Population Growth, Social Segregation, and Voting Behavior in Lima, Peru, 1940–2016 by Henry A. Dietz (review)

Henry Dietz follows the evolution of the city of Lima using census data from 1940 to 2007, describing the changes that have transformed the Peruvian capital into a spatially and socially segregated megacity profoundly marked by social inequalities. One of the main questions of this book is whether segregation and socio-residential inequality have also led to “identifiable political behaviors” (3). To answer this question, the author includes, as a central piece of his analysis, aggregated electoral results from national and local elections in Lima, from 1945 to 2016.

In Dietz’s first chapter, we find an interesting brief sketch of Lima from 1876 to 1931 that uses the scarce official statistics available for this period to show the main features of the city before the radical and traumatic population growth and social and economic transformations that occurred after the 1940s. The following six chapters are organized around the depiction of the city that emerges from each of the six censuses used by the author (1940, 1961, 1972, 1981, 1993, and 2007). Those chapters have a common structure: a brief account of the main social and economic processes of the period, followed by a description of the demographic changes and growth that occurred in the city. Then, the socioeconomic characteristics and differences of Lima’s inhabitants are explored in terms of education, occupation, and housing indicators, dimensions that are used to calculate a simple socioeconomic status (SES) index to classify the districts of Lima into three categories (low, medium, and high). Finally, Dietz provides the electoral results of each national and local election held around the censuses (27 elections in total).

One of the main contributions of the book is the compilation of social and political statistical data that allows us to follow the historical transformations of the Peruvian capital and its inhabitants. Census data show how the city became increasingly diverse, unequal, and segregated over time. The analysis of the statistical data benefits from the insights and in-depth knowledge of the author. For example, the 1940 census data pointed out that in San Isidro, the highest SES district, 70 percent of the labor force was female and low skilled, in contrast with the whole city, which was 70 percent male and more diverse. The explanation resides in the fact that most of the female working population in San Isidro were domestic servants in the houses of the richest families of the city, who lived there.

Electoral results allow us to follow the political history and the transformations of the Peruvian party system in the capital, their contrasts with the rest of the country, and their relationships with different socioeconomic groups in the city. Given that it is one of the main objectives of the book, the analysis of the relationship between social data and electoral results is somehow too basic and does not lead to original conclusions. Several authors (many of them cited in this book) have already described and explained the political evolution of the Peruvian party system and the citizens’ political behavior depicted here. The theoretical framework is quite simple. A discussion that included theories and concepts such as political cleavages and voting behavior and its particularities in Latin American societies could have been relevant in this kind of work.

Despite the importance and relevance of the statistical data, their presentation in the book could have been improved by using more tables and graphs, which are quite scarce. A textual narration of statistics in long paragraphs, among many other chapters of similar structure, can become tedious for some readers and interfere with the main conclusions that the author derives from the data.

The book does reflect the great knowledge and appreciation that Henry Dietz has for the city of Lima and its inhabitants, and thus it constitutes an important source for scholars interested in the subject.