Activating Informality: Negotiating Urban Identities in Bolivia and Brazil Georgia E
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Macalester College DigitalCommons@Macalester College Latin American Studies Honors Projects Latin American Studies 2017 Activating Informality: Negotiating Urban Identities in Bolivia and Brazil Georgia E. Gempler Macalester College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/lashonors Part of the Human Geography Commons, Latin American Languages and Societies Commons, and the Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Gempler, Georgia E., "Activating Informality: Negotiating Urban Identities in Bolivia and Brazil" (2017). Latin American Studies Honors Projects. 10. http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/lashonors/10 This Honors Project is brought to you for free and open access by the Latin American Studies at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Latin American Studies Honors Projects by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Activating Informality: Negotiating Urban Identities in Bolivia and Brazil Georgia Gempler Honors Thesis in Latin American Studies Advisor: Professor Paul Dosh, Latin American Studies Macalester College Defended on April 14, 2017 Abstract: Drawing on original research, this paper explores the relationship between community identity and informality in Bolivia and Brazil, answering the question “How does informality influence and operate as identity in the social imaginary of urban Bolivia and Brazil?” Based on case studies of informal settlements in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia and Niterói, Brazil, I argue that informality is a tool of social control, community resistance, and identity consolidation. Community identity is informed by the territorial stigmatization of place through national conceptualizations of race and violence, and histories of marginality, resulting in resistance identity and insurgent citizenships. Keywords: community identity; informality; perception; territorial stigmatization; resistance identity; insurgent citizenship Gempler 1 Table of Contents Introduction: Problematizing Informality as an Identity in Cities 5 Case Studies: Plan 3000 and Morro do Palácio 8 Methodology 11 Definition of Terms 12 Chapter Outline 13 Chapter 1 On Informality, Citizenship, and Identity: Constructing a Framework for Intersectional Informality 15 Introduction: Incorporating Informality and Identity 16 Constructing a Definition: The Complexities of Informality 17 Informality and Citizenship 23 Identity in Informality: Insurgent Citizenship, Resistance Identity, and Territorial Stigmatization 26 Towards Establishing Informality as a Tool, and Perception as a Unit of Analysis 29 Chapter 2 Constructing Identity: Intersectional Informality in Plan 3000 and Morro do Palácio 31 Migration, Ethnicity, and Place of Origin: Racialized Resistance Identities 32 The Social Power of Violence: Stereotypes and Resistance Identities 46 Spatiality, Informality, and Control 51 Forging Identity: Narrative Resistance against Marginality 58 Chapter 3 Perceptions and Control 72 Building Public Perceptions 74 Spatially Informal: Perceptions of the Informal as Illegal, Unregulated, and Peripheral 74 Gente Humilde: External Perceptions of Poverty and Marginality 79 Territorial Stigmatization through the Media, Violence, and Race 80 Informality and the Law: Regularizing the Extralegal in Rio, Niterói, and Santa Cruz 91 Conclusions Evaluating Informality as a Tool 103 Activating a Dichotomy: Reacting to the Narrative of Delegitimized Informality 104 Reflections on Informality 108 Bibliography 109 Appendix 128 Gempler 2 Acknowledgements To my advisors and professors at Macalester College, Paul Dosh, Ernesto Capello, Eric Carter, I-Chun Catherine Chang, Ernesto Ortiz Díaz, and Ron Barrett, and professor Sophia Beal at the University of Minnesota, thank you for your continual support and encouragement. Special thanks as well to Rachel Tan Wei Fen, Maru Meléndez, Nina Escrivá Fernández, Rachel Naasz, Claire Looney, and Nicholas Bascuñan-Wiley – all incredible Macalester students who gave me suggestions and supported me along the way. In Santa Cruz de la Sierra, this research would not have been possible without the assistance of Paula Peña Hasbún (Santa Cruz) and Ana Carola Traverso-Krejcarek (New York) who assisted with the research process and facilitated research connections in Plan 3000 and Santa Cruz, as well as with local and state libraries. Your help and continued support was invaluable. Paola Viviana Blanco Rojas, an architect in Santa Cruz, generously provided me with her thesis on urbanization and the urban imaginary in Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Plan 3000. I am also grateful for the assistance of the librarians at the Sociology Department at the Universidad Autónoma Gabriel René Moreno (UAGRM) and at the Biblioteca Departamental de Santa Cruz for making the process of archival research much more bearable, and for finding extremely useful gems where at times there was little information to be found. Thank you as well to Gustavo Pedraza, for helping me to further direct my research and filling in the gaps. In Plan 3000, I am especially indebted to Juan Pablo Sejas and the Centro Cultural San Isidro for welcoming me into their organization, inviting me to experience their programming, providing me with their original research conducted about their own community (Plan 3.000), connecting me with academics and other useful resources, and sharing their wonderful community space with me. This research would also not have been possible without the help of the staff of La Calle, its director Daine and her siblings Cionny and Tito Álvarez Ortiz, who coordinated interviews, acted as guides throughout the ciudadelas, and introduced me to the wealth of information they had collected about their community. The work you do in invaluable. In Rio de Janeiro and Niterói, I am grateful for the assistance of Erika Robb Larkins of University of Oklahoma for helping me to think through the possibilities for research in Rio de Janeiro, as well as for her incredible scholarship. Thank you also to the staff at the Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro and of the Secretaria de Urbanismo e Mobilidade at the Prefeitura Municipal de Niterói, especially Fernanda Mesa Vila, for giving me access to relevant government reports and resources. I am especially grateful for the assistance and hospitality of Luciano Ximenes Aragão of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUC-Rio) and Alexandre Rodrigues; thank you for taking the time to show me Rio and help me understand the processes behind its formation, welcoming me into your home, and sharing your love of geography. Thank you as well to professors Rogério Haesbaert and Márcio Piñón of the Faculdade de Geografia at the Universidade Federal Fluminense and Marília Vieira de Araújo of Middlebury College Abroad. In Morro do Palácio, I am grateful for the support and assistance of ‘Salgadinho’, the Gempler 3 president of the Associações de Moradores do Morro do Ingá, and the staff of the MACquinho. This research was funded by a Study Abroad Research Grant from the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs at Middlebury College. All interviews included in this research are included with the permission of interviewees to share their statements. All names included, except those of public figures in their communities, are pseudonyms. Gempler 4 Legend of Abbreviations AEIS – Áreas de Especial Interesse Social AMMI – Associação de Moradores do Morro do Ingá BOPE – Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais (Elite Special Forces) CCSI – Centro Cultural San Isidro CDU – Corporación Municipal de Desarrollo Urbano COMPUR – Conselho Municipal de Políticas Urbanas CPSC – Comité Cívico Pro Santa Cruz IBGE – Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística MAC – Museu de Arte Contemporânea PDM – Plan de Desarrollo Municipal PEMAS – Plano Estratégico Municipal para Assentamentos Informais Urbanos PLOT – Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial PMCMV – Programa Minha Casa, Minha Vida UPP – Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora (Pacifying Police Unit) UVs – Unidades Vecinales Gempler 5 Introduction: Problematizing Informality as an Identity in Cities Gempler 6 Urban identity – identity as a sense of belonging to a city – encounters ambiguity in cities in which there is a visible divide between formal and informal space. Informal settlements (often referred to as slums), as spaces in which the informal or the unregulated economy reigns and urban development occurs independently of coordinated municipal efforts, have their own realities that shape urban identity formation. In these communities, identity at the community scale is intersectional, dynamic and, I argue, purposeful. Governments and media often use the label informal to associate communities with poverty, violence, or racial difference. These communities may be dubbed “subnormal” agglomerations, unplanned sections, or poor. This rhetoric dominates dialogue around them and dictates outsider perceptions. Such perceptions are then used to justify forced evictions and planning policies that neglect infrastructure development in informal areas. Thus, because informality is associated with the undesirable and precarious, it is imagined as a demeaning identity rather than a flexible and pervasive condition. On the other hand, the condition of informality is conducive to the development of identities that permit communities to challenge negative rhetoric. The circumstances