Legalidades alternativas y tomas de tierras en una ciudad de la Patagonia Argentina

As a result of an ethnographic work on land occupations in Comodoro Rivadavia (Chubut,Argentina), the article discusses interpretations that reduce a complex social phenomenon toa view of land occupations as a simple “illegal act”. In opposition to the approaches of landoccupation as a “usurpation,” those who occupied lands hold criteria that legitimize their actionswhich, in turn, constitute a tense relationship with the formal legal order. The purpose of the textis to analyze these discursive practices aimed at countering the dominant readings that disqualifythem from illegality.Seeking to deal with the hegemonic discourses that circumscribe land occupations to a legal.criterion, the first section is organized around the weight that informality had in the historicalconstruction of Latin American cities. Taking Commodore Rivadavia as a witness, in thesecond section the State is dimensioned as a promoter of urban informality. The third sectionconveys the empirical analysis of the criteria of legitimacy as popular responses to the dominantviews of occupations as “illegal acts”. Finally, the conclusions propose a revision of the mainargumentative lines developed throughout the work.