Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on a process it denotes as 'land laundering' where the illegal appropriation, subdivision and selling of land in the context of Peru takes on a legitimate appearance. It exposes the non-linear and iterative movements that shift communal land into other land tenure types.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on how peasant community land, by definition 'intangible, indivisible and imprescriptible' and therefore non-urbanisable, is seeing an unprecedented rate of urbanization in many Latin American countries. Drawing from Lima- Peru, the paper examines how the illegal appropriation, subdivision and selling of land by organised groups known as land traffickers, undergoes a process of laundering to take on the appearance of legitimate private/public urban land. Multiple shifts occur through different forms of legal and illegal corruption. In the case of land trafficking in Lima, a cyclical movement is evident where communal land is privatised to then be expropriated into government land and finally be privatised again through the land titling of individual plots. Interrogating the shifts within urbanisation and legalisation processes the paper argues for longitudinal methodologies to fully appreciate the mutations that takes place over time. The findings provide an important consideration for urban studies and planning; they bring attention to non-linear and iterative movements that occur between illegality and legality, as well as from one tenure type to another.