Contesting the Neoliberal City: Place-Based Activism in the Documentary Films of Barrio Anti-Gentrification Movements in Bogotá and Mexico City

Abstract

This study explores how barrio social movements in Bogotá and Mexico City fight gentrification by making everyday life visible in films. An analysis of two communally produced documentary videos examines how the portrayal of stories that detail people’s affective ties to places targets the pillars of neoliberalism – that is, the reduction of human relations to market exchanges and the prevalence of private property over collective rights. After some background on the urban areas at stake, I study how the films foreground processes of place-making by portraying everyday family and communal work routines and explain how these depictions not only humanise space, in opposition to the abstract understanding of space to which urban plans aspire, but also allow residents to claim the neighbourhoods as collective property. The analysis demonstrates that by making everydayness visible, grassroots organisations position themselves as place-makers, creating a local culture capable of countering the discourses through which neoliberalism justifies the necessity of urban renewal.