Approaching the current state territorial organisation

In the period from 1925 to 1973, we can find the most direct predecessors to the current territorial structure of the Chilean state. Montecinos (2005, p.455) defines this period as an attempt to reconfigure the state territoriality, and calls it “the first regionalisation”. Remember that the period before 1925 was characterised by demands coming from strong regionalist and federalist movements that were born in the provinces and, in most cases, had violent outcomes by means of revolution or armed uprising. These decentralising demands were considered, reflected upon and mentioned in a specific article of the constitution:

“The laws will entrust gradually to provincial or municipal agencies the authority and administrative powers currently exercised by other authorities, in order to proceed with the decentralisation of the national administrative system”.

(Constitución Política de la República de Chile, 1925, Article Nº107) This article described a process of ‘administrative decentralisation’ which sought to promote economic development (Boisier, 2000). Since 1939, CORFO had stimulated a new process of territorial organisation based on the economic development of the country. This new organisation delineated six major productive regions: Norte Grande, Norte Chico, Núcleo Central, Concepción and La Frontera, Región de Los Lagos, and Región de Los Canales. These productive-administrative divisions supposedly aimed to integrate people and human resources within a national developmental plan. However, this did not take into account the socio- spatial fabric of major ancient socio-economic and cultural groups such as the Magallanes people in the South, the Mapuches in Central Chile and the Aimaras in the North (Montecinos, 2005). According to Boisier (2000), the new division delivered more autonomy to neither Concepción nor Coquimbo —regions that had historically demanded more power— because it was mainly based on the spatial distribution of natural resources. Thus, the principal objective of this ‘first regionalisation’ was to encourage the economic development of each region based on its geographical and economic characteristics (Boisier, 2001).

In 1965, the National Planning Office (ODEPLAN) increased regionalisation by establishing new regions based on a system of poles of economic development. This time, the territory was divided into eleven regions and one metropolitan area. This ‘regionalisation’ was characterised by the designation of central spatial units, determined by a city as a hub that was to connect the rest of the region. Santiago and its metropolitan area were established as the main centre of national development, while the three poles of multi-regional development were Antofagasta, Valparaíso and Concepción. A third hierarchical level was composed by another set of sub-poles of regional development which were first politically and then economically subordinated to the aforementioned regional poles (Montecinos, 2005). By observing such hierarchies, it is then possible to understand better the underlying processes that have produced the current geographical and scalar organisation of the Chilean state, as this logic of organisation continued in the 1970s.

Alongside the arrival of the military dictatorship in 1973, there was a phenomenon that Montecinos (2011) considers paradoxical: instead of increasing the centralisation of the country, the dictatorship headed by the General Augusto Pinochet gave a strong impetus to the process of regionalisation and administrative decentralisation already started in the 1950s. Decree Nº212, from December 17, 1973, created the National Commission for Administrative Reform, or CONARA (Boisier, 2000). CONARA established the current national political-administrative division of Chile, consisting of thirteen regions. Thirty-four years later, a major modification to this spatial division was made in 2007 through the creation of two additional regions: Los Ríos Region and the Arica and Parinacota Region (see Appendix 7). According to Montecinos (2005), the military government discourses on state territorial organisation in the 1970s was focused on the geographic and economic potentialities of each region, and argued that this division would promote better integration of citizens, national security, socio-economic development and better national administration. In other words, the military government continued the process of administrative decentralisation initiated since the constitution of

1925. Likewise, the development of a national security system intended to achieve border security and internal cohesion by inhabiting the territory of ‘unoccupied’ spaces (Boisier, 2000). Although the foundation of Chaitén occurred in 1940 within an ‘unoccupied’ region, it was only during the 1970s that an important influx of people and economic progress took place (Delgado et al., 2005).

In the 1970s, the creation of regions displaced the power from provincial to regional governments, thus giving them more recognition and resources to implement the regional development plans (Szary, 1997). With this solution, the national government aimed to keep a united country but without falling into a “utopian federalism” while promoting economic development with territorial and political harmony (Montecinos, 2005, p.458). However, more than 30 years after the first regionalisation, the dialectic of centralisation and decentralisation processes — federalist and regionalist— is still considered an unsolved issue in the Chile of today (SUBDERE, 2000). According to Boisier (2001), this issue has created an imbalance between an administrative decentralisation and one political, where concrete redistribution of power to sub-national levels has not occurred. Moreover, Boisier (2001) asserts that administrative decentralisation has not secured a balanced distribution of the economy in the territory. On the contrary, since the 1980s, the concentration of wealth, income opportunities, and economic and political power in the Santiago Metropolitan Region has increased (Atienza and Aroca, 2012).

In sum, within the history of the Chilean territorial organisation, it is possible to distinguish various centralisation and decentralisation attempts: however, there are two clearly identifiable and distinctive styles of decentralisation: endogenous decentralisation and vertical decentralisation. The first is described as a “bottom-up” process (Montecinos, 2005, p.461) with a strong regional-political component based on revolutionary attempts of involving a radical change to the model of government and constitutional order. These, implemented in some cases, include attempts to federalise the country in 1826, 1851 and 1859. Another endeavour was the attempt to move the country from a highly centralised presidential system to a parliamentary

system, in practice for 34 years between 1891 and 1925. Both attempts brought no radical institutional changes and policy outcomes; nor were they manifested in Chilean social and political life (Boisier, 2001). On the contrary, the failure of these attempts became sufficient reason to react and recentralise power in both 1833 and 1925.

The second style, described as a “vertical decentralisation” or top-down (Montecinos 2005, p.461), is characterised by governments deciding on a policy of decentralisation with an administrative emphasis —a decentralisation of the functions of the state aiming to contribute to the process of its modernisation and economic growth in the country. In this period and under this logic, main government institutions and frameworks for disaster management and risk reduction are consolidated, such as the ONEMI, municipal emergency plans and territorial planning instruments (IPTs). These will be fully addressed in section 4.4. To end this historical revision, I will address the current structure of the Chilean territory.