Abstract
Demanding the Land is a motivating and important book. Paul Dosh analyzes with lucidity different invasion case studies, their organization and strategies, as well as the differentiation in generational terms allowing large trajectories to be understood in the context of the cities of Quito and Lima.
The book presents two different countries within their political and urban metropolitan context in similar periods of time. In doing so, it contributes to the knowledge of Latin America urban reality, where the majority of the population lives in so-called “self constructed” habitats, which result from squatting land, illegal invasions, permanent claims, and urban popular movements to gain the right of becoming a resident of the cities.
In six chapters, the author goes from a detailed discussion of social movement theory with especial attention to the role of structure, to an in-depth analysis of ten case studies. In Chapter One, Dosh initially conceptualizes strategies in terms of legality and autonomy, building a typology that supports the analytical construction called “strategy life cycle.” Here, he reviews different concepts and accentuates three analytical aspects in the study: the organizational strategy, the organizational success and organizational survival of the movement. The author then conceptualizes external and internal factors that contribute to success or failure on the demand for services. Finally, in order to explain organizational survival, the concept of organizational stages of development and the analytical tool of the “security trap” are introduced. The rest of the book examines the three levels of demand for service at the metropolitan level, at the neighborhood level, and finally at the level of individual demands for services.
Dosh offers a comparative analysis of land invasions in the metropolitan areas of Lima and Quito, which is a permanent dynamic of invasion and settlements for inhabitants in those Latin American metropolises, since several decades ago, forming the largest territories of barrios with self-constructed housing. He presents with rigor the urban and geographic aspects of Lima and Quito, as well as the existing political characteristics during the time of the organization case study. He differentiates between a politically centralized city such as Lima to a politically decentralized city such as Quito, establishing a permanent reference regarding the movements and land invasion settlers. In this sense, the exceptional weather conditions in dry Lima easily allow settlers to build and rapidly expand due to the desert conditions, whereas in rainy Quito, settlers need to think twice regarding construction materials and the mountainous land. The author also refers to the existence of contrasting leadership styles that vary from democratization experiences to Caciquismo leadership, sometimes authoritarian. After a detailed review of twenty possible case studies, Dosh selected ten cases representing land invasion in both cities, and chose for the unit of analysis invasion “organizations” more than neighborhoods, arguing that sometimes the same organization could represent two land settlers’ invasions. Subsequent analysis allowed the author to group the cases into five analytically useful pairs, including what he calls two Old Guard clients, two Old Guard radicals, two larger older Next Generation cases, two small newer Next Generation cases, and two Innovators. The fieldwork resulted in a total of 70 interviews and rich “empirical process observations.”
Latin American land invasions have long been an historical practice, to solve the housing scarcity problem for the majority of urban populations. Sometimes, land invasions are organized squatters, or a couple of families, and at other times a private landlord, who will negotiate with land distributors. Dosh argues that the neighborhood analysis approach must be complemented at the national level and at the metropolitan level of analysis in order to understand the differences between urban land invasion in Lima and Quito as well as in other Latin American cities.
Using an analytical matrix that includes stage of development, neighbor leaders, external and internal factors and outcomes, Dosh develops a detail-oriented analysis of the life of each organization with different historical moments and strategies, interior dynamics and different leaders, some authoritarian, who even developed extreme and violent strategies with lynching crimes resulting (Old Guard case of Pissulli, Quito). Through the analysis we observed that Old Guard organizations usually characterized by rigidity and inflexibility combined with authoritarian leadership do not produce success.
By contrast, the organizations called by the author the “Innovators” characterized by power sharing, nonviolence, and use of technology were the three key aspects for success.
In general, action related to land titles, which imply recognition as well as formalization and regularization of the land and houses of the settlers, has been a failure in the majority of the cases. No matter what kind of organization, what strategy, or what leader negotiations, the pursuit of land titles has been a failure. From the ten organization case studies, 27 demands for land titles were requested, 23 failed, and only 4 succeeded. Although this study in land invasions and their organizations is significant in terms of urban movements, it is clear that urban settlers without land regularization remain in an informal and vulnerable condition, and will be always subject to eviction.