Journal of Urban History 2017, Vol. 43(6) 960–967 © The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav journals.sagepub.com/home/juh Review Essay Beyond Resistance: New Works on Urban Popular Politics in Latin America’s Informal Cities Edward Murphy (2015). For a Proper Home: Housing Rights in the Margins of Urban Chile, 1960-2010. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 360 pp., $27.95 (paper). Alejandro Velasco (2015). Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela. Oakland: University of California Press, 344 pp., $29.95 (paper). Bryan McCann (2014). Hard Times in the Marvelous City: From Dictatorship to Democracy in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 256 pp., $94.95 (cloth), $25.95 (paper). Brodwyn Fischer, Bryan McCann, and Javier Auyero, eds. (2014). Cities from Scratch: Poverty and Informality in Urban Latin America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 304 pp., $94.95 (cloth), $26.95 (paper). Reviewed by: Andra B. Chastain, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA DOI: 10.1177/0096144217715617 Keywords Latin America, housing, resistance, popular politics, urban, shantytowns, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela Latin America is now the most urbanized region in the world. It experienced staggering urban growth during the twentieth century as the promise of industrial jobs and better living conditions spurred widespread migration from the countryside. The metropolitan areas of São Paulo and Mexico City mushroomed more than eightfold, from fewer than two million people in 1940 to more than 15 million in 1990, while cities like Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Lima, and Santiago also swelled dramatically. 1 With housing stock unable to keep pace with demand, the region witnessed the rapid growth of precarious informal settlements, known variously as colo- nias populares in Mexico, ranchos in Venezuela, barriadas in Peru, favelas in Brazil, villas miserias in Argentina, and poblaciones in Chile. Histories of popular politics in Latin America’s informal cities have often worked within the paradigm of resistance versus co-optation. On one hand, many scholars have viewed urban squat- ters as collective protagonists on par with workers. This characterization makes sense in many cases, since Marxist parties spearheaded urban land seizures and organized to stop the removal of informal settlements, though the contours of these struggles varied. 2 As revolutionary hopes were dashed by repressive military dictatorships and further eroded by globalization, the para- digm of collective action shifted to take into account smaller-scale forms of resistance and sur- vival. 3 Some of the studies that highlight grassroots organizing or decentralized forms of resistance also implicitly critique older modes of collective action, arguing that these drew poor residents into hierarchical, dependent relationships with politicians and parties. 4 Broadly speak- ing, studies of popular politics in Latin America’s informal cities have tended to emphasize the poor as either resistant to domination or dependent on powerbrokers. There have been fewer 715617JUH XX X 10.1177/0096144217715617Journal of Urban HistoryReview Essay review-article 2017