¡Aquí Vive Gente! Ordinary people's fight for a place

In ¡Aquí Vive Gente! Ordinary people’s fight for a place the author addresses the topic of Democracy, political representation, and grassroots organizations. In particular, how ordinary people fight for a place in Puerto Rico. Listeners are going to learn how grassroots initiatives, beginning in 2012, started to revitalize abandoned spaces in a US colony with one of the highest vacancy rate in the whole US jurisdiction. Initiatives ranged from formal agreements to squat-based projects and also differentiate in their character from cultural to more political efforts. What they all have in common is that they wanted to provide a service and improve the living conditions of those communities in which they were taking place. Whether what has happened over the last decade was an isolated episode or added a new chapter in a long history of grassroots mobilizations exerting people’s“right” to occupy land in the Puertorrican archipelago and the Puertorrican diaspora remains a question to be answered. Projects like Casa Taft 169 and Brigada PDT put a particular focus in building community, fighting urban blight and resist gentrification. They also put a special focus on participatory planning and leveraging partnerships between community groups and the municipality. Casa Taft 169 added an extra layer and was successful in their effort to providing alternatives to overcome existing legal and taxable obstacles to acquire these properties so that they could be put into the hands of community groups and nonprofit organizations to serve a greater common good. This phenomenon happens in a broader context of mass migration, impoverishment, austerity measures and political unrest. Moreover, it happened in the context of “La Junta” or the Financial Oversight and Management Board, a de facto anti-democratic government imposed to people residing in Puerto Rico by US Congress, President Obama’s administration and the local government. La Junta have been implementing a neoliberal agenda, cutting out public services and privatizing public assets. These extreme measures have included a massive public schools closings. Community groups are now taking over closed school buildings instead of taking over the massive inventory of abandoned private properties. An alternative that can be seen as a double threat to housing and education rights in Puerto Rico. 

References 

Alvarado, N.A. (June, 2020) Migrant politics in the urban global south: The political work of Nicaraguan migrants to acquire urban rights in Costa Rica. Geopolitics, pp. 1-25. 

Moscoso, M. (June, 2018) ¡Aquí vive gente! o sobre la lucha por el lugar. 80Grados 

https://www.80grados.net/aqui-vive-gente-o-sobre-la-lucha-por-el-lugar/

Roy, A., (Spring, 2005). Urban informality: Towards and epistemology of planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 71 (No. 2), pp. 147-158. 

Casa Taft 169/Somos Machuchal ArtPlace Video: https://vimeo.com/473401613

Casa Taft 169/Música para tus oídos by Walter Morciglio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78HnYwfVCLA