Home » Books » Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela

Download Barrio Rising
Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela (Epub & Pdf)

Overview :

Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela by Alejandro Velasco Details

Beginning in the late 1950s, political leaders in Venezuela built what they celebrated as a more stable democracy in Latin America. But outside the dilapidated halls of power, in courageous…

Barrio Rising synopsis

Beginning in the late 1950s, political leaders in Venezuela built what they celebrated as a more stable democracy in Latin America. But outside the dilapidated halls of power, in courageous Paris for a rapidly urbanizing country, another policy has been relentlessly rising, controversial, and demanding its inclusion.

Based on years of archival and ethnographic research in the largest public housing community in Venezuela, Barrio Rising provides the first in-depth history of urban populism before the Bolivarian Revolution, providing a vital context for understanding the democracy that emerged during Hugo Chavez's presidency. In the mid-1950s, a military government determined to modernize Venezuela destroyed dozens of slums in the heart of Caracas and replaced them with huge buildings to house the city's working poor.

The project remained incomplete when the dictatorship fell on January 23, 1958, and within days the inhabitants of the city illegally occupied thousands of apartments, squatting on green spaces, and renamed the neighborhood to honor the emerging democracy: 23 de Enero (23 January). Over the next 30 years, through evictions, guerrilla warfare, state violence, internal conflict, and official neglect, the inhabitants of the clean areas learned to use their strategic location and symbolically link the promise of democracy to demand a better life.

Giving legitimacy to the state by voting but protesting its failures with violent street actions when necessary, laid the foundation for an expanded understanding of both radical and electoral democracy that still resonates with its features today. Barrio Rising combines rich narrative stories with critical analysis of urban spaces, politics and everyday life, and offers a comprehensive reinterpretation of modern Venezuelan history as seen by its leaders but by the inhabitants of one of the country's most popular neighborhoods..



Please don't review this Book if you received a freebie for writing this review, or if you're connected in any way to the owner.