A land expropriation machine: the first years of the Urban Improvement Corporation (CORMU) in Chile (1967–1970)

Between 1967 and 1970, the Corporación del Mejoramiento Urbano (CORMU) established a strategy for land expropriation in which architecture played a crucial role. Created in 1966 by President Eduardo Frei-Montalva, it was a state agency with the attributes of a private corporation, with ample powers to develop urban renewal projects that vastly surpassed the mere provision of social housing. However, the fact that a developing country like Chile would spend its capital in expropriating urban land and that it would do so to undertake projects that would not address social issues, seems counterintuitive. This peculiar case can be explained if we consider the corporative ethos of Chilean politics since the 1930s and Frei-Montalva's political power. The paper analyses the trajectories of corporatism and Christian Democracy in Chile in the mid-twentieth century, explaining the institutional framework, surrounding the CORMU and describing the mechanism the corporation mobilized to expropriate urban land. Relying on archival documentation and interviews, this text unveils the unexamined relationship between legal tools (the framework) and architectural design (the mechanism) that enabled the CORMU's well-oiled land expropriation machine. Finally, the paper analyses the San Borja Remodelling, the urban scheme where the CORMU's machine found its biggest materialization.