Evidence available in the same World Bank documents suggest a contrary view: Peru’s informal urban communities are described as having very strong collective organizations and a great variety of neighborhood mutual-help arrangements. Typically, a squatter neighborhood was formed by a single village, whose members would plan their relocation collectively in advance, allocate each family a building plot, and reproduce the communal associations of the village in the new location. None of this indicates a situation in which people feel so threatened they must stay home to guard their individual properties. (The World Bank also reports that titling programs tend to weaken these neighborhood associations.)

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1957