Society and local power: the community of Villa El Salvador, 1971-1996: testimonies and reflections of an actor: Michel Azcueta

This book is a slightly modified version of a doctoral thesis submitted to the History Department of Columbia University, New York. The subject it addresses is the Lima shantytown of Villa El Salvador. The period covered by the research spans from the moment of its founding, in May 1971, until 1992–93, when the defeat of the armed uprising of Sendero Luminoso concluded an entire cycle of Peruvian politics. In Lima, shantytowns had become widespread after World War II. They were the by-product of prolonged internal migrations that transformed the nature of Peruvian society from rural to urban. This great migration was accompanied by, and in part due to, a demographic explosion that throughout the twentieth century affected Peru as well as the set of countries known as the third world. These mass migrations, as well as the unprecedented demographic growth, had begun in the developed world during the two preceding centuries.