Systemic land tenure insecurity fuels violent resistance in Peru's informal settlements during state-led evictions

Peru's history of land conflict stretches from the Spanish encomienda system to the 1990s Fujimori era, when Decree Laws 890 and 891 facilitated the privatization of communal lands and sparked widespread peasant uprisings. The recent eviction echoes those patterns, as state‑backed clearance targets informal settlements that grew during the neoliberal rollback of agrarian protections. Understanding this lineage shows that today's flare‑up is a continuation of a long‑standing struggle over territorial sovereignty.