Casa encantada: A Portrait of the Fight for Housing in Belo Horizonte (e-book)

Kasa Invisível is a house squatted by an autonomous and horizontal anticapitalist collective, since 22 march 2013, located in the downtown of Belo Horizonte. For a decade, people from all around the world have been visiting Kasa Invisível for discussions, workshops, movie screenings, concerts, classes, book fairs, and festivals. In addition to hosting events and meetings for unions and social movement groups, Kasa functions daily as a community kitchen, library, infoshop, screen printing workshop, and vegan food cooperative. During the pandemic and the period of social isolation, the Kasa collective started to organize regular actions to support homeless people and workers in the neighborhood against COVID-19. This involved gathering and donating food, clothing, blankets and hygiene kits alongside other forms of direct action and mutual support.

The book Casa Encantada documents abandoned houses in Belo Horizonte that have been squatted and transformed into homes and social centers. During the pandemic, we saw an explosion in homelessness in Brazil’s urban centers, which led to the emergence of a new wave of occupations of houses and smaller buildings.

The book documents this network of autonomous squats with illustrations by Baruq, phographs from C. Passos, and interviews with residents and activists in the squatting movement in Belo Horizonte.