Taking
It To The Streets: The Frente Unida de los Pueblos de Peru, or the United
Front of the Peoples of Peru (FUPP), includes members from 15 different Lima
districts as well as several Peruvian provinces. The FUPP seeks cancellation
of debts to public banks that the settlers regard as illegitimate. After 10,
15, or even 20 years of paying interest on loans used to build water and drainage
systems in their informal neighborhoods, settlers have paid two or three times
the amount of the original principal, yet they remain in debt. Although Peru's
Law #27205 requires the Bank of Materials to forgive some or all of these
debts, the banks have not complied, and threaten to foreclose on settler homes
if the payments do not continue.
