Scholar speaks on Latin slums

Cut into rock on the sides of mountains, the make-shift houses of Latin American barrios were vividly portrayed Tuesday in the photographs and lecture of Magaly Sanchez, a visiting scholar from the University of Venezuela. Speaking in one of an on-going series of lectures sponsored by the Latin American Studies Program, Sanchez described the process by which almost 60 percent of Latin Americans have come to reside in the barrios. Handmade settlements frequently found on the outskirts of the city, barrios house the poverty-stricken lower classes most directly affected by Latin America's economic depression. The barrios arose from a 1920s and '30s migration of rural farmers to the cities in search of economic opportunity. Unable to provide its citizens with economic opportunity or such traditional components of social life as education and housing, Latin American governments have neglected large portions of their populations, according to Sanchez. These people, forced to find alternative means of acquiring social necessities, now live in the houses of the barrios -- which are constructed at best out of concrete and bricks, but at worst of cheap forms of zinc and debris. The Latin Americans' lack of employment opportunities has led to the travelling workers and trashmen's practicing informal economic activity. The workers and vendors live in the barrios by night but travel to the city by day to sell merchandise in the streets, Sanchez noted. Once condoned and encouraged by the state, these informal activities are now repressed by the government due to the worsening economic situation in Latin America. "These people, becoming nomads, must travel farther and farther to find work," said Sanchez, who has spent years conducting research in the unpaved streets and dirt roads of the barrios. The nomadic life has led to a breakdown in the structure of barrio families, Sanchez continued. The children wander the streets, sometimes losing their "conceptions of home" and not returning to their families for extended periods of time. "There is a lot of activity in the streets, people hanging out for hours without jobs or full-time work," said College freshman Adriana Lopez, a Daily Pennsylvanian photographer from Caracas who has walked through her city's barrios. Sanchez explained that in response to the disintegration of the family structure, the children find alternative lives in Melandros, roving street gangs devoted to illegal and informal activities. Once referring to a man who worked in the city but lived in the barrios, the term Melandros now applies to the gangs who remain in the barrios selling drugs and water. "There is no water supply in the barrios but a state truck comes around once a week to allow the people to purchase water to fill their containers with," Sanchez said. "They sometimes use the same water for days." Isolated from the mainstream of the city, the barrios have developed their own forms of social differentiation. "They have become cities within the cities -- housing people excluded from the mainstream of society and living on its boundaries," said Lopez, who described the barrios' atmosphere as "tense and vivid." She added that she often hears screams coming from the small houses and dirty streets. "I feel different when I'm there -- the way people talk and dress inside."