From Neigborhood to Nation
Velázquez, Daniel Rodriguez
ON SEPTEMBER 19, THE FOURTH ANNIVERsary of Mexico City's devastating 1985 earthquakes, two commemorative rallies were held in the city's central plaza, the Z6calo. At the first, before a...
...At the next conference the independent character of CONAMUP Tijuana: Ingenious use of available materials VOLUME XXIII, NO...
...It is also the center of manufacturing, commerce and service industries, and the heart of the nation's systems of communication and information...
...At present, the Salinas government is insisting that urban problems should not be "politicized," a policy it calls "concertaci6n" or "coming together...
...Two of them won Assembly seats...
...Yet through negotiations the movement has won victories-and even partial victories give a boost to activists' confidence and build the legitimacy of their organizations...
...With this organizing innovation, the number of families applying for housing mushroomed from a few hundred at the beginning of 1987 to nearly 20,000 eight months later...
...In Mexico City's 40 electoral districts, 66 representatives of the urban movement ran for Congress and the Metropolitan Assemby on the Popular Socialist Party (PPS), Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT) and Mexican Socialist Party (PMS) slates...
...In Mexico City almost all the urban organizations joined, with the exception of some from the CUD, who supported the PRT's Rosario Ibarra, and a few others that clung strongly to anti-electoral positions...
...In 1987 the Conference agreed to diversify the national leadership to reflect the work of the various member organizations, and to broaden and advance a national program...
...iNo se hagan pendejos, el PRI se la ching6...
...Its governing body is the annual National Conference of the National Delegates' Assembly, where all member organizations are represented...
...Signs accused the government of underestimating the death toll and underbudgeting reconstruction projects, and speakers demanded a much broader federal housing program...
...3. The exceptions are the states of Baja California Sur, Yucatdn, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Tlaxcala, Tabasco and Hidalgo...
...With 18 million inhabitants, this is fast becoming the most populous urban area in the world...
...But political differences still impeded the exercise of national power by the movement...
...At the September 19, 1988 demonstration, the largest in the history of the urban movement, Cuauht6moc called on the movement to struggle not only for "urban" demands, but to join the larger struggle for political, economic and social democracy, clean elections 27The Homeless everywhere, a new policy regarding the foreign debt, and a fairer distribution of wealth...
...Yet over ten years, the movement has offered Mexican society important lessons in pluralism, mobilization and community participation, which have already contributed greatly to the democratization of all social movements and opposition political parties...
...6. From this point on, the non-party "social Left" (OIR-LM, MRP, ACNR and ORPC) and the party Left (PRT, PTZ, PRS and PSUM) worked more closely together in the movement...
...A favorite means of co-opting the movement is to incorporate its demands and proposals into the PRI platform, channeling state resources through the local chapter of the PRI's National Federation of Popular Organizations (CNOP)-which along with the campesino CNC and the labor CMT form the three pillars of the party...
...So far the organization has held nine, each in a different city...
...However, there is as yet no single united national organization...
...8 The FDN's program was based on the ideas of the "Left" in the Mexican Revolution, from Emiliano Zapata and Francisco Villa to Lizaro C6rdenas (as opposed to the conservative current from Carranza to Alemdn to De la Madrid and Salinas...
...Although some areas are urbanizing much more rapidly than others, "urban" demands-for housing, land, services, transportation, school, food supplies and so on -are common throughout the country, and at least 24 states and the Federal District have mass urban organizations independent of the ruling party...
...5. This policy was approved as part of the 1978 National Development Plan, and was implemented in a number of cities...
...Those who are not wage-earners are considered nonproductive, on the margins of the basic social relations of production...
...By throwing their support to Cirdenas, the urban organizations risked sacrificing some of their political autonomy, but they gained greater participation in national politics...
...In 1988 the Asamblea de Barrios and several other organizations, including the People's Union of New Tenochtitlin and the Seamstresses Union, founded the "Benita Galeana" Women's Coordinating Committee...
...In 1987, the U.N.'s International Year of Housing for the Homeless, more zonal and regional organizations emerged, of which the most important was the Asamblea de Barrios, made up of neighborhoods of the central city...
...The existing municipal structures could not, or would not, meet their demands for jobs and services...
...They demanded regularization of land holdings, water and sewer lines, transportation, respect for the independent organizations, and a halt to evictions...
...One of the founding organizations of the CONAMUP, the CPD believes the time has come for the organized poor to take on the task of running the government...
...Confronted by government attempts at selective cooptation, CONAMUP, CUD and the Asamblea de Barrios have found respect for political differences to be a central, albeit elusive, principle...
...Unlike previous fronts, this one made clear its intention to vie for power through elections, by unifying social and electoral struggles...
...Another current, represented by the Asamblea de Barrios, believes that the movement should be broadened to include all city activists-youth, women, ecologists, unionists, artists, intellectuals and street vendors-to push for political change...
...In September of the following year, they held the first forum on "Women's Participation in Reconstruction...
...T HE URBAN GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT BEgan some 20 years ago, as Mexico's cities were already reaching the bursting point...
...The movement's history is not linear...
...The Metropolitan Front was an ad hoc coalition which, despite its mass potential, did not survive into 1988, when By day the colonias are women's domain: Women are the backbone of the urban movement REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 24most of the organizations of the urban movement turned to electoral politics...
...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...
...Benita Galeana was a peasant woman from Guerrero who became a national figure in the Mexican Communist Party in the 1930s...
...There are still traces of caudillismo, paternalism and passivity in the traditional political culture of the urban poor, but the progress over the past ten years is obvious...
...See unomdsuno (Mexico City), April 5, 1989...
...They have established commissions for each of the principal demands such as water, transportation, land titles, environmental protection, green areas, health care, food aid, electrification, housing, and schools...
...At first the CONAMUP women's demands were for school breakfasts for their children, storehouses, tortilla coupons, cooking gas and other things related to their traditional familial roles...
...S NE LESSON URBAN LEADERS DRAW FROM their participation in the social movement around Cirdenas' candidacy is that the urban popular movement as it now stands can not be the central actor in the transformation of the Mexican political system...
...The emergency gave rise to greater urban mobilization than ever before in the city or the nation...
...It includes middle-class groups (bureaucrats, teachers, professionals, private white-collar workers, technicians, etc...
...None of the principal organizations advocates electoral politics strategically, only tactically...
...It seems clear that, if the movement is to become a protagonist in the struggle for a new Mexico, only the form of resolving demands is negotiable...
...In recent years the Women's Regional has undertaken projects and workshops on health care, vocational training and education, as well as sponsoring legal and psychological counseling on gender issues (maternity, violence, etc...
...But it took the emergence of a national electoral movement in 1988-Cuauht6moc Cdrdenas' National Democratic Front (FDN)-to bring about a unified and widespread mobilization...
...2, 1989...
...Reality is more complex...
...Get it straight, state: For housing we can't wait...
...Democracy and independence from the state are not...
...The first condition for such negotiations is good faith, since PRI officials are accustomed to monologue rather than dialogue and often fail to fulfill commitments, even written ones...
...8. Among the political and social organizations which made up this electoral front were: PFCRN, PARM, PPS, PMS, MPM, UD, CD, MAS, ACNR, ORPC, OIR-LM, Asamblea de Barrios, UPREZ and many more...
...cities, and in most of the outlying municipalities in the state of Mexico...
...Since then they have held events periodically about the situation and demands of women...
...Resolutions on themes 2 and 3, "AnAlisis de Coyuntura" and "Politica de Alianzas," Final Documents, IX Encuentro Nacional, CONAMUP, Oct...
...Internal democracy is fundamental to these organizations' legitimacy in the eyes of their own members and of society as a whole...
...Evictions no...
...local organizations which enjoy the consensual support of their neighborhoods or zones are considered "hegemonic" and get two votes...
...The government has waged campaigns to slander the movement, calling members "agitators" whose demonstrations and marches have a "hidden"-presumably revolutionary-political agenda...
...After a lot of street actions, the first objective is nearly always achieved by opening and sustaining negotiations with government officials...
...In 1983, they came close to a split over whether CONAMUP was made up of "mass organizations" independent of political parties, or of "political mass organizations" that should support one of the left parties...
...This quickly grew to be the main force in the Clandestinely tapping electricity in Mexico City 23The Homeless urban movement, raising new issues to be addressed such as food supplies, respect for women, and school breakfasts...
...4 Previous settlers of new urban areas had been forced to deal with paternalistic political bosses, or charros, connected to the government or the PRI...
...On the Sept...
...The people in the neighborhoods are becoming increasingly politicized, and almost all the left-wing movements are more active here than anywhere else in the country...
...wage-earners, laborers and broad groups of "informal" and "off-the-book" workers (domestic employees, peddlers, cab drivers, windshield washers, unemployed and so on), who do not always constitute a selfconscious social class...
...On October 6, 1987, International Habitat Day, nearly 30,000 people pitched camp in the Z6calo following a plan of action to focus attention on housing struggles throughout the Valley of Mexico that year...
...since the earthquake it has spread and taken new life, led by the Asamblea de Barrios...
...The most active participants have been women...
...They began in northern cities such as Chihuahua and Monterrey, and in several neighborhoods of the Federal District, including Campamento 2 de Octubre, Santo Domingo, Ajusco, and others...
...1988...
...The first major effort to create a city-wide movement occurred the following year, when residents of Mexico City's poor neighborhoods launched the Regional Coordinator of the Valley of Mexico with the slogans: "Housing yes...
...Their intention, clearly, is to wear down the organizations...
...From Neighborhood to Nation 1. This article was translated by Geoffrey Fox...
...The movement has walked alone and isolated, struggling and resisting firmly," he said...
...Women spend more time in the neighborhoods than men and are in closer contact with neighborhood needs...
...Later the women's movement began to participate in the celebration of March 8, International Women's Day, and November 19, International Day Against Violence to Women...
...Is the phase of struggle for local demands now over...
...4 (NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1989) 25o .a o_ Poor women march in the northern city of Torre6n: What next now that the minorities are the majority...
...This, in turn, implies recognition by the state of the movement's independence...
...See Benita Galeana, Benita (Mexico: Extemporaneos, 1974, originally published 1940...
...Today, with the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) reeling from electoral embarrassments, internal dissension and economic failures, the urban movement has a greater opportunity than ever to push for its own political program-if it can hold itself together and determine a common agenda...
...So where is all the aid The world has sent us, pray...
...One tendency within the movement, reflected in the Mexico City-based Convenci6n del Andhuac, seeks to increase grass-roots participation in the administration of city services for all inhabitants, and lobbies for the establishment of elected local government for the Federal District.1 0 The Comit6 de Defensa Popular of Durango, meanwhile, has sought to become registered as a political party to participate in state elections...
...T HE URBAN MASS MOVEMENT HAS YET TO incorporate vast sectors of the population who are waging marginal, almost anonymous resistance against a segregationist urban policy and in defense of their living conditions...
...So many participate that they have come to be the movement's social base...
...embryonic" groups get only one vote...
...Cuauht6moc identified his campaign with the urban struggle, bolstering his relations with urban organizations in meetings throughout Mexico, and telling the press on election day that he voted for Superbarrio, the masked superhero of the urban movement who delights crowds at demonstrations...
...Government, you thieves, For you we all must grieve...
...2 The hub of the movement is greater Mexico City, which now fills the entire Valley of Mexico, overflowing the boundaries of the Federal District to include the surrounding areas of Mexico state...
...N THE BEGINNING, THE URBAN MASS MOVEment was made up essentially of squatters and posesionarios-long-time occupants of land who did not hold titles...
...7 There is also a Youth Coordinator of the Valley of Mexico and several other organizations for youth of both sexes, who make up the largest age group in the neighborhoods...
...Bulldozing of squatter settlements was particularly extensive in Tijuana, Acapulco, Uruapan, Monterrey and Guadalajara, and in the neighborhoods of Santa Ursula Xitila, Campamento 2 de Octubre, San Nicolas Totolapan, San Jos6 Aculco, Jalalpa and Flores Mag6n in Mexico City...
...and "iColono, consciente, no se rinde ni se vende...
...For many of them, this meant moving into the most neglected urban areas and organizing the poor...
...But CONAMUP, in its Ninth National Conference in October 1988, warned that "we should not fall into a subordinate role which is mainly what the so-called 'concertaci6n' means....We must stand ON OUR OWN STRENGTH to open wider spaces for negotiation and solution of our demands...
...Now, armed with the knowledge that they are not minorities relegated to local struggles, community activists can advance toward the development of a new movement, deepening democracy within the member organizations and within the home, overcoming sectarian attitudes, and using electoral experience as a forum for civic education...
...That same year, federal policy exchanged bulldozers for "urban reordering"--violent evictions from areas that were declared "ecological preservation zones"--applied so as to favor real estate interests...
...By 1984 several organizations had joined the Coordinadora Inquilinaria, or Tenants' Coordinator, of the Valley of Mexico (CIVM), demanding a federal tenancy law and a halt to evictions and unreasonable rent hikes...
...Together with the CUD these organizations formed the Metropolitan Front which organized a march of nearly 90,000 people to Mexico City's Z6calo, on September 19, the second anniversary of the quake...
...Despite the government's achievements in constructing low-cost housing, there are still-four years after the quake-hundreds of homeless families, many of whom remain unorganized...
...In the Valley of Mexico a CONAMUP-sponsored Country-City Cooperative links rural producers directly with urban consumers...
...As one compahera of the colonia of San Miguel Teotongo put it, "there has never been and there never will be a revolution of men or of women...
...CONAMUP is the most widespread of the urban activist organizations, with some 600,000 families affiliated and a permanent structure in several states...
...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...
...Although ad hoc coalitions were sometimes worked out on the basis of general agreements on strategy and tactics, it was not until 1980 that there was a VOLUME XXIII, NO...
...19 demonstrations, see Deirdre Fretz, "Competing for a Tragic Memory," Mexico Journal (Mexico City), Oct...
...VOLUME XXIII, NO...
...4. The cities included Durango, Zacatecas, Torre6n, Tepic, Guadalajara, Mazatlan, Tijuana, Hermosillo, Mexicali, Ciudad Obreg6n, Ciudad Ju.rez, Jalapa, Le6n and Puebla...
...The tenants' organizations, which had been a minor part of the movement, came to the fore as representatives of disaster victims...
...An unusual feature of AB is that, besides the usual territorial representation, it has "groups of 24," in which 24 families work together as a self-governing unit to seek land for housing, negotiate rent conditions with landlords, research the legal situation of the buildings they live in, etc...
...This changed the social composition of the movement, its relations with the state, its territorial distribution, and the relations among the forces of the Left that were participating...
...But today the movement is growing in strength, unity and combativeness, sowing the seeds for a democratic future...
...revolutions are made by whole peoples...
...From 1983 to 1985, the Regional Women's Organization was the nerve center of the Regional Coordinator of the Valley of Mexico, because of its dynamism and capacity for mobilization and organization...
...Democracy is not merely discussed but practiced: assemblies, meetings, work committees, demonstrations, study circles and other methods enrich the members' own life experience...
...They organize to demand employment, recreational programs and, above all, an end to police harassment and illegal detentions...
...During the 1986 World Soccer Cup tournament in Mexico City, the earthquake victims in the CUD were offered housing if they promised to stay calm...
...The movement spread rapidly to other cities and to other neighborhoods of metropolitan Mexico City...
...There have been three CONAMUP National Women's Conferences so far: Durango (1983), Monterrey (1985), and Zacatecas (1987...
...CONAMUP, CUD and AB all maintain their autonomy from the parties, but their constituent organizations are free to participate as they choose, with their own candidates...
...DRV toward levels of individual and collective participation that are here to stay...
...Politically conscious squatters neither surrender nor sell out...
...The urban movement in Mexico is multi-class...
...This has given rise to some serious soul-searching: What should be done now that the "minorities" form the electoral majority...
...The CUD redefined the tenants' movement in the center of the city to include devastated middle-class neighborhoods such as Tlatelolco, Roma and Condesa...
...3 In greater Mexico City, there are organizations in almost all the delegaciones, similar to wards in U.S...
...These people channeled their discontent into the great FDN mobilizations of 1988, but they are still unfamiliar with alternatives closer at hand for organizing effectively and collectively...
...As Cdrdenas implied, Mexico's urban grass-roots movement has developed from a collection of isolated local struggles, into a force capable of challenging the policies of the regime...
...Then came Cuauht6moc Cirdenas...
...A final constituency, consumers, has been pressing the demand for tortibonos, government-issued coupons for purchasing tortillas at a subsidized price...
...Another tactic is to offer solutions to select groups on the condition that they "not make noise...
...Thus the movement in general seeks a broad strategy for social change, within which different political currents may pursue various tactics to achieve intermediate goals...
...All three do favor dialogue, tolerance and "unity-criticism-unity," and they insist on decision-making by consensus...
...But in the early 1970s, independent community organizations began to appear, formed either by political cadres or leaders from the community who had emerged in the course of the local struggles for services and land titles...
...Throughout the 1970s, neighborhood organizations remained essentially local, led by people with very diverse politics...
...Refugees from rural poverty staked out territory on the cities' edges or crowded into their central areas, increasing both sprawl and density...
...At the same time, veterans of the protest movements of the late 1960s, many of them Maoist students, decided to "go to the people" to try to build a revolutionary mass party "from below...
...The women of the CUD, although not as established as the Women's Regional, have also gone beyond local struggles, beginning with the demonstration in November 1985 for respect for arraigo or "rootedness," the right to remain in the communities where they had lived before the quake...
...Two broad objectives are most important for the organizations of the movement: getting the state to satisfy their demands, and maintaining an organizational identity independent of the state and the ruling party...
...Voting at National Conferences is weighted to reflect the relative strength of each member: Regional or state-wide "fronts" get three votes...
...The 22 REPORT ON THE AMERICAScapital of a highly centralized political system, the Federal District is governed by the national executive, so that any complaint against "city hall" becomes a national challenge...
...Since then the date has been celebrated as the "Day of Unity of the Urban Popular Movement," providing the occasion for Cuauht6moc Cirdenas' remarks at last year's and this year's rallies...
...But the many political currents in CONAMUP often engage in contentious debate...
...The strongest resistance to the evictions came from the colonos-neighborhood residents-of the south, in the Ajusco Independent Coalition, made up of CONAMUP member organizations and others around the Ajusco hill...
...iQue el gobierno entienda: Primero es la vivienda...
...Now they are confronting, with great difficulty, such problems as the nonsharing of housework, sexual prejudices and oppression, and male hegemony in decision-making in the mass organizations...
...As the umbrella organization for diverse tendencies, CONAMUP maintains that the struggle for transforming Mexican society should still be waged through efforts to achieve grass-roots demands for services...
...The Asamblea de Barrios (AB) is especially deeprooted in Mexico City, where its highest authority is the General Assembly, with a Political Council made up of the commissioners of Finance, Culture, Women, and Government Relations (Gestoria, dealing with specific types of government housing programs...
...The AB, the Regional de Mujeres of the CONAMUP and others from the urban movement belong...
...Against repression, mobilization...
...And, finally: iY d6nde estd la ayuda, que el mundo nos mand6...
...The movement's historical sense of itself-through its organic expression in social organizations-is as a revolutionary actor defined more by its long-range political project than by current local demands...
...What is the relationship between urban struggle and expressly political struggle?' The Asamblea de Barrios addressed this in February: "Due to attitudes sown by a system that does not want citizens to participate effectively and critically, we believed that politics was only for the corrupt, for demagogues,...for the parties....It was our lack of political consciousness that allowed them to impose on us governPOETRY OF PROTEST T HE CHANTS AT THE RALLY AT THE PRESI- dent's mansion right after the 1985 earthquake included these pungent little rhymes: iGobierno, corrupto, por ti estamos de luto...
...The FDN has since formed a party, the Partido de la Revoluci6n Democrdtica...
...2. The author thanks Dr...
...Massive rallies in the streets and neighborhoods culminated on October 30, 1985, when 30,000 marched on Los Pinos (official residence of the president), demanding the right to continue living in their neighborhoods and local control over reconstruction efforts...
...But the class composition of the movement is ultimately less important than its political practice and its proposals...
...5 In 1983 the women's caucus of the CONAMUP organized the First National Women's Conference in Durango, and that same year the Regional Women's Organization (Regional de Mujeres) of the Valley of Mexico was founded...
...DRV ments which had no intention of resolving the problems of the people...
...Urban mass organizations from several parts of the country participated, such as the Comit6 de Defensa Popular in Durango, the Frente Popular Tierra y Libertad in Monterrey, and the Uni6n de Colonos, Inquilinos y Solicitantes of Veracruz...
...Angel Mercado for his support and his valuable comments on the methodology and structure of this research...
...The Convenci6n del Andhuac was founded in November 1988 by over 100 Mexico City grass-roots organizations, including labor, community, ecology, student, women's and artists' groups...
...Homeless people are another constituency organized by CONAMUP, which is negotiating with the government's National Fund for People's Housing (FONHAPO) for financing of CONAMUP's own programs for inexpensive housing...
...Don't try to bullshit us The PRI's fucked it away...
...9. S6ptima Declaracidn, Asamblea de Barrios, February 1989...
...And it still insists on independence from the state and autonomy from all political parties...
...I N THEIR ROLE AS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE "class" of urban dwellers against the state, all three major umbrella organizations-CONAMUP, CUD and the Asamblea de Barrios-attempt to coordinate at all levels, from regional and state-wide to barrio-wide down to street-by-street or block-by-block...
...7. See accompanying article by Elaine Bums...
...T HE EARTHQUAKE OF SEPTEMBER 19, 1985 brought huge changes to community organizing in the capital...
...Most regional organizations are governed by a general assembly, with local assemblies and governing councils or committees made up of representatives of the street, building, block, colonia, etc., or of members of various commissions...
...From the beginning, the urban organizations that are independent of the government and the governing party, such as CONAMUP and the Asamblea de Barrios, have unequivocally defined their place in Mexico's broader political struggle: at the side of the progressive and revolutionary forces, against capitalist exploitation, and for the creation of a new social order, democratic and socialist...
...M ANY URBAN GRASSROOTS ORGANIZAtions made intense but disjointed forays into electoral politics over the years...
...In time, other organized interest-groups became active in the movement, including women, youth, seekers of housing, consumers, tenants, and disaster victims...
...4 (NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1989) was again challenged, and a political commission made up of all the political currents was created...
...6 The Coordinadora Unica de Damnificados (Single Coordinator of Disaster Victims, or CUD), was founded a month after the quake by new groups plus some from the Tenants' Coordinator...
...At the second, 12 hours later, some 50,000 people rallied at the call of a coalition of neighborhood-based organizations of the urban poor...
...Officials also use physical or legal threats to co-opt or weaken leaders, in some cases resorting to massive repression...
...The Conferences also function at the regional and local level, and participate in the Delegates' Assembly as an autonomous body...
...Although the homeless movement began on the outskirts of the city...
...Despite the laws, regulations and organisms which attempt to channel "citizen participation" into activities sanctioned by Mexico's corporative state, the urban mass movement is evolving MULTI-CLASS REVOLUTIONARIES T HE 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...
...They have also sought to establish people's grocery stores and dairies, REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 26administered cooperatively by the beneficiaries...
...But now it could count on the support of political parties and the participation of millions of citizens and would "be decisive in the transformation we are struggling for throughout the country...
...consolidation and expansion alternate with dispersion, disarticulation and even co-optation by the PRI...
...Instead of Salinas, the crowd heard left-of-center opposition politician, Cuauht6moc Cdrdenas, whom many believe was the true winner of the July 1988 presidential elections.' At last year's anniversary rally, Cirdenas, whose campaign relied heavily on support of the grass-roots organizations, told a crowd of 100,000 that the urban movement had taught "valuable lessons" in mass organization and determination...
...4 (NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1989) 0 o a U, 0- 0 broad enough consensus for a sizable number of organizations to come together at Monterrey to create the National Coordinator of the Urban Popular Movement (CONAMUP), which is now the main umbrella group, and a forum for determining the movement's role in national politics...
...Throughout the Valley of Mexico, the "massification" of social life, the erosion of local loyalties in favor of a metropolitan consciousness, is overwhelming traditional mechanisms of urban control...
...The creation of the Regional Coordinator reflected both CONAMUP's decision to promote coordination and the desires of local organizations themselves to band together to confront the government's "bulldozer policy" against irregular settlements and urban invasions, which in 1981 alone displaced 15,000 families in the capital...
...URBAN MOVEMENTS RESORT TO DEMONstrations because they have no regular channels to make themselves heard, unlike the businessmen and PRIlinked workers, campesinos and popular movements which enter "respectful" discussions over the breakfast table or in closed-door sessions with the president, the governor or some other government dignitary...
...All these groups stress the need for equality of men and women...
Vol. 23 • November 1989 • No. 4
