Squatting with Andrew

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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 indentured individuals who would resettle um on those regions that

were previously wiped out by the plantation system. When I 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

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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 of cool Zone Media and more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool Zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.