ABSTRACT
Villa 31, today known as Barrio Carlos Mugica, is the most famous and stigmatized informal settlement of Buenos Aires, given its longevity, scale and central location. This strategic position has been a pivotal factor behind successive eviction attempts spearheaded by constitutional governments and dictatorships — both conservative and progressive — for nearly a century. In recent decades, this neighbourhood has emerged as a paradigmatic case study of the community's legal recourse in battles over urban space and the right to live in the city. Currently, after an intense struggle that involved the deployment of a wide range of legal, political and social tools, a comprehensive neighbourhood improvement process is now underway. Although fraught with enormous risks and challenges, it nonetheless stands as a remarkable achievement for the community, bolstered by a vast support network that included academic teams, civil society organizations and public advocacy agencies.
This chapter analyses the conflicts and judicial processes that unfolded over the past decade and a half in Villa 31, which entails reconstructing the many facets of a period when state intervention in this neighbourhood and other villas radically shifted.
