own -in this case the precordillera -is a cultural process that involves the envisioning of utopia.It has a meaning because the place was sought out, defended and built by the group.Through the experiences of these inhabitants, spaces are re-appropriated and given new meanings as the groups actualize their choices, wishes and demands.The territory becomes a space of discussion from the moment the group inscribes its action in it.Engaged inhabitants express their visions of what a good life should be and generate new discussions about how to live.
Neighbors do not perceive the difficulties of living in the precordillera as threats to their way of life.Real threats appear with the arrival of the gated communities and urbanization.These two models -parcelas and condominios -have been developing together over the last decade or two.Neighbors try to live together and certainly have achieved this, in a shared common territory.For example, they share the streets and access roads, and joined together to deal with damage from heavy rain and flooding in 2005.They even share some common concerns for the environment.In fact, among the reasons the inhabitants of gated communities offer to explain why they chose to live there, is an interest in seeing their children grow up in an environment with clean air, surrounded by nature, at the feet of the mountains.These motives are similar to those expressed by the inhabitants of Lo Cañas.However, there is a different level of engagement, considering the greater Lo Cañas mobilization through the Red.
Since my first encounter with Laure in her house in Lo Cañas in 2007 I knew about the importance that the precordillera, as a local and particular space, held for the Red.More specifically, Laure and many others spoke to me about the El Panul forest.The disappearance of the Panul is certainly perceived as the biggest threat to the Red's way of life, for it is the most tangible danger.Nature or environment, for the members of the Red, means El Panul or the precordillera; it is always a particular space.For this reason, El Panul has a specific sense for the members of the collective.
The state and its institutions have a different sense of nature.For the authorities, the category of environment is understood in a very ambiguous and general way.The Department of Cleanliness and Environment (Departamento de Aseo y Ornato) of the Municipality of La Florida is the only office that makes an explicit allusion to environment in the commune.But when I entered this office to speak with the person in charge, Pedro, he told me that they no longer had the resources to worry about this "area."So, what of environmental monitoring and protection, if there are no resources?Pedro affirmed that the municipality tried "to do something about the subject, but there is no quorum" (interview, 14/4/2008).For Pedro and government officials, the environment is an abstract idea, markedly different to the place-based qualities extolled by its local citizen defenders.For the authorities, the environment is perceived in a vertical and hierarchical manner and some government employees see it in terms of costs and benefits.As a member said in a meeting, "the government doesn't earn any money protecting the environment" (interview, 14/3/2010).And even if the State affirmed the importance of the environment when, for example, it created the Ministry of Environment, at a very local level this political measure was toothless since no resources were allocated for concrete actions (Ministerio Secretaría General de la Presidencia, 2010).As Pedro says, "…without resources it is very difficult to help people."Members of the Red do not look to the Department of Environment of the Municipality for help, even if the name seems promising.Given the weakness and inaction of the municipality, and the almost complete absence of urban planning in the precordillera, the Red's members prefer to develop their own plans and strategies to maintain and improve their neighborhoods.That is why the association members limit themselves to particular demands, trying to produce a political and social critique through narrowly focused forms of participation (Link and Méndez 2010;Sabatini and Wormald 2004).
While the environmental institutions developed by the government agents do not make much sense to Red members, they still do need to engage authority.They learn the existing planning regulations and rules in detail, to best target their actions in the vacuum of working environmental institutions.Second, they aim to make changes inside public institutions in order to legitimate their own organization.To have credibility in local spheres, they need to win legal challenges to development.For them, the only way to 'save' El Panul is for the State to buy it and then turn it into a public park, so they pressure the State to buy the property in which the forest is located.Three young lawyers worked pro bono for the association.It is through legal and technical means that interventions occur.
On the other hand, environment has turned into a 'multifunctional' term that has obliged the members of the Red to choose a specific definition and to take a clear position regarding the different uses the concept might have.This position has been built over time, part of a struggle for the very delimited and specific precordillera environment.This allows them to distance themselves from some terms like 'sustainability.'The real estate enterprise that is seeking to build in the woodland talks about 'sustainability' and 'ecology' (Gesterra 2011) when promoting the development project; it wants to build an 'innovative' architectural project in La Florida. 15Even the owner of the land where El Panul is located is concerned about "environment protection" (interview with the manager of the real estate project, 29/3/2010).Despite the opposition that members perceive between destruction (carried out by the real estate enterprise against El Panul) and protection (undertaken by them), the truth is that the enterprise and the members of the network deploy similar terms to refer to the native woodland.
The Red members, in turn, use the term 'environmental protection' to argue against the notion of sustainability mobilized in the dossiers of real estate developers, because the latter does not take into account the specific characteristics of the piedmont.They argue that 'environmental protection' seems to be considered only as an aesthetic problem with the construction of gated communities, ignoring its true geophysical and biological aspects.Private enterprises dismiss key aspects of environmental protection, seeing it only as the setting aside untouched areas as part of their developments. 16Residents from the area, on the other hand, decry the deterritorialized nature of gated communities, separating nature from humanity.Also, project advertisements show the development site as an absolutely safe and wonderful place, riskless.In other advertisements, it appears as a private garden belonging to the gated communities.It is this unreal image that the most engaged actors are trying to deconstruct, in La Florida precordillera and through the Red.Thus, they continuously highlight flooding risks and the existence of geological problems on the site.

Creating a new utopian project based on technical and scientific arguments
Gayet-Viaud shows how actors create a common point of view through which they consider the world collectively (Gayet-Viaud, 2011: 46).For the members of the Red, nature is the starting point for a shared perspective as well as for a common objective.It is in the Red that this shared perspective is configured.This common point of view grounds the engaged neighbors' defense of El Panul.
On the first of November of 2010, I met with Laure, Cristóbal, Camila and other members of the Red at El Panul.This day a group of college students had asked members of la Red to give an interview for a small documentary they were preparing about the Red 's cause.The interview was to be filmed in El Panul itself.We sat under a huge tree.The students started filming and asking questions of the Red members.When the students stopped filming, the members of the Red continued speaking among themselves.In fact, they spoke about El Panul before, during, and after the interview.This conversation illustrated how they understand the forest and what it means for them.Upon arrival they started talking about the things to do, the emails they still had to send, the different public agencies they had to approach.Their conversation showed familiarity with the array of relevant legal decrees, and they exchanged opinions about the different strategies they could follow regarding an upcoming Environmental Impact Study for the El Panul development project. 17s part of the technical strategy they followed, the Red sought to include academic experts in their activities.In the first meetings in Laure's house, I met two students from the National University of Chile, the country's oldest and biggest public university, and on another occasion, I accompanied the Red to a meeting in this same University, where they met with researchers and teachers from the architecture faculty in order to learn why building in the precordillera was not recommended.Twice I went to a seminar in another University where the members of the Red were invited to share their experiences.Through these interactions the Red members gained knowledge and arguments, as well as support from students and teachers.They showed ease in using technical and scientific vocabulary on equal terms with teachers and researchers.On the 12 th of November, 2010, I accompanied Juan and Laure to a meeting of associations in downtown Santiago to discuss the Plan Regulador Metropolitano para Santiago (Santiago Metropolitan Regulation Plan or PRMS), the policy document regulating the city's urban development.Carlos, a 35-year-old journalist and occasional Red member, directed the meeting.He started by saying that "the main purpose of the campaign [concerning the PRMS] is the institutional campaign, with the authorities, and the citizen campaign, including the academic world."Later, Juan added "I was ignorant in these matters ten years ago.I guess many of you were ignorant too.But today we are experts . . .we know more than the urban planners themselves." Figure 5: Advertising of new gated communities on the precordillera ("Live better at the foot of the cordillera").Photo by the author.This struggle, and the search for legal and scientific arguments have created the utopian vision of El Panul eventually becoming a public park.To achieve this the association still works with experts, a major difference from traditional Chilean political lobbies (Espinoza, 1988).Scientific arguments help the association to build the notion of 'public space', which was a new ideal for the Red.It is a ideal to which their civil political project must aspire; a collective project which defines specific tasks for each member.The vision of a public space actualizes their activities, with a clear focus.At the same time, the possibility of seeing El Panul becoming public, encourages members to overcome the organization's daily difficulties.It means that they have to strengthen the technical and scientific arguments to legitimate this vision.
Interestingly, this new utopia is a project within the existing socio-legal order, that takes into account technical and the scientific arguments, transforming a threat into an opportunity.This new utopia preserves the older one: the vision of living with nature that brought many of the community to the neighborhood.The imaginary place -El Panul as a public forest -is still a possibility as the Red maneuvers through a series of legal struggles and concrete actions where only the scientific arguments and technical considerations can demonstrate to the authorities the relevance of preserving this space.

Conclusion
The community forged in Lo Cañas and its political actions does not aspire to the creation of an alternative society or a rupture with dominant modes of living.There are no actions beyond the political space created by the Red.Rather, they are learning to use the tools and the technical knowledge of experts to defend their interests and achieve their goals of creating public space and preserving nature: 'environmental defense.'Their utopian project is possible in the current political context in Chile, where citizens seek to develop democracy and to mobilize society in order to achieve this.It resembles struggles elsewhere, for example in the American West where "…conflicts arise over who has the 'right' to manage, access, and occupy the exurban landscape" and existing residents are pitted against newcomers in a complex history of land deals and the political ecology of settlement (Beebe and Wheeler 2012: 4).
The changes that have taken place in broader Chilean national politics re-map the spaces for utopian imagining and political action at the local scale.In this sense, Red members are professional political actors, participating fully in the Chilean political model.They are using this institutional model in order to explain to the authorities and the State why it is so important to protect El Panul.In this sense they are not like the intentional communities around the world that attempt to live in a much more alternative manner by founding their own schools,creating organic fruit and produce markets, and living out a shared vision and practice of community (Lockyer and Veteto, 2013).In Lo Cañas you will not find permaculture or an ecovillage.The Red is not inventing another way of living, or trying to create an ecotopia (Sanders 2010), but rather they are seeking a new way of making politics.