MUTUAL
AID HOUSING COOPERATIVES IN URUGUAY
A
City Built by Us All
By
Guillermo Font (*) (Spanish:
Haciendo la Ciudad entre todos)
(English
translator: Alicia Porrini)
Look more:
Housing
Cooperative for Mutual Aid
"Nuevo Amanecer" (New Sunrise)
A
CITY is a place to live but mainly a city is a group of PEOPLE. It is a place
where everyone and every family develops an interchange with equals. From this
place where life is shared, a SOCIETY is built with equal rights and
obligations for every member. A
city is the COMMUNITY of men and women who contribute with their effort to
the creation of a common space.
In Uruguay, there is a social urban movement which is engaged in the
collective building of the city. There are over fifteen thousand families
(more than 50.000 people) of low income who are members of four hundred
cooperatives which build (or want to build) their own neighbourhoods by
themselves all together. This type of building is known with the general
denomination of “mutual aid”. These words encompass a broad meaning of
concepts and principles involving solidarity, fraternity, participation, self-management;
education, work, development and organisation; unity, community and struggle;
housing popular integral, habitat and environment.
Mutual aid housing cooperatives constitute a singular experience based
on the development of a community and their contribution to an integral
solution to the issue of housing for vast sectors of society which do not have
access to individual loans.
This initiative is based on a previous Uruguayan tradition of self-building
with the help of family and friends; strong sympathies for the libertarian
ideas and solidarity of the Italian and Spanish immigrants that arrived at the
beginning of the century; and also based on Artigas’s ideas of federation
and social integration (with a multi-ethnic and cultural content) forged in
the battles for independence and for Latin-American integration at the
beginning of XIX century. Another
contribution has been that of the pioneers of Rochdale (England), the textile
workers of those years who contributed with the Philosophical Principles of
modern cooperativism, renewed in the International Cooperative Alliance. Also
the experience of Sweden housing cooperatives has influenced the elaboration
of Act 13.728.
The three first cooperatives were founded in 1966 in the interior of
the country and served as basis for Article 10 of Act 13.728, passed in
Parliament on December 17, of 1968. As from moment, the housing cooperative
movement started its growth, based on its economic efficiency, giving the best
solutions to housing at the lowest cost, and also based on its immediate
insertion in the most authentic experiences of the Uruguayan social movement.
Self-management and mutual aid
Through a collective process, the group becomes a Cooperative which
works on house-building, urban environment and community services. The
cooperative families, besides participating in the civil works, also analyse
and discuss, propose and decide, through their democratic participation in the
Cooperative Assembly, each and every stage and situation encountered along the
way.
The premises are chosen and the social (organisation and community
services), urban (green spaces,
community rooms, internal roads) and architectural
(housing plans, work schedules) projects are studied by cooperative
members with the hired team of technicians (architect, social assistant,
accountant and notary public). The cooperative is legally constituted and then,
an application for a loan is submitted to the corresponding agencies (at
present, the Ministry of Housing). The granting of loans is a process which
may take a long time, depending on the political will of the government
authorities in office. During the dictatorship, some cooperatives had to wait
for 18 years before starting construction; also, several unsuccessful attempts
were made by the military government to dissolve cooperatives.
Among the first decisions taken by the Assembly is the election of the
name and flag of the Cooperative, symbols which constitute part of its
permanent identity.
All the families composing the Cooperative are at the same time
building companies, labour, resource administrators and users to whom the
built houses are destined. Each family group has to contribute with a minimum
of twenty-one-hour work week during the building stage, which is the
equivalent to 15% of the capital constituting the cost of the works. Each
house with two bedrooms has an area of approximately 70 sq. m. The delivery of
the keys at the end of the works is an exciting moment for all members of the
family, as it is only then that everyone gets to know which of the houses will
be awarded to them.
Men and women work jointly in the works, and it is often the women who
are in charge of those tasks with a greater quality of finishing, such as tile
laying in bathrooms and kitchens.
The organisation is based on solidarity, equality, mutual help and
democratic participation, being self-management of resources and community
ownership of the building complex the main characteristics of these
Cooperatives. Also, rotation in positions of direction and control are typical
features, since re-election is only possible after a period of two or three
years (depending on the case).
The Assembly is the highest authority of the Cooperative and is
composed by one representative of every family group. The directive bodies (Directive
Board and Cooperative Promotion Commission, Fiscal commission and Electoral
Commission) are elected annually with partial renewal of their members.
Developing a cooperative is a
long educational process of social integration and training, which starts at
the moment of creation of the group, before the foundation of the Cooperative
itself, and continues with community life and social development as time goes
by. The starting point is an individualist conception: the need for housing,
but during the various stages and tasks, this individual need develops into
solidarity attitudes.
The
Right to a Decent Life
The cooperatives are grouped in the Unified Federation of Uruguayan
Mutual Aid Housing Cooperatives as of May 24, 1970. The solution to housing
has been only a part of the concerns of this movement. The struggle for the
right to a decorous life for those sectors of society who live in the worst
conditions has also been a significant part of our project, which is
characterized by its capacity of solidarity and proposal.
Once the work is completed, the stage of
living together starts. Stimulating the social development of
neighbourhoods and with different degrees of success, cooperatives maintain
and manage a broad scope of activities for all ages.
According to the needs of each group, community services are created,
which are self-managed by the Cooperative, to improve life quality: medical
and dentist surgeries; libraries and cultural centres; nurseries; sports and
recreation activities; maintenance of green spaces, lighting and paving;
improvements of public services; construction and donation of schools, etc.
There are other services which are centralized by the Federation: legal,
notaries and accounting advice; Prefabrication Plant; Agreements with medical
emergencies and other institutions; Training Centers, Vacation Colonies and
Students Homes, among others.
In spite of their contribution to society and to the social and
community development on the city outskirts, housing cooperatives have had to
struggle for their rights. Sometimes
they have occupied fiscal lands or organised large demonstrations and protests
in the centre of Montevideo and of other cities.
Another face of our social action are the so-called "Solidarity
Sundays", when hundreds of cooperativists visit the site of construction
of a cooperative complex and contribute with five-hour’s
labour to that Cooperative, which represents an advance of thousands of
hours for the building of the complex.
An alternative proposal
The experience of so much struggle and sacrifice along so many years
developed the need of translating reinvindication and demand into alternative
proposals for building our city. This
contribution in quality was called the “Urban Reform”, and was mainly
based on the interchange with social organisations of other countries.
Naturally this process started with the need for housing of the first
cooperativists in the late 60s; then it was fostered by the need of
contributing to the development of services (transport, sewage, schools,
health) in those places far away from town centers, because those were the
areas we could afford. During the dictatorship, as all other organisations of
the social movement, housing cooperatives had to endure the hardships of the
period. This story has been written since there is a need of sharing the
experience both inside and outside the country. 
At the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s a fundamental step is
taken and an alternative proposal is created to build up the city from the
people’s perspective: the right to build and live also in central areas with
all services. This proposal focuses on prioritising the general interest over
particular and speculative interests which turn housing into a consumption
commodity, a conception which can apply to privileged sectors, but not to low-income
workers, to whom housing should be a use commodity.
National and International Interchange
For a long time FUCVAM has maintained interchanges and has coordinated
activities and experiences with cooperatives, unions and other social
organisations and NGOs, as well as with municipal and governmental agencies,
both in our country and all over the world.
FUCVAM is an obligatory reference in the sphere of housing cooperatives
of self-management and mutual aid in different countries. Some Europeans NGOs
have supported several FUCVAM projects on cooperative education and training,
social and community development, as well as
some house-building pilot projects.
Among the main organisations with which agreements or interchanges have
been made, are the Swedish Cooperative Union, CEBEMO in Holland, the Central
de Trabajadores Argentinos, the Movimiento de Ocupantes e Inquilinos de Buenos
Aires (Argentina), CEVE of Córdoba (Argentina), the Unión de Movimientos de
Vivienda Popular de Brasil, the Federación de Vivienda de Colombia and
Habitat of Cuba. Cooperatives in Uruguay have been visited in several
occasions by people from various social movements and cooperatives,
Universities, NGOs and technicians from governments and municipalities from
Sweden, Holland, Germany, Italy, England, South Africa, Cuba, United States of
America, Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, Brasil,
Paraguay and Argentina.
FUCVAM is also founder-member of the Confederación Uruguaya de
Entidades Cooperativas (CUDECOOP) and of the Secretaría Latinoamericana de la
Vivienda Popular (SELVIP); and it is also a member of the Confederación
Latinoamericana de Cooperativas de Trabajadores (COLACOT), of the Housing
Commission of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) and of the Habitat
International Co-alition (HIC).
We have received a Diploma by the United Nations Centre for Human
Settlements for our labour in the sphere of popular habitat, within the
framework in the activities developed by FUCVAM along 1997, in the tenth
anniversary of the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless, and an
Honorable Mention in the World Habitat Award 1998, by the Building and Social
Housing Foundation (BSHF) of England.
The Contribution to Montevideo De-centralization
The cooperative experience in Uruguay has also contributed to the
ongoing process of citizen participation, municipal de-centralization and
service de-concentration of the capital of the country. Since the beginning of
this process in 1990, with the territorial division of Montevideo in 18 Zones
and the creation of Local Governments with their Local Boards and Neighbour
Councils and Zone Communal Centres, the neighbours have gradually been
empowered.
The role of the Neighbour Council is highly significant in this context,
since it represents the neighbours and their organisations, and permanently
monitors the municipal government with concrete proposals for the development
of its own Zone and eventually of the City as a whole. The Council is an
obligatory reference for the Local Board and the Municipal Government at the
time of decision making.
Councils discuss the problems, reivindications and iniatives of
neighbourhoods, and keep a close relationship with neighbours and social
organisations. They make proposals and evaluate the key definitions for the
development of the Zone life and municipal management (Strategic Development
Plan, Five-year Plan, management key issues and annual budget, work plans and
social policies.)
Many cooperativists have been proposed by their grassroot organisations,
and have been elected as members of the Neighbour Councils in several Zones of
Montevideo. They are accustomed to administrating and managing large
communities, and therefore they feel comfortable in Councils, since these are
bodies where, through democratic elections, they represent their neighbours,
in the administration and management of small city parts, building the city
all together.
Guillermo Font:
-
Councilor of the Zone 8
of Montevideo (Local
Government)
-
Member of
COVIMT 5
, a Mutual
Aid Housing Cooperative (http://www.chasque.apc.org/guifont/covimt5.htm)
-
Member of the Electoral Commission (1989 y 1998),
Fiscal Commission (1990) and National Directive Board
(1993) of FUCVAM
-
Editor of Autogestión Vecinal
(http://www.chasque.apc.org/guifont)
-
Editor of
vecinet-notici@s
(http://www.chasque.apc.org/guifont/vecinet.htm)
- Collaborator of
CONTACTAR, magazine of municipal governments –edited for
Latin-America in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina- (http://www.revistacontactar.com.ar)
-
Collaborator of the local journal
Charrúa, (Zone Nº 8 of Montevideo)
-
Electrician (Independent worker)
Correo
Electrónico: