Socorro : Persistent bricoleurs at the urban margins

Abstract

Spanish

French

This article examines the ways in which the urban poor in Argentina help one another in the arduous task of making ends meet when neither the formal labor market nor state welfare policies are able to secure their subsistence. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, the article makes one substantive, one analytic, and one theoretical claim. Substantively, the article argues by way of empirical illustration that the urban poor are hardworking bricoleurs. Analytically, the article demonstrates the advantages of studying poor people’s strategies in a simultaneously historic and ethnographic fashion through joint collaborative fieldwork. Theoretically, the article pushes toward replacing the notions of ‘strategy of survival or subsistence’ with the more encompassing notion of ‘strategy of persistence’.

Keywords

Ethnography poverty survival strategies

It is necessary, as Flaubert taught us, to learn to bring to bear on Yvetot the look that one affords so willingly to Constantinople: to learn, for example, to give the marriage of a woman teacher to a post office worker the attention and interest that would have been lent to the literary account of a misalliance, and to offer to the statements of a steelworker the thoughtful reception which a certain tradition of reading reserves for the highest forms of poetry or philosophy.

Pierre Bourdieu

Introduction

Stemming from the Latin word succurrere (‘to run to the help of’), succor (in Spanish, socorrer) means to ‘help or relieve someone when in difficulty’. Socorro, in Spanish, also conveys a complementary meaning: it is not only to offer help, but also a cry for help. Socorrer and Socorro: To come to someone’s aid, and to ask for assistance. Both terms encapsulate the main theme of this essay, which centers on the ways in which the urban poor in Argentina help one another in the arduous task of making ends meet when neither the formal labor market nor state welfare policies are able to secure their subsistence.

Almost 50 years have passed since anthropologists Larisa Lomnitz and Carol Stack published their path-breaking works on poor people’s subsistence strategies in Mexico and the United States, respectively. The weakness, ineptitude, and/or corruption of the state and the market to solve the most pressing problems of those living at the bottom of the social ladder make the ‘survival question’ as relevant now as it was when they conducted (Desmond, 2012) the fieldwork on which their classic books are based.

Cómo sobreviven los marginados? (De Lomnitz 1993 [1975]) and All our Kin (Stack 1983 [1974]) launched a research agenda on the role of reciprocity networks in the strategies of the urban poor in Latin America and the United States. Half a century later, that line of empirical inquiry is still quite vigorous throughout the Americas (Burwell, 2004; Camargo Sierra, 2020; Desmond, 2012, 2017; Edin and Lein, 1997; Eguía and Ortale, 2007; Fernández-Kelly, 2015; González de la Rocha, 2001, 2020; Gutiérrez, 2004; Jarrett et al., 2014; Lubbers et al., 2020; Newman, 2020; Raudenbush, 2016, 2020; Sánchez-Jankowski, 2008; Small, 2004; Small and Gose, 2020). Alongside networks of reciprocal exchange, research in Latin America has examined clientelistic networks and contentious collective action as prominent ways of obtaining basic needs such as housing, food, and medicine among the urban poor (Álvarez-Rivadulla, 2017; Fischer et al., 2014; Holland, 2017; Holston, 2009; Pérez, 2022; Rossi, 2017).

This essay takes heed of this scholarship to examine the manifold ways in which those living at the urban margins in Buenos Aires, Argentina, seek to make ends meet. We make one substantive, one analytic, and one theoretical claim. Substantively, we argue by way of empirical illustration that the urban poor are hardworking bricoleurs. Analytically, we demonstrate the advantages of studying poor people’s strategies in a simultaneously historic and ethnographic fashion through joint collaborative fieldwork. Theoretically, we push toward replacing the notions of ‘strategy of survival or subsistence’ with the more encompassing notion of ‘strategy of persistence’.

We draw on observations, in-depth interviews, and conversations carried out during almost 3 years of fieldwork (2019–2021, that is, before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic) mainly in La Matera (an informal squatter settlement in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires settled in the year 2000). We also conducted observations and interviews in two poor neighborhoods adjacent to the settlement, El Tala and La Paz. These two neighborhoods also originated from massive land occupations that occurred toward the end of 1981. Many of the inhabitants of La Matera have relatives in one of these two neighborhoods and/or attend school or the soup kitchen there.

The struggle for subsistence should be examined in a synchronic (How do the poor cope with material deprivation today?), diachronic (How have they tried to solve their most pressing problems in the past?), and granular way (at the microscopic level, as close as possible to the harsh daily life of, in our case, the squatters). We here focus on what Bourdieu (1996: 33) would call ‘ordinary accounts of ordinary adventures’ – a family’s weekly budget, the contents of a bag of food sent by the state, the price of some (difficult to acquire) milanesas (meat cutlets), the value of a copper cable, the yield of a marijuana plant, and so on. It is by attending systematically to these details (specific stories, local circumstances, and concrete explanations of particular actions) that we can better understand how people ‘make do’ at the urban margins and how they think and feel about their marginalization.

Once we examine poor people’s strategies synchronically, diachronically, and granularly, we see that, in the task of subsistence, residents of the urban margins are hardworking bricoleurs: they rely on precarious and highly exploitative (formal and informal) jobs, along with always inadequate state aid, more or less transgressive collective action, and intense participation in networks of political patronage and reciprocal exchange that sometimes include illicit activities. These strategies do not operate in a vacuum but in a context pervaded by relationships of domination and exploitation, both direct and indirect.

By focusing on the past and present simultaneously, we also see that the question of subsistence (How do they provide for themselves and their families in a context of material scarcity?) should not be disentangled from the question of progress (How do they try to improve their lives?). For the urban poor, ‘to stay afloat’ and ‘to get ahead’ are profoundly intertwined vital issues (Anderson, 2007). The practices of the marginalized (from taking over land, to building a house, digging a trench for the sewer, paving a sidewalk, sending their children to school, or working as a volunteer at a soup kitchen) attest not only to the existence of hope in individual and collective improvement but also to something that they can teach those who do not inhabit those relegated territories: persistence in the face of presumably immutable and insurmountable circumstances. Our historic and ethnographic account will show through a diversity of poor people’s strategies that the notion of ‘persistence’ is, in fact, more accurate than that of ‘subsistence’ or ‘survival’ to adequately describe poor people’s daily practices.

We begin with a review of the literature on poor people’s ways of making ends meet (for a critical evaluation, see Deckard and Auyero, 2022). We then offer a brief methodological and epistemological reflection and proceed to describe the history of our field site. Afterward, we present a series of ethnographic vignettes that attempt to capture livelihood strategies in situ and in action. Although the details are particular to each case, the mix of strategies, the energy put into obtaining resources and their use, are generalizable to almost all the inhabitants of the three neighborhoods in which we conducted our research.

Ways of making do

Consistent with Lomnitz’s and Stack’s classic works, ethnographic and qualitative case studies show that the urban poor rely on networks of mutual aid to obtain food, shelter, and medicine – though the degree to which these actually serve to make ends meet varies (Burwell, 2004; Jarrett et al., 2014; Lubbers et al., 2020).¹ To make do, the poor not only rely on mutual aid networks but also on state aid (in cash or in kind – both very prominent in Latin America since the implementation of a variety of cash transfer programs in the mid-1990s) (Hunter and Borges Sugiyama, 2014), informal or illicit work (Auyero and Berti, 2016; Bourgois, 2003; Dewey, 2020; McCurn, 2020), informal institutions (Zarazaga, 2014), formal organizations (Small, 2004), and (more or less transgressive) collective action (Álvarez-Rivadulla, 2017). Denis Merklen (2003) coined the notion of ‘the logic of the hunter’ to capture the modus operandi behind the combination of these diverse sources.

Poor people not only count on strong, weak, and/or disposable ties to make ends meet (Desmond, 2012; Edin and Lein, 1997). They are also engaged in economic and voluntary civic organizations through which they acquire material and symbolic resources for themselves, their families, and their neighborhoods (Dohan, 2003; Marwell, 2007; Small, 2004). Throughout the Americas, public and private non-profit organizations provide access to housing assistance, clothing, job training, legal defense, adult education, treatment for substance abuse, and food. Organizations such as churches, childcare centers, and community centers are not only direct providers of goods and services for the poor, but they are also the places where those still-relevant networks of mutual aid are formed and sustained (Small, 2009; Small and Gose, 2020).

Patronage/clientelist networks are one of the most important ‘informal institutions’ (Helmke and Levitsky, 2004) upon which the Latin American poor count to meet their daily needs. It has been well-documented that in poor neighborhoods, shantytowns, and squatter settlements throughout the region, many residents solve the pressing problems of everyday life (access to jobs, state welfare, food, and medicine) through patronage/clientelist networks (Álvarez-Rivadulla, 2017; Arias, 2009; Auyero, 2001; Levitsky, 2003; Szwarcberg, 2015; Zarazaga, 2014). Brokers are key actors in these networks, acting as gatekeepers between patrons (the holders of resources) and clients (the potential beneficiaries), and often providing ‘jobs, workfare programs, food, medicine, clothes, shoes, coffins, school materials, appliances, bricks, zinc sheets, cash, marijuana and other illegal drugs’ to their low-income followers (Zarazaga, 2014: 33).

Among strategies for accessing land and homes, squatting and auto-construction are two of the most prominent collective ways deployed by the Latin American poor (Fischer et al., 2014). The scholarship on land occupations as a joint housing strategy is vast (Massidda, 2017; Murphy, 2014; Schneider, 1995) and ranges from squatting organizational dynamics (Cravino and Vommaro, 2018; Merklen, 1991) to its relationship to democratic citizenship (Holston, 2009). Classic (Collier, 1976) and more recent work (Holland, 2017) carefully documents the variety of responses that political parties and governments throughout the region have had toward illegal squatting (from repression, to encouragement, neglect, and forbearance – or a combination thereof).

Land occupations are certainly not the only kind of transgressive collective action that the Latin American poor engage in. Sociologist Anjuli Fahlberg and collaborators (2020) recently reviewed a variety of strategies to obtain jobs, education, health services, housing, and public infrastructure in Cidade de Deus, a well-known low-income neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. These strategies range from more or less disruptive forms of collective contention to more individualistic actions – like ‘making a ruckus’ at the health clinic or Emergency Room (ER) to receive care, or relying on a personal connection to a pharmacist who would give antibiotics without prescription (analogous to what Raudenbush describes in the United States, 2020). In addition, sociologists Pérez (2022) and Rossi (2017) examine poor people’s transgressive forms of protest (in particular, the staging of roadblocks) to demand the distribution of social assistance (food and workfare programs) in Argentina, while Abello Colak et al. (2014) review community initiatives to fight for housing, infrastructure, and food security (community gardens) in Medellín, Colombia. The urban poor throughout Latin America, this line of research shows, deploy a wide range of forms of collective action – from highly transgressive to less disruptive, though usually a combination of both.

Although the actual content of the strategies varies – depending on the population under study and/or political and economic conditions (see Lubbers et al., 2020), scholarship agrees that the ways in which the poor manage to cope with deprivation are part of a taken-for-granted, implicit repertoire of action that (a) is not always the product of conscious calculations or overt discussions and (b) emerges out of collectives beyond individuals. The concept of strategies seeks to capture the dynamic interaction between choices (often the product of deep-seated dispositions) and constraints, risks, and uncertainties (objective and perceived) (Bourdieu, 1977; Fontaine and Schlumbohm, 2000; Hintze, 2004; Lamaison and Bourdieu, 1986). Scholars working on the topic in Latin America have also noted that households and families, not individuals, are the fundamental units out of which these strategies emerge (Chant, 2002; Eguía and Ortale, 2007; González de la Rocha, 2001; Hintze, 1989), while also noticing their conflictual features.

Brief epistemic/methodological note on collaborative fieldwork

Before writing about the lives of others it is imperative to spend time with them to figure out, as Clifford Geertz (2017) once said, what they think they are doing. This, time spent, is what defines ethnographic fieldwork (Desmond, 2009; Hoang, 2015; Lareau, 2021; Wacquant, 2003; Wolcott, 1999). In this sense, the research on which this essay is based (long-term engagement and a combination of participant observation and informal and in-depth interviews) emulates what other ethnographers have done before us. However, our fieldwork is different from most social science and investigative research on the topic in one crucial sense. Many of the individuals that we portray here are Sofía’s neighbors and/or relatives. She was born, raised, and lives in a barrio that borders La Matera. Many of her relatives still live in the squatter settlement. The conversations, in-depth interviews, and life stories that inform the narratives we present were carried out as chats between friends, neighbors, or relatives of a very similar social position. In this sense, the fieldwork resembles the joint way of producing data used in Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown (Auyero and Swistun, 2009).

‘To fully know that game’, Matthew Desmond (2009: 294) writes in his detailed and inspiring ethnography of wildland firefighters,

we must play the game. We must eat their food, speak their language, walk on their sidewalks, work in their jobs, fight in their struggles, teach in their schools, live in their houses; and we must do all this until their things, their life – its smell and taste and temperature, its way of reasoning and psychology, its rhythm and tempo and feel – become our things, our life.

The fieldwork on which this essay is based was carried out by Sofía Servian. Sofía did not decide, from one day to the next, to ‘play the game’ in order to understand what subsistence at the urban margins is all about. She shares with residents their food, their sidewalks, and their school. It was in La Matera where she flew a kite for the first time (when she was eight); it was there where she had her first pajama party with her cousins; it is there where many of her uncles and aunts live. She never had to ‘submit [her]self to the fire of action in situ . . . [or] put [her] own organism, sensibility, and incarnate intelligence at the epicenter of the array of material and symbolic forces’ (Wacquant, 2006: viii) that shape poor people’s strategies because she herself, and her family, have forever been involved in that task. She did not have to intentionally subject herself to a long line in order to receive a welfare check (a percentage of which has to be given to the local political broker who facilitated access to that benefit). She didn’t have to because she experienced it firsthand when Susana, her mother, lost her first job. She didn’t have to ‘immerse’ herself in a daily life plagued by the risks of assault or robbery because she has lived with that since she was born. In other words, she never had to try to make the ‘things’ that define urban marginality become ‘her things’ – the smells of a putrid stream, the taste of a paltry dinner, the cold temperature in winter, the sound of gunshots, and so on – because, simply put it, they have always been.

The site(s): Squatting and auto-construction

In the mid-1990s, the government of the province of Buenos Aires began to plan a public housing complex in the area that is now La Matera. Toward the end of the decade, there had been little progress in the construction of the complex and rumors abounded about the illegal appropriation of the funds. In March 2000, residents of El Tala, the adjacent neighborhood, together with the future beneficiaries of the unfinished housing units occupied the land. The main organizers were leaders of the unemployed workers movement (known as piqueteros), along with some others who were part of the Catholic Church and the Peronist party. Many had been present, or had relatives who were part of, the earlier land occupations in nearby areas. Since the 1980s, that area of the southern metropolitan Buenos Aires had witnessed massive, highly contentious, and oftentimes successful land take overs – of both private and public urban land.

‘Pedro organized folks block by block. He had a lot of experience from other land occupations’, María says of her husband. Squatters – known as ‘ocupantes’ or ‘tomadores’ – knew (or rapidly recruited those who knew) how to set the boundaries for each private plot, how to open up the streets and dig trenches so water could flow, and how to demarcate and reserve plots for public spaces like the main square, future school, and health center: ‘Everything we did, we did a pulmón, we got together with other neighbors during weekends and we built the sidewalks’. They were also experienced in evading the police to bring in building materials, negotiating with government authorities, and, when necessary, confronting the police who arrived to evict them: ‘We would put the kids in front of the mounted police so they couldn’t attack . . . we went through hell . . . when the bulldozers came to try to destroy our tents . . . ’

Mainstream media represented the occupation of La Matera as an extraordinary and transgressive episode carried out by people who were motivated by a basic grievance (lack of housing). It is a narrative that is frequently reiterated, with scant variation, when the urban poor squat land. From this widely shared point of view, the ‘desperate need’ for a home is the main explanatory factor of the ‘extraordinary’ way in which the poor demand housing. However, as with many other land occupations that have taken place throughout Latin America, this one did not occur outside of (or in opposition to) ordinary political processes, but was deeply enmeshed in them (Álvarez-Rivadulla, 2017). Squatters’ high level of organization, their personal connections with established political authorities, and the fact that squatting was already part of the repertoire of collective action linking the poor and the state all attest to this deep imbrication (Cravino and Vommaro, 2018; Merklen, 1991).

Those who were present for the land invasion remember that ‘all this was like an empty field . . . it was all mud . . . up to your knee’. They also remember that the land was occupied by pigs, sheep, cows . . . and ‘you could fish in the creek’. But this was far from an idyllic ‘state of nature’. ‘It was all muddy . . . the bridges to enter the neighborhood from the creek were made of wood or used tires, bridges of terror [we called them], you were afraid to go across’ (our emphasis). ‘We had to carry our own water, but we did it together . . . ’ Although they remember these initial moments in the life of their neighborhood as times of ‘union among residents’, they also stress that they had to ‘be very watchful . . . because if you left your shack alone, someone would occupy it . . . The very same neighbors would take your plot and your home’.

Those were days of collective hope – hope understood not as an illusory belief that ‘everything was going to be ok’, but as shared perspective, a point of view, with specific possibilities: this plot where we are going to build our house, this other plot where we will build a plaza, a school, or a health care center. That hope was made concrete in the act of squatting, in the collective effort of building some basic infrastructure and mobilizing in demand of basic services, and in each family’s labor to build their homes. That collective hope is also made evident in the ways residents put up with living conditions (lack of electricity, water, garbage collection, recurring floods, etc.) that would be considered intolerable or, to put it in crude terms – repulsive – by citizens from other class positions. Collective hope is also expressed in the way in which residents, when comparing past and present, understand the progress their neighborhood has gone through. As Lucía, an early occupant, states,

It was hard to level this plot (so it didn’t flood). Truckloads and truckloads of rubble, dirt, we did a lot. But, hey, it was a struggle . . . we had no water. We had to go and find it on the other side (across the creek), and when it rained the mud covered our boots. It was tough. We cleaned el barrio, we cut weeds, the tall grasses, with a machete. We did so many things.

This tolerance of material scarcity, this ‘putting up with’ poverty, should not be confused with resignation.² A few months into the occupation, they had to endure sudden, deeper hardships when their homes and streets flooded – the first in a long stream of floods that still persist. The most traumatic recollection of the first days of the settlement is neither one of food scarcity (‘there were plenty of soup kitchens’) nor of police violence (‘they wanted to evict us, but we managed’), but of the destruction that came in April 2000 with ‘the water that reached our waists’.

With the exception of a small number of housing units built by the state, most homes in La Matera, La Paz, and El Tala were built by residents, in many cases with the help of relatives and friends and with funds coming from a variety of sources (paid jobs, welfare programs, etc.). As in many poor neighborhoods in Latin America, auto-construction is the main way the poor have built their homes (Caldeira, 2017; Holston, 1991; Ward, 2012, 2019). First, a dining room and kitchen; then there’s the bathroom, then the first bedroom, then another one, after that a second story. As tenancy on the land becomes more secure, the more solid and the larger the home gets.

Relational subsistence: Ethnographic vignettes

1

Vanesa (30) and Cristian (32) have been together for 15 years and have three children: Melanie (14), Uma (8), and Byron (3). They live in a house that, after many mass protests and negotiations led by local political brokers, was built by the state, and later passed on to them by Cristian’s grandfather, Don Javier. Don Javier was one of La Matera’s original settlers. Although thanks to collective action, Vanesa’s household does not need to cover the cost of a mortgage or rent, they still struggle to make ends meet.

Cristian works at a slaughterhouse an hour away from home and makes approximately US$190 per month. Vanesa receives two monthly payments from state-sponsored aid programs: the first payment is US$71 for their three children, and the second is US$6 for food. Thus, roughly a third of the household income comes from state sources. Without state welfare, their subsistence would be even more arduous (‘I get paid every two weeks’, says Cristian, ‘and a few days after I receive the paycheck, I have no more money. You buy food, diapers and milk for the kids and the money is gone’). State aid covers only a part of their expenses.

Vanesa cleans her grandmother Catalina’s home twice per month – for which she receives between US$4 and US$5 for 2 hours of work. Every 2 weeks, Elena, Cristian’s aunt, provides them with milk, noodles, polenta, rice, and corn oil. Elena works at a state-funded local soup kitchen where she receives food, which she then passes on to Vanessa and Cristian. Elena ‘has a lot of stuff and she shares’, Vanesa tells us. Elena is not the only one that helps them make ends meet. Like most of the families we spoke with, Vanesa and Cristian’s household is part of an extensive network of intensive exchange. Twice a week, Vanesa helps her brother Fernando with the sale of clothing he buys in bulk in the city. Fernando often loans her money to buy clothes for the children and also helps her with food: ‘I only buy oranges because they are always on sale. If you come over and see apples or bananas, it’s because Fernando came by. I ask him to buy me some potatoes, but he also buys fruit for us’, says Vanesa. Once or twice a week, Vanesa also helps her mother, Rosana, who owns a small bakery, in exchange for pizza dough and cookies for the kids. Rosana also reciprocates with clothes and sneakers for Vanessa’s children. During the pandemic, Vanesa has not only relied on family members to obtain food. With a portion of the cash Cristian brings home every 2 weeks, she runs a little store in front of her house where she sells toiletries and cleaning products. She makes an average of US$2 a day, which she spends on meals for the family: ‘What I earn, I spend on food. We don’t eat too much meat. We eat mainly chicken and noodles . . . every now and then I make a little more and I buy milanesas’.

Along with food, recurrent expenses include paying for Internet, cell phones, the gas canister to cook, and the parochial school their children attend – arguably the most important expense aside from food. For perspective, slightly over 10% of their income goes to tuition (roughly US$30 per month). As of February 2021, they owe US$235 to the school, a debt they make small payments toward each time Vanessa receives her welfare check. We highlight this point because Vanessa and many of the neighbors we interviewed use their welfare payments to cover the cost of their children’s education. People like Vanessa and Cristian deposit their hopes for social mobility in education – if not their own, for that of their children. State aid is thus a component in poor people’s strategies not just to stay afloat but also in their aims to thrive. State aid thus contributes to both simple and expanded reproduction.

2

‘To be honest, we never go hungry’, Blanca (52), Vanesa’s aunt, tells us,

we might not have all the main dishes, we do not buy milanesas, a good chicken or barbecue like others, but a stew, noodles with tomato sauce . . . those things I try to cook every day. But today I can’t cook because I am out of gas.

It’s been 10 years since her husband died and she lives with her 13-year-old son and her two granddaughters (Luna and Valentina) who moved in with her after their mother, Eliana, was imprisoned (Auyero and Servián, 2021). Blanca used to work at a print shop, packing magazines for delivery, but had to quit her job a year before we interviewed her because of high blood pressure. Blanca’s family income is much less than Vanesa’s. She received US$60 a month from the AUH, and US$7 housecleaning for Catalina, who, knowing about her precarious living conditions, pays her more than Vanesa. Most of Blanca’s income comes from the state.

‘I would love to go back in time, when I was working, and managing my own money. Not having to think about it all the time’, Blanca says. Now, she must always think about how to pull together her family’s basic needs from various sources. She receives foodstuffs from the school Luna and Valentina attend: noodles, tomato sauce, rice, corn oil, ‘sometimes they give you sugar, jelly. They never give meat, but sometimes they give you a chicken’. Blanca has fewer expenses than Vanessa but also participates in a strong exchange network – she helps Fernando sell clothes and Rosana at the bakery, and in exchange she receives food and clothing for the children: ‘Although I do not go around crying or complaining, they know about my situation and they lend a hand’.

3

Different from Vanesa, Blanca’s network includes Lili, a local political broker who oftentimes provides her with milk, flour, corn oil, noodles, rice, and oats, and ‘some cans that read pan de carne’ (spam). Her network also includes Pocho, another powerful local broker. In order to illustrate the relationships between residents and political brokers, let us cite a conversation we had with Blanca – including the dialogues she imagined she would like to have with them (edited for clarity):

I want to ask Pocho for a welfare subsidy. I want to see if he can get me into one of those (state-funded) cooperatives. He knows me well. I am also going to ask Lili. I have time, other than cleaning the house and taking care of the kids, I have nothing to do. If she needs something, I can do it. But I need a subsidy. If Pocho gets me a job at a cooperative but tells me to give him part of what I make there, it’s fine. If he tells me, ‘I signed you up but you don’t have to come and work, just give me a part of the subsidy’, that’s also fine with me. Pocho and Lili make those kinds of arrangements. They have twenty people working like that and they make an income for themselves.

It is not our intention to use Blanca’s testimony to criticize brokers’ actions. These sorts of ‘arrangements’ are quite common in poor barrios. What we want to emphasize here is that Blanca, like many of her neighbors, counts on brokers to make ends meet – political brokerage is part and parcel of poor people’s strategies.

In their current strategies, Vanesa’s family combines work, state welfare, and mutual aid. In Blanca’s case, state welfare and reciprocity are mixed with direct food assistance and what political sociology would call ‘clientelist arrangements’. The families of Vanesa and Blanca illustrate some of the main ways in which the urban poor stay afloat and seek to get ahead and how their strategies intertwine with state and party politics.

4

Diego is 42 years old. He was born and raised in El Tala, two blocks aways from one of the bridges that crosses into La Matera. He still lives in the house where he was born – his grandmother was a midwife. Both of his parents passed away a few years ago, and he now lives by himself. Diego has worked since he was a kid, but he never held a formal job. For many years, he worked at a sweatshop, manufacturing the soles of shoes, boots, and sandals. He then moved to a car battery factory and, after a few years there, he worked at a glass factory. When the pandemic hit, he was fired and couldn’t get a job for a while. His niece helped him to apply for the IFE (Emergency Family Income – a lump sum distributed by the federal government during the pandemic). The 10,000 pesos came in handy. He bought a cart and started collecting cardboard, glass, scrap metal, and plastic to sell:

Copper is the best thing . . . you can now sell a kilogram of copper for $1700 (US$ 6 as of October of 2022). Sometimes people change the electrical installations at home, and I get a lot of copper. I pile it up, and once I have a kilogram, I sell it.

He works Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 2 or 3 p.m. ‘I go around everywhere with my cart. I stop for lunch and then work a few more hours until the wholesaler closes’. He estimates he makes US$5 a day. ‘That is enough for me to eat and, I won’t deny it, to have one or two drinks’. He tells us that he wishes he could get a better job, ‘but I am 42, and I doubt anybody is going to hire me. But I really wish I could get a job that pays more than this one’.

5

Each plant of marijuana produces between 1 kg (if the plant is outside, on the ground) and 600 g (if inside, in a pot), Eduardo tells us, adding:

You can make two joints for every gram . . . each joint goes for $800 (US$3). My last plant produced a whole kilogram, I didn’t know what to do with all the weed . . . I gave away a lot of it.

Eduardo is 41 and has a stable job at the local municipality. It doesn’t pay much (roughly US$400 a month). He supplements his income selling and trading marijuana, which he has been growing for 10 years. After expenses (seeds, soil, herbicides, humidifier, etc.), he estimates that he could make roughly US$3200 per year. But he does not sell all of what his plant produces. He keeps some for personal use, he makes oil (used by Nora, his wife who suffers from epilepsy), and he trades much of it with friends and neighbors:

I exchange it for cleaning products, for video games, and sometimes for some jobs I need done. If I need someone to do plumbing, or to fix the AC, or to repair the roof . . . I pay them with weed.

Eduardo also gifts some of it to family and friends, especially to those friends who ‘know much more about marijuana than I do and give me advice on how to take care of the plant and how to improve the quality’. Weed, as many other material resources that circulate between friends and relatives, serves to oil the social relationships that help the poor subsist.

6

‘My legs hurt, particularly my knees. I’ve only been working for a day doing what these women do four times a week. I’m exhausted’. This is Sofía’s entry from her fieldwork diary on 1 July 2021. She is describing her first day of participant observation at the ‘Comedor de Virginia’. Virginia is the name of one of the founding members of the Community Center where Sofía volunteered over the course of 6 months. From Monday to Thursday, a group that oscillates between 6 and 18 women distributes food rations to roughly 160 families from La Matera and El Tala. The food is, in part, provided by the municipal government and private donors, and in part, purchased by the women at the center. Food rations include fresh produce such as potatoes, carrots, and onions. They also include various types of dry goods such as noodles, rice, powdered milk, polenta, sugar, flour, eggs, a quince paste, and one fresh chicken:

July 1, 2021 (Sofía’s fieldwork diary). When we finished packing everything Claudia put together a list of people who could not come to pick up the food (they were sick, no adult was available, etc.). Together with Brenda, María, Fernanda, and Julia, we take the food packages to them in two carts. Felipe, an old man we brought food to, gave us a bag with chocolates and candies in return. According to Brenda, he always gives them a little present.

Sofía’s first note captures the grueling physical labor that goes into preparing the rations – from unloading the heavy bags from the truck that brings them to the community center, to setting them up in the main room, to packing them up for distribution (which involves spending hours squatting) and bringing them to those who cannot pick them up in person. That day Sofía participates in the packing of merchandise. A few days later, on the sidewalk of the center, she sits next to two of the ‘chicas del comedor’ (as the women from the center are known) to distribute food rations. Every week, keeping the appropriate social distance imposed by the pandemic, neighbors form a line outside the center to pick up their rations – neatly arranged to avoid damaging the most fragile products.

Less than 3 months after visiting the center for the first time, Sofía is already part of its daily dynamics, working alongside the core group of women – to the point that they decide that she should be compensated for her commitment. One day after lunch, early in October 2021, one of the coordinators and Sofía have the following conversation. We reproduce it in extenso (edited for clarity, emphasis added) because it illustrates the ethnographer’s position – at once achieved and bestowed through her sustained engagement – and also because it encapsulates the material and symbolic rewards obtained in (and conferred by) the collective care work carried out by these women (which includes but also exceeds the mere distribution of food).

Silvia (one of the center’s coordinators) –

Sofi, who do live with?

Sofía –

With my mother and brother. My parents have been divorced for a long time. It’s only us three.

Silvia –

Does your mom work?

Sofía –

Yes, she is a domestic worker. She works four times a week. All is good.

Silvia –

I ask because Virginia was talking about giving you food rations every week.

Sofía –

But . . . well, I benefit from coming here, you know I am doing research. So, I don’t think I should be given food rations.

Silvia –

Yes, we know your research, don’t waste your time telling us. But, beyond that, you are putting in your time here, and that has a certain value. Even if it is one hour, or two, or an entire day. You may not realize, but there are some activities that we wouldn’t be able to carry out without you. You give the children who come here your time, a look, a smile, a hug . . . that has value, and we want to acknowledge that. Even though we do not have much to give, even if it is only a pack of noodles, it is our way of recognizing you, because your time is valuable and we want to thank you. And, on top of that, well for me, you are already one of us. Every day I ask about you because I’m used to seeing you. It (the food ration) is a recognition for the time you put in here.

Bricoleurs at the urban margins

The inhabitants of the urban periphery are bricoleurs. To make ends meet, they rely on relatives, neighbors, brokers, and state officials; they combine mutual aid, state assistance, formal and informal work, and illicit ventures; they merge transgressive collective action with their participation in clientelistic networks.

Despite the difficulties, despite being overwhelmed and feeling unprotected, and despite infrastructural precarity, many of the inhabitants of these marginalized areas claim to have experienced an improvement in their living conditions. This should not surprise us: since the beginning of the settlement, and thanks to their individual and collective efforts, the material conditions of existence have been radically transformed. That trajectory was informed by their aspirations for progress. These aspirations for improvement shape their actions in the present – not only the determination with which they approach the daily task of making ends meet but also their yearnings to ‘get ahead’.

Part of this text was an attempt to interrogate the form and origins of hope as a constitutive element of the livelihood strategies of the marginalized. Years of fieldwork taught us that subsisting at the bottom of the social structure implies aspiring to a better future. In practice, in the act of hope (Moore et al., 2022; Holston, 1991), these yearnings are expressed in self-construction and in the collective work of infrastructural improvements. They are also manifested in their eagerness to be able to ‘eat milanesas more often’, to go to the supermarket and be able to ‘fill their carts’, and to eat their meals at home (rather than relying on soup kitchens).

Had we only conducted ethnographic work, we would have missed the centrality of transgressive collective action and patronage politics as strategies to obtain shelter. We would also have confused what is more likely a pause in popular contention with acquiescence and resignation. Had we only carried out historical research, we would have missed the key role played by the interplay between state aid, clientelist networks, and mutual aid in procuring sustenance. So, there is then one general lesson that our historical and ethnographic account offers for those interested in studying poverty and marginality in other contexts: poor people’s strategies need to be examined both synchronically and diachronically, in present tense and across time. Doing so not only affords a better view of the diversity and deeply political character of the strategies they use but also dissolves the distinction between what it means ‘to survive’ and ‘to make progress’. This distinction does not do justice to what those strategies are all about – even in the midst of deep material scarcity, most of our interlocutors think about (and consequently act) making ends meet and improving their living conditions, if not for themselves, for their children at least – as attested by the effort they put into both their academics and extra-curricular activities. Strategies thereby should be examined as they span across generations.

As our research moved forward, we began to realize that the notions of ‘survival’ or ‘subsistence’ were not adequately representing what we were seeing on the ground. The notion of persistence strategies better captures the dynamics uncovered during our field research. Securing material subsistence is hard in several ways: physically (long lines, excruciating wait times), emotionally (the many instances in which parents have nothing more than bread and tea to feed their children), and morally (the contortions one must make to please a local broker to obtain needed resources). And yet, this effort is never – at least in the practices we witnessed and reconstructed – divorced from attempts to be recognized or respected as a person and/or a member of a specific community (being that a family, a group, neighborhood center, etc.). The meaning attached to the collective care performed by ‘las chicas’ in the last vignette offers one illustrative example. The effort to subsist should therefore not be separated from the individual (and sometimes collective) endeavor to secure a better future. In other words, satisfying urgent needs and nurturing mutual recognition and hopes for the future are, in the logic of poor people’s strategies, inextricable.

According to the English Oxford Dictionary, to persist means to ‘continue firmly or obstinately in a state, opinion, purpose, or course of action, esp. despite opposition, setback, or failure’. Persistence is one of the threads that connects the individual stories and ethnographic reconstructions presented above. Studying ways to persist expands the focus beyond material subsistence and alerts us to the endeavors of the most dispossessed to cultivate or maintain a sense of themselves, of their community, of the meanings of their lives and those of their loved ones, and of their collective purpose in the world.³ ‘Persistence’ is thus a more precise and, at the same time, more encompassing analytic category. It allows us to shed light on the individual and collective efforts made by the residents of the urban margins without losing sight of the objective circumstances beyond their control.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We presented earlier versions of this paper in the Departament d’Antropologia Social, Universitat de Barcelona and at the Seminario Internacional ‘Paisajes de Abandono’ at the Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea. We wish to thank Camila del Mármol and Gabriel Gatti for organizing these events, and Seth Holmes and attendants for their insightful comments and criticisms.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Javier Auyero

Notes

Author biographies

Javier Auyero is Lozano Long Professor in Latin American Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and Ikerbasque Research Professor at the University of the Basque Country UPV-EHU, Bilbao. His latest book (co-authored with Sofía Servián) is Cómo hacen los pobres para sobrevivir? (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI).

Sofía Servian is an anthropology student at the University of Buenos Aires. She is the author (with Javier Auyero) of Cómo hacen los pobres para sobrevivir? (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI).

References

Abello Colak

Gómez Ramírez

Quintero Valencia

(2014) Iniciativas comunitarias y su incidencia en la seguridad humana. In: Observatorio de Seguridad Humana de Medellín (ed.) Nuestras voces sobre seguridad humana en medellín: diálogos sobre seguridad. Medellin, Colombia: Universidad de Antioquia, pp.145–184.

Álvarez-Rivadulla

(2017) Squatters and the Politics of Marginality in Uruguay, 1st edn. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Anderson

(2007) Urban poverty reborn: A gender and generational analysis. Journal of Developing Societies 23(1–2): 221–241.

Arias

(2009) Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks and Public Security. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Auyero

(2001) Poor People’s Politics: Peronist Survival Networks and the Legacy of Evita. Durham: Duke University Press Books.

Auyero

Berti

(2016) In Harm’s Way: The Dynamics of Urban Violence. Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Auyero

Servian

(2021) “Vidas en riesgo.” Cuestiones Criminales 4 (7/8): 89–118.

Auyero

Swistun

(2009) Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bourdieu

(1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

10.

Bourdieu

(1996) Understanding. Theory, Culture & Society 13(2): 17–37.

11.

Bourgois

(2003) In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. New York: Cambridge University Press.

12.

Burwell

(2004) Dónde Están Los Huevos? Surviving in times of economic hardship: Cuban mothers, the state and making ends meet. Journal of Poverty 8(4): 75–95.

13.

Caldeira

TPR

(2017) Peripheral urbanization: Autoconstruction, transversal logics and politics in cities of the Global South. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 35(1): 3–20.

14.

Camargo Sierra

(2020) Vivienda y Estrategias Familiares de Vida En Barrios Populares Consolidados En Bogotá. Revista INVI 35(98): 101–125.

15.

Chant

(2002) Researching gender, families and households in Latin America: From the 20th into the 21st century. Bulletin of Latin American Research 21(4): 545–575.

16.

Collier

(1976) Squatters and Oligarchs: Authoritarian Rule and Policy Change in Peru. Baltimore, MD; London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

17.

Coraggio

(2014) Economía Social y Solidaria: El trabajo antes que el capital (ed. Acosta

Martínez

). Wilson, NC: Editorial Abya-Yala.

18.

Cravino

Vommaro

(2018) Asentamientos en el sur de la periferia de Buenos Aires: orígenes, entramados organizativos y políticas de hábitat. Available at: https://ri.conicet.gov.ar/handle/11336/85947

19.

De Lomnitz

(1975 [1993]) Cómo sobreviven los marginados?. México, DF: Siglo XXI de España Editores, S.A.

20.

Deckard

Auyero

(2022) Poor people’s survival strategies: Two decades of research in the Americas. Annual Review of Sociology 48: 373–395.

21.

Desmond

(2009) On the Fireline: Living and Dying with Wildland Firefighters (Illustrated edition). Chicago, IL; Bristol: University of Chicago Press.

22.

Desmond

(2012) Eviction and the reproduction of urban poverty. American Journal of Sociology 118(1): 88–133.

23.

Desmond

(2017) Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Reprint edition). New York: Crown.

24.

Desmond

Travis

(2018) Political consequences of survival strategies among the urban poor. American Sociological Review 83(5): 869–896.

25.

Dewey

(2020) Making It at Any Cost: Aspirations and Politics in a Counterfeit Clothing Marketplace. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

26.

Dohan

(2003) The Price of Poverty: Money, Work and Culture in the Mexican American Barrio. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

27.

Edin

Lein

(1997) Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

28.

Eguía

Ortale

(2007) Los Significados de la pobreza. Buenos Aires: Biblos.

29.

Fahlberg

Vicino

Fernandes

, et al. (2020) Confronting chronic shocks: Social resilience in Rio de Janeiro’s poor neighborhoods. Cities 99: 102623.

30.

Fernández-Kelly

(2015) The Hero’s Fight: African Americans in West Baltimore and the Shadow of the State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

31.

Fischer

McCann

Auyero

(eds) (2014) Cities From Scratch: Poverty and Informality in Urban Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press Books.

32.

Fontaine

Schlumbohm

(2000) Household strategies for survival: An introduction. International Review of Social History 45(S8): 1–17.

33.

Geertz

(2017) The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

34.

González de la Rocha

(2001) From the resources of poverty to the poverty of resources? The erosion of a survival model. Latin American Perspectives 28(4): 72–100.

35.

González de la Rocha

(2020) Of morals and markets: Social exchange and poverty in contemporary urban Mexico. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 689(1): 26–45.

36.

Gutiérrez

(2004) Pobre’ . . . como siempre estrategias de reproducción social en la pobreza. Córdoba: Ferreyra Editor.

37.

Helmke

Levitsky

(2004) Informal institutions and comparative politics: A research Agenda. Perspectives on Politics 2(4): 725–740.

38.

Hintze

(1989) Estrategias Alimentarias de sobrevivencia. Un Estudio de Caso En El Gran Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Centro Editor de America Latina.

39.

Hintze

(2004) Capital Social y Estrategias de Supervivencia. Reflexiones Sobre El ‘Capital Social de Los Pobres. In: Danani

(ed.) Políticas Sociales y Economía Social: Debates Fundamentales. Buenos Aires, Argentina: UNGS–Altamira, pp.1–19.

40.

Hoang

(2015) Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

41.

Holland

(2017) Forbearance as Redistribution: The Politics of Informal Welfare in Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press.

42.

Holston

(1991) Autoconstruction in working-class Brazil. Cultural Anthropology 6(4): 447–465.

43.

Holston

(2009) Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

44.

Hunter

Borges Sugiyama

(2014) Transforming subjects into citizens: Insights from Brazil’s Bolsa Família. Perspectives on Politics 12(4): 829–845.

45.

Jarrett

Bahar

Odoms-Young

(2014) ‘You just have to build a bridge and get over it’: Low-income African American caregivers’ coping strategies to manage inadequate food supplies. Journal of Poverty 18(2): 188–219.

46.

Lamaison

Bourdieu

(1986) From rules to strategies: An interview with Pierre Bourdieu. Cultural Anthropology 1(1): 110–120.

47.

Lareau

(2021) Listening to People: A Practical Guide to Interviewing, Participant Observation, Data Analysis and Writing It All Up. Chicago, IL; London: University of Chicago Press.

48.

Levitsky

(2003) Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.

49.

Lubbers

Small

García

(2020) Do networks help people to manage poverty? Perspectives from the field. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 689(1): 7–25.

50.

McCurn

(2020) Surviving the grind: How young black women negotiate physical and emotional labor in urban space. Sociological Spectrum 40(4): 227–246.

51.

Marwell

(2007) Bargaining for Brooklyn: Community Organizations in the Entrepreneurial City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

52.

Massidda

(2017) Negociaciones, permanencia y construcción cotidiana en villas. URBANA: Revista Eletrônica do Centro Interdisciplinar de Estudos sobre a Cidade 9(1): 15–46.

53.

Merklen

(1991) Asentamientos en La Matanza: la Terquedad de lo nuestro. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Catálogos Editora.

54.

Merklen

(2003) Vivir en los márgenes. La lógica del cazador. In: Svampa

(ed.) Desde Abajo. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Biblos, pp.81–119.

55.

Moore

Eiró

Koster

(2022) Illegal housing in Medellín: Autoconstruction and the materiality of hope. Latin American Politics and Society 64(4): 94–118.

56.

Murphy

(2014) In and out of the margins: Urban land seizures and homeownership in Santiago, Chile. In: Fischer

McCann

Auyero

(eds) Cities from Scratch: Poverty and Informality in Urban Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press Books, pp.68–101.

57.

Newman

(2020) Ties that bind/unwind: The social, economic, and organizational contexts of sharing networks. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 689(1): 192–201.

58.

Pérez

(2022) Proletarian Lives: Routines, Identity and Culture in Contentious Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

59.

Raudenbush

(2016) ‘I stay by myself’: Social support, distrust and selective solidarity among the urban poor. Sociological Forum 31(4): 1018–1039.

60.

Raudenbush

(2020) Health Care Off the Books: Poverty, Illness and Strategies for Survival in Urban America. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

61.

Rossi

(2017) The Poor’s Struggle for Political Incorporation: The Piquetero Movement in Argentina. New York: Cambridge University Press.

62.

Salvia

Chávez Molina

(2013) Sombras de una marginalidad fragmentada. Madrid; Buenos Aires, Argentina: MIÑO Y DAVILA.

63.

Sánchez-Jankowski

(2008) Cracks in the Pavement. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

64.

Sarria

Mercedes

Tiribia

(2004) Economía Popular. In: Cattani AD (ed.) La Otra Economía. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Altamira, pp.173–186.

65.

Schneider

(1995) Shantytown Protest in Pinochet’s Chile (Illustrated edition). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

66.

Small

(2004) Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

67.

Small

(2009) Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

68.

Small

Gose

(2020) How do low-income people form survival networks? Routine organizations as brokers. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 689(1): 89–109.

69.

Stack

(1983 [1974]) All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community, 60837th edn. New York: Basic Books.

70.

Szwarcberg

(2015) Mobilizing Poor Voters: Machine Politics, Clientelism and Social Networks in Argentina. New York: Cambridge University Press.

71.

Wacquant

(2003) Ethnografeast: A progress report on the practice and promise of ethnography. Ethnography 4(1): 5–14.

72.

Wacquant

(2006) Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer, 1st edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

73.

Ward

(2012) ‘A patrimony for the children’: Low-income homeownership and housing (im)mobility in Latin American cities. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102(6): 1489–1510.

74.

Ward

(2019) Self-help housing. In: Orum

(ed.) The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, pp.1–6.

75.

Wolcott

(1999) Ethnography: A Way of Seeing. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

76.

Zarazaga

SJR

(2014) Brokers beyond clientelism: A new perspective through the argentine case. Latin American Politics and Society 56(3): 23–45.