Land Trafficking and the Fertile Spaces of Legality

Abstract

Land trafficking, responsible for the unprecedented rate of urbanization in many Latin American cities, is often conceptualized through corruption as ‘abuses of public office for private gain’. While those involved in the practice rely at times on violence and illegality, their repertoire is sophisticated, allowing them to move in and out of legality as part of their cost–benefit calculations. In this article I argue that land trafficking is based on legalized corruption. I use an ethnographic approach to observe the strategic conduits that are technically embedded in, and opportunistically related to, different municipal processes to legalize illegality. I demonstrate how land traffickers use morphing possibilities between land tenure types (communal, private and government) and mimic development typologies that have gained legitimacy over time. I also show how conflicting, competing and humanitarian rationalities that characterize the state play a crucial role in promoting land trafficking, by grafting illegality and violations onto ‘formal’ practices.

PROPERTY‐LED INFORMALITY: Shifting Informal Land Development from Popular Housing to Middle‐Class and Elite Speculation in Belo Horizonte

“…For example, there are instances of land mafia groups invading private or public land to subdivide and sell it, and one group was prosecuted by the state (inspector 2, planner and prosecutor, interviewed 2020-2021). These land swindlers are similar to the traditional grileiro documented by Holston (2008) in São Paulo or to the 'land trafficker' studied by Lambert (2021) in Lima. Another type of under-represented actor is the 'intermediary', a non-specialized opportunistic trader who offers informal deals to landowners in order to quickly subdivide and sell land (planner, interviewed 2021).…”

“…In line with a view of urban informality as a logic of exception and deregulation through which differential spatial value is produced and managed (Roy, 2011), this growing body of work challenges essentializing, dualistic and bounded notions of the ‘informal’ (McFarlane and Waibel, 2012; Acuto et al ., 2019), broadening the array of actors studied and the geographical scope of inquiry worldwide. This article builds on and extends an emergent scholarship looking at elite informalities (Moatasim, 2019; Vieda Martínez and Chiodelli, 2021), corruption, organized crime and mafia groups (Weinstein, 2008; Chiodelli, 2019; Lambert, 2021), and especially the speculative dynamics of informal urbanization. The last point includes work on speculative regimes of informal practices (McFarlane, 2012); practices of speculation and rent extraction by rural villagers (Kan and Chen, 2021); everyday financial, social and cultural speculation among peri‐urban residents (Leitner et al ., 2023); and financialization through rent extraction, flexibility and illegalisms (Rolnik et al ., 2022).…”

“…If it goes wrong, they have a small loss because they usually sell to high‐income people’ (planner, interviewed 2021). By mimicking and twisting the law (Lambert, 2021), companies subdividing rural land into urban lots―while keeping an appearance of rural―can disclaim any responsibility of servicing the subdivision, unless the area is officially declared to be urban (prosecutor, interviewed 2021). This entitled form of elite informality (Moatasim, 2019) reveals how class power defines what is deemed legal or illegal (Roy, 2005) and how the permanent transient status of informality (Rolnik, 2019) is exploited by wealthier actors.…”

Navigating stigma through everyday city-making: Gendered trajectories, politics and outcomes in the periphery of Lima

“…Practices under this label range from those of local community organisations gradually occupying the slopes to capture small surpluses in order to ameliorate the area, to the large-scale operations of organised mafias of land traffickers (Lambert, 2021). In the first case, newcomers gain the right to occupy a designated area either by paying a fee or by joining an Agrupacio´n Familiar (AF) or recognised community-based organisation.…”

The violence of planning law and the production of risk in Lima

“…People access land by buying a plot from organised groups, which can either be established settlers, or so-called 'pirate subdividers' or 'land traffickers'. These groups operate through the usurpation of government and peasant community land, subdividing areas and selling to those seeking a place to live (Lambert, 2021). In the process of land occupation, inhabitants organise through community organisations or Agrupaciones familiares (AF), which de facto govern all collective affairs in the neighbourhood and interface with governmental institutions and programmes.…”