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The case of Mancora, Northern Peru, illustrates a process of neoliberalisation through which conceptions of place, local identities and the recent history of the place have been reformulated due to the rapid expansion of global tourism. In this former fishing village, tourism development altered local conceptions of place, allowing the emergence of contrasting projects for converting it into a beach resort. This process brought about a context governed by land conflicts and tension between local authorities, where local inhabitants reshaped their identities and the recent history of the place in order to gain or maintain ownership over valuable natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By strengthening transnational linkages, and those between urban centres, and rural and coastal areas, the tourism industry has fostered new dynamics around the use of land, including territories subjected to extreme environmental hazards. Using the case of Mancora, Peru, this paper explores how a lack of land governance structures, resulting from conflicts between local authorities in the context of coastal tourism development, has triggered processes of uncontrolled urbanisation within fishing villages cyclically affected by the El Niño event. Based on ethnographic material collected via semi‐structured interviews, participant observation, and archival research, the study demonstrates how new dynamics around the use of land are increasing land conflicts, while raising the degree of environmental vulnerability to which the population is exposed, and threatening the reproduction of local models of development. It stresses the need for land governance structures to ensure the sustainability of coastal territories where land markets have intensified due to tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]