The spirit of the women who participate in the movements fighting for housing in Brazil is as hard as lime and wood. As a majority in land occupations, they vigorously coordinate organizational and political practices of settlement and popular housing construction. It is no wonder that many of the occupations of the MST (Landless Rural Workers' Movement) or the MTST (Homeless Workers' Movement) carry the names of women such as Dandara, a quilombo leader from the colonial period.
Cheyenne Pereira Miguel is one of these women. As the coordinator of the MLB (Social Movement in Neighbourhoods, Towns, and Slums), one of the social movements of Belo Horizonte (state of Minas Gerais), she moved in 2017 to the Paulo Freire Occupation, in the southwest of the capital of Minas Gerais. She and her brothers and sisters built the plywood house on their own - a reality consistent with most of the community's occupations, where the population lacks technical assistance.
