Mi Barrio No Se Vende: Social Mobilization in a Sunbelt City

Abstract

The thesis, "Mi Barrio No Se Vende: Social Mobilization in a Sunbelt City,” is an ethnographic study documenting a soup kitchen’s efforts to combat gentrification in the city of South Tucson, Arizona. This paper examines the genealogy of urban renewal in Tucson, arguing that settler colonial logics continue to structure patterns of state intervention, property investment, and urban development. Time and time again, local government has used the concentration of Mexican American, indigenous, and nonwhite residents as the basis of establishing “blighted” areas, justifying the ongoing racialized dispossession of land. First, via urban renewal, consisting of the complete demolition of entire communities and violent removal of nonwhite residents to “modernize” the city center and currently via private-public partnerships to increase tax revenue and outside investment. Revitalization has slowly begun to take root in the barrios south of downtown Tucson. Local government continues to facilitate redevelopment efforts which are taking place under the veil of “sustainable” development—one which promises to deconcentrate poverty, increase equality, and leave the local milieu intact. Although redevelopment of South Tucson is still in its early stages, it is already apparent that it prioritizes the tastes and lifestyles of new residents and tourists over those of longtime residents. In addition to mounting displacement pressures within the barrio, community members face expulsion from the larger metropolitan area due to a severe lack of affordable housing stock produced through an ongoing process of neoliberal restructuring of subsidized housing in combination with stagnating wages nationwide. In response, the thesis offers recommendations to further community preservation strategies and policy recommendations.