THE ‘FIFTH COLUMN’ OF THE HETERONOMOUS CITY

SOME REFLECTIONS ABOUT THE ACHIEVEMENTS AND LIMITS OF A PART OF THE ‘SEM-TETO’ MOVEMENT’S SPATIAL PRACTICES IN RIO DE JANEIRO

Abstract

The squatts of the ‘sem-teto’ movement Chiquinha Gonzaga (2004), Zumbi dos Palmares (2005-2011) and Quilombo das Guerreiras (2006), placed besid Rio de Janeiros’ Central Business District, can be considered as small enclaves where citzens undertakes socio-spatial practices contrasting considerably of those hegemonicaly performed in an heteronomous metropolis. From this contrast we can analyse a kind of tension that helps on the understanding of the possibility of ‘autonomy gains’ within a basically heteronomous town through a botton up action. Some exemples of this tension are, on the one hand, the improvements of dwellers’ economic conditions consequently to the everyday life in the squatt and, on the other hand, the obstacles that restricts the development of self-managed cooperatives; the more peaceful life in the squatts (in comparison with the favelas controled by drug dealers) undermined by the stresses provoqued by the siege of criminal and policial violence, aside from the ambivalence of the socio-spatial representations that the squatts dwellers creats about urban spaces and about other citzens. The purpose of this article is to understand the mechanics of the obstacles faced by this part of the ‘sem-teto’ movement, as well as the ‘fundament’ of the solutions found by them.