Colonia El Pepeto
by Victor Kleyr, Amélie Lambert, Lars Ludes, Shreya Sen
El Salvador is the smallest but most densely populated Central American country.1 After gaining independence in 1839, the new coffee production encouraged the economic development of the country, but also lead to rural exodus and social inequalities.2 At the dawn of the 1970s, the Hundred Hours’ War – which forced the return of around 100,000 Salvadoran emigrants3 – and guerillas instilled a climate of instability, while the country still suffered from social inequities and poverty.
In this context, the Soyapango sites-and-services project was part of a wider program which tried at that time to address the lack of housing solutions: a major part of the urban population lived in unauthorized or overcrowded dwellings.4 It served as pilot project within a five-year plan that was set up to balance the situation in about nine sites, targeting mainly households earning less than 100 USD per month.5
With an area of 6 km², the project provides homes and facilities for 530 families on land bought from the Salvadorean Air Force.6 It continues the punctual expansion of Soyapango toward the countryside, and is today commonly known as the Colonia El Pepeto neighborhood. The plots mainly measure 6 by 10 meters and the dwelling usually covers the whole plot. They are serviced with basic infrastructure of water, sewerage, and optional electricity connections. They have an enclosed sanitary unit which is the first grade of construction. Half of the lots were directly provided with the second grade, a basic dwelling consisting of an asbestos cement roof, a wooden openings frame, and a concrete structure.7 Built in stages, the project was pragmatic and affordable for the targeted population (302 USD / house in 1973, eq. 2,000 USD in 2022).8
The main actors of this project are the Salvadorean government, the World Bank, the FSDVM (Salvadorean Foundation for Development and Low-Cost Housing).9 They are, respectively, the ‘representatives’ of the public, external, and private actors, to which we add the group of the users. Mapping the relationships between these groups shows a strong asymmetry between the users/public actors and the private/external actors regarding responsibility relative to number. It is intriguing to compare this to the project’s interests, which, despite being firstly a response to the lack of dwelling in the country’s cities, seem to be highly motivated by financial reasons through the role of private/external actors.
The FSDVM saw the introduction of housing solutions as a way to act for social change: the project would allow the paradigm of urban housing in El Salvador to be changed on an institutional and legitimatized level, offering homes for a large number of people and a platform for community development.10 The Foundation even supported the project’s building phase with a mutual help program where members of the future households and communities would take part directly on the worksite, taking care of tasks which did not require specialized building knowledge.11
The sites-and-services project, originally surrounded only by sugar cane fields and the airport, has expanded around the site. The previously unpaved access road has developed into a system integrated into the city’s road network. Sports fields and schools are used for cultural events such as dance and music.12 In 2014, a landslide damaged the units, which were supposed to be landslide-proof,13 and many members were forced to continue living in their accommodation despite the invidious circumstances,14 questioning the maintenance of the project since its settlement 40 years before.
