EVER SINCE URBAN MIGRATION BEGAN accelerating some forty years ago, homeless people
have been invading empty lots in cities from Tijuana to
Slo Paulo. They have waged pitched battles against
police, soldiers and hired thugs, held sit-ins and demon-
strations against city officials and real estate speculators,
fought internal struggles against self-appointed political
bosses. More often than not, they won the right to remain.
For decades squatters’ organizations were isolated
from one another, their struggles exclusively local. They
were hierarchical and closed, like the communities which
spawned them. Women, though the clear majority, were
barred from decision-making power. And, as with all
single-issue struggles, leaders and organizations were
commonly bought off and brought into the system.
But the great depression of the 1980s left more than
debt, destruction and decay in its wake. It weakened
governments’ capacity to co-opt or repress, spurred squat-
ters’ militancy, and honed the sophistication and effec-
tiveness of their organizations. As a result, these groups
linked up with each other to form powerful city-wide and
even nation-wide grass-roots movements, which neither
governments nor political parties can afford to ignore.
T HIS REPORT LOOKS AT THE EMERGING
strength of these movements in three sharply con-
trasting contexts. In Lima, where the state is too weak
either to satisfy or effectively repress the demands of the
poor, Peruvian journalist Carolina Carlessi writes of
homeless Indian migrants from mountain villages who
have created self-governing cities within the city. Their
own economic development projects, food and services
distribution networks and security patrols fill the vacuum.
Carlessi is an editor at Lilith Ediciones and the author of
numerous articles on the women’s movement in Peru.
In Mexico, where the governing party can still co-opt
or intimidate grass-roots organizers, the “urban peoples’
movement” has grown so large and confident that it chal-
lenges government policy in Mexico City and across the
country. Daniel Rodriguez Velizquez, a researcher at the
National Autonomous University of Mexico and a fre-
quent contributor to the Mexican newspaper El Dia,
shows how isolated local struggles have become a nation-
wide movement. Elaine Burns, a long-time resident of
Mexico City who works with Mujer a Mujer, an organiza-
tion that fosters links between U.S. and Mexican women,
examines one particularly well-organized neighborhood,
San Miguel Teotongo, and finds that women’s struggle for
grass-roots democracy has been nothing less than revolu-
tionary.
In Brazil, the Catholic Church’s base communities
were important in stimulating and coordinating a grass-
roots movement, especially during the long years of
military dictatorship. Jan Rocha, Slo Paulo correspon-
dent for the Guardian (London), shows that the move-
ment has greatly outgrown its origins. Urban activists
helped found the Workers Party (PT) and through it have
taken over the Sao Paulo city hall.
NE REMARKABLE ASPECT OF THESE STO-
ries from Peru, Mexico and Brazil is the rediscov-
ery of power by the most oppressed of the oppressed
-women in squatter settlements who must confront both
the patriarchal traditions of their husbands and fathers and
the cruel indifference of the cities’ power brokers. The
majority of homeless activists are women, and women’s
struggle has been at the core of the transition from local
activism to politics on a grander scale.
In each of the three countries, neighborhood activists
have concluded that only national political change can
resolve their problems. As the drama of each country’s
crisis draws the movements into “politics,” they face a
dilemma: Will working with the government or the vari-
ous opposition parties compromise their autonomy, and
thus their ability to work for fundamental change?
Squatters have always been pragmatic in their dealings
with authority, and they have gained a realistic sense of
their own potential. Through winning and defending their
homes, the organized poor have built real democracy
from the ground up-not the hallowed rituals of pin-
striped politicians, but mass participation on the basis of
equality. If they can maintain unity, there will be no
question of co-optation by established power groups, but
rather of accords negotiated from strength.
The housing movement in the United States faces very
different conditions, of course. Although the state here
may not be able, or willing, to satisfy the need for housing
and services, it has far greater resources for suppressing
people’s own improvised solutions. Every state has clubs,
guns and courts; the United States excels at more sophis-
ticated repression: shelters that foster dependence, schools
that batter self-esteem, a reigning ideology by which
poverty is the fault of the poor. Latin America’s experi-
ence in homeless organizing may not be applicable here.
But, as Elaine Burns points out, if nothing else it chal-
lenges us to redefine what we consider possible.
