(Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2022-12-30) Pinley Covert, Lisa
This article examines the efforts to address the housing crisis in the aftermath of the 1950 earthquake in Cusco, Peru. Mid-twentieth-century Cusco served as an early incubator for ideas about affordable housing and development in Peru. Peruvian and foreign experts sought to rebuild Cusco as a beacon of modernity in the Andes. Still, for the most part, these global designs failed to come to fruition, leaving poor, working-class, mostly Indigenous cusqueños to improvise their own solutions. The article argues that this experience in Cusco helped shape housing policy in Peru more broadly.
(Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2022-12-30) Luna-Victoria Indacochea, Lucía
In 1984, in the context of Peru’s internal armed conflict between the Shining Path and the State (1980-2000), Lima’s socialist mayor Alfonso Barrantes Lingán decreed the creation of Huaycán, the first housing project targeting Lima’s poorest residents. Huaycán originated from a shared socialist vision by urbanists and shantytown settlers to address the politics of abandonment by establishing a comanagement program between municipal representatives and the population. This article traces the creation of Huaycán, from 1983 to 1985, as a project that emanated from the demands of a new generation of urban residents. The article reveals the tensions derived from within the leftist front, and between the urbanists and shantytown settlers that created the project.
(Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2022-12-30) Boose, William
This article offers an ambitious, though still fragmented, history of motorcycle taxis in Peru. It offers three central arguments. First, it highlights that motorcycle taxi drivers have played a fundamental role in the production of urban space.Second, it argues that state, elite, and popular discourses about «informality» and the «modern city» stigmatize motorcycle taxi drivers in ways that are classist and racialized, targeting them for strict policing. Finally, it suggests that if we think with motorcycle taxi drivers and the materiality of motorcycle taxis, we can reveal the contradictions inherent to the «formal»-«informal» and «modern»- «non-modern» binaries and thus more lucidly analyze urban space and relations.
(Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2022-12-30) Luna Loranca, Arturo
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the authorities of Mexico City carried out a series of slaughters of so-called vagabond dogs (strays), which claimed the lives of 20,000 to 30,000 canines. The sacrifice of these animals was not well-received by certain sectors of society. This article argues that studying the material relationships established between dogs and plebian groups can partly help explain the reluctance demonstrated by the residents of Mexico City towards the slaughters. Its central argument is that plebian groups did not share the same view as colonial authorities of dogs. While authorities regarded dogs as a latent danger, plebian groups saw dogs as producers of a monetizable good: excreta. Some economic sectors, such as the medical marketplace and leather tanneries, had a high demand for dog excrement.
