Municipality and Community in Chile: Building Imagined Civic Communities and Its Impact on the Political

Abstract

This paper examines the institutions for participatory governance that have been created in Chile through a case study of Huechuraba, a low income municipality in the Santiago metropolitan area. The case of Huechuraba suggests that in certain contexts, the meetings that take place between government officials and grassroots organizations can become a forum for the state to colonize public space and bolster the hegemony of the status quo by establishing the parameters of citizenship.