Resizing property ownership in Peru

• Autor: Arribas Irazola, Guillermo José
• Formato: artículo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2023
• Institución: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
• Repositorio: Revistas - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
• Lenguaje: español
• OAI Identifier: oai:revistaspuc:article/28045
• Enlace del recurso: http://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/themis/article/view/28045
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: Constitutional property; Informal property; Possession; Propiedad constitucional; Propiedad informal; Posesión

In this article, the author proposes to expand the concept of property that is currently held under Constitutional law in Peru. Specifically, he proposes to protect the right of possession that communities hold over informal housing as part of the constitutional right to property. This right of possession, as the author states, consists of factual control over the asset and the recognition of this control by the community to which the individual belongs.The article confronts two apparently contradictory realities. On the one hand, almost 50% of the houses in Peru have a legal property title. On the other hand, the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court has repeatedly indicated that the right of possession is not part of the constitutionally protected content of the right to property. In other words, almost half of Peruvians occupy their homes based on possession, but this control over the asset would not have constitutional protection.As the author reviews, informal property is excluded not only from a constitutional recognition, but also in general from what is studied as part of the civil law on property. The main research that has been carried out on informal property have been promoted by anthropologists, such as José Matos Mar, or economists, such as Hernando de Soto. Based on their work, various instruments have been legislated to implement public policies in land titling, transforming informal property into legal property. However, if we consider the percentage of informal ownership that exists today in Peru, it may seem that these initiatives have not fully met their purpose.The author raises the need to understand informal property also from civil law as a potential complement to the initiatives.