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“Alejandro Velasco’s compelling history of one of Venezuela’s most symbolically charged urban neighborhoods illuminates the possibilities and contradictions of Venezuela’s postwar politics. No other English-language study has so effectively analyzed the complexity of popular engagement with Venezuelan democracy in the decades preceding Chavismo.”—Brodwyn Fischer, author of A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro
"This book just might 'crack the code' on Venezuela, an enigmatic country that resists easy understanding. It will surely become a reference point for understanding Latin American politics and social movements."—David Smilde, author of Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A History of Place and Nation
PART ONE. Landscapes of Opportunity
1. Dictatorship’s Blocks: The Battle for the New Urban Venezuela
2. Democracy’s Projects: Occupying the Spaces of Revolution
PART TWO. Paths to Democracy
3. From Ballots to Bullets: The Rise of Urban Insurgency, 1958–1963
4. “The Fight Was Fierce”: Uncertain Victories in the Streets and the Polls, 1963–1969
PART THREE. Streets of Protest
5. Water, Women, and Protest: The Return of Local Activism, 1969–1977
6. “A Weapon as Powerful as the Vote”: Seizing the Promise of Participation, 1979–1988
7. Killing Democracy’s Promise: A Massacre of People and Expectations
Conclusion: Revolutionary Projects
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Alejandro Velasco is Assistant Professor at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
Summary
Based on years of archival and ethnographic research in Venezuela's largest public housing community, this book offers an in-depth history of urban popular politics before the Bolivarian Revolution. It also provides context for understanding the democracy that emerged during the presidency of Hugo Chavez.
Additional text
Velasco’s complex engagement with the everyday practice of politics is a model of good urban history... great comparative potential well beyond its contribution to defining urban popular politics in Latin America. Above all, Barrio Rising makes the important point that incomplete promises create lasting legacies in the built environment and in politics.
