Riparian Struggles

This is a platform to share planetary strategies and tactics for collectives engaged in riparian struggles across the Near-South. It is a result of a two-year funded design project which connects human and nonhuman riparians in Jakarta, São Paulo and Berlin by making what we call a “self-organised infrastructure”.

Strategies

With the Cameroonian political theorist, Achille Mbembe’s provocation in mind, we came up with three “planetary strategies” aimed at steering our tactics to build better relations between human and between nonhuman life. These are: strategies of corresponding, of evidencing, and of circulating.

Tactics + Recipes

Through this website we invite you to view examples of our tactics in action and download their recipes so you can try them out and develop them further in your community.

Collaborators

The main ambition of our project is to share knowledge, practices and tactics between our sites, making what we call a “self-organised infrastructure”.

Dear fellow riparians,

We are Salve Saracura, a collective born along the river banks of the hidden Saracura river in Bixiga, downtown São Paulo. We are a horizontal community based organization existing through meetings in different sites across Bixiga's hilly topography, including community associations, bookstores, local museums etc. We fight for the preservation of nature-culture in our territory, with a focus on the riparian communities- mostly black and immigrants- around Saracura river.

Our struggles are situated along Saracura's riparian riversides, where, in the middle of a dense urban fabric, nature emerges through the river springs and the remaining green hillsides which evidence the river basin's geography.

Our main struggle is to protect the spring and hillside areas against new construction and, at the same time, ensure the preservation of cultural heritage, including riparians' cultural practices and their local built environment.

Some of our tactics and rituals used in this struggle include, water testing and springs certification. In this case, the Forestry Code protects springs and river courses, but in urban areas the legal interpretation is in constant dispute, for example, once the river is covered it is not consider a river anymore. But for us it remains so, and its overspilling through floods are the evidence.

Other tactics include neighbourhood parades and demonstrations; artistic interventions; ludic and educational activities with children; debates; presentations; engagment with academic work; and community supervision of archeological sites. In addition, we advocate on behalf of the Saracura for listing the cultural landscape such as the Saracura Popular-Park; protecting Afro-Brazilian heritage-memory e.g. Saracura Vai Vai; promoting site sensitive urban planning and taking legal action against predatory intervention.

We look forward to hearing from you all and learning from your struggles.

Yours,

Salve Saracura