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Urban popular movements that organize illegal land invasion communities present an intriguing puzzle. When most invasion organizations acquire land titles, their participation levels plummet and their agendas stagnate; yet some neighborhoods achieve land titles, sustain high participation, and acquire other services, such as piped‐in water. Why do these organizations achieve movement resilience? The more typical trajectory of movement collapse is explained by the disappearance of the key selective incentive, property security. Some organizations, however, evade this “security trap” through mixed motives: their basic material agenda is supplemented by a nonmaterial and often altruistic agenda, which sustains participation in the face of reduced selective incentives. Examining three neighborhood case studies in Lima and Quito, this article argues that a new, “innovator” type of invasion organization is more likely to exhibit sustained participation and movement resilience due to tactical innovation, democratic governance, and mixed motives.

Study of land invasion organizations in Lima and Quito reveals six surprising trends that differ by metropolitan context. Specifically, invasion organizations tend to differ with respect to building materials, original land ownership, the difficulty and consequences of acquiring land titles, strategies for acquiring electricity, and types of neighborhood regimes. A more general contrast also emerges: Lima organizations are more likely to encounter quick initial success followed by gradual decline, while the success of Quito organizations is often more gradual, resulting in long-term organizational survival. These citywide trends can be explained by three factors—public policy, local democratization, and geography and climate—that are often neglected in favor of neighborhood-level explanations.

and three reviewers for their helpful suggestions on earlier drafts. This project was generously supported by a Wallace International Research Grant, an Associated Colleges of the Midwest grant for innovative faculty-student collaboration, and a Macalester Summer Faculty-Student Research grant. For the popular organization case studies, interviews (a total of 60) were conducted with the given group's president and most or all of the women members of the given group's executive council, as well as past and present local and executive leaders (men and women). Interviews were also conducted with Constitutional Assembly members, elected officials, NGO staff, and union leaders. Although the events described in the case study narratives were corroborated by multiple interviews, typically only the most important or representative interviews are cited. Translations from Spanish are the authors'.In the 2000s, Bolivia and Ecuador were marked by battles over natural resources in which mass mobilizations challenged the neoliberal privatization of resources such as water and natural gas. In El Alto and Quito, these mobilizations boosted the public standing of women whose frontline militancy helped confront privatization and build momentum for the election of women to top leadership. Although gender discrimination persisted, women's activism in these resource battles demonstrated to men their capacity to lead in arenas other than health, family, and education. In the wake of these conflicts, variations in women's voice-the power to speak, set agendas, and dictate discourse-on the executive councils of popular organizations prove to be determined by societal sexism, leadership and training opportunities for women, the presence of more women on the executive council, the status of the council seats won by women, and the particular organization's decision-making process.

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