To inhabit occupied mansions in the historical center of salvador, Bahia, Brazil: Old collective houses and new experiences and rights

Abstract

The objective of this article is to describe, analyze and reflect about a modality of housing that has been gradually gaining quantitative and qualitative importance in the city of Salvador (Bahia, Brazil) and in its historical center (CHS). These are the occupations of old houses and buildings by poor people, linked to the homeless movements. The ethnographic field work carried out with six occupations allowed me to arrive at some conclusions that I present in this work: 1) that some occupations are an updated version of the old “cortiços” of CHS, with problems that aggravate their situation even more; 2) that most of them are essays on a new way of living which represents a rich experience of self-management and female leadership; 3) that centrality is an essential value for precarious and vulnerable workers who have been living in the center of the city since the nineteenth century, a value that is now being claimed in discourses and / or practices such as the right to centrality.