Looking Through the Mirror: the pratice of techinical assistance to social movements in Brazil seen by uruguayan experience

Abstract

The Uruguayan model of housing cooperatives emerged in the 1960s from movements in civil society. This experience was adapted to Latin American realities and arrived in Brazil in the 1980s, along with the redemocaratizac?a?o process, which made the emergence of new actors on the political scene and recon gured the action of housing movements, which besides claiming passed propose projects with popular participation. The success of the self-managed housing production depends on three factors: the government, responsible for housing policy for self-management, the organized population, which will manage the project, and tech- nical advice, support of the whole process. In this article we seek to re ect on this third factor, that is, the possibilities and limits of performance of technical advisory services in the Brazilian context. To achieve this objective, the Uruguayan experience as a case con- trol. The choice of this approach proves to be useful both to under- stand our reality, and to visualize other possibilities. The contexts of each country led to di erent forms of assimilation of housing self-management. While in Uruguay pilot experiences have result- ed in a national law regulating the housing cooperatives in Brazil had experiences in several municipalities that until 2004 did not succeed in becoming a national policy. The exponent of these ex- periences is the FUNAPS-Comunita?rio, launched in 1992 by the City of Sa?o Paulo. However, using this case as an example reduces the issue and mutes other successful experiences. Therefore, we will use the Rio experience, which although small, has peculiarities, such as the adoption of collective ownership in some cooperatives.