In December 2009, a late-afternoon storm dumped so much rain on Ayacucho, Peru, that drainage systems said, "Nope," and turned into muddy death slides. Ten people died, 18 were injured, and 530 houses were wrecked. Edgar Castro, a leader in the city's biggest informal neighborhood, Mollepata, remembers it as "a disaster" - which is one way to put it.
Nearly 17 years later, thousands have decided that the best place to build a home is right where the last disaster happened. Mollepata's population went from 316 in 2007 to 6,624 in 2017, and local authorities estimate it'll hit 17,000 by 2027. Castro, however, thinks the real number is closer to 30,000 - because who needs official data when you have vibes?
Throughout Latin America, one in five people live in unplanned settlements, because nothing says "good investment" like building on a floodplain. Cynthia Goytia, a professor of urban economics in Buenos Aires, notes that as extreme weather gets more extreme, the urban poor are both most exposed and least equipped to deal with it. It's like being in the splash zone of a climate-change water park, but without the fun.
Mollepata's homes are self-built adobe or brick structures with corrugated metal roofs, perched on steep slopes like they're auditioning for a disaster movie. Two-thirds of the population and all its schools are in high-risk zones. The local glacier has lost 95% of its snowcap, and rainfall is shorter but more intense - so when it rains, it pours, and when it doesn't, everything turns into an oven. Environmental specialist Juan Carlos Prado says these neighborhoods become "little ovens." Charming.
Access to Mollepata is via a single bridge. If that collapses, residents are cut off. The city runs education campaigns, but Castro says people "still don't take these consequences into account." Goytia explains that families make "calculated trade-offs" between affordability and risk - which is a fancy way of saying they'd rather gamble with nature than live nowhere.
Relocation isn't an option because the city has no money. When officials tell people to move, the response is, "Where?" The only honest answer is, "Try another planet."
In 2025, Ayacucho published a plan to improve services and manage disaster risks. They're grading roads and building drainage ditches - but because of existing water pipes, the ditches have to be shallow, and residents have to guide the machines to avoid destroying infrastructure. Community leaders are renting dump trucks and organizing volunteers. There's even a plan for a park.
Integrating Mollepata into the city will cost 530 million soles (about £116 million) - almost five times Ayacucho's annual budget. A shorter list of priority projects is 460 million soles. But hey, it's a start.
Meanwhile, new settlements keep popping up on steep slopes and riverbanks. Prado says the situation is "becoming critical." But Castro is hopeful: officials got their boots dirty visiting Mollepata. "They see how we live here," he says. Progress is slow, dirty, and expensive - but at least someone's walking in the mud.