Brazilian Urban Popular Movements: The 1997 Mobilization of the Inner-City Slum Movementin Sao Paulo

Abstract

Introduction Between 1997 and 2005, more than 80 occupations of abandoned buildings took place in downtown Sao Paulo. They involved more than 10,000 people and were mobilized by five different social movement organizations. The scale and impact of these occupations surprised both social scientists and public officials given that the downtown cortico1 population has continued to diminish during the past 50 years and was never considered mobilizable by urban popular movement activists, even during important waves2 of urban land occupations and contestation in the 1980s.3 An urban popular movement4 organized around housing issues has a long history in Sao Paulo. Since the early 1990s, it has become more institutionalized, concentrating on housing project negotiations with government and international development agencies, and abandoning more radical forms of action such as occupations.