By AFP - Agence France Presse
'Afraid to live here': the houses that defy death in urban Bolivia
Gonzalo TORRICO
The humble brick house of Bolivian shopkeeper Cristobal Quispe dangles precariously on the side of an unstable hill in La Paz, near the edge of a road that has collapsed.
The landscape around him is littered with debris left behind after hundreds of structures were swept away by a landslide in 2011, including his former home.
Quispe, 74, built a new house not far from where the original one stood.
The residence overlooks half of a park where children used to play. The other half disappeared as the landscape on which it was built shifted.
Now, every year during the rainy season, from November to March, Quispe watches the skies of the highest city in the world with apprehension.
“We're afraid to live here. When it rains... there could be a landslide,” Quispe told AFP about life in the Valle de las Flores neighborhood, whose impoverished residents belong mainly to the Aymara indigenous group.
Although the municipality has declared the area a dangerous “red zone”, Quispe and others say they have no choice but to stay there.
Most have lived there all their lives and many have received title deeds to the land they occupy from the authorities - land they hope will be valuable one day.
- 'Highly vulnerable'
Nestled among the mountains at an altitude of more than 3,500 meters, La Paz is crossed by more than 300 rivers and streams, which makes the soil unstable.
Almost one in five registered properties are in “high” or “very high” risk areas, according to the municipality, many of them in slums.
Since November last year, the government says that 16 Bolivians have died in landslides and floods caused by heavy rains.
The problem is not unique to Bolivia, say experts, who blame poor urban planning and a lack of investment in resilience to natural disasters.
“Latin America is highly vulnerable compared to other regions of the world”, with ‘very vulnerable ecosystems, urban development expert Ramiro Rojas, from Bolivia's private university Univalle, told AFP.
This, in turn, is “amplified by socio-economic vulnerability, i.e. inequalities and high poverty rates” which force people to live in unsafe areas.
In the last ten years, at least 13,878 people have died in natural disasters in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to data from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.
Urban planner Fernando Viviescas, from the National University of Colombia, told AFP that the threats posed by worsening natural disasters caused by climate change were not taken into account when Latin American cities were built.
Almost 83% of Latin Americans now live in cities, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
- There's nowhere to go - You're a 10-minute walk from the Valley.
About a 10-minute walk from the Valley of Flowers, on a rocky hill, Cristina Quispe - no relation to Cristobal - sells groceries from her house.
Several of the 48-year-old's neighbors had to leave recently, as a torrent of mud engulfed their homes. Like hers, Quispe's neighbor's house remained standing but now leans at a precarious angle.
“I'm not scared. I'm calm. Anyway, it's not like I have anywhere else to go,” Quispe told AFP.
In another part of La Paz, in a settlement on the banks of the Irpavi River, mechanic Lucas Morales, 62, said that he had recently lost part of his property because of the floods.
“As you can see, one day everything is fine, the next it's destroyed,” he said, gesturing around him.
“That's the problem. They gave us the green light to build, but then the river comes through here.”
According to Stephanie Weiss, an environmental engineer at the Bolivian Institute of Urban Planning, La Paz faces a huge shortage of safe and affordable housing.
And the initiative to grant land ownership to disadvantaged people who had long occupied it illegally had the unintended consequence of keeping them in unsafe locations, she said.
Property is seen as a way for poor people to save for the future, Weiss explained, and many cling to the idea of having their “own home, even if it's on the edge of a cliff”.
gta/mlr/bfm
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