Estrategias legales de los grupos movilizados en los conflictos socioambientales de la Región Metropolitana de Santiago (2010-2021)

This article analyzes the legal strategies deployed in socio-environmental conflicts by citizen organizations in the Santiago Metropolitan Region between 2010 and 2021. The study is based on an inventory of 92 socio-environmental conflicts, compiled through the triangulation of press, judicial, and digital sources and complemented by the identification and analysis of the associated legal actions. The results show that 51 of the 92 conflicts identified (55%) were judicialized. Although no significant differences are observed in the likelihood of judicialization according to the socioeconomic status of the territories, judicialization is more frequent in peri-urban and rural areas than in consolidated urban areas. The recurso de protección (constitutional protection action) is the most frequently used legal avenue, although a high proportion of these actions are rejected, whereas cases brought before the Second Environmental Court show more balanced outcomes. Furthermore, a substantial proportion of the conflicts involve prolonged legal trajectories spanning different legal avenues and judicial instances. These findings show that judicialization constitutes a heterogeneous and ambivalent strategy of collective action: while it provides opportunities to make conflicts visible, activate institutional mechanisms, and prolong disputes, its legal effectiveness varies, and its use is conditioned by the resources and capacities of the actors involved.