Contesting Utopian Dreamings of Progress through Mutual Aid Cooperativism in San Salvador’s Centro Histórico

The renovation of San Salvador’s Historic Downtown (Centro Histórico) is a central collective dream of postwar Salvadoran society. At its heart is the hyper-modern National Library (BINAES), functioning as a secular cathedral for President Nayib Bukele’s future-oriented, religious-infused politics. Drawing on Laurence Davis, I analyze this urban spectacle as “transcendent utopianism,” a top-down vision demanding an ideological faith in capitalist progress that ultimately drives speculative dispossession. In contrast, I examine an alternative renovation process led by the Salvadoran Federation of Mutual Aid Housing Cooperativism (FECOSVAM). Rooted in the labor movement, these cooperatives provide dignified housing to working-class families formerly in precarious tenements (mesones). Following David Bell, I conceptualize FECOSVAM’s cooperative labor as “utopia-as-place”: an immanent space continuously reproduced through shared governance, solidarity, and convivencia. Theorizing this praxis as utopianism renders visible a contesting horizon of social dreaming, challenging the state’s elite, linear model of development.