LAND SQUATTING IN MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY by María José Álvarez-Rivadulla BA in Social Wo

246 Pages·2009·2.51 MB·English

by  Vernon Franklin

CONTENTIOUS URBANIZATION FROM BELOW: LAND SQUATTING IN
MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY

by
María José Álvarez-Rivadulla
BA in Social Work, Universidad de la República, Uruguay, 2000
MA in Sociology, University of Pittsburgh, 2004

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
Sociology in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

University of Pittsburgh
2009

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UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
SOCIOLOGY DEPARTMENT

This dissertation was presented

by

María José Álvarez-Rivadulla

It was defended on
April 21, 2009
and approved by
Kathleen Blee, Distinguished Professor, Sociology Department, U. of Pittsburgh
Patrick Doreian, Professor Emeritus, Sociology Department, U. of Pittsburgh
Javier Auyero, Lozano Long Professor of Latin American Sociology, Sociology Department,
U. of Texas, Austin
Dissertation Advisor: John Markoff, University Professor, Sociology Department, U. of
Pittsburgh

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Copyright © by María José Álvarez-Rivadulla
2009
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CONTENTIOUS URBANIZATION FROM BELOW: LAND SQUATTING IN
MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY
María José Álvarez-Rivadulla, PhD
University of Pittsburgh, 2009

What explains the evolution and dynamics of land squatting in Montevideo, Uruguay? Over the
last few decades squatter settlements have increased dramatically in this city that lacked a
―frontier‖ of poor illegal settlements until the 1980s, with the exception of a handful of very
precarious neighborhoods dubbed cantegriles that started appearing around the 1950s. Today,
about 11 % of the city‘s population lives on illegally occupied land (INE 2006). The more than
400 current squatter settlements have expanded the city limits, leaving a very concrete trace of
urban and social change. Squatter settlements mushroomed without natural disasters setting
people in motion and without population growth due to rural to urban migration processes,
frequent causes of land squatting elsewhere. Thus, both knowing how and why land squatting
has developed constitute interesting puzzles. No one has yet written about the history of land
squatting in Montevideo. This dissertation recovers this history from oblivion and puts it in
dialog with the literature on popular politics. From a social movement/contentious politics
perspective, in this dissertation I challenge the assumption that socioeconomic factors such as
poverty were the only causes triggering land squatting. I test whether political factors also
shaped the cycle of land invasions and examine the mechanisms through which those factors –
known as political opportunities in the literature - translated into different types of mobilization.
Through statistical analysis, in-depth interviews, document analysis, and multi-sited
ethnographic fieldwork, this project will describe and explain the origins and trajectories of
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squatting as an elusive form of collective action during the last half of the 20th century (1947-
2004). The project seeks to a) describe and explain the cycle of squatting and its timing; b)
compare trajectories of different kinds of mobilization involved in land seizures and the
mechanisms that activated them, and c) understand squatters‘ politics through a thick description
of squatters‘ experiences and memories of their relationships with state agencies and politicians
and through the experiences and memories of politicians, technocrats and bureaucrats as well.

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To my parents, Carmen and Pepe, who made me promise
I was not going to keep studying after this dissertation.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS ......................................................................................................... VII
LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................................................... XI
LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................. XII
PREFACE ................................................................................................................................. XIV
1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1
1.1 ON SQUATTING ................................................................................................ 3
1.2 THE STUDY OF LATIN AMERICAN SQUATTER SETTLEMENTS ....... 5
1.3 SQUATTER SETTLEMENTS AS MOVEMENTS ......................................... 8
1.4 SQUATTER SETTLEMENTS IN THIS STUDY .......................................... 17
2.0 THE CASE .................................................................................................................. 21
2.1 SQUATTING AND THE REPERTOIRE OF COLLECTIVE ACTION OF
THE URBAN POOR OF MONTEVIDEO ...................................................................... 21
2.1.1 A stubborn statist tradition in a worn down/elastic state .......................... 22
2.1.2 Statism and Clientelism: continuities and changes .................................... 32
2.1.3 Changing the repertoire ................................................................................ 39
2.1.4 The politics of squatting ................................................................................ 40
2.2 FROM MARGINALITY TO THE POOR WORKING CLASS: A
CHANGE IN DEMOGRAPHICS AND IDENTITY ...................................................... 42
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2.2.1 The name ........................................................................................................ 42
2.2.2 Demographics through historical and more recent studies of squatters .. 46
2.3 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 53
3.0 HOW TO STUDY ELUSIVE COLLECTIVE ACTION? A CALL FOR MIXED
METHODS .................................................................................................................................. 55
3.1 WHY A MIXED METHODS APPROACH?.................................................. 56
3.2 WHAT DID I DO? ............................................................................................. 60
3.2.1 Mini-ethnographies ....................................................................................... 60
3.2.2 Protest event analysis .................................................................................... 69
3.2.2.1 Building an event data set from various sources .............................. 71
3.2.2.2 The event data and its biases .............................................................. 73
3.3 CONCLUSION: QUALITATIVE OR QUANTITATIVE? .......................... 81
4.0 THE CYCLE OF LAND INVASIONS .................................................................... 82
4.1 TIME ................................................................................................................... 83
4.1.1 Late start in relation to the rural-urban migration process ...................... 87
4.1.2 Steady growth during the military regime .................................................. 88
4.1.3 The big peak ................................................................................................... 94
4.1.3.1 From the squatters’ side ..................................................................... 96
4.1.3.2 From the politicians’ side ................................................................... 98
4.1.4 Decline........................................................................................................... 101
4.1.4.1 Legal changes..................................................................................... 102
4.1.4.2 Increasing government responsibility for the land ........................ 107
4.2 TYPES: DISCOVERING HETEROGENEITY ........................................... 108
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4.2.1 Land invasions by accretion ....................................................................... 111
4.2.2 Planned invasions ........................................................................................ 116
4.2.3 Subdivision and sale .................................................................................... 126
4.2.4 Prevalence ..................................................................................................... 129
4.3 TYPES OF LAND INVASIONS OVER TIME AND SPACE .................... 130
4.4 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 139
5.0 INTERACTIVE MODELS FOR AN INTERACTIVE THEORY: EVENT
ANALYSIS OF LAND INVASIONS ...................................................................................... 141
5.1 POLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES AS A DETERMINANT OF
COLLECTIVE ACTION: AN IMPORTED FRAMEWORK ..................................... 141
5.2 PREVIOUS MULTIVARIATE STUDIES OF PROTEST EVENTS IN
LATIN AMERICA ........................................................................................................... 144
5.3 STUDYING EVENTS OF LAND SQUATTING IN MONTEVIDEO ....... 148
5.3.1 Definition of contentious event ................................................................... 149
5.3.2 Data ............................................................................................................... 149
5.3.3 Methods ........................................................................................................ 154
5.3.4 Results ........................................................................................................... 155
5.3.5 Comparative results .................................................................................... 161
5.3.6 Discussion ..................................................................................................... 167
5.4 CONCLUDING REMARKS .......................................................................... 170
6.0 MARKET CLIENTELISM: “IF YOU DON’T FLIRT, YOU DON’T GET
ANYTHING.”............................................................................................................................ 173
6.1 METHODS ....................................................................................................... 174
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6.2 THE GENEALOGY OF NEW ROCK .......................................................... 176
6.3 DISCUSSION ................................................................................................... 187
6.3.1 Squatters and clientelism ............................................................................ 188
6.3.2 Market clientelism ....................................................................................... 190
6.3.3 The “other” clientelism ............................................................................... 193
6.3.4 Some other theoretical reflections on clientelism and mobilization ........ 195
6.4 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 199
7.0 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 201
ORAL HISTORY QUESTIONNAIRE .................................................................................. 215
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 218
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