Residency Counts and Housing Rights: Conflicting Enactments of Property in Lima’s Central Margins

Use, Exchange, and Speculation: The Politics of Inhabitance and the Right to the City in Urban Peru

“…The clientelist use of titles continued under Fujimori’s neo‐populist regime, and, while titling authority now officially rests with regional governments, the national government retains this authority in states of emergency that, conveniently, persisted in Peru from 2006–2016. Moreover, while there is some indication that issues of inadequate inhabitance and absentee ownership (identified in the introduction of this article) increased in the era of massive titling (Calderón 2013; Skrabut 2018a), careful readings of texts about Lima’s largest barriadas, and the frequent allusions to property speculation in Peruvian legislation, indicate that these issues plagued Peru’s barriadas long before these policies came into effect (see Smith 1994; Irigoyen 1988). It would seem the citadins of Lima have thus long embraced both use and exchange value to the extent they supported their diverse “strategies of living.” As I demonstrate in the next two sections, efforts to navigate between these dimensions of value, and to ensure that even commodified property remains embedded in the local moral economy, dramatically shapes social dynamics in Pachacútec, a site founded at the height of this neoliberal titling fervor.…”

“…Peru’s history of land appropriations created a situation in which poverty, active use, and community contributions gave squatters moral claims to property. Nonetheless, shantytown inhabitants also wanted official recognition of these claims materialized through national land titles and constancias de posesion (paper certificates of possession distributed by local governing bodies) (Skrabut 2018a). Though documents have historically been used by the powerful in Latin America as tools of dispossession and abuse (Gordillo 2006; Arguedas 1985), Peruvian squatters hoped that documents could be repurposed to defend their land claims against the abuses of governors, elites and other land usurpers, particularly if they had to be absent due to the shifting demands of life and labor (Mangin & Turner 1968; Field 2007).…”

“…Like liberal political theorists, squatters asserted a mutually reinforcing relationship between documents and use rights, arguing that titles certified and strengthened ties to land, and encouraged investment and participation in their communities (Lloyd 1980; Calderón 2013). In practice, however, documents also allow land rights to be detached from physical occupancy, facilitating the use of urban land as a savings and security strategy, and creating possibilities for popular speculation (Appadurai 1996; Skrabut 2018a).…”

“…It was only by maintaining social ties in Pachacútec and appealing to the sympathies of neighbors and dirigentes that seasonal inhabitants retained rights to Pachacútec. Thus, social networks, facilitated in part by moral standing and reputation, provide a means of retaining rights to Pachacútec, while those without such ties are not treated so generously (Skrabut 2018a).…”

Within and beyond the law: The ethics of collective action in urban markets, Peru

“…In Peruvian cities, therefore, there is generally a moral and legal ambivalence towards the nature of land ownership and squatting. This ambivalence is reflected in a rhetorical ambiguity as to whether ownership rights should be based on active use and necessity or as a product of formal property titles (see also Skrabut [2018] and Ødegaard [2010]). Such ambiguities also informed the controversy around Santa Anita.…”