467763LAPXXX10.

1177/0094582X12467763Latin American PerspectivesCortés / Pobladores and Favelados in Social Theory

2012

A Struggle Larger Than a House

Pobladores and Favelados in Latin American Social Theory
by
Alexis Cortés Morales
Translated by Timothy Thompson

During the twentieth century, the political action of the urban poor in Santiago de
Chile and Rio de Janeiro was a focal point of research in the social sciences. A critical read-
ing of the major theories that were proposed begins with an analysis of marginality theory,
which represented the first (negative) interpretation of the political potential of the mar-
ginalized. Subsequently, Santiago and Rio witnessed a series of urban popular experiences
that elicited two opposing schools of thought: the urban-social-movement school and the
utilitarian perspective. Chilean and Brazilian social scientists grappled with the way the
popular sectors reacted to each country’s military dictatorship, and their interpretations
reflected a certain indeterminacy, ranging from rediscovery to eulogy to denial. Urban
popular struggle must be rethought in order to move beyond this theoretical ambivalence.

Durante el siglo veinte, la acción política de parte de los pobres urbanos de Santiago de
Chile y Rio de Janeiro fue un foco investigativo en las ciencias sociales. Esta lectura crítica
de las principales teorías propone, en primer lugar, un análisis de la teoría de la margin-
alidad, la cual representó la primera interpretación (negativa) del potencial político de los
marginados. Posteriormente, Santiago y Rio de Janeiro fueron testigos de una serie de
experiencias populares urbanas, las cuales configuraron dos modos de pensamiento opues-
tos: la escuela de los movimientos sociales urbanos y la perspectiva utilitaria. Los cientis-
tas sociales chilenos y brasileños, al enfrentar la forma en la cual los sectores populares
reaccionaron frente a las dictaduras militares en cada país, reflejaron en sus interpretacio-
nes una cierta indeterminación, fluctuando entre el redescubrimiento, la exaltación, hasta
la negación. La lucha popular urbana tiene que volver a pensarse para superar esta ambiv-
alencia teórica.

Keywords: Pobladores, Favelados, Urban social movements, Marginality, Urban

poor

During the twentieth century, Latin America’s urban poor stood at the cen-
ter of the region’s intellectual debates. Reflection on their position gave rise to
an extensive body of theory aimed at understanding the specifics of social real-
ity in Latin American cities. Efforts were made to interpret the collective action

Alexis Cortés Morales holds an undergraduate degree in sociology from the Pontificia
Universidad Católica of Chile and a Master’s in sociology from the Instituto Universitário de
Pesquisa do Rio de Janeiro. He is completing his doctorate in sociology at the Instituto de Estudos
Sociais e Políticos (UPERJ). Timothy Thompson is a freelance translator completing a Master’s in
Latin American and Caribbean studies at Indiana University Bloomington. The author thanks
Luiz Machado da Silva, Gonzalo Cáceres, and Vicente Espinoza for their insightful comments
and Magdalena Toledo for her invaluable assistance in editing the text.

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 189, Vol. 40 No. 2, March 2013 168-184
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X12467763
© 2013 Latin American Perspectives

168
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015
 Cortés / POBLADORES AND FAVELADOS IN SOCIAL THEORY    169

of those residing in popular housing (which takes many forms) and situate it
within the analytical frameworks of particular political agendas, agendas vying
for the right to lead dependent societies down the road to development.
The marginalized have been understood by some writers as pawns (massa de
manobra) potentially at the mercy of populist or revolutionary agendas, as a
lesser arm of the proletariat, or as leading actors in a new form of class struggle,
as Castells (1972) would say—this despite the secondary nature of the dynamic
that defines them (consumption/housing). All the same, they have been at the
center of the political debate at certain junctures, and Touraine’s (1987) famous
phrase “the centrality of the marginalized” (although apparently paradoxical)
came to describe a major facet of collective popular action in Latin America.
My goal in this study is to analyze critically the way in which twentieth-
century social science came to understand the political action of the urban
poor in Rio de Janeiro (favelados) and Santiago de Chile (pobladores); in the
process, I suggest some possible rereadings of these urban social movements.1
Although the categories of favelado and poblador describe particular seg-
ments of the urban poor and not their totality, these labels became the focus of
much of the debate around urban social issues in the region.2 The favela is
probably the type of popular housing that has had the greatest impact on
images of urban poverty, whereas the experience of pobladores, for its part,
played a decisive role in leading to the recognition that an eminently urban
social movement starting from a subaltern position was capable of creating
profound social transformations.
An effort to compare and contrast the way social scientists have approached
the paths of collective action taken by favelados and pobladores can advance
our understanding of the collective action of Latin America’s urban poor, mov-
ing beyond the dichotomies and vagaries of the different schools of thought
that have examined urban social issues in Latin America.
This study is divided into four parts. The first part sets the stage by discuss-
ing trends in the interpretation of the “social question” in both Brazil and Chile.
Here we see a tendency that also appears in the realm of specifically urban
social issues: the Brazilian working class is seen as an object of manipulation
(massa de manobra), whereas the Chilean working class is seen as becoming
aware of its historical role in social transformation. The second part addresses
the emergence of marginality theory as an initial, nebulous attempt at recogniz-
ing the political agency of favelados and pobladores. The third part examines
the schools of thought opposed to marginality theory: major alternative inter-
pretations of the urban poor’s political action came to see it as either a radical
movement based on class consciousness or a utilitarian movement based on
concrete demands. The final part briefly considers how the social sciences came
to understand the reaction of movements led by pobladores and favelados vis-
à-vis the military dictatorships of their respective countries.

The Social Question: Gift or Achievement?

The social question is closely tied to industrialization and urbanization; fol-

lowing Castel (2004), it can be understood as an awareness of a central fracture,
dramatized by proliferating descriptions of poverty, that may even lead to the

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015

170    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

dissolution of society as a whole. In Chile and Brazil academic approaches to

the social question displayed certain similarities but arrived at opposite
conclusions.
In both cases we see an initial stage of heroic unionism confronting the miser-
able living conditions of the working class, followed by a subsequent stage
marked by an effort to expand the horizon of citizenship in relation to the state.
In both countries the transition from the first stage to the second coincided with
a framing of the movement that centered on the figure of the union as an entity
mandated by the labor code, ignoring the initial heterogeneity displayed by
workers’ organizations. From then on, the labor movement could no longer be
understood outside its relation to the state, which itself came to be redefined by
its attempt at social inclusion. This entailed a fundamental disjunction: relin-
quishing autonomy as a movement while achieving an important set of goals.
For mainstream Chilean historiography the social question was defined by
the self-awareness of the working class, a product of its political and organiza-
tional maturity; pressure applied through strikes and electoral struggle resulted
in the achievement of social legislation. Brazilian historiography, however,
arrived at a diametrically opposite interpretation: social legislation was seen as
a “gift” from the administration of Getúlio Vargas and the corporate state
rather than the product of working-class struggle; unions were the result of
social legislation rather than its cause.
The corporate state is the basis for understanding the rise of the idea that
after the Brazilian Revolution of 1930 the social question became a matter of
official policy rather than an opportunity for the working masses to bring about
social change. This hypothesis was set forth by a thinker who was one of the
Vargas administration’s most brilliant supporters, Oliveira Vianna: “The
Revolution of 30 had the distinct merit of raising the social question—hitherto
left to police jurisdiction in raids on the public square—to the dignity of a fun-
damental national problem, a problem to be solved through a set of laws whose
precepts were guided, with a deep sense of social justice, by a noble spirit of
harmony and collaboration” (Vianna, 1951: 11).
In Chile, by contrast, the official process of integration, which culminated in
the institutionalization of a series of rights, was far from being interpreted as a
gift from the ruling classes. Mainstream historiography saw it as an achieve-
ment of the working class, an achievement made possible by proletarian aware-
ness, organizational capacity, and combativeness: “The history of the labor
movement demonstrates that the rights now enjoyed by the working class and
whatever benefits have been attained were not free concessions made by bour-
geois authorities or landowners, nor were they disinterested gifts from the rul-
ing classes. They are solely and exclusively achievements of the working class”
(Ramírez Necochea, 2007: 287).
This brief overview has highlighted the basic either/or approach taken by
traditional interpretations of the social question, which see the subaltern classes
as either passive on the one hand or assertive on the other. The Chilean work-
ing class is held up as an example of a “class for itself,” whereas the Brazilian
working class is seen as a “class in itself” (closer to being a “mass in itself”). It
would be a mistake to apply this oversimplification to the context of the urban
poor; if we were to do so, of course, the pobladores would represent a combat-
ive and politically active social movement, whereas the favelados would be

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015

 Cortés / POBLADORES AND FAVELADOS IN SOCIAL THEORY    171

(once again) an object of manipulation. We need to move beyond the limits of

this interpretation and its effort to define the subaltern classes as more or less
combative or more or less manipulable and focus instead on the constitution of
both pobladores and favelados as political actors in their respective societies.
The differences between their trajectories lie not in a predisposition toward
organization and radicalism on the Chilean side (versus the opposite on the
Brazilian side) but in the different political processes involved in the national
disputes that in each country made it possible for a given repertoire to be more
successful than its alternatives.
Specifically, the social question involves a dilemma that must be “prevented”
insofar as the continued survival of society itself depends on ending the work-
ing class’s state of destitution. It entails a recognition of the potential within the
subaltern classes to construct, hypothetically, a counterhegemonic project
whose discourse is emboldened by their members’ lived experience of poverty.
The “preventive” response to the social question in both Chile and Brazil rep-
resented an attempt to anticipate the social fractures that might arise from the
organized action of the subaltern classes. The role of the working class is crucial
here, whether because of the real threat it represents or because of the potential
threat posed by its autonomous organization.

Marginality: Political Actors and the Threat They Pose

In the Latin American context several theories employed the category of

“marginality” as a key explanatory variable. Their emphasis on different
areas—productive, technical (related to the organization of production), socio-
cultural, political, demographic—demonstrated that discussions of marginal-
ity were imbricated with the assumptions that underlay the contrasting models
of development presented as alternatives for understanding and overcoming
underdevelopment (Germani, 1973).
Despite the theoretical heterogeneity of the “marginal” perspectives, they
found common ground in their reading of marginality as dysfunctional; regard-
less of the ideological allegiance behind the analysis, the marginalized were
associated with a potential for disruption, whether positive (in their capacity
for revolution) or negative (in the burden they placed on the rest of society).
The focus remained on the need for social change, be it revolutionary or reform-
ist (Machado da Silva, 1971).
One of the foremost marginality theorists in Latin America was Roger
Vekemans, a Belgian sociologist and Jesuit priest. Tied politically to the
Christian Democrats, he carried out much of his work at Chile’s Centro para el
Desarrollo Económico y Social de América Latina (Center for the Economic and
Social Development of Latin America—DESAL). Marginality theory played a
fundamental role in consolidating the different schools of thought attempting
to think the specificity of urban development in Latin America (Lezama, 2002).
In the view espoused by DESAL, Latin America became aware of the pres-
ence of the marginalized only after its cities had been inundated and it became
physically possible to point one’s finger at the swaths of destitution. Marginality
entails a lack of participation and social belonging, manifested in Latin
America’s characteristic social dichotomy: a participatory society on the one

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015

172    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

hand, settled and hegemonic, versus a society of marginalized masses on the

other. Marginality is relational and negative (a lack); the phrase “lack of par-
ticipation” implies a negation of the bond that should tie the marginal sphere
to mainstream society. Marginality is not only economic but above all cultural,
in the sense that it affects every area of social life. This dynamic was seen as
coinciding with a physical manifestation, crystallized in a specific social space:
the favela (or población). It is here that the strongest image of marginality
emerges: “The world of the marginalized. . . is internally fractured and frag-
mented, a world whose ‘agglutinations’ take the form of ghettos, defensively
folded in upon themselves and unwilling to confront the social mainstream”
(Vekemans and Silva, 1976: 81).
An undeniable aspect of this theory is the cautionary tone it takes when
discussing the marginalized: “The marginal masses are standing, metaphori-
cally, outside the shop window, yet they have no purchasing power. . . . Four
centuries have passed and, faced with this new reality, we must act to prevent
the shop window from being violently shattered” (Vekemans and Silva, 1969:
61). To “prevent the shop window’s destruction,” DESAL proposed the
Promoción Popular (Popular Promotion) program, an attempt to integrate the
marginalized into society through a process of social restructuring. The idea of
promotion can be understood as both top-down (capacity building) and bottom-
up (organizing) because the foundation of the process of social reintegration lay
in grassroots organizations (neighborhood associations, mothers’ centers, and
so on).
These ideas clearly exerted a profound impact on many intellectuals and on
important political projects in the region. In Brazil similar elements had already
been present in the scholarship of urban sociology pioneers such as Carlos
Alberto de Medina (1964), who viewed the favela as an extension of the coun-
tryside in the city, a rural-primitive tumor within the modern metropolis.
Although the favela was a blight, it could be cured through good public admin-
istration. The problem was that favelados, because they reproduced cultural
patterns originating in the countryside, were easily manipulated by dema-
gogues, which hindered the possibility of finding a solution for their situation.
According to the first major study of favelas, Aspectos humanos da favela carioca
(Human Aspects of the Favela of Rio de Janeiro) (Rios, 1960), migration from
the country to the city led to the development of a “Caboclo culture” with the
psychological traits and behavioral norms of rural life preserved in the favela.
Here the cautionary tone is even more pronounced than with DESAL: “We
must go up the hill before the communists come down it” (Rios, 1960: 43).
The Catholic Church’s creation (in alliance with Carlos Lacerda, the gover-
nor of Rio de Janeiro) of the Fundação Leão XIII and the Cruzada São Sebastião
became the practical manifestation of a new conception of favela residents, one
geared toward a long-term solution: the human promotion of the favelado.
These mechanisms were designed to foster “community participation” and
grassroots organizations, essentially to oppose “demagogic exploitation by
politicians” and neutralize the communist influence in the favelas.
Does the idea of a threat also carry with it a potential recognition of the
political capacity of the marginalized? Can the preventive nature of “going up
the hill” to keep the “glass from being shattered” be compared to the social
question’s reflective response to the demands of the working class? The idea of

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015

 Cortés / POBLADORES AND FAVELADOS IN SOCIAL THEORY    173

the “manipulable masses” found in the work of marginality theorists stands

opposed, by definition, to the recognition of subaltern political action. Yet is it
possible to warn of society’s potential fracture without acknowledging the pos-
sibility of building a political project that would make such a fracture viable?
The notion of “recognition” is somewhat clearer regarding the workers’
movement than with regard to that of the favelados or pobladores. Still, the
idea that “we must go up the hill before the communists come down it” is not
only a matter of defusing danger but also an acknowledgment of the potential
emergence of a “radical” political actor. There is a fear of the amorphous
masses, but the greatest fear is of the masses’ becoming a radical oppressed
class (the manipulable communist masses, in this view). The fear is that the
amorphous masses will become a political actor outside the predefined bound-
aries that the dominant classes have set for the subaltern classes, boundaries
based on the idea of the “good favelado” who “learns” to escape from poverty.
Despite political prejudices regarding the urban poor, what we have here is still
a (dominant) social group contemplating a scenario that is possible; hence this
hypothetical situation (“the communists coming down”) is already having con-
crete consequences in the real world, and, according to the Thomas theorem,
“if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (quoted
in Merton, 1970: 515).
Particularly in the case of Brazil, a distinction should be made regarding the
preventive nature of state action. The dominant sectors took systematic action
to prevent a social avalanche (from coming down the hill) and to neutralize
the communist influence in the favelas. Yet if the social question (for workers)
shifted from a police matter to a matter of citizenship regulated by the state
(for the benefit of a small sector of Brazilian workers) (Santos, 1998), the urban
social question in large part remained a police matter. State regulation of citi-
zenship in the favelas was much more contradictory and repressive than in the
factories. In other words, if the state’s approach to unions showed both a
strong left arm (through labor legislation) and a strong right arm (through
control), its approach to the favelas demonstrated an extreme swing to the far
right, most visible in the form of forced removals. Even under conditions that
were favorable to the favelas, repression was always present in places of pov-
erty (Silva, 2005).
Finally, mention should be made, albeit briefly, of the versions of marginal-
ity theory that were Marxist in inspiration (economic marginality). In opposi-
tion to the version proposed by DESAL and others—including Lewis’s (1961)
“culture of poverty” and Germani’s (1971) modernization theory—they under-
took a materialist reading of marginality that was key to shaping the debate
that would develop in Chile with Castells and the Centro Interdisciplinario de
Desarrollo Urbano (Interdisciplinary Center for Urban Development—CIDU).
The economic reading of marginality would become a source and to a certain
extent an integral part of the literature on urban social movements. The debate
between Nun and Fernando Henrique Cardoso regarding the idea of the “mar-
ginal masses” is a case in point; at issue here was an effort to explain the increase
in dysfunctional populations vis-à-vis the dominant system of production
(Nun, 2001). In a similar vein, Anibal Quijano (1972) would develop the cate-
gory of the “marginal pole” to identify a new social stratum cast off by each

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015

174    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

sector of the economy and excluded from the most productive sectors because
it lacked a production-oriented function. It is not surprising that in the fertile
Latin American sociological debate of the late 1960s attempts were made to
develop totalizing approaches that integrated a range of categories, including
development, underdevelopment, dependency, marginality, and spatial
inequalities (Sunkel, 1970), approaches that would give Latin America’s urban
poor a leading role in the theoretical development of social science research in
the region.

An Urban Social Movement or a Utilitarian Movement?

The Urban-Social-Movement School

Influenced by Chile’s climate of social and political ferment in the early

1970s, a group of researchers in Santiago turned its attention to what seemed
to be a new and potentially decisive political actor in the midst of the country’s
polarization: the poblador. These intellectuals saw the marginalized as an
“urban spearhead,” in the words of Fanon (2007), that would lead the processes
of social transformation at work in the region. Their first task as researchers
was to refute the arguments of marginality theory à la DESAL. In a series of
empirical studies, they called into question the “lumpen” label that had been
applied to those living in popular housing, demonstrating instead the “popular
heterogeneity” of poblador communities. They problematized the idea of mar-
ginal subculture, affirming instead that the cultural life of low-income neigh-
borhoods could not be separated from the ideological and political ebb and
flow of the general processes of class struggle.
They also criticized the interventionist approach to marginality theory taken
by DESAL, an approach geared toward justifying the political modus operandi
of the Christian Democratic Party. They saw marginality theory as an attempt
to conceal the relation of exploitation that was part and parcel of the capitalist
system; economic in nature, the causes of marginality were not to be found
within the marginalized themselves (as a supposed subculture incapable of
organized action). The work of DESAL, in their view, served to legitimize the
workings of a paternalistic and populist state, one that expected the marginal-
ized to become electoral clients of its political agenda.
At the same time, their critique also applied to traditional workers’ parties
(especially the Communist Party), which consisted primarily of nonmarginal
workers. The presence of these parties in low-income communities was limited
to a basically economistic approach, tactical in nature: their weak ideological
foothold manifested itself in a tendency to focus on the neighborhood council
as an institution that could provide a purely electoral advantage.
As the research group most responsible for fostering this approach, CIDU
was dedicated to understanding the sociopolitical phenomenon of the newly
organized movement being led by activists from several political parties—
Christian Democratic, Communist, Socialist, and the Movimiento de Izquierda
Revolucionaria (Movement of the Revolutionary Left—MIR), a movement
characterized by land occupation and the establishment of scores of campamentos

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015

 Cortés / POBLADORES AND FAVELADOS IN SOCIAL THEORY    175

(encampments). To the right wing, the campamentos were a lumpen safe

house; to the communist left, they were the primary way the masses could
push to obtain housing; and to the revolutionary left, they were the first step
toward taking power (“take this land, then take power”). Beyond these com-
peting interpretations, CIDU saw the pobladores’ campamentos as a unique
experience of political struggle and urban organization. The movement’s orig-
inality lay in the explicit relation between land occupation and power. At issue
was not only the presence of a variety of popular organizations within the
campamentos but also the directly political role played by the act of land occu-
pation itself in the Chilean context of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the
poblador movement took center stage; it was in this context that the varying
interventions of the campamentos’ different political actors took shape
(CIDU, 1972).
For Castells (1972), the poblador movement was defined, in the context of
class struggle, by the way it linked urban social demands to a political strategy
of mobilization, one whose goals were tied to local governance. This combina-
tion gave rise to the development of new forms of political organization. Urban
issues in Santiago came to overshadow even the struggle of factory workers
during the period preceding the election of 1970 (won by the socialist Salvador
Allende); their centrality was a function of the concurrent action of three
opposed political strategies competing within the campamentos and poblacio-
nes in an effort to find a way out of the structural crisis of popular housing in
Chile. The strategy of the Christian Democrats, inspired by Popular Promotion
policies, was viewed by CIDU as merely a populist attempt to draw workers
into the party’s potential power base. The workers’ parties, especially the
Communist Party, aimed to take the political struggle onto the terrain demar-
cated by the Christian Democrats. For its part, the revolutionary left, led by the
MIR, saw the explosive nature of the occupations as an opportunity to further
its strategy of armed struggle and gain a foothold with the poor and working
class, whose unions had been dominated by communists and socialists.
The different forays by external actors (political parties) into Santiago’s
poblaciones are viewed by Vanderschueren (1971) as efforts marked by two
extremes: at the one end an attempt to neutralize and control popular pressure
(Popular Promotion) and at the other an effort to stimulate popular mobiliza-
tion to achieve the “real” liberation of the popular sectors. Vanderschueren
sides with the latter perspective, the mobilizing approach, understood as a
form of “proper practice,” one that sees the socioeconomic system as a source
of exploitation.
Other scholars underscore the way in which the mobilization of pobladores,
with their urban political demands, led to new forms of “popular power,” lend-
ing a new complexion to the Chilean political struggle (Quevedo and Sader,
1973). The pobladores were able to organize to such an extent that they man-
aged, in large part, to make up for the state’s inability to meet popular demands,
developing the capacity to propose alternatives to existing institutions. At the
same time, they understood that different manifestations of popular power
carried different political meanings, and they were aware that if these manifes-
tations were limited to the level of political demands they would lose their
capacity for transformation. In short, these experiences demonstrated a quali-
tatively different approach to confronting the problems and needs of the

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015

176    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

popular sectors; they represented an original attempt on the part of the domi-
nated to change the nature of the position of subordination in which they found
themselves.
The momentum of the pobladores in their struggle was interrupted by the
coup d’état that toppled the Allende government and focused much of its
repression on the poblaciones, both selectively through the killing or disap-
pearance of their primary leaders and collectively through police raids, block-
ades, mass detentions, kidnappings, destruction, and theft of personal and
household items. Despite the dictatorship’s obstruction of the movement’s con-
tinuity, the popular experience that took shape in the poblaciones during the
three years of the Allende government seems to have led to the consolidation
of a new social actor: “The potential of the poblador movement is key to the
development of a political strategy for the revolutionary transformation of the
countries of Latin America” (Pastrana and Threlfall, 1974: 153)
And yet it was precisely the coup that called many of CIDU’s premises into
question, opening the way to a more skeptical reading of the political potential
of the poblador’s world: “In light of the sector’s present state, it is difficult to
believe that truly substantial mobilizations have taken place. Expectations of a
revival seem to fade before the harsh reality of the present moment. . . . The
poblador seems to prefer individual solutions” (Espinoza, 1982: 42).

The Utilitarian Perspective

Although Rio de Janeiro was not home to an organized school of thought

with the same level of intellectual unity as that of CIDU, there was still an effort
to marshal a counterargument against the urban-social-movement school and
marginality theory, an effort that for lack of a better description I will call the
utilitarian perspective.
Perlman (1976) is among those to deconstruct the different assumptions of
marginality theory, calling into question the “constant attempt of those in
power to blame the poor for their position” (102). She marshals a considerable
amount of empirical evidence to demystify marginality in each of its dimen-
sions: social (internal disorganization and internal isolation), cultural (tradi-
tionalism and a culture of poverty), economic (parasitism and parochialism),
and political (apathy and radicalism). Because of the leading role played by
politics in Perlman’s study, I focus here on the final dimension of her analysis.
Contrary to the notion that favelados are politically apathetic, Perlman points
to the existence of an internal political system through which they actively
participate in local organizations and work to establish external social connec-
tions. She also highlights the presence of leaders who have an acute under-
standing of mainstream political processes that allows them to be selective and
concentrate on local concerns to obtain results. Not without a sense of realism,
she states that “under the circumstances in 1968–1969, they were not about to
assume any dead-end risk or harbor any ideological illusions” (Perlman, 1976:
188), in contrast to those who hoped for a popular uprising that would change
the course of events following Brazil’s military coup. The conclusion is clear in
this regard: favela politics cannot be understood apart from the context of polit-
ical repression particular to a dictatorial regime, which played out in various
ways within the favela.
Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015
 Cortés / POBLADORES AND FAVELADOS IN SOCIAL THEORY    177

Another leading critic of marginality theory was Anthony Leeds, whose

research on urban Brazil included a definition of politics that would play a
crucial role in defining the debate in the Brazilian context. According to Leeds,
politics is “any action, interest articulation, or attempt by an actor to maneuver
public or private bodies which is aimed at extracting goods and services from
a given system by other than standardized exchanges of value, usually by
means of money” (Leeds and Leeds, 1976: 194). Politics is understood in this
sense as the use of paternalistic and individualistic methods, quid pro quo, to
obtain favors and achieve specific goals (political support in exchange for pub-
lic services, for example) in the absence of action by government officials.
Despite being a limited definition of politics, this view compels Leeds to con-
clude, in contrast to the scholarly consensus of his era, that the relation between
a given proletarian population and the external political community was not
necessarily one of unilateral exploitation by the latter.
Valladares (2005), however, offers one of the most fleshed-out responses to
the tradition represented by Manuel Castells. Moving beyond descriptions of
popular participation as passive or of the relation between favelados and pub-
lic officials as merely hierarchical, she rejects the notion of an urban social
movement as Castells would have it, arguing instead for free-rider theory as an
explanatory model. In practice, favelados are ideologically utilitarian, more
individual than collective, and able to deploy both formal and informal mech-
anisms such as the Brazilian jeitinho to obtain results. That the efforts of some
communities to resist 1970s-era removal plans were unsuccessful demonstrates
that “the favelas never came to represent organized hubs of resistance and
struggle” (Valladares, 1978: 52).
There are two points to be made in countering this approach. First, it would
be fallacious to argue that a movement never existed simply because it did not
succeed. Yet here we have, for example, the unsuccessful case of the Federação
de Associações de Moradores de Favelas do Estado da Guanabara (Federation
of Favela Neighborhood Associations of the State of Guanabara—FAFEG), in
its opposition to the government’s removal program, being cited as evidence
for denying the existence of organized collective action against forced removal.
On the contrary, this example is proof that there were in fact concrete attempts
to resist government action on this front. Second, it is worth asking whether the
favela could have maintained its place in the urban landscape if it had hewed
to a particularistic discourse based on an ethics of individualism and utilitari-
anism. In the push for “urbanization yes, removal never” is there not a notion—
albeit inchoate—of fighting for one’s right to the city, an affirmation that a
space that has been won should be allowed to be kept?
In Movimentos urbanos no Rio de Janeiro (Urban Movements in Rio de Janeiro),
Carlos Nelson Ferreira dos Santos (1981), whose interpretation is similar to that
of Valladares, also argues against the urban-social-movement approach. His
critique reflects his own rich ethnographic perspective, stemming from his
experience as an architect for FAFEG during Rio de Janeiro’s favela urbaniza-
tion process. For Santos the urban-social-movement concept overstates the
novelty of this new form of social conflict; it fails to distinguish between capi-
talism and the city itself, transforming the demands of the urban poor into a
reflection of class struggle. It amounts to an external framework whose ideo-
logical commitments prevent it from appreciating the particularity of lived

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015

178    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

experiences of urban struggle. For his part, Santos examines the limits on the
action of the urban poor while at the same time acknowledging its transforma-
tive potential. In cases where efforts to resist forced removal were successful,
the experience did not constitute an ideal prototype for socially oriented urban-
ization; rather, it represented a regression from a supposed sense of commu-
nity toward a focus on individual objectives. Those involved came to behave
like any other homeowner. Behind any presumed common interest, a decisive
set of particular interests was at stake.
From a different perspective, one that cannot be classified as utilitarian,
Machado da Silva (1967) advances one of the most suggestive discussions of
favela politics. He contends that the defining political factor in this context is
the figure of the “bourgeois favelado,” a figure who monopolizes access to and
control over economic and social resources (political contacts). This ability to
mediate offers privileged access to external resources in exchange for potential
internal support (votes). Accordingly, other favelados, particularly those with
the least socioeconomic status, become the “manipulable masses” exploited by
the bourgeois favelado vis-à-vis his or her personal connections. Condemned to
a position of subordination, albeit internally, and lacking the slightest political
consciousness, they are limited to scattered uprisings and reduced to a position
of “defensive passivity.”
It is safe to say that there is no single school of thought that evenly incorpo-
rates the arguments of those putting forth an alternative to Castells’s interpre-
tation of urban popular participation. Lima (1989), for example, champions the
existence of a favela movement; taking issue with the utilitarian approach, she
underscores the continuity of mobilization efforts in the favelas of Rio and their
perseverance in the face of intense political repression. For Lima the creation in
1954 of the União de Trabalhadores Favelados (Favela Workers’ Union) indi-
cates a convergence, by its very name, between favela organizers and the labor
movement, explicitly identifying favelados as workers (who have no other
available housing option). She highlights the robust presence of union leaders
in the favela workers’ movement, particularly in textile and construction
unions (reflecting the occupational profile of the favelas). Joining them were
communist activists, who were engaged in organizing the movement.

Military Dictatorships and The Urban Poor

The authoritarian wave that struck Latin America in the 1960s and led to the
establishment of military dictatorships in many countries, including Brazil and
Chile, posed a significant challenge to social movements in the region. The
break with democracy coincided with the point when the favelado and
poblador movements, respectively, had reached full ferment. Regarded by
intellectuals on the left as vehicles for expected change, these movements were
seen as a possible way to respond to the region’s military dictatorships. Yet
when power was seized it was precisely the absence of social mobilization that
led Alain Touraine (1987: 219) to argue that, “contrary to what was thought to
be the case in the 1960s, there were no urban movements of hyperradicalized
pobladores; this reserve army of revolution did not in fact mobilize in Brazil in
1964, in Argentina in 1966 or 1976, or in Uruguay or Chile in 1973.” Touraine’s

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015

 Cortés / POBLADORES AND FAVELADOS IN SOCIAL THEORY    179

message is directed at Manuel Castells: “As for the urban movement phenom-
enon, my general opinion is that there never was one, there is not one now, and
there will never be one. Of course there are urban struggles, but they do not
constitute urban social movements” (218).
Whatever the case, once the military had consolidated its hold on power, one
of its first measures was to demobilize civil society through blatant repression.
In both Chile and Brazil organizations representing the urban poor were
directly targeted and their leaders persecuted.
Because of its pivotal role in Salvador Allende’s Chilean socialism, the pobla-
dor movement became a chief target for repressive action during the dictator-
ship. Organizations representing pobladores were banned and subsequently
broken up; their leaders were persecuted and in many cases executed or disap-
peared; many others went into hiding, often abandoning their neighborhoods.
Taken together, these factors led to an almost total dismantling of the move-
ment that had inspired urban-social-movement theory.
The early 1980s, however, saw the beginning of nationwide protests against
the regime; once the opposition had emerged from its disarray and begun to
coordinate more effectively, it was precisely the poblaciones that became the
primary centers of resistance to and disapproval of the dictatorship of Augusto
Pinochet. For some (Pinto, Candina, and Lira, 1999), these days of protest led
to a territorialization of popular and political power; as one of their most salient
consequences, they returned the poblador to the foreground.
The dictatorship reacted by broadening the scope of its aggression (which
previously had been more selective); because of the instruments of repression
developed by the dictatorship and specifically designed to control and sup-
press popular action, the territory identified with the población became a space
of torture and political imprisonment (Comité de Memoria Histórica, 2005).
Notwithstanding, the 1980s, after a period of reversal and recovery, were
marked by a revival of the poblador movement (Cáceres, 1993). There was even
talk, despite research that emphasized the movement’s continuity via the con-
struction of a shared local culture (Schneider, 1990), of a new social actor. For
Touraine, the mobilization of Santiago’s urban poor did not possess the ele-
ments needed to constitute a social movement. In Chile, Touraine was perhaps
the most influential voice on social movements, and his statements had a sig-
nificant impact on local scholarship. Eugenio Tironi (1986), for example, ques-
tioned the poblador movement’s ability to create a lasting collective identity,
arguing that it was defined not by being social in nature but by the mere pres-
ence of activists. The movement’s propensity for discontinuity and its tendency
to become visible via sporadic outbursts helped corroborate this understanding,
posing a serious interpretive challenge for the social sciences (Espinoza, 1994).
In Brazil the dictatorship was effective in curtailing the movement being
organized around FAFEG. As Machado da Silva (2002) points out, “There was
a decline in terms of political power and mobilization capacity, beginning with
the repression unleashed by the dictatorship at the height of forced removals
and in particular with the period marked by the hegemony of chaguismo, which
succeeded in disrupting and dividing the movement’s leadership and even led
to the creation of a parallel federation.” According to Eli Diniz (1982), chagu-
ismo came to describe a political modus operandi in Rio de Janeiro during the
dictatorship, namely, the institutionalization of trading support (primarily

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015

180    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

votes) for special favors from public officials. In other words, chaguismo rep-
resented a political machine that created a centralized system of service provi-
sion for different kinds of local electoral clienteles; the low-income urban
population, despite its heterogeneity and fragmentation, constituted the core
of its electoral base.
Beginning in 1978, with the dictatorship’s transition toward political liberal-
ization, efforts to organize began to make a comeback, particularly in the urban
context, and neighborhood associations began to multiply. This placed a strain
on the structures of representation controlled by the state government. The
creation of a parallel federation as an alternative to the official one was driven
by a demand for organizational autonomy. This move signaled a break with
chaguismo’s approach to grassroots political organization and reflected a turn
toward raising the consciousness of favelados through a focus on civil rights;
the use of pressure applied through mobilization became the primary means of
interacting with government officials.
It was in this break with chaguismo that the Catholic Church’s Favela
Ministry began to play a prominent role in political organizing among Rio de
Janeiro’s urban poor, bringing together a number of local leaders and profes-
sionals. According to Eduardo Guimarães de Carvalho (1991), the 1960s saw
the emergence of several organizations concerned with human rights, nearly
all of them tied to the Catholic Church. Once the dictatorship’s intensity began
to weaken, these groups, under the Church’s coordination, began to diversify
their activities, focusing mostly on land issues. For some groups on the left, the
Favela Ministry came to serve as an umbrella organization. The Partido
Democrático Trabalhista (Democratic Labor Party—PDT) played an important
role in political organizing in the favelas, as did the Partido dos Trabalhadores
(Workers’ Party—PT). The latter drew upon what Ana Maria Doimo (1995)
refers to as a significant ethical-political push, a self-described “popular move-
ment” that exerted considerable influence on the Brazilian political process
between 1975 and 1990. The main influences behind this new push were the
popular pedagogy of Paulo Freire and the liberation theology of figures such
as Leonardo Boff and Frei Betto.
This rebirth of popular movements was followed once again by a reversal
and decline. Chile’s democratic transition emphasized political stability, bet-
ting on the demobilization of the sectors responsible for Pinochet’s departure
(Lechner and Güel, 2006). At the same time, a policy emphasis on public hous-
ing satisfied in part the movement’s primary grievance, which was precisely
the lack of adequate housing (Ducci, 1997). In Brazil, despite the popular move-
ment’s leading role in the country’s democratic transition and despite the
ongoing threat of eviction faced by residents of Rio’s favelas, these communi-
ties faced a serious impediment to political representation in the consolidated
power of heavily armed drug traffickers, both in the physical threat they posed
to community leaders and in the actual submission of some to their orders,
which “undermined the social base and legitimacy” of their organizations
(Leite, 2008: 119).
The focus of social scientists shifted once again from the popular sphere’s
new leading role to a diagnosis of its absence, a veritable postmortem of the
movement. Did urban social movements ever truly exist? Were they an illusion
or a transient reality? In Chile and Brazil social science interpretations of the

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015

 Cortés / POBLADORES AND FAVELADOS IN SOCIAL THEORY    181

poblador and favelado movements were ambivalent, ranging from eulogy to

rediscovery to denial.
Regardless of the intellectual vagaries of academe, the social movements led
by the urban poor in Chile and Brazil demonstrated a tremendous capacity for
reinvention and political and organizational metamorphosis throughout the
twentieth century. The nearly constant process of construction and reconstruc-
tion that characterized these movements calls for a reevaluation, one that
understands them as relevant political actors while avoiding overideologized
optimism, uninformed admiration (ignoring the movements’ historical trajec-
tories), or undue pessimism (underestimating their political reach).

Final Considerations

During the twentieth century, both poblador and favelado movements rep-
resented a constant interpretive challenge for the social sciences. If on the one
hand the social sciences contributed to a recognition of the political importance
of urban popular mobilization, on the other hand urban movements them-
selves constantly broke the analytical molds into which they were forced.
This critical review of the twentieth-century literature on urban movements
points to the need for a fresh understanding of the urban poor’s collective
action, one that transcends the dichotomy between free riders and the radical
marginalized. The different approaches taken by the popular sectors in con-
structing their urban demands correspond to the possibility of using a particu-
lar form of pressure or organization in response to a given set of social
circumstances, subject to the unfolding of a particular sociopolitical process
(bound to be different in different places, as in Chile and Brazil). Specific griev-
ances, whether born of individual or radical motives, are not essential attri-
butes of the actors seeking to redress them, nor are they the constitutive
elements of a given social identity. Rather, they should be seen as variables in
a strategic repertoire whose deployment depends on the context, be it favorable
or adverse to a given form of collective action. In this process, the urban poor
have shown great skill in knowing when to use one form and when to use
another.
In sum, the poblador and favelado movements must be rethought in a way
that moves beyond the theoretical back-and-forth that has characterized social
science approaches to social movements and has reproduced an analytical
cycle of eulogy, rediscovery, and denial. The trajectory of these movements
cannot be traced without a broad (and at the same time critical) review of the
literature that tried to understand them (or confirm their absence); the real task,
however, is to move beyond that literature.

Notes

1. Given this article’s focus on twentieth-century scholarship, current contributions to the

extensive debate around favelas and poblaciones lie outside its purview. However, references to
more recent work by those who have shaped the field of urban sociology in both countries have
been incorporated into the text as appropriate in order to develop its argument.

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015

182    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

2. The greater precision of the original Spanish and Portuguese terms—poblador, favelado,
población, favela, and their respective plural forms—has been preferred to the rough equivalence of
the translations available in English (squatter, slum dweller, slum, shantytown, ghetto, and so on).
In a discussion of the semantic space around the term favela, for example, Valladares (2008: 1)
warns that the use of familiar terms such as “slum” can lead to an erasure of the historical specific-
ity of the favela as a social space and end up further “stigmatizing neighborhoods situated at the
bottom of the hierarchical system of places that compose the metropolis.”—Translator’s note.

References

Cáceres, Gonzalo
1993 “El movimiento de pobladores de Santiago. 1930–1990.” El Mensajero: Boletín del Programa
de Educación Popular–CIDE, no. 55, 1–16.
Castel, Robert
2004 Las metamorfosis de la cuestión social: Una crónica del salariado. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
Castells, Manuel
1972 “Chile: movimiento de pobladores y lucha de clases.” Mimeo, VIEZPO, Santiago.
CIDU (Centro Interdisciplinario de Desarrollo Urbano)
1972 “Reivindicación urbana y lucha política: los campamentos de pobladores en Santiago de
Chile.” EURE 2 (6): 55–82.
Comité de Memoria Histórica
2005 Tortura en poblaciones del Gran Santiago (1973–1990). Santiago: Corporación José Domingo
Cañas.
Diniz, Elis
1982 Voto e máquina política: Patronagem e clientelismo no Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e
Terra.
Doimo, Ana Maria
1995 A vez e a voz do popular: Movimentos sociais e participação política no Brasil pós-70. Rio de
Janeiro: Rellume-Dumará/ANPOCS.
Ducci, María Elena
1997 “Chile: el lado oscuro de una política de vivienda exitosa.” EURE 23 (69): 99–115.
Espinoza, Vicente
1982 “El movimiento de pobladores: una evaluación crítica.” Proposiciones 5: 41–52.
1994 “Tiempos cortos y largos en el movimiento poblacional.” Proposiciones 24: 246–250.
Fanon, Frantz
2007 Los condenados de la tierra. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Germani, Gino
1971 Sociología de la modernización: Eestudios teóricos, metodológicos y aplicados a América Latina.
Buenos Aires: Paidós.
1973 El concepto de marginalidad: Significado, raíces históricas y cuestiones teóricas, con particular
referencia a la marginalidad urbana. Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión.
Guimarães de Carvalho, Eduardo
1991 O negócio da terra: A questão fundiária e a justiça. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ Editora.
Lechner, Norbert and Pedro Güel
2006 “Construcción social de las memorias en la transición chilena,” pp. 17–46 in Elizabeth
Jelin and Susana Kaufman (eds.), Subjetividad y figuras de la memoria. Buenos Aires: Siglo
Veintiuno.
Leeds, Anthony and Elizabeth Leeds
1976 “Accounting for behavioral differences: three political systems and the responses of
squatters in Brazil, Peru, and Chile,” pp. 193–248 in John Walton and Louis H. Masotti (eds.),
The City in Comparative Perspective: Cross-National Research and New Directions in Theory. Beverly
Hills: Sage Publications.
Leite, Márcia Pereira
2008 “Violência, risco e sociabilidade nas margens da cidade: percepções e formas de ação de
moradores de favelas cariocas,” pp. 115–141 in Luiz Antonio Machado da Silva (ed.), Vida sob
cerco: Violência e rotina nas favelas do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira.

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015

 Cortés / POBLADORES AND FAVELADOS IN SOCIAL THEORY    183

Lewis, Oscar
1961 Antropología de la pobreza: Cinco familias. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Lezama, José Luis
2002 Teoría social, espacio y ciudad. Mexico City: Colegio de México.
Lima, Nísia Verônica Trindade
1989 O movimento dos favelados do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: IUPERJ.
Machado da Silva, Luiz Antonio
1967 “A política na favela.” Cadernos Brasileiros, no. 41, 35–47.
1971 Mercados de trabalho manual e marginalidade. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ.
2002 “A continuidade do ‘problema da favela,’” pp. 220–237 in Lúcia Lippi Oliveira (ed.),
Cidade: História e desafios. Rio de Janeiro: FGV/CNPq.
Medina, Carlos Alberto de
1964 A favela e o demagogo. São Paulo: Martins.
Merton, Robert
1970 Sociologia: Teoria e estrutura. São Paulo: Mestre Jou.
Nun, José
2001 Marginalidad y exclusión social. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Pastrana, Ernesto and Mónica Threlfall
1974 Pan, techo y poder: El movimiento de pobladores en Chile (1970–1973). Buenos Aires: Ediciones
Siap.
Perlman, Janice
1976 The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Pinto, Julio, Azun Candina, and Robinson Lira
1999 “Historia contemporánea de Chile II: actores, identidad y movimiento,” pp. 13–174 in
Gabriel Salazar and Julio Pinto (eds.), Historia contemporánea de Chile. Santiago: LOM.
Quevedo, Santiago and Eder Sader
1973 “Algunas consideraciones en relación a las nuevas formas de poder popular en poblaciones.”
EURE 3 (7): 71–81.
Quijano, Aníbal
1972 “La constitución del ‘mundo’ de la marginalidad urbana.” EURE 2 (5): 89–106.
Ramírez Necochea, Hernán
2007 “Historia del movimiento obrero en Chile: antecedentes siglo XIX,” pp. 267–365 in
Hernán Ramírez Necochea (ed.), Obras escogidas. Santiago: LOM.
Rios, José Arthur (ed.).
1960 Aspectos humanos da favela carioca: Estudo sócio-econômico elaborado por SAGMACS. São
Paulo: O Estado de São Paulo.
Santos, Carlos Nelson Ferreira dos
1981 Movimientos urbanos no Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.
Santos, Wanderley Guilherme dos
1998 “A práxis liberal e a cidadania regulada,” pp. 63–114 in Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos
(ed.), Décadas de espanto e uma apologia democrática. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco.
Schneider, Cathy
1990 “La movilización de las bases, poblaciones marginales y resistencia en Chile autoritario.”
Proposiciones 19: 223–243.
Silva, Maria Lais Pereira da
2005 Favelas cariocas 1930–1964. Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto.
Sunkel, Osvaldo
1970 “Desarrollo, subdesarrollo, dependencia, marginación y desigualdades espaciales: hacia
un enfoque totalizante.” EURE 1 (1): 13–49.
Tironi, Eugenio
1986 “La revuelta de los pobladores: integración social y democracia.” Nueva Sociedad, no. 83,
24–32.
Touraine, Alain
1987 “La centralidad de los marginales.” Proposiciones 14: 214–224.
Valladares, Licia do Prado
1978 Passa-se uma casa. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.
2005 A invenção da favela: Do mito de origem a favela.com. Rio de Janeiro: FGV Editora.

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015

184    LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

2008 “Social science representations of favelas in Rio de Janeiro: a historical perspective.” Lanic
Etext Collection, LLILAS Visiting Resource Professors Papers. http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/
etext/llilas/vrp/valladares.pdf.
Vanderschueren, Franz
1971 “Significado político de las juntas de vecinos en poblaciones de Santiago.” EURE 1 (2):
67–90.
Vekemans, Roger and Ismael Silva
1969 “El concepto de marginalidad,” pp. 15–63 in Centro para Desarrollo Económico de
América Latina (ed.), Marginalidad en América Latina: Un ensayo de diagnóstico. Santiago: Herder.
1976 Marginalidad, promoción popular y neo-marxismo. Bogotá: CEDIAL.
Vianna, Oliveira
1951 Direito do trabalho e democracia social: O problema da incorporação do trabalhador no Estado. Rio
de Janeiro: José Olympio.

Downloaded from lap.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PITTSBURGH on March 9, 2015