Paper short abstract:

I consider new modes of popular organization represented by the FPEBP, analysing the problems that need to be transcended when lower class people negotiate their right to the city in a context where property interests enjoy extensive political influence and drug trafficking operates.

Paper long abstract:

I consider new modes of popular organization represented by the FPEBP, analysing the problems that need to be transcended when lower class people negotiate their right to the city in a context where property interests enjoy extensive political influence and drug trafficking operates.

The FPEBP was born in 2007, but entered a phase of demobilization towards the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012 as community leaderships faced various kinds of threats as a result of this situation. This case study reflects the broader context of Brasil as the next host of the football world cup in 2014 and Olympic games in 2016, which require new investments in public transport systems, as well as the impacts of new commercial and residential development in the zone of Salvador between the historical old city and the international airport, an axis of urban development in which the 60,000 residents of Bairro da Paz find themselves occupying a strategic position. The tendencies observed in this case now threaten to marginalize this and other popular neighborhoods inside the city, where the possession of the land and the housing conditions were less precarious in the past, provoking a wave of claims and protests by several local groups and broader movements.