In the Wake of Bulldozers: Speculations on Space, Race, and Insurgent Life in Two Latin American Cities

In this text that bridges the life conditions of predominantly Black and Indigenous neighborhoods in Cali and São Paulo, Jaime Amparo Alves and Stella Zagatto Paterniani answered our invitation for this issue by reflecting on a status of “bulldozable” shared by these communities in Colombia and Brazil. Describing the struggle of “the wretched of the city,” they offer a robust analytical frame that can be extended to other cities in Latin America.

After reducing a whole area to rubble, the bulldozer advances to the edge of El Calvario, a neighborhood at the heart of Santiago de Cali, Colombia, that houses an undesired population of predominantly Black and Indigenous dwellers excluded from a city increasingly unaffordable to live, bended to the real estate speculation. Twisted irons and bent metals show what once were homes and small stores. The caterpillar’s hand forces the house’s slab, trying to bring it down. Dogs bark in the background as they protest the destruction. The slab comes down, and the caterpillar drags the concrete to open the way for more cleaning. The bulldozer rapidly reduces a group of houses to debris, while officers, city officials, and NGO staff follow from afar. Besides a pronounced statement on the “revanchist city,” the spectacle of destruction circulating social media also provides “architectural testimony” that the bulldozer is a productive force performing the “civilizing mission” of turning Cali into a dynamic and promising urbanity. Here, chaos is a technology for city-making. As if legitimizing their strategy, the manager of EMRU (Municipal Authority for Urban Renewal) says that “inhabitants and renters have turned in their properties.” A commentator reminds us that demolitions will be followed by cleanings, enclosure to avoid returns, and strengthening of security in the area.