Vidas, lutas e resistências: O “não-lugar” da pobreza na Recife globalizada (Sobre moradia popular, 2003/2019).

Abstract

This thesis discuss the conflicting relationships between social actors based on their life stories, having the city of Recife as a stage and, at the same time, as a product of these relationships, in the context of urban interventions that took place between 2003 and 2019. The narrative is developed based on the hypothesis that, in the game of observed actions, there were no victims or villains, but subjects who fought moved by the anxiety of appropriating the city and its spaces, of reproducing, living, producing income and having access to goods and existing products. Such subjects are defined by their social condition. This led the poorest to defend their local interests, while the elites, connected to the mechanisms of global capitalist domination, sought priority over the use of city space and dominion over the resources and goods produced in it, being itself the most important commodity. As for objects and sources, this research is classified as bibliographic, documentary, and field, since books, periodicals, academic works, and photographs were used, together with sources produced from field surveys, such as observations, interviews, collections of information, and opinions. As secondary sources, books were referenced in the areas of urbanism, political life, sociology, and history that deal with the theme of the city's relations with poverty, as well as academic works in the areas of urbanism, political life, sociology, and history. The big question that motivated and directed this research was: how were the daily lives of the poor residents of the city of Recife impacted by the urban interventions that took place between the years 2003 and 2019, and how did they react to this process? Regarding the initial hypothesis, it can be said that it was confirmed as true. The data analysis also allowed the verification of the relationship of continuity between the historical roots, embedded in the mercantilist capitalism of the colonial period, and the social injustices that produce poverty in the contemporary urban area. It was also possible to verify that the resistance and the struggle waged by the poorest residents of the city of Recife in the face of the challenges imposed by the public power through urban reforms were not revolutionary, but of the tactical type. It did not aim at changing the political or economic system, but at accessing them, that is, social inclusion, as a means to have made the right to the city effective. In this sense, without ever giving up fighting and resisting expulsions, discursive attacks, mud, garbage, and rats, the poor also did not stop dreaming of the realization of the right to decent housing, guaranteed to them by the Federal Constitution, but denied by the facts themselves. However, when they realized that the fulfillment of their dreams had brought the opposite with them, that is, a nightmare in which they stumbled, they made the fall the support for a counter-coup. Some of them achieved the most difficult, which seemed even impossible: the inclusion of real estate income and profits in the market. Everything happened, however, not according to what was predicted by the planners, but according to the creativity and intuitive ability of the subjects, who took advantage of all occasions and opportunities, especially in situations that threatened their survival and of their families.