Over the last two decades, Latin American countries have undergone profound transformations, including transitions from military to civilian rule, radical liberal economic restructuring, and accelerated urbanization and urban sprawl. Yet the impact of these changes on civil society, and particularly on the organizational structures of the urban poor, has yet to be fully assessed. On one hand, most large Latin American cities have experienced increased poverty and inequality in the 1990s, accompanied by the declining influence of the most organized and militant forms of popular organization. On the other hand, some poor communities have seen increased social mobility and organizational development. Furthermore, new forms of informal popular organization have emerged with more young people in leadership positions.

These trends generate a number of questions for sociologists, civil leaders, and policymakers: Why have some poor communities flourished in this changing context while others remain in misery? Why have some communities, known for their long-standing traditions of popular participation and collective action, found their bases weakened in recent years? And why have others without such traditions made considerable advances in civic organization?

Investigating social networks and community organization in two low-income neighborhoods in Lima, Peru, provides insight into these questions. The first neighborhood is Barrios Altos, an inner-city settlement dating back to colonial times. For years, social scientists have viewed this community in the historical center of the capital as one of Latin America’s typical slums of despair, populated by the poor of Lima and characterized by social disorganization and a tendency toward individualism. The second case is Independencia, a community established through the 1960s invasion of rich estates on Lima’s northern outskirts by the urban poor. Initially comprised of makeshift shanties, Independencia has frequently been seen as one of Latin America’s newer shantytowns of hope, founded by migrants of peasant origin with ancient traditions of collective self-help and social solidarity.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Independencia was the site of considerable social and political experimentation, and most analysts expected it to fare better than Barrios Altos in terms of both social mobility and political development. However, the 1990s saw a dramatic reversal of this trend, with the organizational bases of Independencia seriously weakened and neighborhood organizations in Barrios Altos growing for the first time. In order to understand these developments, it is important to examine changes in the political regime and institutional design of the state and their impact on the ability of the urban poor to organize and take collective action.

History in Transition

In the last two decades Peru underwent a transition from a reformist military regime to an unstable civilian one. It also shifted from a populist government in the 1980s to the neoliberal, authoritarian government of Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s. During these years, the role of the state in society was expanded, reduced, and then expanded again, while governments experimented with different programs aimed at serving the urban poor.

The military government (1968-1979) had a reformist agenda that encouraged popular mobilization while at the same time seeking to control the people through corporatist structures. During this period, the state gained new centrality in virtually all spheres of social life, and this new position initially was accompanied by a high capacity for state spending to satisfy demand for public goods. At the same time, the military banned all political parties, leaving few opportunities for independent social and political participation.

Virtually all local community demands and struggles could have become direct political confrontations with the state since the success or failure of popular organizations was measured by their capacity to obtain state resources. This was especially true of the social movements that emerged in the shantytowns and sought to obtain ownership of land gained by the takeover of estates.

When economic crises forced the military to impose unpopular austerity measures in the late 1970s, popular confrontation with the regime increased dramatically, and the military responded with greater suppression of political dissent. However, it is important to note that in the case of the urban poor, the military combined austerity with some populist measures. One such measure was the Tenants’ Law of 1979, which sought to protect poor occupants through rent freezes and the automatic extension of contracts. This legislation had a lasting impact on urban communities in the decade that followed.

The second important shift came with the transition to elected government in the 1980s. This opened new opportunities for the organization of the urban poor while retaining some of the earlier statist and populist tendencies. During these years, two populist parties, Popular Action (AP) and American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), came to power and established government agencies to address the demands of the poor in exchange for political support. New forms of civic participation developed alongside the organizations established during the military regime.

Democracy in the 1980s also brought elected municipal governments to Peru for the first time, creating new arenas for political competition. During this decade, however, the state’s capacity to distribute resources declined dramatically with the deteriorating economy. The poor expressed their disenchantment by electing the United Left Front (IU) at the local level and making it a serious contender for national power between 1983 and 1986.

Under IU control, the municipality of Lima maintained its long-standing rent control while accelerating the distribution of land titles in the shantytowns and improving public services in the various poor districts under their rule. With these actions, the IU promoted the consolidation of huge poor and working-class districts formed by estate takeovers during the previous decades. Paradoxically, this weakened the confrontational forms of popular organization that emerged in the 1970s as well as the electoral appeal of the IU itself in these districts by the late 1980s and 1990s.

The 1990s combination of neoliberalism and neopopulism under Fujimori had a contradictory impact on the urban poor. Fujimori’s radical stabilization programs dramatically swelled the ranks of the poor and weakened many forms of social organization. Survival became the main concern for both the poor and the shrinking middle class. In this sense, the initial years of Fujimori’s reign closed opportunities for social and political participation, especially in formerly politically active barrios such as Independencia.