Abstract
Every Latin American metropolis has its marginal squatter settlements. Even Brasilia, the capital carved from Brazil's interior and inaugurated in 1960, came equipped with a full complement of shacks around the edges. A staple of modern photographic journalism is the picture of a packing-crate shack, complete with children and chickens, set against the background of a gleaming high-rise architectural monolith. Such pictures may give the impression that marginal urban squatter settlements are new phenomena, but they are not. References to such settlements can be found in sixteenth-century descriptions of Mexico City-and of London, for that matter.' They are a natural response to a period of rapid urbanization.
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