Developing Sustainable Peripheries

Abstract

In March 1984 approximately 800 families squatted on previously unoccupied lands on the edge of Guatemala City in an area known as El Mezquital. In the following months, squatters continued to arrive, eventually forming a community of more than 25,000. This was the first major organized act of squatting that successfully established a community in the city since 1976. Dozens of other invasions-to employ the term most commonly used in Guatemala-had been broken up by the police in the early 1980s (CITGUA, 1991: 70). However, following the success of Mezquital, other squatters have established communities throughout the city.1 Although the Guatemalan state still forcefully breaks up land seizures, many of these settlements in the past 16 years have slowly been transformed into neighborhoods. The increase in urban squatting has come at a crucial point in Guatemalan history. Since 1984 Guatemala has experienced fundamental changes in its body politic. In the transition from dictatorship to democracy and from 35 years of civil war to peace, new spaces have opened up for marginalized actors to have a political voice.2 As the case of urban squatting makes clear, these new spaces are important. They are not, however, without their limits and silences. The squatters have benefited, particularly in the 1980s, from the spotlight provided by the presence of international organizations and the emergence of a relatively independent press, articulating a strong critique of the conditions under which they live. Nevertheless, they slowly lose the ability to voice their concerns. This silencing occurs, at least in part, because of modern development institutions providing crucial

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