Political cartographies of a squat building: quotidian, territory and conflict

This work aims at analyzing the process of building occupation in São Paulo, which was substantially expanded during the second half of 1990s. By analyzing « Ocupação Mauá», took as the field of this empirical research, this work aims at understanding the different urban e political dimensions of the squat buildings in São Paulo, which are related to the historical issue of popular housing policy in the city. The squat buildings by housing social movements follow this long lineage; however, there are new forms and dynamics of production of the urban space that need to be set out. On the one hand, this work takes the city as reference plane and as part of a bigger urban mesh, in relation to other events, movements and actors that dispute over other forms of ownership and management of the city, seen here as a conflict space. On the other hand, this research aims at understanding the dimension of the conflict in the production of urban spaces. The conflicted relations with the State and its operators mark the daily life of a squat building, its interactions and local agencies. By this occurs the creation of a gravitational field in which are added a big amount of different movements (political, juridical, cultural). Thus, the occupations not only are transformed into places of experimentation and creation, but also into places of dispute for the production of space. Center and connector of different subjects, movements and experience, an squat building is crossed by these lines and paths, transversally, in its territoriality. These fragments and clues will be gathered by an ethnographic research and the reconstitution of the occupants\' trajectory. (AU)