Surprising Trends in Land Invasions in Metropolitan Lima and Quito

Abstract

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.

Gated barriadas: Responses to urban insecurity in marginal settlements in Lima, Peru

“…A third factor contributing to the decline of community organizations was the process of decentralization in Peru. From the 1980s onwards, district governments were strengthened, mostly at the expense of regional layers of government, with the consequence that democratically elected local authorities emerged as ‘competitive regimes’ for community organizations (Dosh & Lerager 2006: 47). According to Calderón (2005: 249), the result was a municipalization of the barriada problem.…”

Housing the Contingent Life Course: Domestic Aspiration and Extreme Poverty in Peruvian Shantytowns

“…As Gilbert (, 5) explains, throughout Latin America, land titles have long been an “apparently unchallengeable recipe for popularity with ordinary people,” with politicians at different levels of government competing to distribute them. In Peru, between 1961 and 2002, the administrative responsibility for titling lands changed at least thirteen times (Calderón Cockburn ; Dosh and Lerager ). Today, whether titling powers lie with the national, regional, provincial, or district government depends on the specific history of the settlement, resulting in a mosaicked legal geography in which multiple legal recognitions might matter for land rights, and it is often difficult to determine whose authority matters most.…”

Micropolitics of Urban Slums: Variations in How the Urban Poor Organize Politically

“…Clientism has been found to be one of the most prominent and enduring features (Ruth 2016) in the political landscapes in the favelas of Brazil (Cardoso 1992;Gay 1994), the pueblos jóvenes of Peru (Stokes 1995;Dietz 1998), the ranchitos of Quito (Lind 2005;Dosh 2006;Burgwal 1995), las invasiones of Colombia (Gilbert and Ward 1984;Gilbert 1998), and las colonias of Mexico (Barriga 1996;Eckstein 1990). An optimistic view would suggest that it provides a mechanism of exchange and solidarity in asymmetrical power relationships between elites and masses (Gay 1994: 5-6).…”