By looking into housing status, entitlements, infrastructure and policies, the panel “Housing crisis in a time of democratic backsliding” provided an analysis that helps to explain social contradictions and what kind of political action is possible by people excluded and/or repressed given authoritarian spatial dynamics in a society
El Salvador is experiencing an accelerated authoritarian drift at the hands of its eccentric president Nayib Bukele, which has led to widespread demonstrations. Bukele´s image is that of a millennial president, spontaneous, young, and cool. Yet this style goes hand in hand with the persecution of social activists, the removal of the entire Supreme Court and the militarization of society. To learn more about the current situation and ongoing protests, we spoke with activists from Fuerza Solidaria por El Salvador.
Raimundo Bonfim, national coordinator of the Centre of People’s Movements (CMP), talks about the current political situation in Brazil and gives perspectives on the struggle against Bolsonaro and the challenges currently posed to the Brazilian left.
The relationships between the local and the global in the shaping of space comprise a set of fundamental categories of Milton Almeida dos Santos, one of the greatest Brazilian thinkers in the second half of the twentieth century. He was a geographer who produced a critical and totalizing theory that permeates different areas of knowledge, such as philosophy, sociology, and political economy. In this text, I will present some of his main concepts, due to their relevance and accuracy. His notions of space, technique, place, and territory are fundamental for the understanding of contemporary political, social, and economic dynamics in the Global South and North.
“My decision was firm since I left my university in mid of February. My aunts are now giving me pressure to go back to my professor job. After seeing atrocities and mass killing of the junta, I no longer want to be part of the system they are ruling.”
The novel coronavirus has been emphasizing and exacerbating the effects of a widening wealth gap, years of policies of austerity, and the extent of social inequality all over the world. The uncertainty over what the future will look like increases concerns surrounding the future of crucial matters such as labour, the housing market, and higher education. This piece focuses on the practices of solidarity, how this has shaped people’s experiences of the lockdown in Istanbul, Turkey, and the ways in which the local and national state can—and did—exploit public concerns and confusion that have been evoked by the pandemic to fast-track their controversial urban projects and decisions.
More than 6,400 families have been evicted from their homes and another 19,000 remain threatened with eviction in Brazil since March 2020, when the coronavirus outbreak started in the country. In the state of São Paulo, 1,681 evictions were carried out and up to 5,000 families can be evicted from their homes at any one time. This startling data relates to informal settlements—evictions for non-payment of rent are not included—and numbers may be even higher, as this reflects only the cases identified by popular movements and the organizations participating in the “Zero Eviction” campaign.
