Définir les confins urbains par l’informalité politique : les arrangements citadins entre conflits municipaux et production de territoires indéterminés à Lima (Pérou)

Living in the Intra-Urban Confines of Lima: A Precariousness of Geopolitical Origin

“…They act by creating markers in the landscape (toponyms in giant concrete letters, addressing in the name of the district, signs, and posters advertising the municipality's activities, etc.) or by providing services and facilities clearly identified as belonging to each district, in a logic of clientelism (Sierra, 2016), thus contributing to the production of a specific urbanity. Conversely, inhabitants and local leaders respond to these strategies developing their own practices of territorialization, which express their membership or rejection to municipalities.…”

“…Paradoxically, the laws creating the districts produced an indeterminacy of boundaries by incorporating a first level of informality that we have described elsewhere (Sierra, 2016). This legal and geographical indeterminacy, due to the use of lay knowledge of the law, was not problematic as long as the municipal territory remained undeveloped.…”

“…The corollary of this fragmentation was the creation of 108 "dyads" (Foucher, 1991) on a metropolitan scale, i. e. zones of contact between two municipal territories and therefore between two local authorities, which corresponds to the creation of confines each time. This legal and geohistorical approach has made possible to highlight the indeterminacy of half of the municipal boundaries, a characteristic that reinforces the dimension of confines (Sierra, 2016). The second stage, which we are reporting on, corresponds to a morphological and social reading leading to the definition of several types of boundaries.…”

“…This situation is conducive to the installation of workshops and huariques (or escondites, escondrijos), a slang words that refers to non-legal bars evoking an underground and interloping dimension. Source: Fieldwork Alexis Sierra, 2016;©Pascale Metzger, 2013 The oldest part of the city has confines that are the legacy of margins dating back to the Colonial Era and the 19th Century. At that time, activities were thrown outside the walls in locations such as cemeteries and military activities (barracks and gunpowder production) in the East, and, much later, slaughterhouses in the West.…”

“…In return, these arrangements contribute to the city's fabric both in its forms and landscapes as well as in its various social dimensions. We have also shown that the production of confines is the result of a succession of arrangements that contribute to its definition (Sierra, 2016). The objective here is to ask whether these political informality practices are not a means of overcoming the precariousness that exists and for us to reveal it.…”