Land Struggles in Vulnerable Coastal Territories: Tourism Development in Mancora, Peru

Abstract

By strengthening transnational linkages, and those between urban centres, and rural and coastal areas, the tourism industry has fostered new dynamics around the use of land, including territories subjected to extreme environmental hazards. Using the case of Mancora, Peru, this paper explores how a lack of land governance structures, resulting from conflicts between local authorities in the context of coastal tourism development, has triggered processes of uncontrolled urbanisation within fishing villages cyclically affected by the El Niño event. Based on ethnographic material collected via semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and archival research, the study demonstrates how new dynamics around the use of land are increasing land conflicts, while raising the degree of environmental vulnerability to which the population is exposed, and threatening the reproduction of local models of development. It stresses the need for land governance structures to ensure the sustainability of coastal territories where land markets have intensified due to tourism.