Abstract

AVENDANO ARIAS, Johan Andrés; FORERO FLOREZ, Jaime Andrés; OVIEDO YATE, Brayan Stiven  and  TRUJILLO VANEGAS, Maira Yesenia. Between the Cartucho and the Bronx in Bogotá: Territories of Fear or Expressions of Socio-Spatial Injustice?. Cuad. Geogr. Rev. Colomb. Geogr. [online]. 2019, vol.28, n.2, pp.442-459. ISSN 0121-215X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcdg.v28n2.73531.

According to Sabatini (2001), Musset (2009), and Avendaño (2016), Latin American cities have had to deal simultaneously with increasing urbanization and informal economies, land-use conflicts, and tension between crime and imaginaries of fear and insecurity. This has produced, in recent times, "critical zones", impenetrable territories, "lawless places", which share the collective socio-spatial symbolization or topo-representation, of being niches of violence and crime. However, it is important to ask how such spaces are generated. The article analyzes the configuration of two of the territories of fear in Bogotá, Colombia: the Cartucho and the Bronx, which have been most stigmatized due to the rates of crime and occurrence of criminal activities. A recent geo-historic perspective was used for the analysis, consisting in the revision of documents in order to gain insight into the topo-representations established regarding the studied zones. This path leads to an understanding of how socio-spatial injustices are produced through the instrumentalization of a collective sense of insecurity. The article concludes that both the emblematic Cartucho and later the Bronx were spaces that arose, to a certain extent, as a result of neoliberal public policies and territorial planning projects gradually implemented in Bogotá.

Highlights: Reflection article on the public policy response to historically consolidated niches of fear such as the Cartucho and the Bronx, through urban renovation projects. The conclusion is that rather than being a solution, they are an expression of socio-spatial injustice.

Keywords : Bronx; Cartucho; geography of crime; insecurity; spatial injustice; spatial justice; socio-spatial justice; topo-representations.

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