Squatting with Andrew

Andrew joins us to chat about the history of squatting and its place in creating a more equitable world.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M hey everyone, and welcome to take it happen here.
I'm Andrew how due Channel Andrewism and today I want
to talk about the squatting movement. Actually, before I do that,
I'm joined today by my co hosts Your Cause Andrew

(00:22):
or Garrison Davis and James Stout, and I am your producer, Sophie,
and I am here Andrew. Please continue, Thank you, Sophie.
I want to talk about the squatting movement. I'm particularly
how people love overcome the analities of privatizing land and
restricting people's access to it so they could cove a

(00:45):
life for themselves. Um in this troubling world. Now, I
think a lot of people are at least passingly familiar
with the squatting movements. The political squatting movements where be
an anarchist, autonomous store, socialist and nature that have taken

(01:07):
place in Italy, the US, and most famously Denmark where
they had you know, Freetown Christiania set up. But outside
of the global North and much of the rest of
the world, squatting is just a fact of life. It
doesn't typically though sometimes it does have radical political ambitions.

(01:31):
So today I'm not going to be spending time discussing
the squatting movement in Europe or North America, but instead
discussing the millions of people in the world lack of
access to land where they can find secure shelter and
have turned to what has been deemed informal occupation or

(01:54):
squatting to find residents. Most specifically, I'll be discussing the Caribbean,
but first I need to get into some statistics. It's
always that kind of weird, right. In nifty only eighty
six cities around the world had populations of one million
people or more. In twenty sixteen, there were just over

(02:17):
six hundred cities that met this threshold. Over half of
the world's population now lives in urban areas, and nearly
a billion, if not a billion I asked to me
to be living in in fourmal settlements, mostly in the
urban and perry urban areas of less developed countries. I

(02:38):
don't know if any of you have read Planets of
the Slums by Mike Davis. I don't think I have,
but he he discusses this phenomenon, this explosion in urbanization,
and the fact that unfortunately, you know, these cities aren't
exactly urban Eden's They are deeply impoverished, filled with makeshift

(03:00):
and often unsafe, whether it be you know, poison us
or just poorly constructed or disease written dwell ends areas
such as their roots Quarantina, Mexico cities, Santa Cruz, Maya, Hualco,
Rio DeRos Favelas and Cairo is a city of the

(03:22):
dead ware, up to one million people living homes made
out of actual tools. Now Davis addresses the issues root cause,
that being post colonial neoliberal policies driven by free market
catholicst principles. It is yes, cities modernized in the wake
of the colonial era, a lot of the same zone

(03:44):
and boundaries enforced by imperial powers across racial and soce
economic lines were continued, so quality colonization did not really
take place, and did imperial rule didn't lead to a
magical increase in equality e galitianism. It's just post colonial
rulers took up the mantel where a colonial rulers left

(04:04):
so and of course this switch, this changing of hands
of power was kept up by the International Monetary Fund,
which stepped in on behalf of these elites and pushed
the poorest citizens basically into thickly concentrated slums by making

(04:25):
it easier for the ruling class to ignore these issues
and prioritize the affluent. The depth restructure and policies and
nine s also LEDs a lot of governments cutting down
on their public health and education investment expenditure so that
they could repay the loans that they had been forced

(04:48):
to take out. David spent a lot of time talking
about Asia and sometime talking about the increasing hardship in
African cities. But the situation of squatting is off to
overlooked in the Caribbean, and so I'd like to draw
some attention to that. I think that anyone who has

(05:10):
lived in the Caribbean or as family in the Caribbean
would be somewhat familiar with the idea of family land,
which is this idea that you know, you have these
plots that the family essentially owns collectively, maybe somebody living there,
or it may just be landed as being passed along

(05:33):
for anyone who needs it. Um A lot of this
land was acquired by purchase, and a lot of it
was acquired by squatting. In turn, Dad in Jamaica and
Puerto Rico and Martinique and Barbadoes, squatting was how a
lot of recently emancipated people gained some foothold to live

(06:04):
now they could not stay on the plantation system. Now,
the early squatting movement was largely wiped out by the
growing plantation system um, but eventually a new squatting movement
would arise due to escaped slaves and maroons and post

(06:28):
indentured individuals who would resettle um on those regions that
were previously wiped out by the plantation system. When I

(06:50):
spend most of the focus of this episode discussing what
took place in Jamaica, because I discovered this really excellent
research paper done by Pressergene Besson. But Jamaica is really
quite an interesting example because Jamaica is one of the
few Caribbean countries that had a successful sustained maroon movements

(07:11):
that lasted into the twenty one century. And so what happened,
as is the case for a lot of these colonies,
is you have this sitting model of land ownership called
crown land. Basically all the land of the crown deemed
themselves to own by virtue of colonized. In these places,

(07:32):
crown land would often be you know, parceled out when
they wanted to attract new colonists to the different colonies,
and so enslaved people in Jamaica created these squatters, settle
months on Crown land, basically recaptured that land and created

(07:53):
villages and communities um in as Maroons in that context
of colonial violence, and of course these governments would demolish
the squads settlements and try to effect land capture. But

(08:15):
in Jamaica, the Maroons succeeded, particularly the Leeward Maroons, as
they were two different groups to Winwood Maroons in the
Leewood Moroons, and that's a whole different history. Today, a
Kampong village is the only survive in village for the
Jamaican Leewood Maroons, and there's also the oldest persistent Maroon

(08:37):
society in African America. After the slaved Africans and Creoles
escaped the plantations and squatted Crown Land, they waged successful
guerrilla warfare against the British colonists in the Foost Maroon
War and the leadership of Colonel Couju, and that land

(08:57):
would be the basis of two Leewood Rooon villages that
be in Coudo's Town in St. James and a kampongs
Town in St. Elizabeth, a Kampong being named after couldos
brother in arms, Captain Kampong. Eventually, Couldow's Town would be
renamed Trelawny Town after the treaty between the British Governor

(09:21):
would grant the Moroon's their freedom and fifteen hundred acres
of legal freehold land. A Kampong Town, on on the
other hand, did not really get any legal recognition until
a land grant was given to them to some two
thousand five dcres around set a couple of decades later

(09:46):
between six the Second Maroon War before between the Trelawny
Town Maroons and the British colonists. Because of course, the
British did what they would do and whipped to the
Maroons for the theft of pigs in Montego Bay. Of course,
this is just the insight and incident, as these things

(10:08):
tend to be, for the deeper discontent regarding access to
the land, and after this Second Maroon War, the Trillony
Maroons ended up being deported to Nova Scotia. So, for
those a bit familiar with you know, Canadian history, the
Maroons are moved and resettled in Canada. As a result

(10:32):
of this and the Trintown Ruins land being confiscated, a
compunc Town became the soul surviving village, and today it
remains Common Treaty town. It is owned in common by
the some I believe it's like just over three thousand adults,

(10:53):
all of which by the way, claimed descent from Colon Couju.
And they sort of have a mixed settlements, producing for
household use, rare and livestock, utilizing the forest for medicines
and timber um, cultivating food forests and provision grounds. And

(11:15):
even after that was of the commitude migrate, they would
still have that connection to their commons and often returned
to either live or visit. Sloney Town. On the other hand,
after being recaptured by the Crown, it was eventually purchased
and transformed into family lands by the descendants of slaves, lanterns,

(11:38):
and ruins, and of course squatting played a part in
that development. Most recently in Latin America and the Caribbean,
there has been a move by governments switching from a
policy of trying to eradicate squatters and instead trying to
give them titled their lands, either granting them or usually

(12:00):
selling it to them in an effort to alleviate poverty,
so they could use their house as you know, collateral
for business loans and that kind of thing. And that's
basically what happened for a compoun town and for Trelawney Town,
where the captured land was surveyed and subdivided and put
for sale, and so the squat was were able to

(12:20):
purchase the land and the government was able to impose
taxation on the people who lived on that land. Now
I spoke of squatting in the Caribbean lats market not

(12:42):
ratherically political, but there are political slash religious movements that
have used squatting to gain a foothold. For example, the
Revival Zion movements and offshoot of Rasterfarian movements. If I'm honestly,
couldn't find much information about them, but they're enough through

(13:05):
Jamaican religion and slash cult and so they managed to
capture a lot of the land near Lawney Town and
would often settled their homes right behind the city councils
no squatting signs. Eventually, you know, you have about thirty

(13:25):
househoods who have basically recaptured their land from Babylon. As
Rastafarians would describe the state um, their community, which they
called Zion, became a very vibrant squatter settlement of some

(13:46):
seventy house yards on about thirty acres of captured land.
Eventually the land was surveyed and subdivided, of course, trying
to tax and control the people that were there. But
the situation led to a lot of people still you know,

(14:09):
not being able to afford the land, and still of
course having to squat on the land that they lived on.
But so long difficulty with squatted land is that it's
a very um tenuous, very fragile state of being. The
future is often unsitting and clay. It's it's more secure,

(14:31):
i would say, than being like homeless, but you're still
very much subject to state violence um. And even when
so called legal avenues opened up for you to get
the land, you know, through purchase, the fact that you
had to squat in the land in the first place
should be some indication that you probably can't afford to

(14:52):
buy land. But squatting enables people at least in the
interim two potentially you know, develop some funds and stuff
until they are able to secure a future for their families.

(15:17):
I think a lot of the liberal solutions to the
issue of squatting and poverty is to replace these sorts
of systems and putting instead like proper private property rights
and giving these people private property so that they could
achieve sustainable development goals and all the other buzz words

(15:37):
that you know these programs tend to use. I think
the future of these kinds of projects, however, should be
more along the lines of commons. I think that the
fact that they were able to secure that land without
the government's approval should be an indication that the government

(15:58):
should not need to approve for people to live on
the if you're called home. I've spoken a previous episode
about barb Uda and they are commons, and I really
don't see why. I do see why, But I really

(16:19):
believe the solutions these isssues lies in reclaiming the commons,
lies in rejecting these colonial and post colonial governments which
based themselves on exclusion and illegality, and bring about participatory

(16:40):
local management of the land by the people for the people.
And that's about it. Thanks. I do you think it
was really fascinating? Any any final thoughts? Scare James. My
final thought is that we have a live share of Wonderful. Yeah,
just thing I was thinking about as we talked about

(17:01):
squatting this one. You will be excluded unless you can
pray the cost of entry or work out how to
not be excluded, I guess. But it's on the twenty
six of October. I nearly forgot what month it was,
and you can buy tickets on the internet. Yeah, so
we're doing this live stream October six pm. It is

(17:22):
a live virtual event and you can get tickets at
moment dot ceo slash I see h H will link
that in. The episode will be a fun, spooky themed
live show who It could Happen Here as a production

(17:43):
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