Urban Neofractures and Land Mafias: Criminalised Informality, Property Violence and the Politics of Housing in Chilean Cities

ABSTRACT This article examines transformations in informal access to urban land in Chile, marked by the emergence of mafias de la tierra (land mafias): armed groups that organise land invasions and illegal subdivisions, displacing long‐standing housing struggles led by social movements and political parties. This phenomenon produces what we term an urban neofracture: a rupture through which land is converted into an informally traded commodity, deepening socio‐spatial exclusion and urban violence. Drawing on the theory of the metabolic rift and foregrounding epistemic, distributive and intergenerational injustices, the article analyses the actuarial logic through which land mafias monetise vulnerability by estimating eviction risk, enforcement lag and household financial exclusion, converting structural uncertainty into predictable cash flow, and examines the practical impossibility of state intervention. The study argues that these practices configure a new urban scenario in which illegality competes with state planning, eroding rights and consolidating transnational criminal circuits.