New House, New Life

Abstract

This chapter chronicles the story of squatters who engaged in fraught and complex processes of homemaking in the face of environmental degradation and infrastructural ruin. The chapter focuses on housing activism and relocation, which represents one of the movement’s major victories as the government relocated hundreds of families from contaminated squatter settlements into state-financed housing divisions. The ethnographic heart of the chapter involves housing activism surrounding two of La Teja’s major squatter settlements, Inlasa and Rodolfo Rincón, including contested debates over widespread culturalist explanations of toxic suffering and the character of urban marginality. The chapter concludes with a critical discussion of the alternative integrative vision of housing and social inclusion put forth by the leftist Frente Amplio’s ambitious post-neoliberal programs targeting integration of the socially excluded.