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Caught in the CrossfireBy Josh Raufman At first glance, Villa El Salvador is a "third-world" shantytown like any other. The mostly unpaved roads divide blocks bursting with concrete shacks that are covered by corrugated steel roofs. The endless houses have all been heaped onto a desert just south of the Peruvian capital of Lima, and the sand that finds its way up from under the ground and onto absolutely everything doesn't allow that fact to be forgotten. The few large paved roads that run through the area are covered with the ashes of burnt trash, left there by the people who have no other place to dispose of it. Many people just bring their trash and burn it right there by the side of the road with the hope that the smell won't permeate their houses. This effort is in vain though; the whole town is saturated with the smell, along with those of dirty people, mangy dogs and rotting corpses. To the unknowing eye, Villa El Salvador is a pit, but something makes the town very unique: it was actually a planned, grassroots construction. In 1976, Lima was bursting at the seams. People from all over Peru were coming to Lima to look for work. Many of these people didn't speak any Spanish, only the indigenous language of Quechua, and all of the people were poor. When the desert land just north of Lima was designated as the future site of a wealthy, beachside resort, the poor people organized and acted. In one night, dozens of families moved onto the land and began to construct houses. After a day, 100,000 people joined them. When the National Police moved in to push the people off of the land, they were met by fierce resistance. The people defended their new land, and eventually the police retreated. Instead of forcefully moving the people out, the government decided to starve them out. No plumbing system was constructed on the desert land, and no roads were constructed connecting Lima with Villa. Lima is a huge city; to walk into town to get water and food was a whole day's journey. And of course, Villa El Salvador is a desert, complete with sand dunes and blazing heat. Most of the invaders were originally from the mountains of Peru, and had never felt any heat like that of Villa. But the people didn't give up. Instead, they united together and provided for themselves. They constructed their own roads into town and they set up their own system to bring food into Villa. They even dug their own wells and built pipelines to bring in water. The neighborhood was divided into zones and the streets were made into a grid pattern in order to facilitate further growth. The main streets were all named after famous revolutionaries in a tribute to the revolutionary strategy of the people of Villa El Salvador, and so a feeling of community grew out of the desert village as people worked together to better their new home. Through the years, Villa El Salvador continued to grow. Every few years there was another invasion and another standoff with police, but the newcomers always triumphed. The police soon gave up trying to stop the invasions and only showed up to make sure there was not any violence nor disorder. The government continued with its policy of providing no public services to Villa, though this came to be more of an acknowledgement of the fact that the people had learned how to provide for themselves than a political strategy. I spent a month working in a medical clinic in one of the newer sections of Villa in January of 2000. During my time there, a new invasion occurred, but this one was different. A section of land that initially had been invaded 10 years earlier and was now generally considered to be privately owned, was reinvaded by angry immigrants. This previously-invaded land was being used for agricultural purposes, and, in the spirit of Villa El Salvador, the invaders declared that land could not be used for anything more important than housing. 
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