Issues Of Land Registration In Rural Latin America: the Case Of The Guatemalan Construction Company, Cassa
Open Access
- Author:
- Lenze, Michelle Firing
- Area of Honors:
- Geography
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Susan Walker Friedman, Thesis Supervisor
Roger Michael Downs, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Land Tenure
Guatemala
Latin America
CASSA - Abstract:
- CASSA is a young, Guatemalan social housing company that has recently become interested in the potential ramifications of systematic lack of land registration among its potential clients. Of particular concern is the fact that many of the potential clients with whom CASSA has interacted have not completed the national level land registration process, leaving them with significant financial risk, should they chose to build with CASSA. This paper investigates the literature describing issues of land titling for low-income populations, first exploring the historical, social, economic, and political structures that led to the modern day situation and then looking at current cases where systematic lack of land tenure has become an issue among low income communities in Latin America. This investigation begins looking at Latin America in general, and I argue that the land tenure issues witnessed by CASSA are part of a broader trend throughout Latin America as a whole. I then move to land tenure in Guatemala to provide detail on the specific case of the country in which CASSA operates. Finally, I consider a number of tenure-related issues CASSA discovered through two reports it published in 2014: CASSA: Social Housing Market Research Report and CASSA: Impact Assessment Manual. I analyze these issues using arguments developed in the chapters on Latin America and Guatemala, considering how they would change if CASSA’s clients, most of whom do not have fully registered land, were to acquire nationally registered property titles. I conclude that there is one major potential drawback to land titling for the Guatemalan poor – an increased likelihood of being bought out by large landholders as registration makes the land market more legible to external buyers. There are also two major potential benefits to titling, the first being a likely increased access to credit, and the second being increased tenure security, although the legal process through which land disputes are resolved is incredibly slow, making this second benefit considerably less promising. I discuss these and a number of other issues, and ultimately come to the conclusion that, as a socially minded company, CASSA should be advising its clients on land registration procedures, but that it should only push for registration in cases where there is a clear threat of a dispute of the client’s landholding. This preliminary finding will hopefully be adopted by CASSA and tested in the following years as the company continues to expand its business, shedding light on the impact of the complicated Guatemalan land titling and registration system on low-income homeowners.