teleSUR English | 10/26/2016
Rocio Bastidas has insisted in 186 meetings over ten years of sweat and hair pulling that her neighborhood be kept people-friendly. She has a full-body laugh, short-cropped hair—a daring style in Ecuador—and an ability to immediately embrace a stranger as a long-time friend or keep them at arm’s length if she senses conflict down the line. The top floor of her lodge-like house is lined with chairs to host any breed of popular meeting that touches on the future of her barrio, La Floresta in Quito.
One characteristic unites her and her organizer friends: “We are characterized by being happy in everything that we do—peace, good humor, happiness.”
A 15-minute walk to the west, world technocrats, bureaucrats and vendors plant their stalls for a four-day conference to “Decide the Future of Cities Together,” according to the words printed on their complementary tote bags. The U.N.-led event, Habitat III, was 20 years in the making.
Naturally, Bastidas helped organize a parallel conference. As the spokesperson of one of the handful “alternative Habitat” events, she sat down to discuss both their collective vision and her own agenda in La Floresta and other self-organized barrios of Quito.
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Naomi Cohen | journalist 