The right to the city from a gender perspective in the El Gallito neighborhood (Guatemala)

Abstract

The cities of the world concentrate economic and social powers and, by their own idiosyncrasy, offer the necessary tools to face the new development challenges. However, as recently stated by the United Nations (2018), the increase in vulnerability and social exclusion has directly led to a notable growth in inequalities between regions and cities. In addition, in recent decades’ urban spaces have emerged strongly in which social imbalances, lack of community resources, deterioration and degradation of the environment, have been accentuated within cities giving rise to so-called vulnerable neighborhoods. The recognition of such situations by the United Nations has materialized in the Sustainable Development Goal 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities in order to "make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable." The increasingly evident emergence of this type of environment necessarily recovers the theoretical conception of the right to the city since: “it cannot be conceived as a simple right of visit or return to traditional cities. It can only be formulated as the right to urban life, transformed, renewed” (Lefebvre, 1969, p. 138).

Therefore, the study presented is focused on the city of Guatemala whose selection has been based on accessibility to direct contacts with professionals working in the city and that, thanks to the people contacted, it has been possible to establish more contacts with citizenship resident in the El Gallito neighborhood, located in the capital city. In the last Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (2016), the intervention of the Delegation of Guatemala declared itself to be the least urbanized country in the most urbanized region in the world and highlighted the opportunity to redefine the country's development model, framing in this context the Urban Agenda GT of national character. In this way, the need for urban planning is highlighted in order to reduce inequality gaps and avoid the extension of urban areas with people in high-risk areas, among others. However, it should be noted that Guatemala is one of the fourteen countries with the highest rates of violence in the world, aggravated by the presence of criminal groups. The presence of maras and flags in different areas of Guatemala and different countries of Latin America, are part of the day-to-day life of citizens residing in these environments. Thus, the object corresponds to "determine the different types of sociability existing in the neighborhood of El Gallito (Guatemala) from the community perspective." To achieve this goal, a total of ten auditions (individual and group) have been made in order to discern what urban life is like in El Gallito by different profiles: technicians, religious and citizens, and in particular, what role they play Women in the urban work of El Gallito. For the analysis of the different auditions, the Maxqda2018 computer program has been used to codify and categorize the speeches of the auditioned people according to the objective and indicators of this communication. Regarding the results, it should be noted that they have been obtained within the framework of an investigation carried out at the international level in order to analyze the phenomenon of vulnerability and social exclusion in Guatemala and in Spain from the selection of two neighborhoods vulnerable. In this case, the main results include the violence (citizen and institutional) to which its residents are subjected, with special mention to adolescents and women of El Gallito. In addition, the development of the capacity of territorial resilience as a means of coexistence in the face of the climate of violence of criminal groups and organized gangs, is one of the key issues that has been indirectly mentioned throughout the speeches. In addition to the stigmatization climate and population rejection of people living in El Gallito, they result in the identification of this neighborhood as a vulnerable space in the capital city.

Finally, among the most outstanding conclusions of the study it is worth pointing out, on the one hand, the paralysis of the administration due to the chronicity of the situation, and, on the other hand, the existence of explicit and implicit phenomena to the community, as is the case with the strong stigmatization social towards the neighborhood and its residents, as well as the naturalization (institutional and citizen) of the control exercised by groups and bands organized over the geographical boundaries of El Gallito.