Vera Córdova develops a powerful critique of urban formation in Latin America, arguing that many contemporary spatial arrangements are rooted in a colonial juridical logic—the “right of conquest”—that continues to structure ownership, governance, and legitimacy in the city. The essay draws upon postcolonial legal theory, urban sociology, and the critical writings of René Zavaleta and Aníbal Quijano to interrogate how conquest is not merely historical but ongoingly enacted through processes of displacement, expropriation, and urban disciplining. Cities, Vera Córdova contends, are not neutral agglomerations of infrastructure and capital; they are spatialised expressions of domination, built upon the erasure of indigenous geographies, peasant knowledges, and informal territorialities. The article revisits legal figures such as the “res nullius” and the “empty land” doctrine, showing how urban planning often reinscribes colonial hierarchies by masking dispossession under developmentalist or modernising discourses. Using the example of housing policies and spatial reforms in Mexican cities, Vera Córdova reveals how legal and spatial violence intertwine to marginalise the urban poor while consolidating elite control over central spaces. The concept of the “right to the city” is redefined not as an abstract humanist ideal but as a struggle against the persistence of conquest logics embedded in zoning, property regimes, and urban aesthetics. The author calls for a decolonial urban praxis that recognises alternative forms of land tenure, collective memory, and epistemic plurality, proposing a city that does not merely include, but is radically reimagined from those historically excluded.
Vera Córdova, A. (2020) ‘La ciudad y el derecho de conquista’, URBS. Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales, 10(2), pp. 70–83.
