Urban Latin America

Urban Latin America ● Why can we say that Latin America is, and historically has been, an ‘urbanized region’? ○ i.e. Tenochtitlan and Machu Picchu/Cusco as urban centers established in the past ○ i.e. today, Rio de Janeiro, Cusco, La Paz, Buenos Aires ■ Colonial style architecture ● Urbanization: ○ The process of making an area more urban; but there are many definitions of what this means (range of what an “urban center” are especially in LAC) ■ The notion or what is “urban” is relative ○ > 50% of the world population lives in rural areas ■ 2007-2008 the world become more urban than rural ● US ~ 83% urban populations ● LAC ~ 80% urban populations ● What have been the drivers of urban growth in Latin America? ○ Rural to urban migration due to rural decline and urban industrialization (1940s50s; ISI period) ○ Push factors: forces the ‘draw’ people away from a particular place ○ Pull factors: forces that ‘bring’ people to a particular place ○ Communication & Transportation improvements: portrayal of cities as ‘modern’ and prosperous; improved transport networks into the cities ○ Natural increase in urban populations: births - deaths = natural increase (important beginning in the 1960s) ● Megacities: large metropolitan areas with a population of 10 million+ (i.e. Mexico City) ○ Usually have large informal sector economics that take place beyond official record (informal housing, economies, labor, etc.) ■ Informal labor: individuals completing work that is not formally approved by the government (i.e. pirating, candy, fruit, drugs, etc.) ○ 6 In Latin American projected by 2020: ■ São Paulo, Brazil → over 22 million ■ Mexico City, Mexico → over 21 million ■ Buenos Aires, Argentina → over 15 million ○ Mexico City as a megacity ■ Population of Mexico City proper (over 8 million)doubles every day with the people coming from outside the jurisdiction into the city for work ● ~ 60% of employment in the city is informal ● Overurbanization: jobs and housing don’t keep pace with growing cities and their populations; leads to the rise of the informal sector and informal housing ○ Can cause problems globally (not just in LAC) including: ■ Environmental issues ■ Infrastructural inadequacies ■ Uneven access to resources and services ■ Urban poverty ■ Inequality ■ Social segregation and exclusion ● Congregation: the territorial and residential clustering of specific groups or subgroups of people, which enables group identity to be consolidated in a neighborhood ● Discrimination: host or majority population may enegage in disctiminateion beased spaital seperation from certain popultions ● Urban poverty: poor often engage in informal sector work and living in informal housing, unable to attain equal access to city infrastructure Case Study in the La Chureca in Managua, Nicaragua ● Waste pickers in landfills collecting for shoe soles and materials to sell on the market ● The majority of the population who does this work builds their homes out of materials found in the landfill ○ Oral History Excerpts from landfill workers Identity & Social Difference ● Identity is … ○ “How we make sense of ourselves” (Gillian Rose) ○ “Constructed through experiences, emotions, connections and rejections that meshes with who we are and where we are at any given time … constantly changing” (Fouberg et al.) ○ Place is vital - our experiences and perceptions in and out of places help us define who we are ○ Reflexive: ■ How we wish to show ourselves and to be seen; coinciding or clashing with how others see us despite what we may wish ○ Multiple/Intersectional: ■ Simultaneous maintenance of multiple identifies; their intersections matter ○ Fluid: ■ Changes over time, with personal circumstance, in different places, with different people ○ Unique: ■ Identities are socially and culturally constructed and they change from time to time and from place to place ○ Often expressed in opposing terms, against other people/identity categories (man/woman, Indigenus/not) ○ Important common markers of identity: race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, nationality, etc. ● Social Difference ○ “Social difference”: a term to describe the many ways human difference is expressed ○ To understand and appreciate difference we must go beyond just the division of people into groups based on common categories of gender, race, class, sexuality, etc. and we must appreciate identity as reflexive, intersectional, fluid, and unique ○ We always must ask: “different from what? What is the so-called norm and why?” ● Identity & Difference as Social Constructs ○ Race: a mode of classification of human beings which distinguishes difference on the basis of physical properties ■ Often presented as ancient and immutable, but actually it’s modern manifestations are quiet new (role of European colonialism) ■ Based on distinguishing physical features (but genetic differences between people of same “race” can be larger than between people of supposedly different “races”) ■ Variously defined over time and place (not stable categories) ○ Gender: mode of classification relating to sexual identity and social expectations based on ‘sex’ ■ A culture’s assumptions about the differences between men and women: their ‘characters’, the role they place in society, what they represent ■ In LAC also profoundly influenced by Colonialism and Catholicism ■ Variously defined over time and place (not stable categories) ● Constructions of Identity & Difference in Latin America: ○ Racism: belief that particular ‘races’ are superior or inferior, and the prejudices and treatment of people based on those beliefs ○ Colorism: treatment of people based on the color of their skin along a spectrum, including by people of the same ‘race’ (ex. Preferential treatment of people with lighter skin in Latin American or among black communities) ● Case Study with the Idea of Brazil as a ‘racial democracy’ ○ World’s largest black population outside of Africa; second largest to Nigeria ○ Last in Americas to abolish slavery (Brazil: 1888, US: 1865, Mexico: 1829), had around 11 times more slaves than North America ○ Renders people of African descent as statistically invisible ○ Neglects the role of gender categories and class in race and racism ○ Around 70% of people living in extreme poverty are black; black Brazilians age 12-18 are almost 3 times more likely to get killed than their white counterparts ● Gender & Sexuality ○ Gender: ■ Refers to the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex ○ Sex: ■ Refers to a person’s biological status and is typically categorized as male, female, or intersex. There are a number of indicators of biological sex, including sex chromosomes, gonads, internal reproductive organs and external genitalia ○ Sexuality: ■ A component of identity that includes a person’s sexual and emotional attraction to another person and the behavior and/or social affiliation that may result from this attraction. A person may be attracted to mem, women, both, neither, to people who identify as genderqueer, or to people with other gender identities ● Gender & Sexuality in Latin America ○ Pre-Columbian Gender & Sexuality in LAC: ■ Gender constructions in many parts of Mesoamerica and the Andes were more fluid, non-hierachical, open: associated more with societal roles than anatomy; notion of symmetrical balance or complemtarity between masculine and femine pairings; presence of third-gender subjects; transgender practices prevalent; sexuality more fluid ■ Gender became a tool of domination not only under Spanish but predating colonization with other groups including imperial powers like the Inca ○ Spanish Conquest: ■ Concerned with maintaining racial purity and hierarchy ■ Demonized sexual practices that conflicted with mainstream Catholic/ European values (purpose of sex is only procreation) ■ Legacy of associating LAC women with eroticism ■ Promoted male dominated or “Mashimo” culture ● Gender Equality in Latin America? ○ Gains main politically don't mean gains in the private sphere (women presidents and high numbers of legislatures) ○ Sexual division of labor based on gender stereotypes and norms ○ Female labor participation stagnated at 53% in the last decade (ECLAC) ○ Salary of women only 84% of amount men earn (ECLAC) ● Femicide/Feminicide: ○ Killing of a woman or girl, in particular by a man and on account of her gender Femicide: accounts for the gendered aspect of this phenomenon; problem is gender expressions (masculinity) not sex (being a woman) ■ 14/25 countries with the highest rates of femicide globally are in LAC ○ Adriana Quinones (UN Women’s Country representative for Guatemala): ■ “In Latin America, we have a culture of high tolerance towards violence against women and girls. You see it in the media all the time, crimes against women are exhibited with very crude images and nobody seems to care about it. Violence becomes normalized; it is seen as a part of life for women.” ● LGBTQI+ in Latin America & the Carribean: also progress alongside problems ○ Latin America is the region with the highest rates of violence against LGBTQIA+ people, but also has the highest number of progressive policies ● Latinx ○ Why are people using this term? Different reasons for different people including: ■ Aims to move beyond gender binaries ■ Challenges the masculinzed form of words in Spanish as ‘gender neutral’ (Latino); rejects gendering of words ■ Form of rebellion against European legacies ■ It’s imperfect, but now a preference for many people ● Key takeaways: ○ Identity and social difference, the ways people identify themselves, and the ways people are categorized into groups based around similarities and differences, really varies depending on where you are (place matters). Latin America is no different. ○ These things are socially constructed. Identity categories are never simple and easy, and they can’t be determined just by looking at someones. ○ In Latin America, as elsewhere, social difference is often the basis for discrimination, prejudice, and marginalization Identity & Social Difference with Children and Young People ● Is childhood a social construction? ○ What does it mean to be a child? ○ How can this socially constructed idea influence how we look at and understand non-western ideals of childhood? ● Child protection and workers rights organizations ○ 1989 UNCRC (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) ■ Nondiscrimination ■ Best interest of child ■ Right to life, survival, and development ■ Right to participate ■ Article 32 ○ Convention 182 - International Labor Organization and Child Trafficking ● Child Labor - Rural vs. Urban ○ Gendered roles in rural communities ○ Difficult in obtaining education ○ Changes in rural societies ■ What has changed in rural communities and why? ■ What have communities and children begun to do to combat these new problems they are facing? ○ Street children and the problems associated with this term ○ Work and education rights ○ Violence against working children and migration ■ How has prejudice and increased violence against ‘street children’ corresponded with youth migration? ■ What types of empowerment and protection organizations have popped up because of this violence? Indigenous Peoples & Politics ● Who are indigenous peoples? ○ From the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, indigenous peoples: ■ “Self-identification as indigenous peoples at the individual level and accepted by the community as their member” ■ “According to the UN the most fruitful approach to identity, rather than define indigenous peoples. This is based on the fundamental criterion of self-identification as underlined in a number of human rights documents.” ○ Alternatively called Tribal Peoples, Native Peoples, Aboriginal Peoples, Indigenous Peoples, and First Peoples ○ Constitute about 5% of the world population (~370 million people) ○ Belong to about 5,000 different groups ○ Estimated that indigenous territories contain 80% of earth’s biodiversity ■ Increasing given respect for their role in environmental protection ● Highest indigenous population in LAC: ○ Bolivia at 62.2% ○ Guatemala at 41% ○ Peru at 24% ● Progress and continuing problems for indigenous peoples: ○ Overall improvements of quality of life in LAC have benefitted indigenous populations to some extent ○ But as we’ve discussed before, LAC still incredibly unequal, and often indigenous peoples are among the most marginalized in an unequal society ○ They continue to experience discrimination, higher rates of poverty, unequal access to basic services like education, often experience poorer health outcomes thatn non-indigenous counterparts ○ However, many countries, regions, and mainstream institutions increasingly recognize indigenous contributions to society, diversity in languages and worldviews, and to environmental protection ● Indigenous tribes in the Amazon are saving the rainforests through their protections and lands in sought after areas ● Uncontacted peoples (the Yanomami) in the Brazillian Amazon ○ Tharoor (2015): ■ Why is the term “uncontacted” a misnomer? ■ What is the romanticized view of these tribes, and why do Hill and her colleague Walker think that tribes might actually choose to remain isolated from mainstream society? ● Indigenous Peoples and Identity: ○ “Identity is no museum piece sitting stock-still in a display case …” ○ “He spoke of a Maya identity that is not only generic but also locally articulated” ● Indigenous Politics: ○ Indigenous peoples in Latin america have been at the forefront of movements for political, social, and environmental change ○ Indigenous mobilizations of last 30 plus years have often been in response to neoliberal policies ○ Often mobilize because their existence is tied to a particular territory or their ability to claim rights to place ○ Some form of identity politics is usually involved; in other words, asserting political position and demands based on their perspectives and desires as indigenous peoples Social Movements ● The Language of Social Movements ○ Social Movements: ■ “Groups of individuals who share common interests and often a common identity, engaged in noninstitutionalized discourses and practices designed to challenge and/or transform society, sometimes even using political means to influence, change, or even dismantle the state” (Bosco pg. 219) ○ Mobilization: ■ “How social movements come and stay together … how social movements connect with each other to build coalitions and networks across spacetime” (Bosco pg 207) ○ Activist: ■ Participant in a social movement ○ Cultural Politics: ■ “Processes enacted when sets of social actors shaped by, and embodying, different cultural meanings and practices come into conflict with each other” (Bosco pg. 209) ○ Transnational social movements: ■ “Social movements that span, and operate across, several nations and cultures, some of them even at the global scale, helped by common global grievances and held together by shared identities and strategies that bridge cultural and spatial divides among participants” (Bosco pg. 219) ● The role of place, scale, and networks in social movements ○ Importance of and use of public space, ○ Creation of a sense of place, ○ Role of attachment to place/territory/resources in movements, ○ Power of reaching out across space ● Case Study: The Chilean Student Movement ○ Post-Pinochet, first generation born after the dictatorship are young people who have been protesting Pinochet’s political and economic legacy ○ Pinochet and Chile’s “neoliberal experiment” privatization of natural resources and state-run enterprises, including Universities ■ Sine Pinochet years many private universities have been created, and public universities are no longer free ■ Much student debt because university fees higher than the minimum wage (in 2011) of $350 (the most expensive in LAC) ○ 2006, first wave of (high school) students protests (the penguins), demanding quality education for all, waiving uni admissions test fees, bus passes, etc. ○ 2011-2013, those students enter college, student movement to demand end of forprofit higher education and more state involvement in education in Chile ○ 2016- present, student movements in Chile remains major player in protesting government policies Tourism ● United Nations WTO following and researching tourism impacts in LAC ● Tourism: ○ Exchange of people, money, ideas, power and processes of change (social, environment, cultural) ● Sustainable Tourism: ○ Economically viable and inclusive ○ Socially and culturally positive for both hosts and visitors ○ Environmentally positive ● Cultural commodification and appropriation ○ Cultural appropriation: ■ Taking a cultural trait or form and popularizing it to a broader audience, usually for profit ● But, not always negative or discriminatory, cultural appropriation as old as culture itself; cultures don’t exist in a vacuum ○ Commodification: ■ Converting something that formerly wasn’t sellable and making it a sellable thing, frequently reproducing it in mass quantities; people doing the selling may or may not be done by a member of the “cultural group” ● If cultural practices are performed for tourists and for money (commodification of culture), is it still authentic culture? ● Heritage tourism and the “tourist gaze” ○ Heritage tourism: ■ As defined by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, “Cultural heritage tourism is traveling to experience the places, artifacts and activities that authentically represent the stores and people of the past and present. It includes cultura, historic, and natural resources.” ○ John Ury coined the term “tourist gaze”: ■ Expectations tourists place on local populations in search for “authentic” experience of travel ■ Often reflect cultural stereotypes ■ Cultural commodification has role to play in fostering tourist gaze and managing expectations of the local experience ○ Poverty and disaster tourism ■ In (US) Post-Katrina New Orleans, “Tourist, shame on you for driving by without stopping to see my pain. 1,600 died here.” ■ Can poverty or disaster tourism ever be sustainable? ● Leakage rate: ○ “The share of tourist spending appropriated by interests outside of the host community in which the tourism takes place” (Jackiewicz & Klak 2020) ● Soft power: ○ “Getting others to do what you want … how the increasing presences of US tourists in Latin America created demand among local for the US consumerdriven lifestyle” (Jackiewicz & Klak 2020) ● Case Study: Gigante, Nicaragua ○ Conservation and tourism: a win-win? ■ Why are conservation-based or eco-tourisms considered a win-win? ■ What are some potential negative impacts of conservation to local communities (in general, and as considered in this case)? ○ Should we evaluate the impacts of tourism similar to the ways in which we evaluate other resource-based export-oriented development efforts? ○ How is conservation-based tourism different and similar to other modes of resource-focused development? ○ Is it important to evaluate who will ‘win’ and who will ‘lose’ (role of power relations) in tourism? ● Responsible tourism? ○ What are some positive outcomes or ‘pros’ of cross-border tourism? ○ How might you take part in the positive benefits of tourism, and avoid contributing to the negatives of tourism? ● Voluntourism: ○ An “alternative” type of tourism has the potential to increase social, political, and environmental consciousness; participants might engage in activism, crosscultural engagement, education, research, service, etc. ○ Positives: ■ More opportunity two -way exchange between host and visitor communities; two-way positive transformation is possible ■ Cultural learning opportunities ■ Can be designed so economic resources stay in and benefit local host community ○ Potential Pitfalls: ■ Social awkwardness and difference ■ Commodification of poverty, or etc.? ■ Inequality of resource uses, demands expectations of visitors in hose community ■ “Post colonial others”: when the host community’s experiences comes second to the visitor community’s experience ■ Host communities positioned as “passive” recipients of assistance, their agency stripped; assumption that visitor community delivers “expertise” onto these passive recipients ■ Limited contributions to the host community ○ Things to consider/strive for: ■ Strive for the positives; be are of and try to avoid the potential pitfalls ■ Equal exchange: equality and inclusivity between all actors in decision making, design, and maintenance of project, particularly those in ‘host’ community ■ Monetary ‘equal’ exchange? ■ Host community informs and shapes the voluntourist experience by making their mission/goals central to project; hose community defines needs/desires ■ Communicate early and often with host community; follow-up on their experience (develop system of assessment for both hosts and visitors) ■ visitor's prepare thoroughly and educate themselves about host community, culture, history, and geography ■ Recognize and accept differences between host and visitor communities ■ BEWARE the “tourist gaze” Building Hemispheric Solidarity ● Solidarity: ○ Unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest; mutual support within a group ○ Solidarity movements often recognize the interconnections and interdependencies between places; they rally around a common interest or cause ○ Civil society groups (as opposed to governments) working for political, social, economic, environmental, etc. change to fill/rectify voids of governments ● A brief history of solidarity in Latin America ○ Solidarity reflects a commitment to and between distant groups, resource sharing, and political support; has a long history in the Americas; ■ Can be understood to date back to pre-Columbian times when the original native peoples of the Americas developed trade networks and exchanged goods and ideas ■ Colonization and creation of borders became barriers to both indigenous and European concepts of solidarity ■ In the “west” solidarity stemmed from secularizing Christian ideas of brotherhood; took a more collectivist approach as opposed to individualistic ■ “Rich North funds and defends poor south” solidarity model vs. solidarity movements “from below” ● Solidarity movement examples ○ Encuentro de Comunidades Transnacionales (meeting of transnational communities) ■ Gathering of Mexican, Central American, and US groups working to analyze and develop more humane migration policies ○ La Via Campesina ■ International movement which brings together millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous populations, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world ■ Defends small-scale sustainable agriculture as a way to promote social justice and dignity ○ Peace Brigades International ■ Protective accompaniment is a strategy pioneered by PBI for protecting human rights defenders and communities whose lives and work are threatened by political violence ■ Accompaniment has proven to be very effective protection, even where the overall human rights situation was deteriorating and where death squads seemed impervious to external pressure ■ In 30 years PBI has successfully protected the lives of thousands of activists while never losing a volunteer ○ San Diego Maquiladora Workers’ Solidarity Network ■ “Ties together people in the nation’s largest border town who want to build an alliance between working people across that border. We believe that US and other multinational corporations operating factories in Tijuana and other maquiladora citives have no right to pay poverty wages, require pregnancy tests of their workers, pollute with impunity, and repress unions. We believe that unions and other workers in the US will be crippled as long as their workers are cut off from their co-employees abroad. And we believe there is no better place to start solving these global problems than locally.” ○ Reflecting questions: ■ Why is cross-border labor solidarity arguably so important for workers on both sides of the border? ■ What are some other examples of cross-border solidarity movements in LAC or between LAC and the US? ● Course Takeaways: ○ LAC is an extremely diverse place (people’s backgrounds and experiences; ecology; build environment; economics; politics; etc.) ○ Global connections are fundamental to understanding Latin America today ■ It is impossible to understand the region without understand it’s relations to the US and the rest of the world (colonialism and economically) ○ Global connections and a transnational approach to understand place is not only applicable to Latin America and the Carribean ○ I hope you will take a “global sense of place” with you in the future ■ It’s not just the place that leads to their actions, outside and external factors from the rest of the globe has caused these situations ○ The importance of Latin America to the United States ■ Natural resources, tourist destinations, labor of Latin Americans ■ Our country is not often friendly to immigrants even though they extremely benefit us and our economy ○ With COVID-19, the US is still very dependent with undocumented and visa workers to produce our foods and be the “essential workers” to take the brunt of our economy and people