The Squatters’ and Tenants’ Movement in Buenos Aires. A Vindication of Centrality and the Self-Managed Production of Space

Abstract

The Squatters and Tenants’ Movement has played a significant role in the recent evolution of Buenos Aires’s city centre. It has helped transform squatted and ruined buildings into new neighbourhoods through cooperation and the self-management of collective property, creating a notable network of residential and social spaces. In addition, MOI demonstrates an explicit validation of the right to the city, as well as referencing many other Lefebvrian concepts in its public documents and militant speeches. This paper examines two aspects related to this case. First, it questions the degree of independence which grassroots movements can have from the state with regard to the production of space. Second, it probes the ideological dimension of the struggle for urban centrality, investigating the relevance of critical urban studies on the concept of ideology itself. The research presented here is based on 11 qualitative interviews with MOI cooperative members combined with a period of three months of participant observation inside the organization’s work areas and housing cooperatives. As a result of the research, this paper advances two main conclusions. First, in densified and consolidated urban areas, under the present conditions, grassroots movements cannot produce new spatial orders and autonomous practices but, rather, must always negotiate with the state’s own socio-spatial interventions. Second, examining the term ideology is important in keeping urban studies politicised. The concept of ideology raises the question of the possibility or impossibility of transforming socio-spatial orders and therefore addresses a key political question.