Untitled - Rebel Studies Library

104 PLANET OF SLUMS
The City Beautiful
In the urban Third World, poor people dread high-profile international
events - conferences, dignitary visits, sporting events, beauty contests,
and international festivals - that prompt authorities to launch crusades
to clean up the city: slum-dwellers know that they are the "dirt" or
"blight" that their governments prefer the world not to see. During the
Nigerian Independence celebration in 1960, for example, one of the
first acts of the new government was to fence the route from the
airport so that Queen's Elizabeth's representative, Princess Alexandria,
would not see Lagos's slums.3! These days governments are more likely
to improve the view by razing the slums and driving the residents out
of the city.
Manilenos have a particular horror of such "beautification campaigns."
During Imelda Marcos's domination of city government,
shanty-dwellers were successively cleared from the parade routes of the
1974 Miss Universe Pageant, the visit of President Gerald Ford in
1975, and the IMF-World Bank meeting in 1976.32 Altogether 160,000
squatters were moved out of the media's field of vision, many of them
dumped on Manila's outskirts, 30 kilometers or more from their former
homes.33 The subsequent "People's Power" of Corazon Aquino was
even more ruthless: some 600,000 squatters were evicted during the
Aquino presidency, usually without relocation sites.34 Despite campaign
promises to preserve housing for the urban poor, Aquino's successor,
Joseph Estrada, continued the mass evictions: 22,000 shanties were
destroyed in the first half of 1999 alone.35 Then, in preparation for the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit, demolition
crews in November 1999 attacked the slum of Dabu-Dabu in
Pasay. When 2000 residents formed a human wall, a SWAT team armed
with M16s was called in, killing 4 people and wounding 20. Homes and
their contents were burnt to the ground, and Dabu-Dabu's miserable
31 Ben Omiyi, The City of Lagos: Ten Short Essays, New York 1995, p. 48.
32 Erhard Berner, "Poverty Alleviation and the Eviction of the Poorest ' "
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24:3 (September 2000), p. 559.
33 Drakakls-Smlth, Thzrd World Cities, p. 28.
34 Berner, Defending a Place, p. 188.
35 Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP-AMRSP) "U b P
D r ' d th .
'
r an oor
'
emo IUon an e Right to Adequate Housing," briefing paper, Manila 2000.
HAUSSMANN IN THE TROPICS 105
inhabitants were relocated to a site along the banks of a sewer where
their children promptly caught deadly gastrointestinal infections.36
As president upon a throne built by US Marines in 1965, the
Dominican Republic's Juan Balaguer was notorious as "the Great
Evictor." Returning to power in 1986, the elderly autocrat decided to
rebuild Santo Domingo in preparation for the quincentenary of
Columbus's discovery of the New World and the visit of the Pope.
With support from European governments and foundations, he
launched a series of over-scaled projects without precedent in
Dominican history: the Columbus Lighthouse, Plaza de Armas, and an
archipelago of new middle-class subdivisions. In addition to monumentalizing
himself, Balaguer also aimed to Haussmannize the
traditional hearths of urban resistance. His principal target was the
huge low-income upper town area of Sabana Perdida, northeast of the
city center. "The plan," write researchers working in Sabana Perdida,
"was to get rid of troublesome elements in the working-class barrios of
the upper town by shunting them to the outskirts. Memories of the
1965 revolts and the riots of 1984 suggested it would be wise to eliminate
this centre of political protest and opposition."37
After massive protests by the barrio rights coordinadora supported by
the UN Commission on Human Rights, the upper city was saved, but
massive demolitions, often involving the army, were carried out in the
center, southwest, and southeast of Santo Domingo. Between 1986
and 1992, 40 barrios were bulldozed and 180,000 residents were evicted.
In an important report on the neighborhood demolitions, Edmundo
Morel and Manuel Mejia described the campaign of government terror
against the poor.
Houses were demolished while their inhabitants were still inside, or
when the owners were away; paramilitary shock troops were used to
intimidate and terrorize people and force them to abandon their
homes; household goods were vandalized or stolen; notice of eviction
was given only on the very day a family was to be thrown out; people
36 Helen Basili, "Demolition the Scourge of the Urban Poor," Transitions
(newsletter of ServICe for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma
Survivors [STARTTS]), #6 (May 2000).
37 Morel and Mejia, "The Dominican Republic," p. 85.