Asentamientos and Cantegriles: New Poverty and the Moral Dangers of Proximity in Uruguayan Squatter Settlements

Abstract

This article analyzes forms of distinction and inequality generated within Uruguayan squatter settlements as a result of neoliberal policies, class polarization, and the downward mobility of previously integrated populations that have migrated to the informal urban periphery. Based on ethnographic research in Montevideo, this article shows how newly impoverished Uruguayans have dealt with their spatial proxim- ity and ever-increasing socioeconomic proximity to chronic poverty through the mainte- nance of symbolic boundaries between themselves and the chronic poor. This boundary work is dependent on the reproduction of a series of moral oppositions, highly reminis- cent of hegemonic discourses on the culture of which cast the chronic poor as dirty, lacking in values, apathetic, disorganized, and responsible for their own poverty. In October 2004, I began conducting ethnographic fi eldwork in La Chacha, an asentamiento (squatter settlement) located on the urban periphery of Montevideo, Uruguay. 1 My main objective was to explore the stories and everyday experiences of downwardly mobile Uruguayans who had migrated to peri-urban squatter settlements after suffering unemployment and consequent impoverishment. Re- ferred to in the literature as new poverty, this process of downward mobility in Uruguay has its origin in the implementation of neoliberal reforms that have played a key role in transforming the structure and composition of the social classes in Uruguay and their location in urban space (Kaztman et al. 2004). One of my informants, fi fty-six-year-old Marta, is an example of a newly impoverished squatter. After having spent most of her adult life renting homes in neighborhoods close to Montevideo's city center, raising two children, and helping her husband run their family business (a small grocery store), Marta fell on hard times when the business went bankrupt in 2001. Her family was forced to build a precari- ous home in La Chacha, one of Montevideo's many rapidly expanding squatter settlements on the urban periphery. According to Marta, the fi rst two years were the most diffi cult as she became accustomed to living with previously unknown hardships such as a clandestine electricity connection and lack of services and in- frastructure. Most of all, Marta lamented her everyday contact with los pobres de verdad (the real poor) and her daily exposure to the miseria she had once been relatively shielded from due to her central urban residence. 1. The word asentamiento is a shortened and more popular version of the offi cial term asentamiento ir- regular (irregular settlement), the latter which is commonly used in academic and social policy literature. La Chacha is a pseudonym. The names of my informants used in this article are also pseudonyms.