From Survival to Solidarity: Reclaiming Santiago’s Streets and Plazas Through Food, Care, and Collective Resistance in <i>Ollas Comunes</i>

Source abstract

Lefebvre conceptualises streets as spaces imbued with political meaning, where mobility, everyday life, and resistance dynamically converge. This conceptualisation was vividly manifested during the 2019 social revolt in Santiago, Chile, when citizens appropriated streets and plazas as territories of collective struggle against entrenched inequalities. In this context—and subsequently amplified during the Covid‐19 pandemic— ollas comunes (community‐led survival kitchens) appeared as grassroots responses addressing food insecurity. Historically spearheaded by women from marginalised urban communities, these initiatives embody not only immediate survival strategies but also profound acts of spatial and political resistance. By providing free communal meals, ollas comunes actively disrupt the prevailing neoliberal governance of urban space, reclaiming streets as arenas of collective care, mobility, and embodied everyday democracy. Whilst scholarship identifies food struggles within public spaces as integral to asserting the right to the city (Purcell & Tyman, 2015), it has primarily focused on urban agriculture. Conversely, initiatives centred on collective food consumption remain significantly understudied. Framed by Lefebvre’s dialectics and drawing on qualitative data from interviews, focus groups, and participant observations, this article examines how ollas comunes in Santiago contest the dominant logic of neoliberal governance and ownership within public space. Findings demonstrate that cooking and eating in the street not only transform physical streetscapes and mobility patterns but also produce emergent publics, meanings, and solidarities. By foregrounding these practices, this article enriches scholarly understandings of streets as contested platforms where food solidarity, care, and resistance converge to challenge neoliberal urban imaginaries.