The Latin American Metropolis and the Growth of Inequality
Angotti, Thomas
At the edge of Mexico City, east of the airport, lies Nezahualc6yotl, a sprawling shantytown of two million people located on the bed of what was once Lake Texcoco. It is one of the many...
...The capital cities located in the interior are exceptions that prove the rule: Mexico City is the center of the only Latin American nation bordering the United States...
...The contrast between Neza and the wealthy neighborhood enclaves near the Paseo de la Reforma in the central city is dramatic...
...In addition, Northern transnationals are setting up factories in Latin America to produce cars, computers and other goods aimed at the region's small but growing upper middle-class market...
...Through the austerity policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, Northern capital discourages national governments from making expenditures that would substantially improve the urban quality of life in Latin America, thereby sustaining the low level of subsistence that corresponds with low wages...
...2 Indeed, urban consumption levels declined in the last decade as a result of austerity measures undertaken to meet debt obligations...
...and Habitat '87, Global Report on Human Settlement (London: Oxford University Press, 1989...
...Entire neighborhoods are often displaced to protect In all the rr large comm movement stop displace secure ba services moveme forged coa play a sign in local an poli elite property rights...
...Self-help is basically an acknowledgment that the state will take little or no responsibility for the planning and development of poor neighborhoods...
...There are a few residential areas planned for the poor, like the 23 de Enero public-housing ghetto created during the Perez Jim6nez dictatorship, but for the most part, the poor live in neighborhoods without planned streets, potable water, sewage, utilities and other services...
...Urbanization by other colonists near the plaza was regulated, but areas occupied by the indigenous masses were unaffected by planning...
...The only way to achieve a balanced urban system and urban equality is to have a balanced economic system, one that is not dependent on a bloated export sector...
...Attached to the dust particles are often fungus and bacteria from d national the open garbage dumps and burntics...
...Children living in the barrios are especially vulnera- nts have ble to respiratory illnesses from the litions that dust kicked up by vehicles on unpaved and poorly maintained ificant role roads...
...Much of the oil profits ends up outside the country...
...International donors favor supporting local self-help housing initiatives by giving financial aid, construction materials, and technical advice...
...The Latin American Metropolis 1 Thomas Angotti, Metropolis 2000: Planning, Poverty & Politics (London: Routledge, 1993), Ch...
...Most new industrial plants, like the scores of auto assembly lines springing up in Mexico and Brazil, are within existing metropolitan areas, where investors expect to take advantage of the large, diverse and low-cost labor pool...
...The lion's share of the oil money that remains in Venezuela goes to lavish residential enclaves like Caracas' "Country Club" neighborhood, and to the privileged middle-class automobile owners who can burn the country's gas at a bargain price...
...The real-estate market is loosely regulated, reinforcing the tendencies toward concentration in the central business district, displacement of low-rent activities, and expansion at the periphery...
...In Mexico, the National Coordinating Committee of the Urban Popular Movement (CONAMUP) and the Assembly of Neighborhoods, led by folk hero Superbarrio, have assumed national importance...
...Living in Nezahualc6yotl can be exhausting...
...While the movements arose in separate neighborhoods, they have forged coalitions that play a significant role in local and national politics...
...Although the rate of vehicle ownership is lower than in the :ement and North, cars, trucks and buses are sic urban older and have inadequate emission systems, and fuel is cruder and . These more polluting...
...Urban strategies that have been favored throughout the region often target cities themselves as the problem, and seek to stop urban growth instead of improv- Pigs wander through the str, ing the urban-and rural- Nezahualcoyotl...
...These megaprojects are connected by a network of intra-city highways that mimics the U.S...
...However, without the resources and institutions to implement these regulations, they are ignored or easily violated...
...The majority of the population in Latin American cities survives at a level of subsistence far below North American standards...
...The metropolis and not the campo now defines the Latin American landscape...
...19-34...
...To one Thomas Angotti is a city planner in New York and teaches in the Graduate Planning Program at Pratt Institute...
...Another key aspect of urban inequality in Latin America is displacement...
...BogotAi was for a long time the center of one of the most balanced Latin American economies...
...These resources can also supplement the enormous reservoir of self-help with socially responsible urban strategies...
...Mexico, like Venezuela and Brazil and a number of other Latin American countries, is locked into a regime of accumulation that forces it to rely on environmentally damaging petroleum energy...
...In all major cities, large community-based movements arose in the 1970s to stop displacement and secure basic urban services...
...In Chile, for example, under the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende, and in Mexico since the 1970s, local associations for improving the ets of Mexico City's Ciudad urban environment played key political roles nationally as well as locally, and have successfully pressured for government financing of urban development...
...The surplus labor force in the countryside is drawn to the cities where people can find more employment, housing and cultural opportunities...
...The few cities that have subways still have horrendous traffic congestion because auto use continues to increase...
...In a balanced economy, a significant proportion of the national surplus can be used to improve the quality of urban life, and to provide a national social safety net so that large numbers of people are no longer forced out of rural areas...
...early capital cities were modeled on their European counterparts and served as coastal gateways for exportbased dependent economies...
...The South has seen a growth and dispersal of sweat shops and enclave industries-like Mexico's maquiladorasonce confined to isolated zones such as the U.S.-Mexican border...
...The informal sector includes street vendors hawking everything from cigarettes to contraband radios, freelance plumbers and carpenters, garbage pickers, and women who make clothing at home...
...Downtown Caracas, for example, is now a collection of giant civic projects that dwarfs the colonial-era plazas and narrow streets...
...Residents displaced from Barra da Tijuca, many of whom had already been evicted from other neighborhoods in Rio, are forced to move further out in the urban periphery or into increasingly overcrowded favelas...
...6, No...
...If you are lucky enough to have a regular factory or office job, you probably have to commute one or two hours in each direction on rickety buses through horrible traffic jams, with portions of your journey on unpaved roads...
...The less developed countries, such as Peru, Bolivia and Guatemala, by contrast, tend to be less urban and have larger rural populations...
...gasoline prices are kept lajor cities, low to promote and protect the unity-based national oil industry and solidify popular support for the governts arose to ment...
...Located on the perimeter of the plaza were the representatives of the Crown, the Church, and civil authorities...
...Self-help actually describes the way most metropolises in Latin America have been built-spontaneously and without government assistance...
...aid programs-it can strengthen local power brokers without benefiting the victims of inequality...
...The North American metropolitan area is typically auto-oriented, sprawled over a large territory, and has sharp economic and social divisions between central city and suburbs...
...4. John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987...
...Following the lead of North America, many Latin American cities tore up their trolley lines to make room for cars, trucks and buses...
...In the twentieth century, the modernist downtown models of Europe and North America replaced the Laws of the Indies...
...The dramatic growth of Caracas, for example, was the result of Venezuela's oil boom, which began in the 1920s...
...The colonial era established the conditions of extreme centralization conducive to metropolitan expansion...
...With NAFTA and other agreements for trade liberalization, the small border enclaves in free-trade zones may become less significant as magnets for rural migration, but these enclaves were never among the largest metropolitan areas anyway...
...Half of all Latin Americans today live in cities with a population of over 100,000, and by the year 2000 half will probably live in large metropolitan areas with populations of over a million.' There are now 41 cities with a population of over a million in Latin America [see table, page 15...
...Since their closest links are with firms and services in the North, export industries seldom spin off the creation of large numbers of urban firms and services...
...The concentration of capital in cities results in the concentration of labor...
...As agriculture becomes mechanized and subsistence farming declines, urban industry and services grow...
...apital investments in the major cities of Latin America disproportionately favor export industries that are not closely linked with the national and regional economies...
...Latin America's urban growth has been driven by capital investment, mainly from North America, but also from Latin America's growing capitalist accumulation, and increasingly from Europe and Japan...
...The low-income community of Barra da Tijuca at the periphery of Rio de Janeiro, for example, has been the target of a concerted eviction campaign by land developers, supported by local government, who want to build luxury condominiums in this attractive mangrove forest area...
...Many workers move in and out of formal work, and many families have both formal and informal workers...
...Residential areas for the elite are mostly private enclaves planned by developers anxious to cash in on the rampant land speculation unleashed by the oil rush...
...Mexico City has perhaps the foulest air of any large city in the world...
...Informal activities may be unregulated by government, but they engage practically the entire population in one way or another, and at one time or another...
...3 Thus, the Latin American metropolis is an integral part of the global urban network dominated by the North...
...Women play a leading role and have become politically empowered in many of the community movements...
...Indeed, a constant among the strongest and most influential self-help groups is the demand for a stronger government role and a more equitable economic and political system...
...The eviction campaign has included the assassination of community leaders by mysterious death squads, destruction of houses by military police, demolitions by local government, and forced evictions...
...David Collier's classic study of Lima's barriadas demonstrates how popular participation at the local level can be used to coopt potential opposition and reinforce central authority...
...Brazil moved its capital to Brasflia, but even though this contributed to urban growth in the interior of the country, the two megacities on the coast-Rio de Janeiro and Sdo Paulo-continue to grow...
...Displacement and the generally poor living conditions in cities have given rise to perhaps the largest democratic movements in Latin America...
...The movement of manufacturing from North to South therefore contributes to the historic trends of metropolitan growth and centralism within the South...
...The market bids up the cost of land in central locations, and forces the eviction of low-income people in favor of office buildings, stores, and new housing for the professional and technocratic strata...
...Mexico City, Sdo Paulo, Buenos Aires and Rio de new indus Janeiro are among the 20 largest met- are withi ropolitan areas in the world...
...The secondary cities lack the economic diversity, urban services and cultural life of Lima...
...Colombia and Chile, which have recently undergone rapid economic growth, have 41% and 36% respectively of their populations in metropolitan areas...
...Despite the globalization of production and consumption, however, the new international division of labor is not producing any major shifts in urbanization patterns...
...These resources can support the growing network of grassroots community organizations, and responsive local governments...
...364- 86...
...1 (April, 1994...
...As with most Latin American metropolitan areas, Caracas is now a center of consumption and lacks the range of productive activities that can be found, for example, in Houston, a Northern oil city of comparable size...
...5 There is a direct link between displacement and the real-estate market...
...These groups have, however, relied on self-help out of necessity, not because they believed it to be a preferred national strategy...
...While a favorite strategy of the international aid establishment has been to promote local government and citizen participation, local government has traditionally been a means for legitimizing elite political power...
...the second largest city, Arequipa, has fewer than 700,000 inhabitants, not substantially greater than the next largest cities of Trujillo and Chiclayo...
...Most of the pollution comes from motor vehicles, whose use is subsidized by the government...
...For example, urban protest movements make up a large part of the popular base of the Brazilian Workers Party (PT), the largest leftist party in Latin America...
...The ost trial plants n existing itan areas, stors expect dvantage ge, diverse cost labor Sol...
...Carbon monoxide levels in the city far exceed these in the most polluted North American metropolises like Los Angeles and New York...
...Their products go to Lima, their budgets are drafted in Lima, and their futures are decided in Lima...
...This planning, however, has mostly benefited the wealthy and powerful...
...Latin American economies crippled with foreign debt can barely afford the institutional infrastructure-urban planning and a coherent set of regulatory mechanisms-to enforce environmental standards, much less maintain physical infrastructure like highways and bridges...
...The huge labor A street scene surplus in the Latin American metropolis is as necessary to transnationals as the small proportion of the population actually employed in commodity production for exchange on the international market...
...Further, since most of the surplus produced in these industries leaves the country, an insufficient amount remains to build adequate housing, roads, water and sewer lines, and utilities for city dwellers...
...VOL XXVIII, No 4 JAN/FEB 1995 15 VOL XXVIII, No4 JAN/FEB 1995 15URBAN REPORT Poverty and informality may not have been created by transnational corporations, but they serve their interests well...
...Since the 1970s, capitalist production has begun to look more and more like a global assembly line...
...When local government ee is able to generate its own revenues-a mostly unfulfilled goal of U.S...
...Mexico City's problems crystallize the urban question in Latin America, not so much because of its size, but because of its economic and social inequalities, and its declining quality of life...
...The average size of these megacities is 3.6 M million people...
...4 (November/December 1989...
...It is often argued that recent revolutionary changes in technology, communications and industrial production will make large metropolitan areas obsolete...
...Inter-city freight moves mostly by truck, since the few railroads were built only to extract raw materials from specific locations by individual foreign corporations...
...Also, the uprooting of the many spontaneous communities that have sprung up on the outskirts of major cities serves to dampen demands for greater government expenditures for urban infrastructure-expenditures that might create further demands for wage increases...
...As in the colonial era, the masses remain outside the orbit of planning...
...When most of a nation's production, goods and surplus are funneled out of the country through a single urban gateway, that gateway tends to overshadow all other cities...
...6. See Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots (Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press, 1983), pp...
...Latin America is now the most urbanized of "Third World" regions, a fact that bears some relation to the region's economic dependency on North America, itself the most urbanized region in the world...
...The colonial neglect of the indigenous neighborhoods was supplanted by North America's laissez-faire approach to real-estate development...
...If transnationals can now set up small shops anywhere in the world, some analysts predict a pattern of decentralized production which will slow urbanization and perhaps alter the pattern of inequality...
...8. Vilmar E. Faria, "Metropolitan Sao Paulo: Problems and Perspec- tives," in Matthew Edel and Ronald G. Hellman, eds., Cities in Crisis: The Urban Challenge in the Americas (New York: Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies, CUNY, 1989) 9. David Collier, Barriadas y Elites: De Odria a Velasco (Lima: Insti- tuto de Estudios Peruanos, 1981...
...About half the population in Caracas lives at the margin, in the humble ranchos that blanket the steep hills around the center...
...In Latin Ameriand lowca, the four wealthiest countries are also among the most urbanized...
...While the old centralized structures of power are being challenged as many secondary cities undergo rapid economic growth, those smaller cities have not gained greater political power or improved government services...
...The first urban planning regulations in Latin America, promulgated by the Spanish Crown in the sixteenth century "Laws of the Indies," established rules for the organization of urban space around the central plaza, which became the seat of political and economic power...
...190-209...
...It is one of the many self-built neighborhoods that house the majority of the metropolitan area's 20 million people-neighborhoods where it is hard to find decent housing, good jobs, clean water, or parks...
...In pc Venezuela, 45% of the population lives in cities over one million, in Argentina 43%, in Brazil 39%, and in Mexico 34...
...The barriadas, favelas and ranchos are ready reserves for international capital to utilize in its global assembly line...
...Many Latin American cities have strict master plans, and rent, subdivision and zoning regulations that theoretically govern urban development...
...1 0 At times, of course, spontaneous building has been very organized and sophisticated...
...An economic and urban gulf has to take a opened between the more developed metropolitan countries and the less of the large developed rural ones...
...Over the last century, Latin America has been transformed from a mostly rural to a largely urban region, with the urban population concentrated VOL XXVIII, No4 JAN/FEB 1995 . 13URBAN REPORT in very large metropolitan areas...
...A huge squad of some 11,000 diesel buses now spews black fumes into the air.7 Contamination of water and soil are also critical environmental problems...
...See Jorge Hardoy, "The Building of Latin American Cities," in Alan Gilbert, ed., Urbanization in Contemporary Latin America (New York: Wiley, 1982), pp...
...R.) 2,170 La Habana (Cuba) 2,040 San Juan (Puerto Rico) 1,816 Goiania (Brazil) 1,788 Barranquilla (Colombia) 1,775 Guayaquil (Ecuador) 1,638 Cabo (Brazil) 1,577 Guatemala (Guatemala) 1,460 Belem (Brazil) 1,357 Asunci6n (Paraguay) 1,350 Novoguacu (Brazil) 1,325 Maracaibo (Venezuela) 1,295 Cordoba (Argentina) 1,285 Puebla (Mexico) 1,260 Montevideo (Uruguay) 1,248 Quito (Ecuador) 1,220 La Paz (Bolivia) 1,210 Santos (Brazil) 1,139 Valencia (Venezuela) 1,135 Rosario (Argentina) 1,122 Le6n (Mexico) 1,077 Ciudad Ju-rez (Mexico) 1,006 Source: Adjusted figures based on UN Demographic Yearbook, 1989...
...But despite decades of talk, no nation has been able to stop urban growth or reverse the centralizing trends except, perhaps, for Cuba, where a major shift of resources to the countryside led to negative growth in Havana...
...quality of life...
...Latin America's capital cities in particular tend to dwarf secondary cities in size, economic activity and political power...
...In "Neza," you may have to live with three generations of your family in a tiny two-room house that you built little by little over the years...
...Many salaried workers in the formal sector hire domestics and handymen from the informal sector...
...1. 2. See Michael Peter Smith and Joe R. Feagin, City, State and Mar- ket: The Political Economy of Urban Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987...
...and Geoffrey Fox, ed., "The Homeless Organize," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...Despite the widespread perception that the large cities of Latin America are unplanned and unmanageable, there has been considerable planning by government agencies as well as by the private sector...
...9 Local government is often an avenue to greater power for local property interests, who can become power brokers in league with the national government...
...The Latin American metropolis is characterized by mass poverty and severe environmental pollution on a scale generally unparalleled in the North...
...23, No...
...metropolis was planned in the image of the North, but without the resources and unique conditions of the North, which has flourished by importing capital and labor to build a diversified consumer economy...
...This strategy is often seen as a substitute for government-sponsored programs in housing and urban services...
...Thus, an urban system designed to work with Northern wealth falls apart in Southern poverty...
...After independence, urbanization went hand in hand with economic growth, even when import-substitution strategies lessened the influence of exports, and sometimes moderated the influence of the capital cities...
...the outlying shantydegree or another, all major Latin American cities have these extremes of wealth and poverty, but the conditions in Mexico City are most dramatic because the city is so immense...
...7. Nathanial C. Nash, "Scrubbing the Skies Over Chile," New York Times, July 6, 1992...
...There is little admiration for the extreme centralism associated with the region's huge cities, and the destruction of popular, democratic and communal structures of governance that has gone along with it...
...He is the author of Metropolis 2000: Planning, Poverty & Politics (Rout- ledge, 1993), and is a participating editor for Latin American Perspectives...
...Cities are a product of economic development...
...Venezuela's elites are wed to Northern patterns of conspicuous consumption and rake off many of the benefits of the meager Venezuelan welfare state...
...VOL XXVIII, No 4 JAN/FEB 1995 17 VOL XXVIII, No4 JAN/FEB1995 17URBAN REPORT The neoliberal craze for deregulation could further worsen air quality...
...At the same 16 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 16 in NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASURBAN REPORT time, indigenous forms of planning human settlements-such as traditional patios and plazas-are superseded by the real-estate market and ignored by government...
...interstate-highway system...
...There has been much talk, for example, about "spatial deconcentration"-the dispersal of the urban population from megacities to small cities and towns...
...Metropolitan Area (Country) Population (000) Mexico City (Mexico) 20,250 Sao Paulo (Brazil) 18,770 Buenos Aires (Argentina) 11,710 Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) 11,370 Lima (Peru) 6,780 Bogot, (Colombia) 5,270 Santiago (Chile) 4,550 Caracas (Venezuela) 4,180 Belo Horizonte (Brazil) 3,890 Curitiba (Brazil) 3,772 Medellin (Colombia) 3,601 Guadalajara (Mexico) 3,200 P6rto Alegre (Brazil) 3,180 Recife (Brazil) 3,040 Monterrey (Mexico) 3,010 Salvador (Brazil) 2,650 Fortaleza (Brazil) 2,422 Cali (Colombia) 2,402 Brasilia (Brazil) 2,400 Santo Domingo (D...
...6 E nvironmental contamination also plagues Latin American metropolises...
...Urban life, though flawed by poverty, inequality, and lack of basic services, nonetheless marks an improvement over the oppressive living conditions in declining rural areas...
...A closer look reveals this divide to be far from sharp...
...A large part of its national surplus and export earnings comes from petroleum, so any restrictions on this sector are looked upon with disdain...
...Unlike its Northern counterpart, the Latin American metropolis has grown unevenly by exporting its labor and resources...
...5. Miloon Kothari, "Tijuca Lagoon: Evictions and Human Rights in Rio de Janeiro," Environment and Urbanization, Vol...
...Almost all of Latin America's metropolitan regions developed around colonial seats of power...
...There is no way around the fact that livable cities require sustainable economic development...
...On the surface, Latin American cities appear to be sharply divided between a vast "informal" sector or "marginal" population, and a "formal" economy made up of regulated, tax-paying industries, wage earners, and commercial establishments...
...The planning of Latin American cities has thus reinforced many of the social problems of unequal development...
...In the last analysis, the city is anchored in the regional economy...
...New industrial enclaves have emerged in 14 NACL4 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 14 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASURBAN REPORT Latin America, but they still do not account for more than a small proportion of capital investment on a global scale...
...Mexico emulates the model of sprawled, auto-based metropolitan growth of the United States, but lacks the resources to control its disastrous ecological consequences...
...Even if you have water piped into your house, you are never sure whether Rocinha favela, one of there is enough pressure, and towns of Rio de Janeiro chances are the water is loaded with bacteria...
...4 This model has greatly influenced Latin American planners...
...As poor as life may be in the major Latin American cities, however, they continue to attract large numbers of people...
...In Santiago, air pollution got worse during the years of the Pinochet dictatorship, in large measure because deregulation of the bus system encouraged the importation of used buses...
...Deindustrialization in North America has led to the flight of the most labor-intensive and noxious industrial operations to the South...
...In Sho Paulo, as in most other large cities, most sewage is discharged without treatment into rivers and streams, only a small fraction of solid waste is treated, and air quality is extremely poor...
...3. John Walton, "Urban Protest and the Global Political Economy: The IMF Riots," in Smith and Feagin, The Capitalist City, pp...
...This led to the "IMF riots" in Buenos Aires, Lima, Santo Domingo, Caracas and elsewhere...
...Latin American workers make up a ready labor reserve for transnationals, who encourage immigration only to the point that it lowers labor costs in the North, and make use of the pool of cheap labor when their industrial investments come South...
...Inequalities between the metropolis, smaller cities and rural towns of Latin American nations are also gaping...
...8 The city is becoming even less sustainable as real-estate development favors new construction over preservation, and wasteful low-density sprawl over more compact forms of growth...
...The economic role of the Latin American metropolis has its basis in the structure of colonial administration...
...Meanwhile, the fastest growing cities are metropol the somewhat smaller ones like Mon- where inve terrey, Mexico and Recife, Brazil...
...ing refuse in outlying areas...
...Shantytown dwellers who happen to be located on land that gains in real-estate value are among the major targets of eviction...
...This allows for the suppression of wage levels in the North as well as the South...
...They can foster sustainable forms of urban development and transportation based on indigenous traditions and appropriate technology...
...In the modern luxury districts you most likely have all the services of a North American suburb, even if you can't entirely escape the foul air, crime and disease of the city as a whole...
...The Latin American in jo Paulo...
...The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) seeks to institutionalize this new international division of labor...
...The downtown skylines of the major metropolitan areas in Latin America offer stark images of the influence of the Manhattan model, where central real-estate values combine with official urban-renewal plans to produce monumental business districts...
...For example, the Lima metropolitan area has a population of about seven million, a third of Peru's population...
...Asunci6n and La Paz are the capitals of land-locked nations and relatively small...
Vol. 28 • January 1995 • No. 4
