Yesterday Cuenca’s Urban Planning directorate demolished the first of 158 structures that are in violation of the city’s urban land-use bylaw.

The first was a vacant house near the Yanuncay river, on the corner of 10 de Agosto and Pichincha. Neighbours say the house was used as a den by criminals.

Julio Guerrero says they’d been asking the municipality to do something about the building for years.

The demolished building contained clothes, kitchen utensils and blankets. A city employee said the house was built in 2011 and got a verbal warning because it was constructed on public property. She says the people who had been living there left with most of their belongings.

A few metres away, at the corner of 12 de Octubre and 10 de Agosto, the security entrance for a gated community was illegally built on public property. Residents say they requested permission from the city for the entrance, but the city says permission was not granted.

At Don Bosco and Fray Gaspar, Ana Mora was blocking the municipality’s heavy machinery from clearing the wire fence around her home.

”Over my dead body and the bodies of my children will they be allowed to destroy my home,” she said. But public works workers went ahead and tore down the fence. The urban planner at the scene says the home is taking up half of the public roadway.

“Six months ago we tore down a brick wall around the house, and now they’ve just replaced it with a wire fence.”

Original story