Mapping social initiatives in the face of the Covid-19 in Latin American cities

Sinergias para la solidaridad
Mapeo global de iniciativas ciudadanas frente al COVID-19 en asentamientos humanos

Bogota community initiatives to deal with Covid-19

Informal settlements are the most vulnerable to the threat of Covid-19. Owing to the poor quality of housing, overcrowding, problems of access to safe water and sanitation, as well as the loss of livelihoods, the residents of these settlements are suffering and will suffer the greatest economic and social consequences of the policies of confinement and social distancing. Faced with this situation, in Latin American cities different actors and civil society organizations have developed a wide repertoire of strategies and initiatives that seek to provide immediate and medium-term responses to the emergency in poor neighborhoods. The aim of this paper is to highlight these initiatives, analyze them, and construct a first typological approach according to the promoters, their scope, purposes, and field of intervention. Direct contact with social organizations and platforms, as well as virtual ethnography, have allowed us to identify and characterize the initiatives. The analysis and typology proposed show a repertoire of social initiatives that is diverse in form and resources for action, but limited in field and purpose. The mapping of social initiatives will allow the generation of synergies to make the actions of the present more effective and to imagine future scenarios in the Latin American peripheries.

Key words: informal settlements, Covid-19, social initiatives, collective action, Latin American cities, Atlas of informality


Isabel Duque Franco, Gynna Brightside, Catalina Ortiz, Jota Samper

See entire project at https://www.synergiesforsolidarity.org/