An asentamiento irregular, known colloquially as an asentamiento () is a shanty town in

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived ...

, particularly around

Guatemala City Guatemala City ( es, Ciudad de Guatemala), known locally as Guatemala or Guate, is the capital and largest city of Guatemala, and the most populous urban area in Central America. The city is located in the south-central part of the country, ne ...

and

Montevideo Montevideo () is the capital and largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 1,319,108 (about one-third of the country's total population) in an area of . Montevideo is situated on the southern co ...

. Most have been established in the last 20 years as a result of economic inequalities between rural and metropolitan areas in

Guatemala Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by Hon ...

and

Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...

Guatemala City

In 15 of the 23 districts of

, there are precarious settlements. In 1984, there were 103 and by 1991 there were 232. In 2016 there were 297. In 1984, 800 families made a land invasion and successfully squatted an area called El Mezquital. The settlement eventually swelled to over 25,000 people. It was the first successful occupation since 1976. These places have been considered "red zones" inside Guatemala City, because of their high

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in C ...

rate and some of them are El Caracol, Cañaverales, El Rinconcito. A famous ''asentamiento'' in Guatemala is La Limonada. With a population of around 60,000 it is one of the largest slums in Latin America outside Brazil.

Montevideo

, Uruguay before 1990, there were land occupations known as

cantegril ''Cantegril'' is the name given in Uruguay to a shanty town, such as those surrounding its cities including the capital Montevideo. It is equivalent to Brazil's '' favela'' and Peru's ''pueblos jóvenes''. Many of the settlements in Uruguay ...

es. The land invasions can be split into accretions (gradual, individual actions) and planned (organised, collective actions). Gradually, cantegril has come to refer to the poorest of shanty towns, whilst groups of houses on squatted land are known more generally as asentamientos irregulares or asentamientos in short.

References

{{Squatting Slums in South America Squatting in Uruguay