"Hotel built without permits on disputed land riles neighboring Paracas reserve in Peru", 11 October 2024

...The Hotel Boutique Atenas is located in the buffer zone of Paracas National Reserve, a cluster of desert and marine ecosystems some 250 kilometers (155 miles) down the coast from Lima, the nation’s capital. It sits on an 11-hectare (27-acre) plot of land known as El Refugio. Today, the owners of El Refugio are locked in a dispute over occupation of the land with Peru’s national ports company, which is accusing them of a crime termed “aggravated usurpation.”

Mongabay Latam reviewed the property’s registration papers and analyzed court records and other documents issued by Peru’s National Service of Natural Areas Protected by the State, known by its Spanish acronym SERNANP, and the town of Paracas. We also visited the area and interviewed residents, public officials, lawyers and scientists.

Our reporting reveals a series of problems in the transfers of the property’s ownership and in projects carried out without authorization, which could cause negative impacts for the reserve and its wildlife...It also shed light on a series of allegedly violent displacements affecting a group of scallop farmers who have long operated in the area...

Only a few feet away from the hotel, there are vestiges of a displacement that occurred three years ago, one night in January 2021.

“About 300 security guards came with excavators and closed everything off,” an eyewitness told Mongabay Latam. “They destroyed the camp, they didn’t let anyone enter — not prosecutors, not authorities. It was very violent. They put up ‘private property’ signs and took us away.”

The camp was composed of about 20 scallop farmers who had kept wooden huts there since 1995...

The scallop farmers’ complaint was closed after nine months...

Mongabay Latam tried to gather testimonies from Luis Atilio Humberto Francisco Corbetto Rossi, María Laura Peschiera Fernández and Sandro Espinoza Flores, but none of them responded by the time of this article’s original publication in Spanish...