Abstract
Between 1962 and 1992, the pobladores, inhabitants of the poor quarters of Chilean cities, carried on their cultural and religious lives on the periphery of westernized cities like Santiago. Initially (1962-1973) social life was established through land appropriation and simultaneous creation of their own community organizations. Subsequently, the pobladores had to defend their way of life against the military government (1973-1986), by means that were at once specifically concrete and spiritual. At length, when the military government began to make way for a civil regime, the pobladores had to define or redefine the meaning that lay in those quarters (1986-1992). In this article, the author attempts to illuminate the cultural and religious behaviour of the pobladores, reduced to the status of targets of a “modernization” sought by the authorities throughout the past 30 years.