On conceptual hegemony and blanqueamiento vis-a-vis Latin urbanism in London

Abstract

The commentary focuses on two arguments addressed in the article which resonates with my research about Latin America's urban margins and Latin urbanisms in London. It will first address gentrification's conceptual hegemony and its adoption in other regions of the world where neither its translation nor conceptual understanding suffice or allow for broader nuances of the processes embedded in urban change. It will then discuss the use of blanqueamiento as a concept vis-a-vis Latin urbanism in London to argue for the need of dialogical regional interconnections.

Blanqueamiento as a weapon to distort, adapt and utilize against their oppressors, seeking to build alternatives by which gentrification’s alleged hegemony is neither fully negated nor fully reinscribed … operates ‘alongside, in contradistinction to, in tandem with, and against gentrification (p. 7).

I’m drawn to two arguments addressed in the article which resonates to some of my research and to which I respond here:

Conceptual hegemony of gentrification and its adoption in other regions of the world where neither its translation nor conceptual understanding suffice or allow for broader nuances of the processes embedded in urban change.

Blanquemiento as a concept vis-a-vis Latin urbanism in London.

Conceptual hegemony

The question Who is Gentrification? is a provocation to think about the limits of gentrification linguistically and geographically. It invites us to reflect upon the limits of relying on Anglo terminology and the dominance of theories emanating from the Global North, but on a more mundane way, as in the example provided, gentrificación is a concept that that does not fit perfectly in the physique of people's everyday life. It is not a simple joke to think about Who is Gentrificación, the authors explained, if we were to think about names like Encarnación, Asunción and the likes. This made me think about who is embodied in processes of gentrification, not just who is interpellated by and in charge of such processes, but about knowledge production, distribution and circulation of theories and ways of understanding and explaining urban transformations. It speaks to both, the languages and the concepts we use to describe and understand urban change.

Blanqueamiento is presented as a response to the normative hegemonic understanding of gentrification, and as a concept that sees its origins in the streets of Mexico City to describe processes of urban change. The challenge to the hegemony of gentrification, as a concept and theory, led me to think about the production and distribution of knowledge about cities in and across Latin America. In reflecting about my work when writing from and about the urban margins of a global city like London I often asked where and what counts as Latin America. What are Latin American urban cultural studies in the diaspora? Why is it that Latin American studies in the UK exclude its diasporas and its migrant population?

In an article soon to be published (Román-Velázquez et al., 2024) with colleagues in the United States (Jessica Retis) and in Argentina (Alejandra Garcia Vargas) we reflect upon our experiences of living and writing form the urban margins whether in Latin America or in its diaspora. In responding to a call for a book about Latin Americas urban margins, we felt compelled to ask the following questions: Where does Latin America live? How are Latin America's urban margins theorised and experienced? What does it mean to be placed at the margins, both physically and emotionally? What is the relationship between borders, migration, periphery and senses of the city in a highly deterritorialised and politicised social experience? We argued that Latin American spaces are not confined to the geographical boundaries that define the geo-political region and that the construction of Latin American diasporic spaces is equally important in this dialogue about Latin America's urban margins.

We challenged academic discourses that privilege metropolitan and capital cities in the production of knowledge about Latin American cities. We drew on our experience of working across Latin American urban margins in different geo-political territories (London, UK; Arizona, USA; and Jujuy, Argentina) and from a communication studies perspective that is highly interdisciplinary to argue that there is a need to deconstruct the traditional notion of places to produce different knowledges of and about Latin American urban communication studies, one that is more inclusive of ordinary cities (Robinson, 2006), other cities or cities elsewhere: the noncapital, nonmetropolitan and diasporic cities. As such, the chapter was a theoretical provocation and reflection based on our experiences of doing research about, with and in Latin America's urban margins. We argued that knowledge distribution about Latin American cities focuses mainly on metropolitan and capital cities and hence promotes a particular knowledge production of and about Latin American cities. Non-national capital cities are marginalised relative to capital cities in Latin America (geo-politically and in other ways), and this has an impact on the production of knowledges about Latin American cities. In the diaspora, however, we are dealing mostly with experiences of marginalisation within capital and global cities. We highlighted the importance of thinking from within the notion of double margins in the production of knowledges about cities: from nonmetropolitan cities in the region to marginalised urban spaces in the Global North.

In contesting western normative approaches to research and critical scholarship, I am drawn to the challenges that blanqueamiento poses to the production and distribution of knowledge about cities elsewhere. Blanqueamiento, even though introduced as a concept that emerged in the streets to undermine or look down at processes of gentrification, still feels like a substitute to gentrification, in that its description privileges those in control and those participating of such processes (Massey, 1995). The characterisation of blanqueamiento that follows does not privilege the practices of resistance from the dispossessed but the practices and materialities that are often used to describe processes of gentrification, with its relevance to class, race, aesthetics, architecture, financial investments and consumption styles. Asserting blanqueamiento in dialogue with its hegemonic counterpart is just the beginning of dismantling colonial paradigms and ways of thinking about processes of urban change in Latin America. Perhaps and as a way of furthering the analysis we need to think about blanqueamiento in its dialogue with other cities, or cities elsewhere as we proposed with the conceptualisation of Latin America's urban margins.

This last proposal leads to the second proposition, that of blanqueamiento in its everyday manifestations and, invoking my first point, in its relationship with cities elsewhere. In doing so I reflect on the concept of Latinx urbanisms, which is key to my research vis-a-vis that of blanqueamiento. Could it be that, when in dialogue these concepts and place-specific manifestations get lost in translation and accentuate the limits of, and need for dialogical interconnections regionally?

Blanquemiento as a concept vis-a-vis Latin urbanisms

In my research about processes of gentrification that directly and negatively impacted two of London's largest Latin American business clusters (Román-Velázquez, 2022; Román-Velázquez & Retis, 2020) I use the concept of Latin urbanisms to capture distinct urban forms, manifestations and processes of urban change in London. I argued that current manifestations of Latin urbanism in London are a tool to resist gentrification, a claim to the right to the city and a claim to multiple Latinx identities.

The concept of Latin Urbanism was first coined in the United States (Rojas, 1991) to describe the practices that are embedded in claims over the identity of Latin barrios. In the United States, Latino urbanism refers to the appropriation and revitalisation of urban spaces by Latinas/os and as such is rooted in the history of migration, marginalisation and responds to their needs and cultural preferences. In this context Latino urbanisms emerged ‘as rational, context-specific, culturally informed, creative responses to a wide range of structural conditions that have and continue to challenge, oppress, and marginalize Latino communities in the United States’ (Garfinkel-Castro, 2021, p. 2). Subsequently, Latino urbanism developed as both a practical planning design tool for community-led development that addressed Latina/o lifestyles and a theoretical approach to explain transformations in the nature and function of cities with large Latina/o populations (Diaz and Torres, 2012; Lara, 2015; Rojas, 1991).

Latin American migration to the United Kingdom, and London in particular, is relatively new and not as established as other migrant groups as in the United States where Latin American migration has a long history. In the specific case of London, we witness a type of responsive urbanism rooted in community practices that invoke the right to the city ¹ and culture – a form of urbanism that responds to localised struggles against gentrification. In this way, a unique sense of belonging developed in urban spaces that are no longer so marginalised and that take as their starting point Latin American urban imaginaries from Latin American cities as well as new ways of invoking constructions of Latinidad in the diaspora.

Race and ethnicity are embedded in manifestations of Latin urbanisms in London. Aware of the critique to Latinidad as exclusionary concept that conveys histories of colonialism and slavery that perpetuate dominant Eurocentric views which obscure indigenous and black populations, their histories and struggles (Flores, 2021), I would like to argue that distinctive, contextual and geo-political histories can’t be ignored when analysing urban change. In this sense, it is important to recognise that Latin urbanisms in London emerged through different set of circumstances and migration histories to that of the United States, but one that conveys the legacies of colonialism, slavery and Eurocentric views. In the British context, manifestations of Latin urbanisms and Latinidades are also about asserting new forms of belongingness beyond and against old colonial powers (Román-Velázquez, 2022; Román-Velázquez and Retis, 2020).

Discourses and practices of Latin urbanism are embedded in a narrative that not only considers the context under which such discourses and practices take place, but the identity politics of such trajectories. In a similar way, I agree with the authors that blanqueamiento as a concept is significant for capturing local processes of urban change, but I would like to add that it is also necessary to consider inter-regional dialogues with similar processes elsewhere.

I feel this is important because of the challenges faced if I were to translate or transfer blanqueamiento to the London context. Many of the processes are relevant and aligned but the geo-political context was crucial to set us apart too. For example, blanqueamiento, by placing emphasis on the hegemonic practices of those in charge, reduces strategies of resistance to mimicry. It is here where I see the biggest difference with my work on Latin Urbanisms in London, where I introduced it as a tool to resist gentrification. Those displaced are often contributing to the changing character of places but later excluded from participating in processes of corporate and developer-led gentrification. It is in this sense that I feel that Latin and migrant urbanisms, put the marginalised, racialised and urban poor at the centre of such processes as active agents rebelling, resisting a particular form of gentrification, which in its very nature is dominated by corporate capitalism. Latin urbanisms in London captured what has, can and will be lost, whilst blanqueamiento captures what it has been replaced with. There are many such studies (referenced in the article) which attempt to define blanqueamiento or whitening as in not just colour, but cultural practices and expressions as well as consumption styles and so on. Thus, blanqueamiento did not feel like a move away from the concept of gentrification, but a substitute, one that is valid and has its merit in place and territoriality. In the same way that Latin urbanisms might get lost in transit and translation.

Second, blanqueamiento is used to highlight the interconnections between race and class through the lens of social stratification in Mexico City. This somehow aligns with my call for putting race in the agenda of the planning process in London – where race is not about whitening the planning process but the opposite. Partly because it is our communities who are displaced and their sense of belonging to a place challenged, diminished and dismissed by a violent form of corporate and developer-led gentrification.

Thirdly, blanqueamiento is also used to describe changing demographics and attempts to eradicate difference by making neighbourhoods whiter and wealthier. This is similar to the London case, but by emphasising difference we privilege a narrative about existing social value. Latin urbanisms were used to highlight racialised aesthetics in the built environment – be it through cultural practices that take place in the urban streets of London, or through more physical manifestations of place-making initiatives by the communities that inhabit those spaces. So, in the London case Latin urbanisms asserted difference, through cultural manifestations and embodied practices to capture rupture and urban change (whiter and wealthier) in what are highly diverse Boroughs (where 40% or more of the population identifies as having a migrant or ethnic background).

I found the characterisation of blanqueamiento as a weapon to diminish, menospreciar, put down, laugh at gentrification more useful here, in that it is more than a concept to understand a process of urban change, but a ‘weapon’ or tool against oppressors and which resonates with many local, regional and global struggles against violent forms of gentrification by dispossession. However, an account of the alternatives to such strategies of resistance is missing in the article in favour of the process of blanqueamiento as a theoretical concept. Despite my call for dialogical regional analysis, I value the concept of blanqueamiento for drawing attention to what we know about current corporate and developer-led gentrification; for drawing attention to who is embodied in such processes. Thus, I would concur with the authors in that it is a more useful concept in the region as not everyone knows what or who Gentrificación is.