Brokers and Their Followers

Chapter 4 describes and analyzes the role played by political brokers—and clientelist politics in general—in the subsistence strategies of the urban poor. Issues of manipulation, control, and ambivalence are highlighted. The chapter delves into the life of, Pocho, La Matera’s main political broker. Pocho illustrates how, when seeking to solve pressing problems, residents and brokers alike combine different forms of action: They resort to individualized solutions, offering state actors political allegiance in exchange for material support (what the scholarly literature calls “clientelist arrangements”), or they rely on (more or less disruptive) collective action. A detailed look at Pocho’s actions sheds much-needed light on the horizontal abuse and lateral animosity that pervade the urban margins.