Poor, or excluded? lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Cities are expanding and so is urban poverty. However, emerging regional trends indicate that the profile of poverty is different today from what it was 10 or 20 years ago. These new trends have to be taken into account when adjusting human settlements development policies and poverty eradication programmes to intra-regional differences. One of the key issues for the urban poor in Latin America and the Caribbean is the notion of exclusion. In October 2000, some 300 representatives from 33 countries, mostly from Latin America, met in Mexico City for the World Assembly of Urban Dwellers to "rethink the city from our perspective and to have our voice be heard". In addition to the lively exchanges, visits to neighbourhoods, dances and spontaneous bursts of laughter, the meeting was very different in style from conventional conferences in that it provided urban poor leaders an international forum to present ideas from their own perspective.

The World Assembly of Urban Dwellers made it clear that I most of the representatives of social movements in the region reject the term poverty and prefer to speak of exclusion. According to Martin Longoria, member of the Continental Front of Community Organizations and the Continental Cry of the Excluded (see box on page 46), the difference is quite clear: "Poverty for us refers to a level of access to goods, while exclusion refers to the level of access to our rights". First priority is not the struggle for access to land or housing, but for "citizens' rights" as a whole. Still, individual members of the movement are generally active in one or more specific dimensions of exclusion. They fight for the voice of the excluded to be heard, especially when policies at the local or national level are defined. Mr. Longoria continues: "You know what is the opposite of exclusion for us? It is not inclusion, but participation. Active participation is what makes you a full citizen."

Experience clearly indicates that poverty eradication starts with listening to the poor, giving them a chance and supporting their initiatives. The Regional Office of the Urban Management Programme (UMP), executed by the United Nations Development Programme and UNCHS (Habitat), has developed a set of activities that aim to secure the active participation of the excluded.

Participation in the Regional Consultative Forum. Movements representing the interests of the excluded and the urban poor participate in the Regional Consultative Forum of UMP, where they are equal partners with UN specialized agencies, international organizations, such as the International Union of Local Authorities and the Confederation of Credit Unions, and the most active regional networks of universities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and researchers. UMP reports to the Forum, which guides the Programme's activities. All partners have underlined the importance of this unique forum because of the diversity of views expressed.

Urban Pact. In each of the 40 city consultations and many other projects, organized expressions of the urban poor are formally part of the inter-partner agreements. This kind of "urban pact" defines the objectives, activities and obligations of the local governments, as well as those of the peoples' organizations and other partners; these may vary from city to city.

Entering practical partnerships. The joint objective of all partners is to explore, legitimize and strengthen forms of participatory urban governance as a means to formulating policies and initiating projects which fight poverty and exclusion. So far, dialogues at regional and city levels have led to some concrete partnerships:

* Setting up in Santo Andre, Brazil an inclusion and exclusion map as a management tool for reducing social and physical inequities;

* Co-managing funds for microcredit in Ecuador, leveraging municipal resources in Quito, Belem and Maracaibo;

* Improving land management and regularization in cities with a high proportion of migrants or displaced people, in Leon and Belize;

* Developing multicultural and pluralistic action plans that include indigenous people (in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala) or youth (in Cotacachi, Ecuador, and Barra Mansa, Brazil).

Service institutions as regional partners. Various service NGOs, such as FEDEVIVIENDA in Colombia, are actively involved with grass-roots organizations and communities to tackle poverty and have become the regional partners of UMP in the region. The role of UMP is to strengthen their capacities, give legitimacy to their common practice and widen their dialogue with local governments, so that the development programmes in the region are sustained, ultimately, by the activities of the poor themselves.

Yves Cabannes is Regional Coordinator of the UNDP/UNCHS Urban Management Programme in Latin America and the Caribbean, based in Quito, Ecuador.

RELATED ARTICILE: Who are the Poor in Latin America?

Emerging trends in Latin America and the Caribbean indicate that the profile of the urban poor is changing:

* A majority of the urban poor in the region are of African descent. In Brazil, for instance, there are some 70 million Afro-Brazilians--most of them urban and poor. Less than 2 per cent of them attain university-level education.

* Indigenous populations constitute 25 per cent of the poor, despite the fact they represent only about 8 per cent of the region's population. Often those who live in cities are "invisible" to official statistics and policies. Mexico City, the region's largest city, is home to an estimated half a million indigenous people who still speak over 50 different languages. In Chile, 400,000 of an estimated 1 million Mapuches live in the capital city of Santiago.

* There is an emerging class of "new Poor"--people who once had a formal job and a middle-class lifestyle, but now exist outside the formal and welfare systems. This massive exclusion is the result of dramatic modernization and privatization processes, which caused many of the "new poor" to lose the solidarity networks that existed in cities for survival and sustenance. Recent reports indicate that Argentina, once a model welfare State, now has at least 10 million poor people.

The Excluded Are Finding a Voice

Despite the deepening economic crisis, the excluded have never been so organized, both at local and global levels, as today. Some drastic changes are occurring, not only in terms of their numbers, but also with regard to concrete proposals, resistance strategies or forms of organization. Moreover, there is a radical questioning of the notion of poverty by the people themselves. Following are some of the most powerful voices from the excluded poor:

* The Continental Cry of the Excluded (Grito Continental de Los Excluidos). This is the most powerful and innovative initiative in the region. Starting in the 1990s as a campaign in Brazil, the "Cry" is increasingly heard by the excluded throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the United States. One of the most innovative features of the movement has been to unite diverse organizations with different areas of focus under the same motto: "Work, Justice and Life". This broad-based union of urban people, peasants and indigenous groups has already managed to mobilize no less than 12 million people.

* The Continental Front of Community Organizations (Frente Continental de las Organizaciones Comunales). The urban force behind the Cry of the Excluded is the Continental Front of Community Organizations (FCOC), which since 1987 has been working to strengthen the communication among grass-roots organizations in the region. Representatives from most Latin American countries meet every two years to share experiences, analyze emerging trends and define new platforms for struggle.

* The Latin American Secretariat for "Peoples" Housing (Secretaria Latino Americana de Vivienda Popular). Another initiative, which since the mid-1990s focuses on access to housing and access to land, is the Latin American Secretariat for "Peoples" Housing (SELVIP). Uniting housing and tenants' movements in the region, mainly from large cities, such as Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Bogota, SELVlP gathers a range of members with a long history of "social housing development", and regularly serves as a forum for the exchange of ideas and strategies for action and lobbying.

* The Habitat International Coalition. Since the first Habitat Conference in Vancouver in 1976, the Habitat International Coalition (HIC) has been particularly active in the region and has gone beyond its original focus on housing and land to include activities at city level. HIC serves as an innovative forum, connecting national and international non-governmental organizations with community-based organizations and social movements.

* GROOTS, a collective of grass-roots women, focuses on the gender dimensions of urban poverty, in particular its consequences on women and children.