Organizations and urban struggles in Latin America: assessment and prospects

Abstract

It has been half a century urban popular population has become a massive presence in Latin-American cities. The author offers a balance of the association, action and relation that urban centers have display with authorities on the definition and the solution of urban life and consumption. Working with a typology of most frequent modalities of popular organization and mobilization, this article shows how this strategy have increase in complexity in the last five decades. To the struggle for urban consumption and life quality improvements, other demands are now in the political arena; the struggle to increase participation on decision making on the cities government and reivindications of cultural projects and identities. Finally, establishing a critique to theoretical overviews about urban population and their struggles, the author draws an analytical frame in which they are seen as social subjects.