Report

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.

Article

Elaine Burns
IN ORDER TO PROMOTE INFORMED AND thoughtful participation by all its members, the urban popular movement has incorporated a number of practices which could be described as "popular education." These usually follow the participant's first experiences of collec- tive strength in the street, at city hall, or in community- initiated projects.
Jan Rocha
IT'S BEEN HAPPENING NOW EVERY COUPLE of months. Hundreds of poor city-dwellers descend on the center of Sdo Paulo in buses, carrying their cloth banners and home-made cardboard posters.
Geoffrey Fox
On the way to Buenos Aires from the airport at Ezeiza, two weeks before the May 14 elections, I asked the taxi driver to point out the site of the mas- sacre. He smiled and waved vaguely behind us at bridge 12, where the Ricch- eri expressway passes over highway 205.
Elizabeth Station
Several times each hour on prime- time television, the Brazilian govem- ment's latest and flashiest AIDS adver- tisement punctuates the commercials between telenovelas, rock videos and news programs. "Use condoms with unknown partners, from beginning to end," counsels singer Caetano Veloso in a quick, tight close-up.
Letters to the editor should be sent to NACLA, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 454, New York, NY 10115. They may be edited for length and clarity.
Daniel Rodriguez Velázquez
ON SEPTEMBER 19, THE FOURTH ANNIVER- sary of Mexico City's devastating 1985 earth- quakes, two commemorative rallies were held in the city's central plaza, the Z6calo. At the first, before a few hundred government supporters, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari lowered the flag to half-mast to honor the thousands of victims and promised more government reconstruction.
When Women Rebel: The Rise of Popular Feminism in Peru by Carol Andreas, Lawrence Hill & Company, 1985, 233 pp., $19.
Daniel Rodriguez Velázquez
THE CLASS CHARACTER OF THE URBAN MASS movement is a subject of intense debate in Mexico, given that classical Marxist concepts do not neatly fit Third World capitalism. Some argue that residents of the poor neighborhoods belong to the proletariat or its industrial reserve army, since they lack any ownership of means of production.
Daniel Rodriguez Velázquez
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Carolina Carlessi
The following interview with Michel Azcueta, mayor of Villa El Salvador, by Jaime de Althaus,first appeared in the Lima daily Expreso (May 19, 1989).* Do you have problems with terrorism? Yes, but I can count them on the fingers of my hand.
Carolina Carlessi
THE FIRST OF JUNE: THE RESIDENTS OF VILLA El Salvador's First Sector are holding an assembly. Suddenly a man gets to his feet, gun in hand, demanding to know the whereabouts of Mayor Michel Azcueta, who is not present.
Elaine Burns
PERHAPS WHAT MAKES THE URBAN POOR people's movement such a deeply challenging force-in Mexico or anywhere-is that it is rooted in the most intimate of realities: the houses and neighborhoods which make up the space called "home." Though much of life is defined by what takes place there, it is an arena still relatively unexplored by political and economic analysts.
MF
Morality and Power POLICE AND SOLDIERS WERE LIBERALLY DE- ployed in downtown Santiago last February 15 when Maj. Sergio Cea, Chile's military prosecutor, went face-to- face with Bishop Sergio Valech of the Vicariade la Solidari- dad.
Elaine Burns
FOR DECADES, THE GOVERNING PARTIDO Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI, has maintained control over poor neighborhoods by serving as the primary channel for access to needed resources-schools, subsidized tortillas, installation of water, roads and electricity, access to transport and land. These resources are controlled by com- munity leaders whom the PRI wins over by granting them privileges in return for demonstrations of political loyalty.
Carolina Carlessi
LIMA, THE NIGHT OF FEBRUARY 21, 1989. Blackout.