As long as living is a privilege, occupying is a right: The Izidora Case and black women's activism

Abstract

What would urban research look like if we paid more attention to women – their lives, thoughts, challenges against racial practices, gender and socio-spatial segregation? The article aims to design a plot that highlights the role of black women in the disputes for place in the region of Izidora, where the occupations Rosa Leão, Esperança and Vitória are located, in the northern vector of Belo Horizonte (MG). Starting from the understanding of the complex land conflict, we seek to start with its historical context, and then analyze the encounter between the struggles around the permanence of subjects in the physical-territorial dimension. Black feminist thought is taken to elaborate a conceptual narrative that, when problematizing investigations of the production of space with neoliberal values, attributes the look to the diverse dynamics that intersect in time and space. The article was made with bibliographic research and having previously developed an extension project of technical assistance on site. The results of the analyses, pointed to the challenges of the occupations of Izidora, didn't occur without the activism of these women, who strongly resisted in their territories, although made invisible by the intersections of gender, race, class and immeasurable fabrics in the arrangements of domination.

Keywords: Izidora occupations, protagonism of black women, intersectionality, urban conflicts.