PERU: From Shantytown to Model for Urban Development

By Clarinha Glock Reprint | | Print |

Clarinha Glock

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Feb 19 2008 (IPS) - Peruvian activist María Elena Moyano became a liability in the eyes of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) rebels on Feb. 13, 1992. That was the day she dared to flout the curfew imposed by the insurgents in order to lead a peace march in the streets.

Two days later, at a fund-raising party, the activist known locally as “Mother Courage”, who was elected president of the Popular Women’s Federation of Villa El Salvador when she was only 24, was shot to death by Shining Path guerrillas, and her corpse was blown up with dynamite.

Because of her, Villa El Salvador, a working-class district on the outskirts of Lima in southern Peru, has become a symbol for all Peruvians of the struggle to overcome against all odds.

Moyano’s story was movingly retold by Villa El Salvador Mayor Jaime Zea exactly 16 years later, at the World Conference on the Development of Cities held last week in Porto Alegre in the south of Brazil.

Zea had taken part in the 1992 march for peace organised by Moyano.

At the conference in Porto Alegre, he was congratulated for his efforts in Villa El Salvador, a municipality that has become a model of how self-management and popular participation can transform a shantytown in the desert into a habitable place, with levels of sanitation and education that are the envy of other Latin American towns and cities.

“At that time, community leaders were regarded by the guerrillas as a cushion to protect the bourgeoisie. But even during the regime of former President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who broke with all the political parties, popular participation in Villa El Salvador remained strong,” he said.

The reason for this is that the first settlers of the area descended from indigenous peoples with strong participative traditions. “Much of that ancient Andean culture, based on community relations that demand participation and trust, still survives in Peru,” said Zea.

Villa El Salvador was founded in 1971, when a group of people from slums on the fringes of Lima occupied land near the town of Pamplona. They were violently evicted by the police, however, and taken to the desert area where Villa El Salvador now stands.

First, the community divided the land into sectors, then into “barrios” (neighbourhoods) and finally into lots. Each barrio organisation elected who would occupy the lots, under certain agreed conditions. Families were given top priority.

Today, Villa El Salvador is divided into nine sectors, and has a population of 400,000.

While mayors of other cities around the world and representatives of the United Nations and private agencies at the Conference in Porto Alegre discussed how to set up and spread participatory governance systems in Latin America, Zea was able to point to the development of an effective process that achieved tangible results in just 37 years.

But Zea is not a miracle-worker. His relatively small budget is about 13 million dollars, and the mayor complains that what his municipal government raises in local taxes only covers 40 percent of its costs, while the central state coffers contribute little to its needs.

However, the mayor hopes to increase basic sanitation coverage from the current 85 percent to 98 percent of the population by 2010.

In addition, Zea plans to expand electricity coverage from the present 70 percent of households in Villa El Salvador to 100 percent by 2015, and to have all of the streets paved by 2021.

The community contributes 10 percent to all the public works projects undertaken by the municipal government, providing labour, water or cement.

People who contribute by sorting rubbish for recycling receive a “green voucher”, and the scheme helps to employ poor residents who do this work. Four vouchers entitle a person to a local tax discount.

One of the projects identified as a priority by local residents is related to food security. The initiative has just been implemented to put an end to the chronic malnutrition that still affects seven percent of children under five.

The municipal government has also developed special programmes to provide assistance for the 8,000 local residents over 65, and has started a training programme in the barrios to curb violence among young people. There are 43 youth gangs in Villa El Salvador, made up of approximately 20 to 25 members each, and Zea intends to focus on them over the next few years.

Some young people who are in the programme are now working at a broom factory. They occupy their time productively, and sell the brooms made by their own hands.

Experiences such as that of Villa El Salvador are important examples for Latin America, said the academic coordinator of the Latin American Federation of Cities, Municipalities and Local Government Associations (FLACMA), Néstor Vega.

“It was thanks to the open town council meetings – assemblies of city representatives, not necessarily just town councillors and mayor, but rather a wider meeting, where decisions were reached and solutions to problems were sought – that the continent was emancipated from colonial rule,” he said.

Vega described other movements promoting popular participation. “In Ecuador, there are four levels of government provided by law: below the municipal level, we have parishes (‘parroquias’), which are similar to the parishes established by Spanish missionaries, but are more administrative,” he said.

People meet there to draw up the proposals they wish to make to the municipal government. The president of a parish is directly elected by the community, and they work together to make sure the local government does what it is supposed to do. Sometimes they carry out small projects of their own with the help of non-governmental organisations.

“The advantage is that popular participation is institutionalised, so that it is not left to the goodwill of mayors to ensure that participation reaches all the way to the local level,” said Vega.