Cálculo de error en las mediciones realizadas con la hélice Ø80mm y paso

Up to 1987 one of the few housing alternatives facing low-income sectors in the Metropolitan Area was to invade land. Private rental housing for poor families was in decline and the government's construction programmes had either collapsed or been reduced to 'sites and services' schemes. Since the mid-seventies the economic crisis had deepened and thousands of families had spent years on government waiting lists without any reply. Community groups began to apply strong pressure from 1976 and kept it up through the elections of 1978 (Argüello, 1983). By invading land the families forced local governments and the housing institutions into a negotiating position. The invaders sought either improvements or relocation to government projects.

From the beginning of the first administration several groups organized land invasions in the south of San José to draw attention to their needs. They did not want to begin a proper state project on the invaded land, land invasions were simply a way of demonstrating their homelessness and of gaining priority in the government's few projects. Invasions occurred in a traditional area of poor settlements, only five kilometres south of the Central Park. The area invaded was close to an INVU housing project which had been used to relocate shanty dwellers from the city centre between 1963 and 1966.^ Ten years later this area had deteriorated badly and its houses were overcrowded. Relocation had meant that many families had lost their previous jobs around the marketplace or in the city centre. New repayments levels plus the costs of basic services had led to increasing debts, and to rising levels of sharing and subletting. Many left the project and in 1979 some of the families occupied land nearby.

This land invasion was named Los Nietos del Présidente Carazo. After two weeks the new settlement had more than 200 huts. Thirty percent of the families came from 15 de Setiembre and 21% came from Aguantafilo, a neighbouring settlement. Many families explained

that they could not pay INVU or had been sharing or subletting in INVU or private houses.^ The government’s response was ambiguous. At first IMAS officials said that it was not their responsibility, in spite of the fact that many of the families had been on their 'waiting lists’ for years.^ Some months later, however, many public demonstrations, strikes and negotiations forced INVU into making an agreement with the local community representatives.

This was the first of many small invasions in the area. Las Prom esas del Présidente Carazo was formed by families from 15 de Setiembre and Los Nietos (Aguilar, 1983:20), but later many more arrived from the whole city.'* Some of these families had occupied the land as a form of pressure to get the government’s commitment to develop new projects and to give them priority. They did not want to continue living in Las Promesas because the settlement occupied a narrow and dangerous site alongside a heavily polluted river. Every family occupied only a lot of 9 m^ and built flimsy cardboard and wood huts. This was a new form of invasion in Costa Rica and very different from the tradition of occupation that had emerged in the country’s two major ports. During the 1970s hundreds of families in Puntarenas and Limon had occupied land, but they had organized the occupation months before and designed the street plan carefully. The invaders wanted to stay in the invaded land, to obtain tenure and to build and consolidate their settlements.®

In the new land invasions in San José, INVU procedures and negotiations dragged on for many months and the community organizations began to apply pressure through demonstrations in front of INVU or the Presidential Residence. They had many public confrontations with the police, and their leaders were jailed sometimes for weeks or months. In the last year of the Carazo Administration hundreds of families were still living in extremely dilapidated conditions, despite formal agreements to relocate them to INVU or IMAS new projects. A few families had been relocated to new self-help projects established by PRECO or PROVIS. In response to the demonstrations IMAS developed a media campaign accusing the invaders of being politically motivated and of being land speculators (LA NACION, 28-09-81:5A; LA NACION, 03-03-82:11 A). The PLN, in the opposition, complained that there were 50,000 people living in tugurios in San José, "fertile land for the communist agitators".® Many families responded by joining housing community groups and invading land in large numbers.

The first of these large invasions occurred during the electoral campaign of August 1981. It occupied an area of 30 hectares in the south-east of the city. Ownership of the land was not completely clear, but it was apparently private land located on a high hill near to the city’s main rubbish dump. Community leaders distributed the land and denied any link with political parties; the leader was a cleric from a Christian group who conducted most of the negotiations with the police (LA REPUBLICA, 04-09-81). In a few days 400 huts had appeared (LA PRENSA LIBRE, 29-08-81 ). As in other earlier invasions the leaders claimed that they could not pay high rents and were living in overcrowded accommodation. They had no other option but to invade land, even if the land was a polluted hill side subject to landslides during the rainy season (LA PRENSA LIBRE, 01-09-81). In 1980 some families relocated in government’s projects returned to their

original land invasion because they could not afford the monthly repayments to INVU. Many other families also returned to their previous sites the following years.^

During the succeeding Monge Administration invasions continued in spite of the negotiations and control by the Housing Democratic Front (FDV) and the Costa Rican Democratic Front (FCV). Many independent community groups invaded public and some times even private land and argued that "they could not pay rents or were evicted" (Semanario UNIVERSIDAD, 28- 05-82). In places, such as R osister Carballo and Nuevo Amanecer, local leaders linked to the FDV distributed land with the formal approval of the Presidency. They had proper lay-outs based upon 90 m^, streets with sidewalks and formal procedures for distribution. Invasions continued in 1983 and 1984, in every case local leaders blaming high rents, lack of government projects for the poor and overcrowded conditions in shared homes or rooms (LA NACION, 04-05-84; 11- 06-84; 21-11-84). During the elections period of 1985 independent community groups invaded public land despite a formal agreement between the PLN candidate Oscar Arias and the directorate of the major housing fronts to discourage them (LA NACION, 01-03-85; 30-04-85). In 1986, formal agreements between the three major housing fronts, FDV, FCV and COPAN, and the newly elected President promoted new land distributions but at least gave the new government some time to organize its programmes without further demonstrations or land invasions. While this agreement slowed down the invasion process, it left thousands of families concentrated in three large public areas waiting for the new projects to be completed.