endangered city by austin zeiderman

8/18/2019 Endangered City by Austin Zeiderman

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The Politics of Security and Risk in Bogotá AUSTIN ZEIDERMAN


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AUSTIN ZEIDERMAN

ENDANGERED CITYTe Politics o Security

and Risk in Bogotá

Durham and London


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© Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States o America on acid-ree

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ypeset in Minion Pro by Westchester Publishing Services

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Zeiderman, Austin, [date] author.

itle: Endangered city : the politics o security and risk in

Bogotá / Austin Zeiderman

Other titles: Global insecurities.

Description: Durham : Duke University Press, . |

Series: Global insecurities |

Includes bibliographical reerences and index.

Identiers: 55

335 (hardcover : alk. paper)

3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

33 (e-book)

Subjects: : Emergency management—Government policy—

Colombia—Bogotá. | Natural disasters—Colombia—Bogotá—

Planning. | Risk management—Colombia—Bogotá. | Urban

policy—Colombia—Bogotá.

Classication: 55.5. 53 |

33.3/—dc3

record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/55

Cover Art: Diego Delgadillo / Stockimo / Alamy


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Preace vii

Acknowledgments xv

Te Politics o Security and Risk

Apocalypse Foretold 33

On Shaky Ground 3

3 Genealogies o Endangerment 3

Living Dangerously 3

5 Securing the Future

Millennial Cities 3

Notes 3

Bibliography

Index

CONTENTS


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It is no exaggeration to say that when I arrived in , Bogotá was saer than

it had been or hal a century. Compared to the turbulent s and s,

crime and violence had dramatically decreased and security had improved.

Yet there was something paradoxical about this change. Although the at-

mosphere was more relaxed—outdoor caes and restaurants were ourish-

ing, public parks bustled with careree activity—many o the old anxieties

remained. It was as i Bogotá was still in the grip o a violent and dangerous

past. During my twenty-month stay, riends and strangers alike urged me tosee the city as a threat-ridden place and proposed strategies or negotiating

it. Tis began rom the moment o my arrival at my hotel, close to midnight,

when the riendly night watchman, Manuel, sat me down with a map to

orient me within the city. First he explained how the street names worked,

with the calles running east to west and the carreras north to south. He then

shifed to where I should and should not go. He drew a boundary around

the “sae zone,” a narrow corridor that excluded most o the city, running

north rom the central Plaza de Bolívar and hugging the mountains. “Whathappens,” I asked, “i one lives or works in the areas that are unsae?” “Don’t

worry,” he responded reassuringly, “you won’t ever have to go there.”

Manuel was the rst o many to offer me the same lesson. “I grew up in

Philadelphia,” I would joke, “I know how to take care o mysel.” But I soon

realized these warnings were prompted less by my status as outsider than

by a pervasive sense o the city as a space o danger. In Bogotá, it was not

just a matter o distinguishing sae areas rom unsae ones, a skill vital in

any city. From obvious precautions, like shutting car windows in traffi c to

PREFACE


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viii PREFACE

discourage street thieves, to more eccentric ones, like wrapping mouth and

nose with a scar to ward off el sereno, a mysterious vapor that descends

at dusk, bogotanos warned o dangers lurking, and offered instructions or

their mitigation.When I started eldwork in the hillside barrios o Bogotá’s southern

periphery—where Manuel had assured me I would never have to venture—

warnings became all the more pronounced. Acquaintances rom the north

said I was crazy, and that whatever I had learned about navigating the city

would be useless south o the center where insecurity was magnied by pov-

erty, marginality, and exclusion. I nevertheless proceeded, with caution.

Once I got to Ciudad Bolívar, I discovered still more techniques or pro-

tecting onesel rom the dangers o urban lie. Te private security guards

and porteros (doormen) ubiquitous in other parts o the city were ew and

ar between. But along these dusty unpaved streets, guarding nearly every

doorstep was a snarling dog, i not two or three. Teir manginess suggested

they belonged to no one, yet they were ercely territorial. “Not a bad idea

to keep rocks in your pocket,” I was told by one resident. “Many o us don’t

have real locks on our doors and we depend on these dogs to protect our

property when we’re not around. Tey recognize our neighbors, but any-

one unamiliar (like you!) puts them on edge.” People ofen alluded to the

presence o vigilante or sel-deense groups, many with links to paramilitaryorces. Speaking in whispers and through euphemisms, like la vacuna (the

“vaccination” ee charged or protection), I was told that while these groups

provided security, you had to watch out or them. “Tey’ll eventually stop

and question you,” warned the coordinator o a soup kitchen; “i they don’t,

it’s because they’ve already asked around and ound out who you are.” Not

once during my time in these parts o Bogotá was I harassed, mugged, or

assaulted. All the same, duly advised, I continued to adopt more and more

tactics or securing mysel against potential threats.Once upon a time, an anthropologist might have equated such measures

with the superstitions o some exotic tribe or with a symbolic order that

separated good rom bad, clean rom dirty, insiders rom outsiders. I pre-

erred to understand them as historically inormed practices adapted to

everyday lie in a city generally understood to be raught with danger. Not

so long ago, Bogotá’s homicide rate was one o the highest in the world and

assassinations, kidnappings, and bombings were almost routine. It stands

to reason that those who lived through this Bogotá—a Bogotá I can never


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PREFACE ix

know—would orient their lives, in both the short- and long-term, in relation

to threats o many kinds, some more plausible than others. But why at a time

when urbanists and security experts rom around the world were heralding

the dawn o a new age, indeed celebrating the “rebirth” o Bogotá, would thispreoccupation with danger remain?

Tis paradox eventually prompted me to begin thinking less about dan-

ger , and more about endangerment . Tough the two terms are cognates,

there is a subtle difference between them. While both suggest the possibil-

ity o imminent harm, rather than its reality, danger ofen indicates a spe-

cic threat, whereas endangerment reers to the more general condition o

being threatened. As a result, the two states might be said to exist in differ-

ent temporalities. Endangerment is durative and open-ended, while danger

is immediate and short-term. Te latter ofen indexes a specic threat that

may dissipate when time passes or conditions change. Te temporality o

endangerment, in contrast, is lasting: the possibility o injury is endured in-

denitely, requiring subjects to recalibrate their perception o the city and

their place within it.

Endangerment can be thought o more as a condition than an experi-

ence; indeed, it is what gives shape to experience. Endangered City , there-

ore, is not about the direct experience o danger so much as it is about how

endangerment ofen indirectly conditions experiences o the city. Tis dis-tinction is important or understanding cultural, social, and political lie

in places like Bogotá, where endangerment has outlasted immediate danger.

Te act that trauma persists in the bodies and memories and attitudes o

people who have experienced it is well known. So, too, is the act that

histories o violence ofen produce enduring cultures o ear that are di-

cult to dispel. Tis book seeks to extend such analyses to the domain o

urban politics and government, to the relationship between the state and

the citizen, to the city as a political community. It explores the degree towhich endangerment has conditioned politics in Colombia in the past and

continues to do so in the present. Endangerment allows us to understand

how the state establishes and maintains its authority and legitimacy, how

the government intervenes in the lives o its citizens, how citizens inhabit

the city as political subjects, and how subjects position themselves when

addressing the state. It offers a way o apprehending the politics o security

and the government o risk, and their implications or contemporary cities

and urban lie.


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x PREFACE

Tis inevitably raises questions o scale and generality. Is this phenomenon—

the endangered city —unique to a place like Bogotá, the capital o a country

with an intractable history o conict, crime, violence, and insecurity? Is it

specic to Latin America, where military dictatorships, guerrilla insurgen-cies, and political instability have been troublesome eatures o the region’s

modernity? Does it represent a particularly salient example o mounting

worldwide anxiety about terrorist attacks, climate change, disease outbreaks,

and other potential threats to hubs o the global economy? In sum, is Co-

lombia a particularly con venient, or an incon veniently particular, place to

analyze emerging techniques or governing the uncertain uture o cities and

urban lie? Each o these questions highlights an important dimension o

my analysis o the endangered city, and together they point to this book’s

comparative and conceptual reach: certain parts are specic to Bogotá,

while others speak to cities o the global South or even to contemporary

urbanism at large. As such, this book is intended or readers at any level

with an interest in some combination o cities, the environment, citizen-

ship, security, risk, and violence in Latin America and beyond. Ultimately,

however, examining the government o risk and the politics o security in

contemporary cities—and the specic, and sometimes unpredictable, orms

they can take—requires recognizing the historical conditions, cultural sen-

sibilities, and political contingencies rom which they emerge.My ocus on endangerment relates not only to the particular moment in

which I conducted eldwork; to some degree, it is also a reection o (and

on) my own personal history. Knowledge is situated not only by historical

context, but also by biographical particulars, and my interest in how urban

lie is organized around the anticipation o potential threats dates back at

least to . From the time I began high school in an unamiliar area o

North Philadelphia, my daily commute o over two hours involved crossing

neighborhood borders, transportation systems, and social boundaries. I wasofen apprehensive as I waited or the subway in the graffi tied tunnels o the

Broad Street Line, and groups o kids rom tougher parts o town requently

reminded me I had good reason to be. Philadelphia in the s saw its

share o conict and violence, though not at the level o Bogotá. Yet like the

bogotanos I would begin to meet in , I grew up seeing my city as a place

o menacing uncertainty and trained mysel to analyze its dangers, all the

while devising tactics to avoid them. In the ambiguous space underground,

I identied certain subway stations as predictably sae, others as off-limits;


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PREFACE xi

seats near the exit doors, I observed, were prime targets, while those in the

center o the car were more protected.

When I eventually got to Colombia, I was still prone to visualizing cities

as dangerous, though I had long ago lef Philadelphia or calmer places. Ondiscovering that long-time residents shared my inclination despite the signs

o improvement surrounding them, I elt the makings o a research project.

Italo Calvino expressed this eeling quite well. In his rich collection o ables,

Invisible Cities, he wrote: “Arriving at each new city, the traveler nds again

a past o his that he did not know he had: the oreignness o what you no

longer are or no longer possess lies in wait or you in oreign, unpossessed

places.” Endangered City is mostly a book about Bogotá, but it is also a book

about Philadelphia and all those other cities where daily lie is guided by ear

o—rather than openness toward—the unknown.


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High

Medium

Low

Locality boundaries

Suba

Usme

CiudadBolí var

Usaquén

SanCristóbal

Tun juelito

Raf aelUribeUribe

LosMártires

AntonioNariño

La Candelaria

Suba

Usme

CiudadBolívar

Usaquén

Santa Fé

Bosa Kennedy

Engativá

Fontibón

Chapinero

SanCristóbal

Teusaqui llo

Tunjuelito

PuenteAranda

BarriosUnidos

RafaelUribeUribe

LosMártires

AntonioNariño

La Candelaria

See mapdetail

B o g o

t á

R i v

e r

COLOMBIA

Bogotá

MAP 1 Bogotá’s zones o high risk or landslide. Source: Dirección de Atención yPrevención de Emergencias, .


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CIUDAD BOLÍVARCIUDAD BOLÍVAR

BOSA

KENNEDY

TUNJUELITO

High

Medium

Low

Locality boundaries

MAP 2 Te northern part o the locality Ciudad Bolívar, where the majority oBogotá’s high-risk zones are located. Source: Dirección de Atención y Prevenciónde Emergencias, .


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As Jorge Luis Borges once wrote, reerring to the two sides o himsel, one

who writes and the other who goes about the routines o daily lie: “I do not

know which o us has written this page.” Te same may be said o this text,

except that a much higher number than two is needed to acknowledge the

many who have made it possible. I am happy or the occasion to thank those

who have been especially integral to my research and writing.

My list must begin with a stellar group o mentors in the Department o

Anthropology at Stanord University. James Ferguson has been a perpetualinspiration or this project as well as a steady voice o encouragement. I

proted repeatedly rom his uncanny ability to distill even the most clouded

thoughts. For his unique combination o clarity and creativity and his com-

mitment to precise thought and language, Jim remains a model o intellec-

tual engagement. Sylvia Yanagisako has been an invaluable source o guid-

ance and advice, and o astute critique. Her direct and rereshing honesty

has helped resolve many conundrums along the way. First at Yale and then

at Stanord, I’ve been lucky to work with Tomas Blom Hansen, always agenerous interlocutor and now a trusted riend. Paulla Ebron offered crucial

support as I struggled to understand what an updated urban anthropology

might look like.

eresa Caldeira’s masterpiece, City of Walls, was an early inspiration, and

I’m especially grateul or her help, both conceptual and proessional, at

many critical junctures. Ananya Roy welcomed me as an interloper within

the Department o City and Regional Planning at Berkeley, where

I observed rsthand her heterodox approach to urban theory as well as

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


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xvi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

her exemplary roles as both teacher and public intellectual. At Yale, I was

ortunate to collaborate with James Scott, while experiencing his boundless

energy and inexhaustible curiosity. Michael Dove shaped my outlook on

nature and culture, and I hold him personally responsible or my decisionto study anthropology. In the classrooms o New Haven and on the streets

o Baltimore, William Burch demonstrated passionately that urban ecology

was ar rom an oxymoron.

Te years o work represented here were enriched by an exceptionally

talented group o Stanord anthropologists whom I eel honored to call both

riends and colleagues. Nikhil Anand, Hannah Appel, Eli Babül, Maura

Finkelstein, Ramah McKay, and Robert Samet have been ellow travelers

rom the beginning, and I would have been lost without them. But the intel-

lectual acuity o others at various stages has also been key, and my thanks go

in particular to Javier Arbona, Gautam Bhan, Hiba Bou-Akar, Ashley Carse,

Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann, Dolly Kikon, Sylvia Nam, Bruce O’Neill, Car-

men Rojas, Adam Rosenblatt, Peter Samuels, and Rania Sweis. Dependable

allies Kevin O’Neill and Anne Rademacher deserve special recognition. And

thanks to riends outside the eld who listened all the same: Page Bertelsen,

Brad Carrick, Apsara DiQuinzio, Geoff Perusse, Ross Robertson, Andrew

Shapiro, and Abby Weinberg.

My lie as a researcher in Colombia relied on a kindhearted group oriends and colleagues. Juan Orrantia and Felipe Gaitan-Ammann, the only

people I knew when I rst touched down in Bogotá, gave me a warm wel-

come and set me on the right course. It is diffi cult to imagine what this book

might have looked like i it were not or Zoad Humar, who initially invited

me to Ciudad Bolívar, or Paola Fernandez, who cheerully withstood my

diatribes against “culture” as she tutored me in Spanish. Alejandro Guarín

shared his network o personal and proessional contacts, and in doing so

opened more doors or me than he probably realizes. One o them was to thehome o Heidi Maldonado and Francisco Ruiz, which remained open to me

or nearly two years. Trough Andrés Salcedo I ound not only an affi liation

with the Centro de Estudios Sociales at the Universidad Nacional de Colom-

bia but also a collaborator and riend. In Bogotá, I ofen sought solace in the

company o other researchers, especially eo Ballvé, Emily Cohen, Meghan

Morris, Jean Paul Vélez, and Maria Vidart-Delgado, and I beneted greatly

rom their companionship. ianna Paschel’s inexhaustible vitality, warmth,


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xvii

and intelligence greatly enriched my time in the eld and many moments

since.

Tis book would certainly not have been possible without the patience

and generosity o the staff o the Caja de la Vivienda Popular (Caja) and theDirección de Prevención y Atención de Emergencias (), particularly

Jaime Gonzalez and Angela Gayón. Countless amilies living on the urban

periphery o Bogotá invited me into their homes, and I am immensely grate-

ul or their willingness to trust someone rom an unamiliar background

with priorities different rom their own. Our wide-ranging conversations

repeatedly challenged my assumptions about what it means to live in pre-

carious conditions. Carolina Romero transcribed recorded interviews, and

Laura Ramírez assisted with that and with archival research. Although Lau-

ra’s contributions as a research assistant were invaluable, she quickly re-

vealed her potential as a scholar in her own right.

My network expanded on relocating to London and joining the London

School o Economics (), and this book is all the better or it. Cities

allowed me the time and space to conduct additional research and complete

the manuscript, all the while surrounded by a creative, committed group o

urbanists. I am grateul to Ricky Burdett and Philipp Rode or believing in

what I was doing and encouraging me to write or a broader audience. For

support and sustenance o various kinds, my thanks go to Suzi Hall, RichardSennett, Sobia Ahmad Kaker, Jonathan Silver, Kavita Ramakrishnan, Mona

Sloane, Adam Kaasa, Adam Greeneld, Gunter Gassner, David Madden,

Fran onkiss, Emma Rees, and Andrew Sherwood, and to Francis Moss or

his help with the Bogotá maps. On joining ’s Department o Geography

and Environment, I have ound mysel in a collegial and inclusive atmos-

phere. Gareth Jones and Sylvia Chant have been supportive mentors, and

I am thankul to my other terric colleagues in the Cities and Development

cluster or welcoming me into the old. London has been a happy intellec-tual home thanks also to Laura Bear, Matthew Engelke, Deborah James, Gisa

Weszkalnys, Carlo Caduff, Matthew Gandy, and Jennier Robinson. Although

I overlapped only briey with Asher Ghertner, I have thoroughly enjoyed

our subsequent conversations and collaborations. Tanks to Michelle War-

bis or the push to ampliy my central claims.

My debt o gratitude also extends to institutions that have supported the

research and writing o this book. A ravel and Language Study Grant and


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xviii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

a Diversity Dissertation Research Grant, both at Stanord, allowed me to

spend two summers conducting exploratory research in Colombia. Te U.S.

Fulbright Program provided unding or my rst year o eldwork and in-

cluded me in an extraordinary network o students, teachers, and researchers.Tanks to Juana Camacho and the Instituto Colombiano de Antropología

e Historia or taking me in as a visiting researcher and or giving me the

opportunity to receive eedback rom an exceptional group o scholars. I

was able to conduct an additional year o eldwork thanks to a Disserta-

tion Fieldwork Grant rom the Wenner-Gren Foundation, while a Doctoral

Dissertation Improvement Grant rom the National Science Foundation

contributed to the cost o travel, materials, and transcription. I was also ex-

tremely ortunate to receive the Stanord Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow-

ship and a Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, which allowed me the luxury o

an additional year o writing.

At Duke University Press, it has been a delight to work with Gisela Fosado,

who gave the project her enthusiastic support and guided it careully to ru-

ition. I owe a major debt o gratitude to two anonymous reviewers or their

thorough engagement with the ull manuscript, not once but twice, and

or providing countless helpul comments. I would also like to thank Daniel

Goldstein or offering invaluable advice at key moments and the rest o the

editorial, production, and marketing teams or their critical contributions.Underlying every aspect o whatever I have accomplished here is my

supportive and caring amily. Howard Zeiderman is unique in his ability to

unite a deep relationship with big ideas and a proound engagement with

the real world. I like to think that this book carries his rare commitment or-

ward in new directions. Steanie akacs has been a constant source o light,

serenity, and contentment. Colin Tubron introduced me to Latin America,

and in doing so sparked my desire to engage with worlds different rom my

own. Tere is neither time nor space to account or the ways Margreta deGrazia has contributed to this text. She has read every page within it, some-

times twice or three times, while demonstrating through her own work that

clear thinking and clear writing go hand in hand.

And nally, I am innitely thankul to be able to share a lie with Paula

Durán. She has maintained her calm and receptive disposition to my work

even when I have ully embodied the gure she affectionately calls el antropó-

loco. Tis book is peppered with traces o her agile mind, ethnographic in-

tuition, and perceptive eye. Moreover, her steady condence and bountiul


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xix

optimism have shown me that the uture need not be a matter o risk and

security. With unconditional love, she has convinced me that uncertainty

is to be wholeheartedly embraced. Tese are contributions as much to the

conceptual oundation o this book as to the emotional grounding o ourpartnership, and are gifs I will treasure or the years to come.

Elements o chapter appeared in “On Shaky Ground: Te Making o Risk

in Bogotá,” Environment and Planning A , no. (): 5–, and in

my contribution to Modes of Uncertainty: Anthropological Cases, an essay

collection edited by Limor Samimian-Darash and Paul Rabinow. An ear-

lier version o chapter was published as “Living Dangerously: Biopolitics

and Urban Citizenship in Bogotá, Colombia,” American Ethnologist , no.

(3): –. Bits o chapter 5 went into “Prognosis Past: Te emporal

Politics o Disaster in Colombia,” orthcoming in the Journal of the Royal

Anthropological Institute, while some general ideas elaborated in the conclu-

sion were sketched preliminarily in “Cities o the Future? Megacities and the

Space/ime o Urban Modernity,” Critical Planning 5 (): 3–3.


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Neither oods nor plagues, amines nor cataclysms, nor even

the eternal wars o century upon century, have been able to

subdue the persistent advantage o lie over death.

— , “

” ( ),

Hurricane Katrina, /, the Indian Ocean tsunami, another off the coast o

Japan and the subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster, earthquakes in China

and Chile and Nepal, Superstorm Sandy, Ebola: such catastrophic events,

varying in cause, scale, and duration, have contributed to a mounting sense

that we now live in a world-historical era o uncertainty and insecurity. Po-

litical leaders, media pundits, urban planners, environmental activists, se-

curity offi cials, and health experts all seem to agree that catastrophes andcrises are globally on the rise. Social theorists have ofen seen these develop-

ments as signs o a momentous shif within (or even beyond) modernity: the

increase in magnitude and requency o threats has outrun economic and

technological progress and our collective capacity to manage risk. Whether

or not they are right in heralding an epochal break on a worldwide scale,

their accounts reect what has become a pervasive view o global transor-

mation. Attending the belie that we have entered a time o singular precar-

ity comes a new political imperative: to govern the present in anticipation

THE POLITICS OF SECURITY AND RISK


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2 INTRODUCTION

o uture harm. Endangered City is about that imperative, particularly its

consequences or cities and or those who live in them.

o address this concern, key paradigms o social and urban thought will

need revisiting. A rich conversation about the rise o risk within modernityalready exists within the humanities and social sciences, and it rames a gen-

eral problematic that remains relevant. It also provides a conceptual lexicon

that allows or critical connections between risk, security, liberal governance,

and the modern city. Te ollowing analysis would not be possible without

these contributions, but, as we shall see, they have proven inadequate to the

contemporary moment, in two respects. Te rst is temporal: history is too

ofen understood as a progressive, linear movement o time through discrete

periods toward a predictably better uture. Te second is geographical: or

the most part, the accounts we have o risk, governance, and the city reect

how modernity has been understood in and by the West. Tis book looks to

avoid these intertwined biases in offering an alternative approach to the pol-

itics o security and risk in contemporary cities. It turns to cities o the global

South: once seen to be trailing afer models derived rom elsewhere, they

recently have advanced to the vanguard o urban theory and practice. Te

turbulent history o Latin American cities positions them at the oreront o

discussions about urban insecurity. Drawing on ethnographic and archival

research in Bogotá, Endangered City aims to shed new light on a world ocities whose uture is undamentally uncertain.

Among twentieth-century theorists, the concept o “risk” has ofen been

seen as a determinant o world-historical change. Ulrich Beck argues that

industrial (or rst) modernity was the period in which risk became an object

o scientic assessment and technological control, and reexive (or second)

modernity ollowed when risks emerged that could no longer be known or

managed. Separating the two historical periods are mechanisms, such as

insurance, that enable rational, calculated assessments about the likelihoodo uture harm; their eventual inadequacy marks the transition to what Beck

calls “risk society.” In a similar vein, Anthony Giddens claims that the notion

o risk is what distinguishes European industrial modernity rom medieval

eudalism and “modern” rom “traditional” societies. Classical anthropo-

logical accounts support this view by studying “danger” within the symbolic

order o “primitive” groups, associating the rise o risk with the unraveling

o cosmologies based on nature, religion, ate, chance, and tradition. Risk


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THE POLITICS OF SECURITY AND RISK 3

marks the threshold dividing past rom present, beore rom afer, the mod-

ern era rom what came beore.

Michel Foucault, too, locates the emergence o what he calls the “abso-

lutely crucial notion o risk” at the brink o a major epochal transorma-tion. Around , he claims, sovereignty and discipline were superseded

by security, a political rationality that governs according to predictive cal-

culations o the likelihood o uture harm. Foucault’s schema also associates

risk with the rise o “modern” society by locating it at the center o the “new

art o government” that emerges in the late eighteenth century— liberalism.

Since reedom was the crux o the problem conronted by liberal political

and economic thought, security became the “principle o calculation” used

to determine the limits o state intervention. For autonomous, responsible

individuals to be empowered to make choices unencumbered by the con-

straints o amily, belie, superstition, and convention, they had to envision

their uture as containing dangers that could be potentially avoided. In Fou-

cault’s account, risk was the calculative rationality on which these decisions

were based, and its simultaneous emergence in a number o different do-

mains (e.g., town planning, ood supply, public health) signaled the rise o

liberalism as the predominant orm o “modern governmental reason.”

Tese perspectives rame a general problematic that understands moder-

nity in relation to risk, security, and liberal governance. However, the tem-poral and geographical assumptions embedded within them inhibit our

ability to comprehend the politics o security and the government o risk in

contemporary cities. Tese assumptions about time and space are hard to

separate, mutually implicated as they are, and their repercussions are many.

Positioning risk as an epochal marker o the transition to liberal modernity

obscures the act that it ofen interacts with, rather than supersedes, suppos-

edly “premodern” and “illiberal” ways o governing threats and understanding

danger. Other technologies or managing individual and collective insecu-rity do not simply “belong” to the past, only to be consumed eventually by

the inexorable orce o history. In Stephen Collier’s estimation, we ought to

learn rom Foucault’s later thinking, which rejects the “kind o account that

is epochal in both its temporal structure and its diagnostic reach.” Instead

o the historical progression o successive epochs or societies, he empha-

sizes coexistent modalities o power that enter into relations o combination,

transormation, and correlation. Tis approach better prepares us to identiy


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4 INTRODUCTION

emergent political rationalities without presuming their overtaking what

preceded them. Nevertheless, a key question remains: how to conduct a

genealogy o risk and security in parts o the world with histories signi-

cantly different rom those o the West?Much o the literature on risk has tracked its rise as a technology o gov-

ernment in “advanced” liberal democracies or its worldwide spread through

processes o globalization, securitization, and neoliberalization. We may in-

deed nd ourselves in the midst o a global prolieration o security mecha-

nisms, but the experience o liberal modernity in Europe and North America

is not necessarily the best guide or understanding what these mechanisms

mean and do in other parts o the world. Anthropologists have long been

interested in the intersection o “modern” legal and political institutions

with “traditional” or “customary” orms in colonial and postcolonial settings.

Tey have shown that the rise o liberalism outside the West, but also in Eu-

rope and North America, coexisted with and even depended on relations

o power that were ofen ar rom liberal. Moreover, they have ound that

many cultural and political ormations considered quintessentially modern

were developed initially in the colonies. Tese insights unsettle genealogies

o political thought and practice that are conned to or centered in the West.

Pausing to consider the relationship between risk, security, and the modern

city will allow me to propose an alternative—a view rom the global Southbut with broader relevance.

A dening characteristic o modernity has been the belie in the pro-

gression o time toward an all-around better uture; in turn, this promise

hinged on the growth and development o cities. Te “modern city” was

considered the most advanced stage o social evolution and cultural de-

velopment. Geographical distance was equated with temporal difference,

such that the destiny o cities outside Europe and North America was pre-

sumed to be a perpetual game o catch-up with the likes o London, Paris,and New York. Te history o urbanization in the West unctioned as a

chronotope—a representational device or ordering time and space—and

the “modern city” was the end point on a time line that stretched inde-

initely into the uture. Te teleological certainty o this narrative was both

an impetus or and an effect o the power to colonize. Modernity and co-

loniality, as Walter Mignolo and his collaborators have taught us, were mu-

tually constitutive—one could not exist without the other. Te prosperity

gained through unequal and exploitative relations o power and exchange


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enabled modern cities both to manage risk and to project a denitive vision

o the global urban uture.

In recent years, this arrangement has come undone as even archetypical

modern cities have begun to anticipate more uncertain and insecure utures.A global trend toward orecasting utures o catastrophe and crisis has en-

abled security to take hold as a dominant rationality or governing cities

rom North to South. Conventional assumptions about progress have been

thrown into doubt, and we now ace what Daniel Rosenberg and Susan Har-

ding call the “crisis o modern uturity,” here in a specically urban orm.

One o the implications o this crisis is the imperative to govern the present

in anticipation o uture harm. Tis imperative is actively reconguring the

politics o cities, rich and poor alike. But the conceptual paradigms we have

inherited rom twentieth-century social theory and urban studies, orged in

the global North and predicated on progressive temporalities o growth and

development, are unprepared to respond to the twenty-rst-century urban

condition. In an unexpected twist o ate, cities o the global South have much

more to say about a world in which the unlimited improvement o urban lie,

even its sustained reproduction, are no longer taken or granted.

Latin America is particularly instructive in this regard. Given its position

in the world since colonization—always in an awkward relationship to mo-

dernity and its uture expectations—preoccupations with risk and securityrun deep. Reerring to a current o anxiety running through the genealogy

o urbanism in the West, Marshall Berman once wrote: “Myths o urban

ruin grow at our culture’s root.” His comment is even more applicable to

Latin America, where cities have long been plagued by security concerns

and uture uncertainty, as García Márquez’s remark in the epigraph attests.

In the colonial period, urban settlements in the Americas were haunted by

the specter o destruction. From hurricanes and earthquakes to pirate at-

tacks and slave revolts to amines and epidemics, the list o potential threatswas extensive. Tis mattered signicantly since, or the Spanish colonizers,

the city was the symbolic and material oundation o empire. Yet its stabil-

ity and longevity—and thereore that o the colonial enterprise itsel—were

undamentally uncertain. Tis continued afer independence, as Latin

American cities were caught in a continual struggle between “civilization” and

“barbarism,” aspiring to become “modern” yet acing the impossibility o that

dream. From military dictatorships, populist movements, and democratic

reorms to experiments with socialism, neoliberalism, and multiculturalism:


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6 INTRODUCTION

visions o the ideal society were hotly contested throughout the twentieth

century, and the city was ofen the stage on which these contests played out.

o ast-orward to the present: Latin America’s uture remains in ques-

tion, as Fernando Coronil aptly put it.

Security tops the agenda romCaracas to Ciudad Juárez and La Paz to Guatemala City, making these stra-

tegic sites or examining how uncertain utures shape cities and urban lie.

Te entanglement o extraordinarily high levels o crime and violence with

extreme poverty and inequality has contributed to the production o wide-

spread eelings o ear and insecurity. Tese sentiments reverberate through

everyday experiences o the city, but they also saturate public space and the

built environment, politics and government, aesthetics and popular culture,

religion and ethics, and law and justice. Te centrality o security across

each o these domains enables scholars o contemporary Latin America to

provide insight into a predicament o global importance. Recognizing this

act, Endangered City asks what the region’s cities can tell us about the urban

condition at large. Given Colombia’s long-running struggle with conict

and violence, Bogotá is an especially good place rom which to consider how

the politics o security and the government o risk is changing what it means

to be a twenty-rst-century city and urban citizen.

The Pursuit of Security in Colombia

On a January afernoon in , a massive earthquake hit the Haitian capi-

tal o Port-au-Prince, leveling the city, killing over three hundred thousand

people, and leaving more than a million homeless. Tis catastrophe was

one among many to have received global attention in the early twenty-rst

century. It struck while I was doing eldwork in Colombia on how the city o

Bogotá was preparing itsel or similar threats. My ocus was the municipal

government’s management o disaster risk and its housing relocation pro-

gram or vulnerable populations living in areas recently designated zonas dealto riesgo, or “zones o high risk,” or landslide, ood, and earthquake. It

came as no surprise that both government offi cials and the media in Bogotá

responded to Haiti’s disaster, either to publicize their city’s readiness or to

call or still greater preparedness. Less predictable was the news that came

three weeks afer the earthquake: Haiti’s interior minister, Paul Antoine Bien-

Aimé, ew to Colombia with the express purpose o visiting Armenia, a

city o three hundred thousand people in the country’s mountainous coffee-

growing region that had itsel been struck by a massive earthquake in .


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Bien-Aimé was accompanied by his Colombian counterpart, Fabio Valencia

Cossio, on a visit to El Reugio (Te Reuge), a seismic-resistant housing de-

velopment constructed or survivors, which had been subsequently praised

by the United Nations or integrating reconstruction and risk reductionefforts. Sparking comparisons and exchanges in both directions, the Hai-

tian earthquake reected the global interconnectedness both o catastrophic

events and o techniques or mitigating their potential effects.

When I heard about this diplomatic mission, I was initially surprised

that Bien-Aimé had not looked to other countries in the global South, or

example, Indonesia, Pakistan, or China, where recent earthquakes had re-

sulted in comparable scales o devastation and destruction. Or why not

visit San Francisco or okyo, two o the most earthquake-savvy cities in the

world? But the Colombians I spoke with had a different response: better to

be associated with the management o disaster risk, they proudly quipped,

than with the masked guerrilla and the murderous narcotracante. Tey

recognized that as a result o its sel-promotion as a leader in the eld and

the praise it had received as a model or the rest o Latin America and the

developing world, Colombia’s global image had taken on a new cast. As

Bien-Aimé’s visit to the city o Armenia conrmed, Colombia had become

the place to go to learn how to understand, manage, and live with high levels

o risk.

Colombia’s association with security and risk extends beyond the eld o

disaster preparedness. Consider, or example, an advertisement circulating

on while I was doing eldwork in Bogotá. Sponsored by Colombia’s

Ministry o Commerce, Industry, and ourism, this promotional video was

the centerpiece o an elaborate media campaign. Its images were predictably

seductive: tropical beaches, snow-capped mountains, verdant countryside,

riendly locals. Te voice-over evoked a timeless paradise o harmony and

beauty—“a place where the past lives harmoniously with the uture, and theword ‘innity’ is written in color on the beach, the mountains, the jungle,

and the sky”—and it showcased a host o enraptured gringos expressing their

newly discovered love or the country’s countless wonders. Te ad’s crown-

ing touch was its nal sentence: “Colombia, el riesgo es que te quieras que-

dar” (Colombia, the risk is that you would want to stay).

Tis slogan had become the uniying concept o a tourism campaign

that depicted Colombia as an exotic, bountiul, and irtatious temptress (as

gure I. so clearly demonstrates), one who uses her sensuous beauty and


24/57

FIG I.1 “Colombia, the risk is that you would want to stay.”

Source: Ministerio de Comercio, Industria y urismo de Colombia.


25/57


Latin charm to entice helpless visitors into staying orever. Tere is a hint o

danger to the siren call: you might never return home, not because you’ve

been kidnapped or shot, but because you’ve allen in love with the place and

its people. Te campaign exploited the act that, or as long as one can re-member, travel to Colombia had been seen, above all else, as a risk. It sought

not simply to orget Colombia’s turbulent, traumatic past and occlude its

persistently violent present, but also to acknowledge and capitalize on the

power o “risk” as a brand. Risk was thereby converted rom threat to allure

and Colombia rom danger zone to tourist haven.

Tis campaign cleverly played on the grim reality that has plagued Co-

lombia throughout the twentieth century. Hollywood lms and the interna-

tional news media have sensationalized this reality, to be sure, but there is

no denying it. An ongoing history o violence, armed conict, and political

instability continues to orient the popu lar and political imagination toward

the ultimate pursuit o security. Tis can be traced at least as ar back as the

late s and early s—a period, in terms o violent crime, comparable

to the worst years o la Violencia, the bloody midcentury political conict

between the Liberal and Conservative parties that claimed the lives o an es-

timated two hundred thousand people. However, the soaring rates o crime

and violence in this more recent period were tied to the rapid growth o drug

traffi cking. Many assaults, murders, and kidnappings took place among rivalcartels, but drug lords also responded to government crackdowns by carry-

ing out indiscriminate attacks on major cities and assassinating political g-

ures. Although the cartels were eventually dismantled, the production and

distribution o narcotics survived the crackdown and continue to uel armed

conict in the present. Troughout this period, political authority, national

unity, and social order were commonly ramed in terms o security.

Alongside the spread o drug traffi cking, Colombia has also seen a con-

tinuation o the battle between the state and lefist guerrilla movementsunder way since the s. Various attempts at reconciliation have been

made, such as a ceasere negotiated by President Belisario Betancur with

the Revolutionary Armed Forces o Colombia () in , which led to

the ormation o a new political party, the Patriotic Union (). Tis peace

process was short-lived, however, as members, leaders, and elected o-

cials were routinely murdered. Attempts to end the conict gave way to

waves o violence, which occasionally struck at the heart o the capital city.

Te 5 siege o the Palace o Justice in Bogotá by the - guerrilla group


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10 INTRODUCTION

would become a watershed event in the politics o risk and security. Coin-

ciding with a volcanic eruption that took the lives o over twenty-ve thou-

sand people, it sparked a crisis o authority and expertise. Future-oriented

modes o government were the proposed solution, as they appeared to offera suitably technical rationality or governing human and nonhuman threats.

As the lefist guerrillas unded their protracted insurgency by kidnapping

government offi cials and wealthy landowners, private militias were ormed

or the purpose o protection and retaliation. Tese paramilitary armies

would eventually grow in number and strength to the point o controlling

major economic interests and exerting broad political inuence. Tey took

hold o large territories beyond the reach o the national army and police,

and delivered their own version o security by organizing death squads and

conducting social-cleansing missions to rid towns and cities o suspected

insurgents and desechables (disposables), whom they eliminated with impu-

nity. Te lines eventually blurred between the paramilitaries and other illegal

armed groups as the narcotics trade offered prots irresistible to all sides o

the conict. But paramilitarism was also embraced by right-wing politicians

as a quasi-offi cial strategy or governing challenges to political authority and

economic stability. Parapolítica, as it is called, would eventually be countered

by the moderate Lef’s efforts to promote an alternative, progressive version

o security and, thus, to prevent the Right rom monopolizing this key politi-cal terrain.

In the s, Colombia underwent a process o major political and eco-

nomic reorm initiated by the administration o President Virgilio Barco

and subsequently led by his successor César Gaviria. Amid a wave o democ-

ratization throughout Latin Amer ica, the adoption o a new Constitution in

expanded civil and political rights, decentralized government, strength-

ened the judiciary, and offi cially recognized multiculturalism. While liberal

democratic ideals and institutions expanded, they were ofen used with orsubordinated to security imperatives. Te impact was strongest on poor and

vulnerable populations, whose status as citizens was ofen predicated on

their need or protection. Meanwhile, President Gaviria ushered in a period

o neoliberal restructuring, which opened Colombian markets to oreign

direct investment, reduced trade barriers, privatized state assets and ser-

vices, and reormed scal policy. Tis restructuring shaped the pursuit o

security thereafer, which has tended to privilege economic interests over

social concerns and to avor individualized solutions to structural problems.


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Yet center-lef mayoral administrations have deployed security logics to

such ends as providing social housing, pursuing environmental justice, and

building a political base among the urban poor.

Te economic liberalization o the s was paired with increasedmilitarization as the deense budget and the size o the army steadily rose,

thanks to the ow o military technology and training rom the United States.

Likewise, the paramilitary movement led by the United Sel-Deense Forces

o Colombia increased its operations against the guerrillas in order to gain

control o strategic territories and the drug trade. With either tacit approval

or explicit cooperation rom the army, paramilitaries unleashed terror cam-

paigns and civilian massacres targeting peasants suspected o siding with in-

surgent groups. Violence in the countryside combined with economic shifs

orced millions to ee their lands or the city in what has become one o

the world’s largest crises o internal displacement. Tis led to the continued

growth o sel-built settlements on the urban periphery, where the majority

o zones o high risk are now located. Internal displacement created a highly

vulnerable population o Colombian citizens who, or the most part, reside

in precarious living conditions now targeted by the municipal government’s

relocation program. Adding to the hardship o the armed conict, Colombia

along with other Latin American countries entered a major recession in the

late s. As the economy shrank and unemployment shot up, Colombiaaccepted loans rom the International Monetary Fund along with accompa-

nying structural adjustment measures aimed at promoting scal austerity

and budgetary discipline. In , the U.S. government approved Plan Co-

lombia, which would send hundreds o millions o dollars in military aid to

Colombia each year (US$ billion overall) or drug eradication programs

and counterinsurgency operations.

Afer the breakdown o ormer president Andrés Pastrana’s attempts at

reconciliation with the and the National Liberation Army (), hopeso nding a peaceul solution to the armed conict were all but abandoned.

In , Álvaro Uribe was elected president afer running a hardline cam-

paign that promised to deeat the guerrillas with military orce. apping into

prevailing “War on error” rhetoric, Uribe’s policy o seguridad democrática

(democratic security) sought to rid Colombia o “narcoterrorism” by demon-

strating military superiority and establishing the presence o armed orces

throughout the country. Democracy and security were used such that the

rights to lie and to protection overshadowed certain entitlements, such as


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12 INTRODUCTION

the reedom o speech, and recongured others, such as the right to housing.

During Uribe’s two terms in offi ce, the was signicantly weakened,

Colombia’s urban areas and main roads were secured, and the economy

grew. However, internal displacement continued, violence became concen-trated in rural regions, human rights violations were widespread, poverty

and inequality deepened, and drug traffi cking adapted yet again. Uribe’s suc-

cessor, ormer deense minister Juan Manuel Santos, distanced himsel rom

the hardline policies o his predecessor, paying attention to the social under-

pinnings o the conict and reopening peace negotiations with the .

And a succession o centrist mayors—most notably Antanas Mockus and

Enrique Peñalosa in Bogotá and Sergio Fajardo in Medellín—succeeded in

reducing urban crime and violence by expanding public space, investing in

inrastructure, promoting social inclusion, and ostering civic responsibility.

Yet popular sentiments and political campaigns remain oriented toward se-

curity as the overarching goal.

Critics argue that “security” in Colombia has been too narrowly ocused

on combating drug cartels and illegal armed groups in order to ensure po-

litical stability and economic growth. Inuenced by the geopolitical rictions

o the Cold War, the War on Drugs, and the War on error, they claim, secu-

rity has been understood predominantly in military terms, ar outweighing

mechanisms o social protection. Security, they insist, should ocus morebroadly on livelihoods and on protecting the lie o the population against

a range o threats. Tese demands have ound expression within the Polo

Democrático Alternativo—a coalition o lefist political parties that has at-

tempted to counter the hegemony o the Right on the national level by o-

cusing on city politics, and in doing so has articulated alternative versions o

security ocusing more on social and economic actors than on combating

the internal enemy. But so, too, centrist mayoral administrations, such as

those o Mockus and Peñalosa, have had to position themselves within thenational security landscape. As a result, a political consensus—a governing

pact, i you will—has ormed around the imperative to protect vulnerable

populations rom threats, both o environmental and human origin. Risk

management has been accepted across the political spectrum, in part or its

ability to encompass a range o objectives while insulating its proponents

rom the conservative establishment’s efforts to criminalize, persecute, or

annihilate anything resembling radical ideology. In this orm o government,

a series o mayoral administrations with varying political commitments


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and different visions or the uture o Bogotá ound an ostensibly neutral,

“postpolitical” way to address the social and environmental problems o the

urban periphery and to build a political constituency among the urban poor.

Te politics o security in late-twentieth-century Colombia have set the par-ameters by which urban lie can be governed and lived.

Governing Risk in Bogotá

Enrique Peñalosa was elected mayor o Bogotá in and immediately

established a lofy set o goals or his two-year term. High among them was

the recovery o public space, a necessary component o his plan to create a

more inclusive, accessible, and secure city. At the time, the mayor’s vision

or the city must have seemed something o a pipe dream: the inamous

barrio o El Cartucho was only a stone’s throw rom his new offi ce in Plaza

de Bolívar, the historic center and political heart. Few dared to set oot in an

area that over the past fy years had become “a sinister urban myth o the

capital.”

Afer the Bogotazo riots o April sparked by the assassination o pop-

ulist presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the downtown area was lef

in shambles. Residents started to ee the center in the 5s, abandoning

its stately buildings and elegant streets to a hal century o precipitous de-

cline. As a result o the mass exodus o gente decente to the north and west,spacious, respectable homes were converted into working-class tenements

or simply ell into disrepair. By the s, El Cartucho was the unsaest cor-

ner o the inner city, the epicenter o insecurity in one o the most violent

and dangerous cities in the world (gure I.). When Peñalosa took offi ce

in the late s, it housed a combination o homeless people, drug addicts,

and criminals involved in a range o illegal activities—rom drug traffi cking

and arms dealing to prostitution, thef, and street crime. Cocaine, crack, and

their cheap by-product, bazuco, were ubiquitous. Te streets were lined withrubbish, and petty crime was rampant. So close to the city center and the seats

o both national and municipal government, this neighborhood epitomized

the dereliction and insecurity o Bogotá’s public space.

For Peñalosa’s vision to become reality, all this would have to change. As

long as El Cartucho remained a blight, he later recalled, “it was impossible

to envision the center o Bogotá as dynamic, lively, and attractive to locals

and visitors alike.” o that end, Peñalosa created the Urban Renewal Pro-

gram. In the hands o his successor, Antanas Mockus, the program would


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14 INTRODUCTION

eventually acquire and demolish 5 properties and relocate thousands o

their ormer occupants, destroying the heart o the barrio. Tis transor-

mation complemented Mockus’s drive to instill a “culture o citizenship”(una cultura ciudadana) among those seen to be lacking civility and civic

responsibility. o symbolize Bogotá’s commitment to a different uture, El

Cartucho would be replaced by the twenty-hectare Parque ercer Milenio,

or Tird Millennium Park.

As the clearance o El Cartucho was under way, a sudden event intensi-

ed the need to secure the city center. During President Uribe’s inauguration

ceremony on August , , mortar shells exploded a ew hundred eet

rom where the newly elected leader was being sworn in. Uribe had won ona pledge to crack down on lefist guerrillas, and his mano dura stance had

been countered by the in the weeks leading up to the election with an

escalation o bombings in both rural and urban areas. Te shells detonated

on Inauguration Day matched those used previously by the , support-

ing the theory that this group was responsible. Although one o the missiles

hit the acade o the presidential palace, at least two others went astray and

landed in the midst o the still occupied El Cartucho. Once the damage was

ully assessed, twenty-one people were ound dead.

FIG I.2 From a series o photographs taken in El Cartucho by a French photographer.Source: Stanislas Guigui, El Fiero, Calle del Cartucho, Colombia.


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Although the strike’s origin remained unveried, the government re-

sponded as i the bombs had been launched rom El Cartucho. Immediately

afer the explosions, tanks and troops dispatched to patrol the city quickly

sealed off its perimeter, attempting to regulate who and what owed in andout. El Cartucho, in this case, was more victim than perpetrator o violence;

nevertheless, it continued to be identied as a security threat. I there had

been any doubt beore the bombing that the neighborhood would be razed,

this event sealed its ate. What began as an urban problem had now been

raised to the level o counterterrorism and national security.

Te inauguration-day bombing ueled latent ears that guerrillas, known

or perpetrating violence in the countryside, were coming to terrorize

Colombia’s cities. President Uribe saw the explosions as an early justi-

cation o his intent to govern with a rm hand and to increase military

operations targeting rebel groups. He believed that militias were

orming in peripheral urban settlements throughout the country and were

“time bombs” waiting to go off. While the city center required height-

ened protection, it was these impoverished, densely populated, and loosely

governed neighborhoods—and the possibility that they could become er-

tile ground or guerrilla recruitment—that were identied as the greatest

threat.

Tis shif rom center to periphery was encouraged by the progress othe Urban Renewal Program in El Cartucho. In December 3, the media

celebrated the all o the last house, drawing a close to what the news maga-

zine Semana called “orty years o embarrassment.” Te creation o Tird

Millennium Park brought twenty hectares o public space and recreational

acilities to the city center to symbolize the dawn o a new era—what urban

planners, politicians, and the media now celebrate as its “rebirth.” As

Ángela Rivas remarks: “It is hard to believe that Bogotá, a city that just a

ew years ago was known, with good reason, to be an urban area as chaoticas it was violent and insecure, could now be considered a model o urban

governance and an exemplary case o the reduction o violence and crime

or Latin America.” But while crime and homicide rates ell, ear abated,

and the physical space o the city was transormed, the problem o urban

insecurity did not disappear. Tere were still hundreds o thousands, i not

millions, living in the city’s shadowy peripheries. In response, new poli-

cies emerged that would redene security and recongure the techniques

through which it could be pursued.


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16 INTRODUCTION

As the demolition o El Cartucho was drawing to a close, the municipal

government o Bogotá initiated a disaster risk management program aimed at

protecting the lives o poor and vulnerable populations rom environmental

hazards, such as oods, landslides, and earthquakes. Te Caja de la ViviendaPopular (or Caja, or short) was put in charge o the program, which began

with an inventory o zones o high risk in the two lowest socioeconomic strata.

Studies ound the peripheral settlements o Ciudad Bolívar—the largest and

poorest o Bogotá’s twenty localities—to be the most vulnerable (see map ).

Tough it became illegal to settle in these areas, qualied existing residents

would be granted housing subsidies conditional on their willingness to aban-

don their homes and relocate to housing developments on the extreme south-

western edge o the city or in the adjacent municipality o Soacha. Te sprawl-

ing, sel-built settlements o the urban periphery—ormerly seen as potential

breeding grounds or urban insurgency, as threats to political stability and

social order, as risks to the city—turned out to have the greatest concentration

o amilies living at risk.

We have, then, two orms o urban security, each with different ways o

dening problems and acting on them. Like the Urban Renewal Program,

the Caja was charged with relocating poor and working-class bogotanos.

But rather than securing the city as a whole, its primary objective was to

protect the lives o vulnerable populations living on the urban periphery.Rather than evicting residents and demolishing buildings, the municipal

government began encouraging households to relocate. And rather than re-

lying on the strength o the military and the police to orce evacuation, the

Caja turned to the technical expertise o engineers, architects, and social

workers, who were to play no more than a acilitating role in what was to

be a sel-directed process o resettlement. While living in these zones had

previously been prohibited by law, a hallmark o the program now was that

it was voluntary. And whereas security logics motivated both slum clearancein the city center and disaster risk management on the urban periphery, the

denition o threat had shifed rom disorder, criminality, and insurgency to

oods, landslides, and earthquakes. Uniting these two orms o government

was the problematization o the city as a security concern and, in response,

the relocation o either “risky” or “at risk” populations. Tis latter approach

to governing risk in Bogotá is the empirical ocus o the chapters that ol-

low. o understand the processes o displacement central to it, key para-

digms o urban theory need rethinking.


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Displacement in (and of) Urban Theory

Since the late nineteenth century, studies o the modern city have been con-

cerned with the problematic o displacement. Te seminal works o ÉmileDurkheim and Georg Simmel were motivated by the unprecedented disloca-

tion o peasants and their mass migration to the rapidly industrializing cities

o western Europe. Both struggled to explain the social and psychological

ramications o uprooting predominantly rural populations and relocating

them in urban environments. A similar concern drove the Chicago school

o urban sociology to search or patterns o urban orm and unction by

studying the inux o immigrant populations to the American city. Henri

Leebvre’s writings reected his preoccupation with the ever-expanding

reach o urbanization as a process o spatial commodication and its dis-

ruptive effects on nature, the countryside, and the rhythms o everyday lie.

Urbanists today remain attuned to related social and spatial processes: rom

gentrication and resettlement to dispossession and expropriation, rom mi-

gration and mobility to evacuation and eviction. Tis list points to a general

problematic that is a central eature o contemporary urban studies—the un-

coupling o people and place.

wo inuential paradigms structure our understanding o displacement

in contemporary cities: urban politi cal economy and neoliberal governmen-tality. Te eld o urban studies is too heterogeneous to be sorted quite so

neatly. But reerring to these two paradigms is a way to highlight key as-

sumptions underlying much writing on social and spatial transormations

in today’s cities and to identiy what those paradigms reveal and occlude.

Te geographer David Harvey, a tenacious and insightul critic o urban-

ization, has played a key role in advancing the rst as a powerul analytic. At

the heart o capitalism, argues Harvey, are interrelated spatial processes he

calls “creative destruction” and “accumulation by dispossession.” Creativedestruction reers to the cycles o violence required “to build the new urban

world on the wreckage o the old” as existing social and spatial orders are

destroyed to resolve political and economic crises and create uture oppor-

tunities or protable investment. While Karl Marx reerred to the “original

sin” o “primitive accumulation,” which hastened the transormation rom

eudalism to capitalism, accumulation by dispossession is the ongoing pro-

cess by which land belonging to poor, marginalized, or otherwise powerless

groups is captured by circuits o capital accumulation and converted into a


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18 INTRODUCTION

source o surplus value. Tese interrelated dynamics o displacement, Har-

vey argues, “lie at the core o urbanization under capitalism.” Although

modes o accumulation and orms o power vary in scale and scope, accord-

ing to this paradigm their undamental logic remains the same rom Parisand Manchester in the nineteenth century to New York and Chicago in the

twentieth to Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro in the twenty-rst.

Like many proponents o urban political economy, Harvey analyzes cit-

ies within the overarching structures o global capitalism, or the urbaniza-

tion process itsel, as noted by Henri Leebvre, “has now become genuinely

global.” o demonstrate the generality o this ramework, Harvey ofen

turns to specic geographies and histories. Having dedicated previous books

to North American and European cities, notably Baltimore and Paris, he oc-

casionally reerences cities outside the West—or example, Mumbai. Tere

he highlights nancial interests backed by state power that, in their quest

to turn the city into a global nancial hub, ratchet up pressure on million

slum dwellers without legal title to surrender territories they have occupied

or decades. Tis dispossession is permitted, in Harvey’s view, by the state’s

ailure to uphold its constitutional obligation to protect the lie and well-

being o the population and to guarantee rights to housing. Harvey then

shifs to urban transormations in other parts o the world, where he identi-

es the same dynamic. All processes o urban transormation, it seems, twithin this conceptual ramework.

Te armed conict in Colombia is a classic case o displacement: there

are now at least 5 million desplazados, or internally displaced persons, re-

siding mostly in the sel-built settlements o the urban periphery. So, too,

is the relocation o “at risk” populations living in these very same areas in

Bogotá. o investigate the changes under way, then, we might ask: Who is

being dispossessed, and o what? Who is doing the dispossessing? And how,

exactly, are they accumulating?Dispossession was amously analyzed by Marx as the “reeing” o peas-

ants rom their attachment to land and access to the means o production.

But unlike the dispossession o agricultural producers, whose labor pro-

vided them with subsistence, inhabitants o zones o high risk were casual

laborers already alienated rom the means o production, working primarily

outside the ormal economy in jobs such as recycling, construction, street

peddling, or domestic ser vice. Te high-risk designation and the resettle-

ment program that accompanied it have not stripped these settlers o their


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property; indeed, this program legally entitled them to houses o equal

or better value. Tey became like the enranchised liberal citizen who, as

Marx pointed out, “was not liberated rom property; he received the lib-

erty to own property.”

Teir newly acquired rights made them eligible ora government subsidy that equaled the price o a new home, and thus ena-

bled them to become legal property owners—a status that had long eluded

them.

I it is not entirely clear who was being dispossessed by the resettlement

program, it is even less clear who would have been proting rom their

dispossession. Familiar orms o capital accumulation were present, but pe-

ripheral. Te resettlement program created a population o potential home-

owners, thereby increasing demand within the ormal property market that

private developers could step in to meet. But given the high cost o real es-

tate in Bogotá and the rather strict regulations on developments that qualiy

as vivienda de interés social (social housing), resettling the urban poor is not

a lucrative emerging market. Moreover, the requirement that resettlement

beneciaries take out loans to supplement their government subsidy gener-

ated income or lending institutions, but not afer , when the subsidy

was increased to equal the cost o a new home. Nor did the utility com-

panies prot signicantly rom the ormalization o these populations, or

most settlers were already account holders paying at rates or water andelectricity, despite lacking offi cial connections to municipal inrastructural

systems.

Other possible motives or the resettlement program are even less plau-

sible. Rumors spread among some settlers that their relocation was spurred

by the discovery o uranium and other valuable resources. Te rich were

decried or hoping to build country homes on these hillsides once the poor

were resettled. More plausibly, it was thought that as the risk designation

caused property values to all, speculation and gentrication would set inby capturing the land or more protable orms o extraction and develop-

ment. But even this seemed highly unlikely, and not just because o the area’s

stigma as the most dangerous in Bogotá. For no sooner were these zones

evacuated by the resettlement program than another round o settlers would

move in. Legal eviction orders could not be enorced because o the sheer

density o people inhabiting these spaces, and there was no political will to

remove them. Afer more than a decade, despite the ailure to turn the situ-

ation to prot, the resettlement program remained in effect.


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20 INTRODUCTION

Perhaps in recognition o the diffi culty o commodiying the urban pe-

riphery, offi cial plans or the uture o these high-risk zones now envision

their reorestation, their use or recreation, their protection rom develop-

ment, and their unction as “lungs o the city.” Te goal o making Bogotá a“global” or “world-class” city may stimulate these ecologically minded proj-

ects; by attracting oreign investment, corporate offi ces, tourist dollars, and

nancial markets, they would predictably benet the elite. But this logic

ails to capture the entire process o urban transormation occurring on the

edges o Bogotá. While there is no doubt that urban political economy is key

to diagnosing displacement and dispossession in cities o the global South,

this analytic does not ully explain why, how, and to what end the state has

committed itsel in Bogotá to protecting the lives o the urban poor rom

environmental hazards.

An alternative is the paradigm o neoliberal governmentality. Popu-

lar throughout the social sciences, this paradigm associates “neoliberalism”

with the rise o modern governmental rationality and seeks to identiy its

dislocating effects. In contrast to proponents o urban political economy,

who tend to privilege global, structural, and macropolitical explanations,

adherents to this paradigm ocus more narrowly on specic governmental

techniques and the kinds o subjects created by them. Teir analyses draw

on Foucault’s of-cited lecture on “governmentality,” as well as the many re-lated studies that have ollowed in its wake, extending their conclusions to

rationalities o urban planning, government, and development. In diverse

contexts, scholars have examined the deployment o market-based logics,

the valorization o private enterprise, the spread o entrepreneurialism, the

reorm o governmental institutions, the retrenchment o the public sector,

and the ormation o responsible, sel-governing subjects. While many o

the inuential early works emphasize contingency, diversity, and variabil-

ity in the specic orms that neoliberal government can take, their analyseshave ofen been transposed uncritically to processes o urban transorma-

tion throughout the global South.

Critiques o neoliberalism regularly treat power as something to de-

nounce and resist. Tey requently imply the disintegration o earlier, pro-

gressive models o governance, which were committed to providing benets

and ser vices to the majority o the population, and the rise o new, regres-

sive ones indifferent to the living conditions o the poor. Te oil or these

critiques, however, is usually the social democratic welare state o postwar


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Europe and North America and its urban orms, neither o which have been

ully established in most other parts o the world. Neoliberalism in Latin

America, or example, has been more about imposing loan conditionalities

and enorcing structural adjustment mea sures than rolling back social wel-are mechanisms and orming sel-governing subjects. In Colombia, it has

been so tightly entangled with militarization and armed conict that the

violent terminology used to characterize neoliberalization in the North At-

lantic (e.g., “attacks” on the public sector, “war” on the working poor, “inl-

tration” o market logics) is more than metaphorical. While most critiques

in this vein are sensitive to the circulation o neoliberal techniques o gov-

ernment beyond their “sites o origin,” they ofen ignore the act that these

techniques now intermingle with political projects that, in Latin America at

least, are set on challenging neoliberalism’s hegemony.

Without discounting the theoretical sophistication and political utility

o these two paradigms, some urbanists have begun to question the degree

to which they adequately explain contemporary transormations in cities

o the global South. Tere is a growing gap, they argue, between the lived

reality o these cities and the canon o urban theory, which has by and large

been produced in and about the “great” cities o Europe and North Amer-

ica, including London, Chicago, New York, Paris, and Los Angeles. Urban

political economy and neoliberal governmentality are based on historicaldevelopments in these cities and then “applied” elsewhere. Ananya Roy

is critical o the way cities o the global South are treated as “interesting,

anomalous, different, and esoteric empirical cases” that either highlight

blind spots in existing theories—thereby reinorcing the ction o universal

applicability—or require a different set o theories altogether, creating arti-

cial divides between First and Tird World, global cities and megacities,

modernity and development. Roy insists that it is time to “articulate a new

geography o urban theory” by decentering the Euro-American locus o the-oretical production. Urban theory, this suggests, requires displacement o

a conceptual sort.

Te task o comprehending contemporary cities demands that we inter-

rogate theories o urban transormation—not simply validate them—and

query the concrete processes under way. How does urbanization under

capitalism unction according to specic histories and geographies? Are cre-

ative destruction and accumulation by dispossession the logics underpin-

ning every instance o displacement, or are there other dynamics at work?


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22 INTRODUCTION

When does neoliberal governmentality enhance and when does it constrain

our ability to understand emerging rationalities o rule? What conceptual

tools are necessary or comprehending cities distant rom the traditional

centers o theoretical production? In considering the adequacy o existingtheories, however, we must not orget that processes o urban transormation

“always outpace the capacity o analysts to name them,” as Achille Mbembe

and Sarah Nuttall remind us. Nevertheless, these questions will lead us

toward a uller understanding o cities both in and beyond the West. And

they may help us better chart the terrain on which the majority o the world’s

population struggles to live in cities and to make their cities livable.

Tis book takes up such challenges in relation to the politics o secu-

rity and the government o risk in Bogotá. Its burden is to describe urban

phenomena that cannot be ully understood by the paradigms o urban po-

litical economy and neoliberal governmentality. For example, the displace-

ment o settlers on the urban periphery is based neither on the state’s ail-

ure to protect the lives o vulnerable populations nor on the negation o

urban citizenship, but rather on the ulllment o these very same rights

and responsibilities. Moreover, there is no simple antagonism between acts

o dispossession and the popular political responses assumed to oppose

them. While our theories predispose us to expect those subject to the mu-

nicipal government’s resettlement program to ght tooth and nail to remainin place, there are many more people who demand relocation than those

who reject it. For it is within this program, not outside o or in opposition

to it, that thousands o settlers on the urban periphery engage in struggles

or political recognition, incorporation, and entitlement. It might be tempt-

ing to understand the clamor or resettlement as reecting a new variety

o accumulation by dispossession or neoliberal governmentality that works

through the very logics that might otherwise challenge it. But rather than

treating cities o the global South as either continuations o or deviationsrom amiliar scripts o urban transormation in Europe and North Amer-

ica, we must attend to dynamics that do not t neatly within them.

The Politics of Risk

When I began eldwork in Bogotá, these two theoretical paradigms together

had prepared me to investigate “neoliberal urbanism” at work. Afer all, the

resettlement program was run by a public agency (the Caja) ounded in

to build housing or the working class according to a social welare rational-


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ity. In its recent adaptation, the Caja was adhering more strictly to neoliberal

ideals: valorization o markets and their effi ciency, skepticism about the role

o the state, devolution o responsibility onto the community and the indi-

vidual, privatization o public goods and ser vices, and so on. Te target ogovernmental intervention was no longer a social class, such as workers, or

society as a whole, but individual households belonging to a narrowly delim-

ited “at risk” population. But since resettlement was ostensibly voluntary, the

Caja had to educate members o this population to become rational, respon-

sible, and prudent—that is, to desire and actualize their own relocation. As

a result, thousands o settlers on the urban periphery, previously marginal

to ormal economic and legal institutions, were being thrust onto privatized

markets or housing, credit, and utilities. In the process, relocation enabled

them to become consumers, taxpayers, and debt holders. But rather than

improving lives and livelihoods, the Caja seemed to be shredding the so-

cial, economic, and cultural abric o these communities and pushing them

arther to the extreme periphery o the city or even outside its municipal

boundaries. Not surprisingly, it was the World Bank that loaned the city o

Bogotá substantial sums o money and subsequently praised the municipal

government as a model o “good governance.”

While Bogotá’s recent effort to govern risk did at rst look like a typical

case o neoliberal urbanism, my rst ormal interview with two leaders othe Caja’s resettlement program challenged this initial assumption. eresa

was the director o the team responsible or relocating households in zones

o high risk, while Yolanda was the manager o the Caja’s eld offi ce in the

peripheral locality o Ciudad Bolívar, the hub o the program’s day-to-day

operations. Afer the usual pleasantries, I asked eresa and Yolanda to tell

me about their backgrounds. “We’re both government unctionaries, pub-

lic servants,” eresa began, gesturing to the bureaucratic offi cialdom o our

surroundings. “But this was not always the case,” she said; “I had the goodortune, the opportunity, to have participated in organizing amilies to

lay claim to land in Ciudad Bolívar—tomárnoslo [to take it or ourselves],”

she paused to exclaim, and then continued:

I organized the community to arrive at night, and we worked all night

long to make sure that we could establish shacks and lay down path-

ways. Te next day, we were ready or a ght when the police tried to

remove the invasión [“invasion” has become the common name or the


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24 INTRODUCTION

endangered city by austin zeiderman

Documents