He begins with a game demonstrating the right to free speech: who can shout louder than the rest! In the next activity, cards indicating different social statuses are distributed (student, priest, etc); participants try to determine which status is most likely to achieve recognition of its rights.

After this useful introduction, Davis evokes the different forms of legal status prevailing in the country, and explains access to the law. Davis is currently in charge of legal training with Cenca: ” the aim of this type of workshop is to provide a discussion group for the inhabitants of these working-class areas of Lima”

In daily life, these communities are faced with the particular problems surrounding construction and property rights. Most of them are migrants who have left the surrounding mountains to escape poverty. They do not have enough money to settle in Lima, and so have built shacks from bits and pieces, in the hills around the city. The majority of them did not finish school and have great difficulty understanding and defending their rights.

Pista Alegre disrict.

These legal training sessions are part of the Miseror activities programme, set up by Cenca on the hills of the San Juan de Lurigancho Area, where the Pista Alegre district is located. The programme lasts three years; it investigates and proposes solutions to environmental and urban development issues such as lack of infrastructure, waste disposal management or water treatment.

Every Sunday, for three hours, approximately thirty participants from the most destitute population of Lima discover their rights and learn to assert them before the authorities, in order to cope with their precarious situation.