the struggle continues: consciousness, social movement, and class action || developing sustainable...

Developing Sustainable Peripheries: The Limits of Citizenship in Guatemala CityAuthor(s): Edward MurphySource: Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 31, No. 6, The Struggle Continues: Consciousness,Social Movement, and Class Action (Nov., 2004), pp. 48-68Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4141607 .

Accessed: 13/06/2014 02:27

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Latin AmericanPerspectives.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.230 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 02:27:15 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=sage

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4141607?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Developing Sustainable Peripheries The Limits of Citizenship in Guatemala City

by Edward Murphy

In March 1984 approximately 800 families squatted on previously unoc-

cupied lands on the edge of Guatemala City in an area known as El Mez-

quital. In the following months, squatters continued to arrive, eventually forming a community of more than 25,000. This was the first major organized act of squatting that successfully established a community in the city since 1976. Dozens of other "land invasions"-to employ the term most

commonly used in Guatemala-had been broken up by the police in the early 1980s (CITGUA, 1991: 70). However, following the success of Mez-

quital, other squatters have established communities throughout the city.1 Although the Guatemalan state still forcefully breaks up land seizures, many of these settlements in the past 16 years have slowly been transformed into

neighborhoods. The increase in urban squatting has come at a crucial point in Guatemalan

history. Since 1984 Guatemala has experienced fundamental changes in its

body politic. In the transition from dictatorship to "democracy" and from 35

years of civil war to "peace," new spaces have opened up for marginalized actors to have a political voice.2 As the case of urban squatting makes clear, these new spaces are important. They are not, however, without their limits and silences. The squatters have benefited, particularly in the 1980s, from the

spotlight provided by the presence of international development organizations and the emergence of a relatively independent press, articulating a

strong critique of the conditions under which they live. Nevertheless, they slowly lose the ability to voice their concerns. This silencing occurs, at least in part, because of modern "development" institutions providing crucial

Edward Murphy is a candidate in the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History at the Uni-

versity of Michigan. He thanks Richard Caindida-Smith, Patty Mullally, and the readers at Latin American Perspectives for providing comments on earlier drafts. Special thanks are due to the Guatemala City residents who so generously shared their views and to Christina Kelly for under-

taking much of the research with the author. At the University of Michigan, the Rackham School of Graduate Studies, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Doctoral Pro-

gram in Anthropology and History provided funds to support fieldwork.

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 139, Vol. 31 No. 6, November 2004 48-68 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X04269911 O 2004 Latin American Perspectives

48



Murphy / DEVELOPING SUSTAINABLE PERIPHERIES 49

services (such as potable water, sewage systems, electricity, and solid waste removal) that create manageable city spaces and achieve "minimal" stan- dards of living. This transformation undermines the ability of squatters to make further claims and eventually allows the national government and international agencies to ignore them.

The settlements become sustainable peripheries-borderland spaces that, having fulfilled the "minimum" requirements of urban modernity, remain in subordinate social, economic, and political positions. The act of squatting thus becomes regulated and incorporated into the dynamics of Guatemala's constricted transnational democracy, legitimizing inequality. What begins as a rupture-the violation of hegemonic liberal property norms-becomes normalized as the agencies of the Guatemalan state and international development help to transform illegal squatters into marginalized citizens living in legally sanctioned homes. But given Guatemala's high rates of poverty, this restoration of hegemonic liberal property norms is a tense and incomplete process.

In this article, I follow the arduous process of Mezquital's incorporation, tracing how squatters moved from a position of illegality, without any services such as water and electricity, to living in an established community with legal titles.3 This process underscores the ambiguities of citizenship in con- temporary Guatemala. While Guatemala no longer suffers the extreme forms of state-sponsored terror that reached its lowest depths in the early 1980s, claiming approximately 18,000 lives in 1982 alone (Ball and Kobrak, 2000: 24), its social, economic, and political inequities remain profound. The process through which desperate squatters become impoverished citizens is a testament to both this fractured context and the cultural norms and expecta- tions that are central to defining Guatemalan citizenship. In the history of Mezquital's incorporation, the squatters pushed the boundaries of citizenship as they fought for concessions from development institutions, but these concessions were gained only by those who were able to conform to a set of practices and roles, while several others were excluded. The process of incorporation thus demonstrates the constraints and limited benefits of citizenship for impoverished residents of Guatemala City as inequality and depoliticization become the norm.4

My interviews indicate that squatters normally arrived in Mezquital following a difficult personal decision. Many cited the high cost of renting apartments in aging, poorly kept buildings in the center of Guatemala City, where it was not uncommon for families of six or seven to live in dilapidated single rooms without windows.5 Rent was generally high, as the housing supply in Guatemala City had still not recovered from the devastating earthquake of 1976.6 More than 92 percent of Mezquital residents rented before coming



50 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

to the area (Noriega and Martinez L6pez, 1988: 72), a situation that often left them vulnerable in periods of income loss. While this vulnerability has always concerned Guatemala City's low-income residents, it was particularly intense during the early 1980s when the country was suffering from a recession.

Given the conditions that they had faced, residents described their arrival in Mezquital as a logical choice. Under the circumstances, squatting on a piece of land was the best that they could do. They did not see Mezquital as a definitive answer to their problems, but for those who stayed it was retrospec- tively made out to have been a necessary choice. As in earlier and later seizures, the vast majority of the residents of Mezquital, some 94 percent, had arrived from other areas of the city and not directly from the countryside (COINAP, SEGEPLAN, UNICEF, 1988: 20). Most had heard about the land seizure by word of mouth, through family members, friends, or fellow work- ers (for a description of this phenomenon in two other land seizures, see AVANCSO, 1993). In fact, many of the squatters had arrived with extended- family members; these kinship ties remain an important aspect of survival strategies and social life in Mezquital, where neighbors are often relatives.

Before the initial seizure, a temporary street market set up on the side of a busy road in front of Mezquital had served as an important meeting place for squatter organization. Unable to afford the rent in Guatemala City's run- down apartments, the vendors in this market led the 800 families that first seized land on the Mezquital plateau (COINAP, SEGEPLAN, UNICEF, 1988). This first group was well organized; members arrived at the same time and they carried Guatemalan flags, attempting to demonstrate that they were involved in a patriotic act that supported the rights of Guatemala's impoverished citizens. Their organization, however, was quickly overwhelmed by the arrival of a number of other squatters. Two days after the initial seizure, there were nearly 2,000 families in the area, with perhaps as many as 10,000 squatters (Quesada, 1985: 7). Four months later, according to another source, there were about 28,000 people living in Mezquital (PROUME, 1994: 2). While many of these later arrivals came in extended-family groups, they tended not to be organized into neighborhood committees at first. At this point, Mezquital's establishment still remained uncertain, and the housing lots often changed hands, as newcomers often bought their lots from earlier arrivals.

During this initial period, Mezquital residents had to tread carefully through a complicated, insecure, and often hostile social field in order to remain on their lands, constantly countering negative images. In a statement




to the press published shortly after the initial "invasion" (Prensa Libre, March 19, 1984), Mezquital's leaders announced,

We want to have a dialogue with the authorities or with the landowners in order to arrive at an understanding, because we realize that we have taken something that doesn't belong to us. We hope that they will sell something to us here or somewhere else, but we will try to resolve our problem, [even though] the government has never given us any attention.

Fourteen years later, Dofia Carmen Guzmain, a resident of Mezquital who had arrived shortly after the settlement was established, reproached me for using the term "invasion." "Don Eduardo," she said, "one thing that I don't understand is your use of the term 'invasion'. We didn't invade this land, that is something that [Christopher] Columbus did 500 years ago to the Indians. We came here not to conquer, but out of need" (interview, July 1998).

Dofia Carmen's emphasis on need provides the actions of the squatters with moral legitimacy, a justification that they are often not granted. In a comic strip in the Guatemala City daily Siglo Veintiuno (June 11, 1998), a wealthy professional Guatemalan quizzically asks his wife, "Didn't you tell me that our neighbor was a real estate agent?" The word "agent" (asesor) rhymes with the term invasor, "invader," and in the background, a smiling man drives by in an SUV, with a sign that says "Professional Invaders." While this cartoon can be read as a burlesque, it nonetheless reflects a common image of squatter communities: that they are made up of "professionals" who illegally seize lands in order to profit rather than poor, desperate families who use their available resources to establish a home.

Don Carlos Chinchilla Grijalba, a Mezquital resident who arrived in the very first months of the community and had worked for 25 years for the military police, depicted squatters in both of these ways (interview, June 1998). As a police officer he had taken part in breaking up a number of squatter communities. He justified these actions by saying, "There are many people who live by doing this, illegally. What rules here is money. There are a lot of people with money who do this as their work. When there is an invasion they will take land when they already have nice houses and then they sell it to other people." This delegitimizing description of squatters occurred 15 minutes after he had passionately defended the character of his neighbors:

Almost all of the invaders have the same necessities ... because with the low salaries that one earns to take care of the children, and if you want to pay for a house, and for food and everything else, it's not enough. ... There are two men that I know from another [area of the city] who say that you have to be careful




here, because all of the people here are thieves. These are things that I don't like ... because there are honorable people here.

In attempting to synthesize his life as both a resident of a squatter commu-

nity and a former member of the military police, Don Carlos expresses one of the central tensions that squatters evoke for establishing the boundaries of Guatemalan citizenship. Are squatters needy citizens deserving of state and international aid, or are they mostly cynical professionals who profit from the land invasions?

This question points to the problematic discursive terrain that the squatters must navigate. They must constantly counter being cast as improper citizens who fail to fulfill their responsibilities and do not deserve to be on the lands that they inhabit. The claim is often made, for example, that political interests promote squatting in order to build up their own power bases among the urban poor or to destabilize the political party in power (see CEUR- USAC, 1990). Reflecting common discourses of urban marginality, Guate- malans often claim that squatters do not share the dominant values of society, lack proper education and skills, and are prone to alcoholism, drug addiction, and crime.7

Although the squatters themselves can repeat these images, they must

respond to them in order to demonstrate their worth as citizens. They were able to do this successfully in the years immediately following the establishment of Mezquital as they effectively lobbied the state and international

development agencies for the provision of vital city services. Residents most often remember the public, communal acts that made this possible in

extremely positive terms, emphasizing the unity of the community and its

ability to achieve particular goals. However, memories of these early years also include numerous examples of polarization and conflict in the commu-

nity. The distinction between these two types of memories is significant, pointing to the importance that the squatters place on their own agency.

While my informants emphasized their own rational decisions in deciding to arrive in Mezquital, few narrated their subsequent experiences in Mez-

quital in the same manner. Instead, they described this as a time of great hard-

ship and insecurity in which their choices were extremely limited. Most informants described the daily struggles and dangers that they had to react to, emphasizing the difficulties that they had in building their small shacks of cardboard and aluminum siding. Don Joaquin Armira Culajay remembered the first years in Mezquital as follows: "When we started living here, it was like a garbage dump, there weren't any houses at all. There wasn't anything, it was practically like a desert. ... There wasn't any water, we didn't have any




light. During the rainy season it was as if there was a river in our shack. We suffered a lot" (interview, June 1998).

Another resident, Dofia Amanda Isabel Lima Marroquin, pointed to the

problems that she had faced during the first years (interview, June 1998):

We had to wash our clothes in the river. It was contaminated water, very ugly.... And there was such a smell because there weren't any sanitary services. It was always so difficult for us to get drinking water, and sometimes [the water] that we did get was bad. There were all these typhoid epidemics; I remember that children would die. There was a lot of diarrhea, and many people died. And there were flies everywhere. It wasn't only flies, but the air was filled with dirt. It would make me cry, all the dirt that was in the houses.

From the very beginning, residents needed to organize in order to distrib- ute housing lots and potable water, plan the design of walkways, issue statements on behalf of Mezquital residents to the press, and represent the

community to state and international agencies. Despite the importance of

organization, my oral sources mostly expressed anger and disappointment at the inability of early community leaders to fulfill their goals. In remembering these times, residents repeatedly told tales of corruption and harsh conflict within the community.8 One resident (interview, July 1999) recalled,

The first time they established a committee they stole a lot of money. They left. They would ask for money every day, and we had to look for the money because they would say to us, "Well, if you don't collaborate with us you're going to have to go because we need the money here .. ." And then they left and they took all of the money. After that another committee started to work and the same thing happened; they went around asking for money and they also left.

Undoubtedly, there was a lot of competition for community leadership positions and a good deal of corruption, but it is not so surprising that amidst

scarcity, fear, and uncertainty, residents in Mezquital clashed over the control of resources. Just as important, however, is that the narratives of corruption express deeper sentiments about the value of agency in the squatters' lives. The uniformity with which residents of Mezquital expressed disdain for cor-

rupt neighborhood leaders is an example of, in the words of Luisa Passerini, "recurrent narrative forms" (1987: 19). Tracing such forms can help to exca- vate a sense of collective identity. According to interviews, corrupt leaders name themselves to their positions of power and continually ask for money from residents without ever accomplishing anything. Others in the commu-

nity are almost entirely passive in this process, other than "donating" money and signing petitions. It is only the "self-appointed leaders," as one resident




put it (interview, July 1999), who organize the community, negotiate with the state, and speak to the media.

Beyond the sense of being cheated, these narratives express a sense of impotence and insecurity, reflecting the conditions that the squatters con- fronted. During this period the squatters often had difficulty receiving the most basic material for human survival: potable water. As is common in other parts of Guatemala City, private companies delivered drinking water in large plastic containers, but they often failed to come to Mezquital and generally charged the squatters higher rates (Inforpress Centroamericana, 1986). Given the resulting shortages, residents often hoarded the water that was available. Disease was also a major problem; in 1986, 48 children died in Mezquital of typhoid, other ailments, and malnutrition (Inforpress Centro- americana, 1986). Given these conditions, residents often did not feel in control of their circumstances.

Nevertheless, on certain occasions in many of the residents' memories of the past, they celebrated the opportunities they had for more agency in their own lives. Most often this is remembered in instances of community cooper- ation. Here, squatters express a belief in the possibilities of struggle and soli- darity. Dofia Aldina Velazqudz remembered how the members of La Esperanza, one of the five settlements that makes up Mezquital, mobilized to ensure that they could stay on their lands (interview, June 1998):

When they discovered that so many, many people had invaded these lands... they decided to kick us out. One time, the army tried to come up from the sides of the ravines, but all of the people united and they couldn't do anything.... Thank God that they didn't shoot and that they didn't hit anyone.... We had to have a security patrol (vigilancia) at night; all of the husbands, the older men had to be outside keeping watch ... because they wanted to kick us out and they said that they would come at night to come take us away. But everyone united and we stayed.

Residents also remember several other instances when the community united to work together. Don Hugo Ochoa, the one leader who is almost uni- versally remembered in positive terms, often led the community in these struggles. Unlike other leaders, Don Hugo visibly acted with the other residents to make immediate improvements to the community. One resident recalled when the community gained access to water (interview, June 1999):

Don Hugo said, "Look, everyone, the president and the government don't want to support us. Fine," he told us, "but we have to do something. And what are we going to do? We are going to steal water." "How?" "We'll take it from the entrance to Mezquital, where there is a pipe. We're going to dig that pipe up and connect our own pipes to it." And so all of us went at one in the morning. We all




went; even the children came to help us remove the dirt.... And we connected the pipe, and we had our first spigot in the community. We had water for all of us.

Don Hugo was also at the center of another event that particularly stands out in the memories of Mezquital residents. Following the death of a child from typhoid, he organized a march from Mezquital to the National Palace in the center of Guatemala City-a distance of about 15 miles. The residents brought the dead child with them in a casket, dramatizing the dangerous conditions that Mezquital residents faced. According to Dofia Elsa de Alvarez (interview, August 1999),

It was like we were abandoned. And then, with Don Hugo, we planned a march to the National Palace so that the government would attend to us. ... We went to demonstrate, and there were thousands of people. Then the international press published the story about this massive demonstration by the pobladores of Mezquital. And, like that, many organizations came to this poblaci6n; UNICEF came, Doctors Without Borders came.

In this narrative and in others, Don Hugo receives credit for galvanizing the residents and calling wider attention to their plight. This allowed the squatters to act together and enunciate their outrage at the poor conditions that they lived in. As Dofia Elsa points out, this had an immediate effect, placing Mezquital in the national spotlight and bringing numerous development agencies into the community. In contrast to other leaders, Don Hugo did not quietly deal with the bureaucracies of the Guatemalan state or pocket funds but instead helped Mezquital residents to articulate their claims directly to the Guatemalan imagined community.

Ironically, however, following these successful pleas, when the development agencies arrived in Mezquital the residents lost their ability to express their concerns in such a public manner. Significantly, Guatemalan state agencies and UNICEF characterized Hugo Ochoa as a "negative leader" in a review of neighborhood organizations in 12 squatter settlements (COINAP, SEGEPLAN, UNICEF, 1988: 45). To understand why, it is necessary to explore how development agencies functioned in Mezquital and how such a technocracy inhibited popular participation.

International and Guatemalan state development bureaucracies have been at work in Mezquital since its inception, but the majority of them arrived in 1987, after the demonstration at the National Palace. These institutions have been an important source of improvements such as running water, electricity, sewage systems, and paved roads. However, they have also been able to define Mezquital as a "successful" and "developing" community,




following their very particular interpretations of what development is. As Arturo Escobar (1995) argues, development agencies tend to extract from the local context what they expect to find. Escobar calls this building a "picture" of social reality, creating economic and social prescriptions that are meant to solve "poverty" and "underdevelopment" but often either ignore the local context or take from it only what planners and policy makers expect to find (see also Scott, 1998). In terms of neighborhood and household development in Mezquital, this meant providing families with houses of a certain size and basic urban services such as sewer, electricity, paved roads, police patrols, schools, health clinics, and parks that would transform the area into a successful, developed community.

In their attempts to create this place, these agencies established the criteria for proper resident behavior. The provision of legal housing was seen as pro- ducing a more controllable subject population. According to the Banco Nacional de la Vivienda (National Bank of Housing-BANVI), the state institution that grants loans to impoverished areas in Guatemala City, "housing exercises the function of fixing the individual and social identities of the occupants" (BANVI, 1978: 12). BANVI identified housing as central to the development of hardworking and productive citizens. Moreover, BANVI claimed that proper housing would contribute to economic expansion by per- mitting residents to join the national labor force and leave the "informal" economy (1978: 10 and BANVI, 1980: 6-7). Proper housing was therefore seen as an important element in developing the nation. The existence of large numbers of squatters represented Guatemala's poor development and infe- rior economic status;9 solving the problem was therefore crucial.

The development agencies' planners and analysts have produced typolo- gies of impoverished areas in Guatemala City, establishing indicators to assess how these areas should be improved. In one study, produced by UNICEF and the Guatemalan Secretariat of Economic Planning, planners ranked areas by their level of development, placing them on a continuum from areas that lacked landownership, public services, and well-constructed houses to areas that had these characteristics, "the minimum to lead a digni- fied life" (UNICEF, SEGEPLAN, CRITERIO, 1993: 9). The planners argued that "[the] important point in the rise of precarious urban areas is their development. We try to establish when a settlement ceases to be precarious" (10). This assessment included such factors as legalization of the lands, reparceling of the lots to at least 72 square meters, improvement in housing, and the provision of potable water, sewer systems, electricity, administration, transportation, and community equipment. They went on to claim that residents should also have a valorization of land and social mobility (see also COINAP, SEGEPLAN, UNICEF, 1988: 7). Furthermore, there is a belief




that once the poor areas of society are incorporated, they will support the growth of the "formal economy," understood as a legally sanctioned, trans- parent sector that contributes to the gross national product.

In the case of Mezquital, at least for the older, more established sectors, many of these goals have almost been met. However, the development agencies, by making these goals technical questions, transformed what had been an intensely political public debate around the issue of squatters into a banal and bureaucratic process. Mezquital residents became a population in the process of "development," a process that is "antipolitical" in the sense that it inhibits popular participation (see Ferguson, 1994[1990]). To see how this unfolds more clearly, I turn now to the laborious seven-year process between 1987 and 1994 through which Mezquital residents received titles to their lands.

On November 6, 1987, President Vinicio Cerezo held a rally in Mezquital to announce that the government had agreed to buy the Mezquital peninsula from its private landowners. In the hope of capitalizing politically on the purchase, Cerezo made the announcement a national media event and sought to present Mezquital as a model of Christian Democratic policies (CITGUA, 1991: 71). He presented the acquisition of Mezquital's property as an important government project in expanding the new democracy to serve the poor: "The traditional political parties believe that the Guatemalan pueblo means the very few who live in privileged places; they don't take into account that the Guatemalan people is much larger, including millions of poor people who have no resources of their own" (El Grdfico, November 7, 1987). The archi- tect Rafael Escobar Donis, president of BANVI, claimed that the purchase of the lands was an effort on the part of the government "to promote the development of the 25,000 people who live in Mezquital" (El Grdfico, November 7, 1987).

Surprisingly, only a few of my informants recalled that President Cerezo had come to Mezquital. Even those who remembered it played down the sig- nificance of Cerezo's speech in Mezquital, narrating his announcement in an offhand manner. Given that these conversations were explicitly about the history of the community's acquisition of basic services and property rights, what explains this indifference? Why would residents of Mezquital find it unimportant to mention the day that the president of Guatemala came to their community and announced that they would legally be able to stay on the land, free of fears of forcible removal?

The climate of fear that is so palpable in Guatemala after decades of human rights abuses, state-directed spying networks, and the repression of community and labor organizations has certainly led to a distrust of state officials (see Jonas, 1991; Levenson-Estrada, 1994; Yasher, 1997). In the case of




Mezquital, however, another factor should be added. President Cerezo and other government officials never allowed Mezquital residents any real sense of agency. Both Cerezo and the president of BANVI claimed that the government and international development institutions would take the necessary steps to improve conditions in Mezquital. They therefore placed the respon- sibility for developing the community in the hands of technical experts in the government. They did not expect the residents to act in the development of their own community. In contrast to the time when the residents of Mezquital had marched on the National Palace with the body of a dead child, on the day of Cerezo's triumphant announcement they were less able to articulate their own demands.

In the government-sponsored newspaper El Grdfico, coverage of Mezquital's situation reinforced the sense that the squatters had no right to act. In the newspaper's narrative, Mezquital residents had put themselves in a risky situation because they did not know any better. "In effect," the newspaper claimed, "these people have settled in these areas . . . without taking the necessary preventative measures" (November 7, 1984). From this elite perspective, squatters were irresponsible, unable to care for themselves, and living in communities without the proper modern institutions and therefore did not deserve to develop their own community. Consequently, the democratic opening of the Cerezo regime and the presence of international development agencies did not mean granting these squatters participation in the affairs of state. Instead, it meant fulfilling the "basic needs" of Guatemalan citizens.

In this context, it is hardly surprising that residents of Mezquital now find Cerezo's announcement barely worthy of mention. Once the squatters of Mezquital had received property rights and certain "basic services," they lost their ability to articulate their own vision of community development. After Cerezo's visit to Mezquital, residents would not again have direct access to the media or to the president. Instead, their dealings with the state would be relegated to the quotidian drudgery and power of bureaucracy.

In the years following Cerezo's speech, development bureaucracies and neighborhood groups formed an organization, the Programa de Urbani- zaci6n de El Mezquital (Program for the Urbanization of Mezquital- PROUME), in order to legalize Mezquital's status and improve conditions for the squatters. This organization included UNICEF, the World Bank, two Guatemalan state entities, the Comit6 para la Reconstrucci6n Nacional (the Committee for National Reconstruction-CRN) and the Direcci6n de Asen- tamientos Humanos y Vivienda (the Directorate of Human Settlements and Housing-DAHVI), and a commission of neighborhood councils from the five Mezquital settlements. International organizations and government




bureaucracies often celebrated PROUME as an example of participatory development because it included representation from neighborhood councils. This representation, however, was limited. The CRN and UNICEF administered the vast majority of the funds for the program and provided the technical support for specific projects. For their part, the neighborhood councils were primarily responsible for ensuring that Mezquital residents contributed a certain amount of free labor to the development projects and kept up to date in paying back their share of the development loans. The CRN audited any funds that the neighborhood councils received (PROUME, 1994: 5-6).

As a parastatal organization, PROUME is an example of the transnational nature of neoliberal state formation in Guatemala, which depends on the con- tributions of international development and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It also demonstrates how this state formation is forged through processes of consent and coercion; residents welcomed many of the benefits that PROUME could offer, but they also had to conform to the demands that PROUME made of them.10 As is explored below, the process of legalizing Mezquital's status excluded a number of residents who did not fit the criteria established by the development apparatus.

PROUME, working through BANVI and the World Bank, provided housing loans so that Mezquital residents would eventually pay for the lands and receive proper government property titles. According to the Guatemalan constitution, in order for these to be legitimate properties the lots had to be at least 6 by 12 meters (Mornin Merida, 1997b). Residents recalled that their lots had originally been much smaller, normally about 5 by 7 or 7 by 7 meters, sizes confirmed by other sources (CITGUA, 1991: 74; ECOTEC and PROUME, 1993: 7). Because of this, in order for the residents of Mezquital to become property owners, the size of their lots had to be increased substantially.

The CRN was charged with solving this logistical problem. One of its

responses was to offer a number of residents the opportunity to move onto lots with water, electricity, and certain building materials provided in a housing project in another area of the city. The International Development Bank (IDB) developed this site in a pilot project in an area to the west of Mezquital, Villa Lobos (PIS, 1994). Before the project was completed, in January 1988 130 families from Mezquital and other parts of the city squatted on these lands, to the exasperation of officials (CEUR-USAC, 1990: 3). This would become the first and last IDB-financed housing project in Guatemala. Al- though some families from Mezquital were relocated through this project, the problem of overcrowding remained. In response, BANVI initiated two other housing projects. Squatters also arrived on one of these sites, further




frustrating the goals of government planners. In total, the three projects provided approximately 1,100 housing units, but it is unclear how many of these units were eventually distributed to residents of Mezquital (ECOTEC and PROUME, 1993: 17-18). Despite these housing projects, the problem of overcrowding persisted.

Development agencies working with PROUME developed two further responses, each of which contributed to fissures within the community. First, they sought to change the minimum size of housing lots to 6 by 10 meters, an effort that many residents rejected. Second, they looked for groups of Mez- quital residents whom they considered unworthy to stay in Mezquital. As one document produced by PROUME claimed, there were numerous "families that are an obstacle to the reorganization needed to initiate the proper urbanization process of the five settlements of El Mezquital" (PROUME, 1994: 4). The families, termed posantes, failed to meet the requirements for receiving land titles and would therefore be "unable to achieve the assignment of their own lots" (ECOTEC and PROUME, 1993: 3).

In a 1992 letter, the chief of the Division of Urban Projects at the CRN informed representatives of these families of a census taken by CRN, BANVI, and the Mezquital Board of Directors. The chief wrote, "Naturally, there are a number of families who haven't complied with or completed the requirements set forth in the manual of norms and procedures of allocation; they can't be beneficiaries-the posantes." According to the chief, these requirements included families who "have lived in the settlement since the first days of the invasion, remain in the same nuclear family that originally arrived, and have sufficient funds.""''

Ironically, the families who had arrived with the original invasion-those who had been the boldest in violating Guatemalan property laws-came to be defined as the citizens with the best legal rights to the land. As these residents gained property titles to lots that were substantially larger than the ones they had initially occupied, others were forced to move to other parts of the city, often becoming squatters once again. Since the posantes did not fulfill the requirements, they were excluded from the benefits of development. Those who stayed, however, became legitimate citizens who deserved the privileges and services afforded by the state.

There were, however, a number of posantes who did fulfill the requirements but lived in areas that PROUME considered an "obstacle to the reorganization necessary to initiate the process of urbanization of the five settlements of El Mezquital" (PROUME, 1994: 4; see also ECOTEC and PROUME, 1993: 5-8). These were areas that a consulting firm hired by UNICEF and the Guatemalan government had designated as the locations of roads, sewer services, potable water, and electricity. The state was supposed




to relocate these posantes, but in many cases it was unable to provide enough housing, and many were forced to leave Mezquital without any support.

Identifying posantes was often an arbitrary process, and a number of households existed on the borders between posante and poblador. This was particularly true in the case of single mothers. In defining a proper nuclear family, the DAHVI representatives looked for a male head of the household first, a reflection of the fact that Mezquital's development has occurred within the context of Guatemala's dominant cultural forms. As Dofia Angela Rojas Bail6n put it, they sought male heads of households because "that is the custom and the culture, that the man is the one in charge" (interview, June 1999). In Angela's case, DAHVI eventually awarded the family lot to her, since her husband was unemployed and an alcoholic. During a public hearing that Angela and her mother-in-law attended, the DAHVI lawyer announced that she was going to put the title in Angela's name. As Angela related,

And my mother-in-law [asked], "And why?" ... They asked [my mother-in- law], "Sefiora, does your son work?" Well, she couldn't say yes, you know. "No," she said. And [the representative from DAHVI] said, "What we want is a person who will be responsible and who will pay." ... And the lawyer said to me, "Now, Sefiora, you have the legal title to your lands for the benefit of your children. And you have to work and keep up your house and lot."

Another woman, Dofia Esperanza Caal Martinez, who had left her husband and was raising her children by herself, claimed that the representatives of DAHVI had questioned her ability to be a property owner. "The representatives said to me, 'Sefiora, you can't pay for the house because you don't have a husband who can help you.' 'Of course I can pay, I work so that I can pay.' 'With all of these children that you have,' he told me, 'you're not going to be able to. You need a man"' (interview, June 1999). As did Angela, Esperanza eventually received the title to her house, but the ideal was to fix nuclear families in male-centered households, reinforcing hegemonic gender and property dynamics.

The attempt to change the requirements for lot size in Mezquital from 6 by 12 to 6 by 10 meters caused a major conflict in the community, further demonstrating the fractious nature of the development process. Many accepted the smaller size, as one resident explained (interview, June 1998):

Look, we were desperate, really desperate, because we were in a really difficult situation. We didn't want to be left with nothing, because we had this pressure put on us that if we didn't accept it we would end up with nothing. ... And so that they wouldn't leave us abandoned, we had to accept the 6 by 10 lots. Those that didn't [accept] didn't get their lots.




Many residents were thus forced to leave Mezquital. Others in the community fought this, however, invoking their constitutional rights. The community rapidly became polarized between supporters of 6 by 10 meters and supporters of 6 by 12. Dofia Mayra Estrada, a supporter of 6 by 12, remembered the conflict this way (interview, July 1999):

There were two sides really well marked off. Representatives from the government came to scare us. They told me, "We need to talk."... [And] they offered me a 6 by 12 lot and said, "We're going to give you aluminum sheets [with which to build a roof]." But I told them that if the rest of the people weren't also going to have 6 by 12, then I wouldn't accept it. We would not accept their corrupt offer.

It is clear that the CRN did put a lot of pressure on community residents to accept the reduced lot size. In a letter to Mario Sandoval, the president of the Asociaci6n de Asentamientos Unidos El Mezquital (one of the principal organizations that represents residents of Mezquital), the chief of the Divi- sion of Urban Projects at the CRN insisted that Mezquital residents follow the registry plans, which established that the housing lots would be only 6 by 10 meters. If they did not comply, the chief warned, they would ruin all of the existing plans for the "development of the community." To enforce the rules, he would not hesitate to deploy the national police.12 Eventually, the vast majority of households accepted 6 by 10 meters, although some lots today are 6 by 12 meters. Those who live in the smaller houses have land titles indicat- ing that they accepted the unconstitutional size.

As this sketch of the process of granting land titles outlines, solving the problem of proper housing was a daunting and laborious task for planners, development agencies, and representatives of the community. A whole series of regulations, development plans, and legal regimes had to be established and carried out. In each of these processes, the limited subject position of Mezquital residents became further entrenched, as they had to conform to being property holders, responsible family members, and individuals willing to assume debt.

Ironically, it was only in the first years of Mezquital, when conditions were at their worst, that squatters had an opportunity to articulate demands to Guatemala's transnationalized, development state. At that point they were outsiders who lived in extremely harsh conditions and lacked legal property titles. With incorporation, however, they became mired in everyday forms of state formation (Joseph and Nugent, 1994) and became fixed and more con- trolled subjects. While the gains they received were significant, Mezquital




remains an impoverished community with limited economic, social, and political opportunities.

But because of the difficulties the residents now face in articulating a critique of their current conditions, the peripheral status of Mezquital has become sustainable. Mezquital is no longer a problem for development agencies. On the contrary, in terms of the constricted, minimal indicators of "urban poverty," Mezquital has become developed. Numerous Guatemalan sources have praised the community's accomplishments. For example, a local press release claims, "The community organization of Mezquital is an example of what the unity of a poblaci6n can do on the path toward development" (Siglo Veintiuno, June 1, 1998). The World Bank, after having invested $4.8 million in the community from 1994 to 1997, promotes Mezquital as a "success story" and a model for how "the world's worst slums can be transformed" (World Bank Group, 1999).

This success story, however, has been forged within the context of a larger neoliberal restructuring package for Guatemala in which the World Bank has

played an important role (Parish, 1996). Following prescriptions that have become commonplace throughout Latin America, this restructuring was tied to trade liberalization, deregulation of the economy, and a decrease in public spending (Vilas, 1996). By tightening the money supply and reducing expenditures, the Guatemalan government has sought to stabilize the economy and pay back foreign debts, often at the expense of social programs. The remain- ing state expenditures are targeted at very specific issues such as the provision of urban services to squatters. At the same time, the opening of the economy has increased foreign direct investment, contributing to the growth of nontraditional exports such as snow peas, broccoli, and flowers. In Guate- mala City there has been a substantial increase in the number of foreign- owned textile maquiladoras taking advantage of the cheap labor that the un- deremployed poor, such as the residents of Mezquital, provide (AVANCSO, 1994). Despite promises that these reforms would bring prosperity, estimates of poverty levels remain as high as 56 to 65 percent of Guatemala's population (INE, 2001) and even higher in areas such as Mezquital.

Furthermore, the rosy assessments of Mezquital's development mask a number of other issues. First, many individuals fall outside of the development framework and fail to receive the benefits offered to Mezquital residents. There is no mention of the fact that numerous posantes were not per- mitted to stay in the community. Furthermore, the many new arrivals in the area, squatters in the ravines leading down from the plateau on which Mez- quital is located, often lack the urban services and land titles that Mezquital's




more established residents have received. Finally, even for the more privileged residents who live in a "transformed" and "urbanized" neighborhood, the stories of success fail to ask about how Mezquital's development has contributed to normalizing inequality and limiting the ability of Mezquital residents to critique the problematic conditions that they still face. After its development, Mezquital residents must endure the daily hardships of urban poverty in relative silence.

In interviews, residents are far less sanguine than the World Bank about the slum's transformation. While residents believe that conditions have improved, most do not speak proudly of the way Mezquital has evolved since 1984. Dofia Celestina Alias Vazquez expresses this ambivalence and the lack of options for residents in the present (interview, July 1998):

What one earns [here] is never enough. It's always like that, poverty. Because there are so many children and every day it gets worse.... For us, it's very hard. Only by doing demonstrations do you gain anything, having demonstrations in front of the [National] Palace. Because that's how we did it when we invaded. I told you how we carried that dead child to the Palace. All of that was fight- ing ... I think that the best fight is demonstrating.

But now that Mezquital is a "developed" community of incorporated citizens, the time for these types of public demonstrations is over.

NOTES

1. Precise numbers are not available, but between 1985 and 1998 as many as 161 squatter settlements have remained (Gellert and Palma, 1999: 43; Martinez Lopdz, 1999). According to one estimate, 425,000 people, approximately one-fourth of the population of the metropolitan area of Guatemala City, live in what housing experts in Guatemala define as "precarious settlements" (Morin M6rida, 1997a: 8), referring generally to neighborhoods built with fragile materials such as cardboard, tin, or, in the best of cases, cement blocks, often lacking basic urban services and property titles.

2. One political and social movement that has received considerable attention in this opening is the Pan-Maya, a group of indigenous intellectuals that, with the support of numerous international organizations, played a role in the 1996 peace talks and contributed to the reframing of the Guatemalan constitution (see Nelson, 1999; Warren, 1998).

3. The microhistorical approach that I pursue in this article documents a community that is, in certain respects, exceptional. With more than 25,000 residents organized into five adjacent settlements, Mezquital was the largest single area settled by squatters in the 1980s and early 1990s

(Espinoza and Hidalgo, 1994: 13). Of Guatemala City's "precarious settlements," it has received

perhaps the most attention of any area in the city from international development agencies, Guatemalan state institutions, and the press. As one observer put it, Mezquital is a "privileged laboratory" of social development projects, having received more funding than any other area in




the city (P6rez Sainz, 1990: 56). Given all of this attention, it provides an important case for studying the effects of development work. While I argue that the benefits that Mezquital has received from this work are both circumscribed and problematic, they have also provided the current residents of the community with important services that many other squatter settlements in Guatemala City have not received.

4. As has been argued (Cooper, Holt, and Scott, 2000; Holston and Appadurai, 1996), citizenship can be generally understood as a set of beneficial rights that are gained when individuals conform to particular practices and roles. Citizenship thus establishes a boundary between inclu- sion and exclusion.

5. The average household size in Mezquital during the late 1980s was 6.1, significantly higher than the Guatemalan average of 4.7 (P6rez-Sainz, 1990: 57). Most residents moved to Mezquital with their families.

6. Between 100,000 and 150,000 Guatemalans migrated to the city following the earthquake, adding to an already bleak housing situation (Gellert and Palma, 1999: 36). During the late 1970s and early 1980s, migration to the city again increased because of the extreme violence of the counterinsurgency campaign in the highlands, exacerbating the housing shortages (Bastos and Camus, 1994: 54). One source estimated the housing deficit in Guatemala City in the early 1990s at 135,000 units (PROUME, 1994: 1).

7. On the ubiquity of "myths of marginality," see Perlman (1976). 8. The image of corrupt community leaders is widespread, often being repeated by govern-

ment functionaries. One official from the state-run National Housing Bank, BANVI, referred disparagingly to community leaders in Mezquital: "One can see that all the 'community leaders,' between quotes, really do is take money" (interview, August 1999).

9. There is a prodigious literature in Guatemala claiming that squatters exist because of "structural problems" in the Guatemalan economy (e.g., Alvarado, 1979; Gellert and Palma, 1999; and Moran Merida, 1997a), a view often repeated by development officials. While economic factors, conceived of in abstract and monolithic terms, are clearly important in the formation of Guatemala City's squatter communities, too often such factors become a stand-in for interrelated social and political forces.

10. Antonio Gramsci first developed the notion that states build their sources of power through consent and coercion. Among the writers who have recently employed and developed this perspective are Joseph and Nugent (1994), Coronil (1997), Mallon (1995), and, offering a perspective from the Guatemalan context of the 1990s, Nelson (1999: esp. 74-127).

11. Antonio Cabrera Velaisquez to the Representatives of the Neighborhood Posantes, May 21, 1992, letter obtained from the Municipality of Villa Nueva.

12. Antonio Cabrera Velhsquez to Mario Sandoval, July 1, 1992, letter obtained from the Municipality of Villa Nueva.

REFERENCES

Alvarado, Luis 1979 El proceso de urbanizacidn. Guatemala City: CEUR-USAC.

AVANCSO (Asociaci6n para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales) 1993 "Aqui corre la bola": Organizacidn y relaciones sociales en una comunidad popular urbana. Guatemala City: AVANCSO. 1994 El significado de la maquila en Guatemala: Elementos para su comprensi6n. Guate- mala City: AVANCSO.




Ball, Patrick and Paul Kobrak 2000 State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: A Quantitative Reflection. Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science.

BANVI (Banco Nacional de la Vivienda) 1978 Campo de acci6n y limitaciones para una politica de vivienda de interds social. Guate- mala City. 1980 Politica nacional de vivienda. Guatemala City: BANVI.

Bastos, Santiago and Manuela Camus 1994 Sombras de una batalla: Los desplazados por la violencia en la ciudad de Guatemala. Guatemala City: FLACSO.

CEUR-USAC (Centro de Estudios Urbanos, Universidad de San Carlos, Guatemala) 1990 Invasiones de tierras (1986-1990): Un desborde popular en tiempos de democracia. Guatemala City: CEUR-USAC.

CITGUA (Ciencia y Tecnologia para Guatemala) 1991 Asentamientos precarios y pobladores en Guatemala. Guatemala City.

COINAP, SEGEPLAN, UNICEF (Comitd para la Atenci6n de la Poblaci6n, Secretaria de Planificaci6n y Programaci6n, United Nations Children's Fund)

1988 Estudio diagndstico: 12 comunidades. Guatemala City. Cooper, Frederick, Thomas C. Holt, and Rebecca J. Scott

2000 Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Coronil, Fernando 1997 The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

ECOTEC and PROUME (Empresa de Consultoria en Ecotecnologifa and the Programa de Urbanizaci6n de El Mezquital)

1993 Programa de urbanizacidn de El Mezquital. Guatemala City. Escobar, Arturo

1995 Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: The Princeton University Press.

Espinoza, Lair and Edgar Hidalgo 1994 Una experiencia de participaci6n en las dreas precarias de la Ciudad de Guatemala. Guatemala City: Programa Integrado de Salud.

Ferguson, James 1994(1990) The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Gellert, Gisela and Irene Palma 1999 Precariedad urbana, desarrollo comunitario, y mujeres en el Area Metropolitana de Guatemala. Guatemala City: FLACSO.

Holston, James and Arjun Appadurai 1996 "Cities and citizenship." Public Culture 8: 187-204.

INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadistica) 2001 Encuesta nacional sobre condiciones de vida 2000: La pobreza en Guatemala. Guate- mala City: INE-SEGEPLAN.

Inforpress Centroamericana 1986 "Informe especial: Pobreza y vivienda en la capital Guatemalteca." No. 716.

Jonas, Susanne 1991 The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power. Boulder: Westview Press.




Joseph, Gilbert and Daniel Nugent (eds.) 1994 Everyday Forms of State Formation. Durham: Duke University Press.

Levenson-Estrada, Deborah 1994 Trade Unionists against Terror: Guatemala City 1954-1985. Chapel Hill and London:

University of North Carolina Press. Mallon, Florencia

1995 Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru. Berkeley: Univer-

sity of California Press. Martinez L6pez, Jos6 Florentin

1999 Tomas de terrenos en el Area Metropolitana de la Ciudad de Guatemala (1991-1998). Guatemala City: CEUR-USAC.

Morin M6rida, Amanda 1997a Condiciones de vida y tenencia de la tierra en asentamientosprecarios de la ciudad de Guatemala. Guatemala: CEUR-USAC. 1997b Adaptaci6n de la legislaci6n y regulaci6n urbana a los intereses del sector popular. Guatemala City: DIGI-USAC.

Nelson, Diane 1999 A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala. Berkeley: Univer-

sity of California Press.

Noriega, Carlos and Jos6 Florentin Martinez L6pez 1988 "El habitat popular urbano en Guatemala: el caso de asentamiento 'El Mezquital.' "

Paper presented at the seminar "El habitat popular en M6xico y Centro Amdrica," El Colegio de Mdxico, Mexico City.

Parish, Lael 1996 "Social funds to the rescue: the World Bank manages Guatemala's poor." Report on Guatemala 17(2).

Passerini, Luisa 1987 Fascism in Popular Memory: The Cultural Experience of the Turin Working Class. London and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Pdrez Sainz, J. P. 1990 "Gdnero y substistencia popular en el Area Metropolitana de Guatemala: el caso de

Mezquital," in J. P. P6rez Sainz (ed.), Informalidad urbana y subsistencia popular en la ciudad de Guatemala. Guatemala City: FLACSO.

Perlman, Janice 1976 The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

PROUME (Programa de Urbanizaci6n de El Mezquital) 1994 Programa de urbanizaci6n de El Mezquital. Guatemala City.

PIS (Programa Integrado de Salud) 1994 Una experiencia de participaci6n en las dreas precarias de la Ciudad de Guatemala. Guatemala City.

Quesada S., Flavio J. 1985 Invasiones de terrenos en la ciudad de Guatemala. Guatemala City: CEUR-USAC.

Scott, James C. 1998 Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

UNICEF, SEGEPLAN, CRITERIO (United Nations Children's Fund, Secretarfa de Planificaci6n y Programaci6n, CRITERIO)

1993 Caracterizacidn de las dreas precarias en la Ciudad de Guatemala. Guatemala City.




Vilas, Carlos M. 1996 "Neoliberal social policy: managing poverty (somehow)." NACLA Report on the Amer- icas 24(6).

Warren, Kay 1998 Indigenous Movements and Their Critics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

World Bank Group 1999 "The world's worst slums can be transformed." http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/ estme/slumspr.htm.

Yasher, Deborah J. 1997 "The quetzal is red: military states, popular movements, and political violence in Gua- temala," in Douglas Chalmers et al. (eds.) The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America:

Rethinking Participation and Representation. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.



the struggle continues: consciousness, social movement, and class action || developing sustainable...

Documents