World Book, Perú

The Peace Corps has three goals. The first goal is to provide technical assistance to those who ask for it. I am more interested in goals two and three. Goal #2 centers around creating a more positive image of Americans abroad, and goal #3 is to inform those in the US (i.e. me and my friends and family) about Perú. It is with this last goal in mind that I’ve decided to back up with my blog, and talk a little bit about Perú, the country I now call home. I’ve only been here a month, so clearly I’m no expert, but I have learned a fair amount. Plus, this will be an interesting baseline for me to compare my knowledge in 26 months when I leave. So, if I were to write a World Book Encyclopedia entry on Perú, it would look like this:

Geography and Climate

Perú lies in South America, its northern border just beneath the equator. Its neighbors to the North are Ecuador and Colombia, to the East is Brazil, to the South are Bolivia and Chile, and to the West is the Pacific Ocean. Perú is divided into 24 departments, which are like our states. Each has a capital, and a not-too-autonomous government. More importantly, Perú is divided into 3 distinct geographic regions: the coast (la costa), the mountains (la sierra), and the jungle (la selva). The coast is really only a fairly thin sliver of land that runs the length of Perú’s border with the Pacific. The mountains come next, and they are not just any mountains, but in fact, the Andes. Most of Perú’s territory, however, is jungle, or the Amazon. Despite the geographic distribution, the overwhelming majority of Peru’s population lives on the coast. In fact, 1/3 of the population lives in the Lima-metro area alone. Very few people live in the jungle, but those who do have the least access to resources of anyone in Perú. One’s socioeconomic class is often closely associated with region. The people on the coast are the most well off, followed by those in the mountains, followed by those in the jungle.

Perú’s climate varies substantially by region. The coast actually contains the driest desert in the world. That’s where I live. It doesn’t rain here, ever. It is extremely dusty, and there is no such thing as natural foliage. That’s why they have to dust the trees that do exist. Lima is often covered in a thick fog for much of the day, but it never rains there either. Chaclacayo is just high enough above Lima that it’s only foggy in the morning, and it burns off by about 10am. When the sun is out it is hot, but probably never gets much above 75 or 80 degrees. When the sun goes away it gets cold. Pretty straight forward.

The mountains have a wet season and a dry season. The wet season is the summer, or roughly October- March. The dry season is the winter, or roughly April-September. It can get very cold in the mountains, especially at night. When you see those really cute pictures of Peruvian children all bundled up with bright pink cheeks- it’s really not that cute because their cheeks are pink principally from chapping and over-exposure to the cold.

The jungle, well, is a jungle. It’s hot and humid almost always.

History

Oh boy, where to begin? Well, Perú is home to the ruins of one of the oldest civilizations in the world- Caral. It was discovered about five years ago a couple hours North of Lima. The ruins there date back to 3000 BC. After Caral came a whole slue of rather interesting indigenous cultures that excelled at everything from architecture to pottery to fishing to dying wool. These cultures came and went and fought with each other until 1450 AD, when the Incas rose to power and started uniting everyone. Peruvians claim that the Incas where peaceful people- unless you tried to resist them. Uh-huh. The Incas made Machu Picchu and most of the other cool ruins in Perú, they spoke Quechua (all though they weren’t the first), and they are considered the basis for Peruvian indigenous culture today. In 1525 AD the Inca Huayna Capac died. He had two sons. Atahualpa was older, but Huascar was born in Cusco, the Inca capital. So, the throne passed to Huascar, and a Civil War broke out, dividing the Inca empire. In 1532 Atahualpa murdered his brother, assumed the throne, and tried to bring his divided empire back together. Enter the Spanish.

The Spanish killed most of the Inca either through fighting or disease, and subdued the rest, with the important exception of Tupac Amaru and many of his followers who fled to the jungle and held out a strong resistance. Eventually Tupac Amaru was captured by the Spanish and brutally executed, and he became a martyr.

In the mid-1800s Perú had had enough of Spanish rule, and joined with most of the rest of South America in kicking the Spanish out. Perú was part of Simon Bolívar’s republic, which encompassed present-day Guyana, Venezuela, Colombia, Panamá, Ecuador, Perú, Bolivia, and part of Chile. This is what Hugo Chávez wants to bring back, by the way. That broke apart pretty fast, and Perú became its own country.

Okay, my history gets sticky here; I’m doing this all without notes. I know that in 1879 Perú went to war with Chile. Really Chile went to war with Bolivia, but Perú and Bolivia had a mutual defense pact. Chile kicked Perú and Bolivia’s butts. They took Bolivia’s coast and briefly controlled Perú via a puppet government in Lima. The Chileans eventually retreated, but took with them Perú’s natural resource rich most southern province. Perú is still upset about it, but probably not as upset as now landlocked Bolivia. Oh, and what natural resource did Perú lose? Mountains of guano. I’m not kidding.

Okay, fast forward about 100 years, I have no idea what happened in Perú during that time, but hopefully I will before I finish my language and culture class. We’ve only gotten as far as the Inca.

In 1980 there was a professor at the University of Ayacucho, Guzmán. He was obsessed with socialism, and traveled to China to study it. He decided that the solution to Perú’s problems was to violently oust its capitalist government and bring in socialism. So, he created the terrorist organization called the Shining Path. The Shining Path created a reign of terror that lasted in Perú for 20 years. They started by taking over small towns and villages in the mountains. They would kill anyone who they suspected of cooperating with the government. Meanwhile the government would come in and kill anyone they suspected of cooperating with the Shining Path. It was not pretty. Nonetheless, no one in Lima really cared because the terrorism was mostly confined to the countryside. Meanwhile, the population of Lima doubled as people fled the terror in the mountains. In the early 1990s, Guzmán decided that his tactics were not working, and that he needed to move the fight to Lima. He did, and when rich people started dying everyone started listening. Alan García was elected in 1985. Under García the Peruvian economy went haywire, inflation got to be so bad that you would have to take a huge box of soles just to ride a combi, and everyone lost their life savings. The currency changed from the sol to the inti (1000 sol = 1 inti) and then from the inti to the Nuevo sol (1000 inti = 1 nuevo sol) all in five years. As you can imagine, most Peruvians lost their life savings. On the plus side, García did a lot to fight terrorism. After García, the Peruvians elected Alberto Fujimori as president. In 1993 he suspended Congress to crack down on the Shining Path. He was re-elected in 1995 and again in 2000. He caught Guzmán, which was the beginning of the end of the Shining Path, but his government continued to massacre, imprison without trial, and torture those that where suspected Shining Path sympathizers. This is less than 10 years ago!! Shortly after Fujimori was elected the second time, a huge corruption scandal broke, Fujimori’s right hand man ended up in jail, and Fujimori fled to Japan and resigned. (He actually came back to Chile last year, and is now on trial in Lima for many things, including human right’s violations.) There was an interim president, and then Toledo was elected. Toledo is important to the history of Perú because as a child he had a Peace Corps volunteer living in his town who recognized his brilliance and personally tutored him and helped him out of poverty. He went on to get a degree from Harvard, and the Peace Corps volunteer was at his swearing in ceremony for president. Toledo invited the Peace Corps back to Perú in 2002 after a 27 year absence. Other than that, Peruvians pretty much hated Toledo. I’m not sure why. The last election was in 2006. The candidates were Alan García (we’ve already discussed his stellar resume), and Ollanta Humala. Humala is an extreme leftist who would have led Perú down the same path as Venezuela and Bolivia. Faced with two not-so-attractive choices, Peruvians re-elected García. It’s now 2008 and the Nuevo sol is still a functioning currency, so let’s hope this term is better than his last…


Politics

Well, I already went over a lot of this. There are some other things though… Just last week a big scandal was discovered with the petroleum company- PetroPerú. They were discovered illegally selling off land rich in oil without using the open market. The prime minister of Perú (Perú has a president, two vice-presidents, and a prime minister) was implicated and had to resign, along with his entire cabinet. This week has been spent running around to find new ministers, and to re-approve some of the ones who resigned. Alan García appointed Simón to be the new prime minister. This is very controversial because he spent a decade in jail for actions associated with the terrorist group MRTA (movimiento revolucionario de Tupac Amaru- this is going to be a kind of long aside… Remember how I told you that Tupac Amaru became a martyr back right at the end of the Inca? Well, this group went by the name Tupac Amaru II, and also had the intention of taking over Perú during the same time as the Shining Path. They were a smaller group, but caused plenty of damage in Lima, and are most famous for taking 406 hostages at a party at the Japanese ambassador’s house. They held about 80 of the hostages for three months until Fujimori’s troops finally broke in and killed every single captor.). So yes, the new prime minister of Perú previously spent 10 years in prison for terrorism. However, this might be a good political move for García because Simón is a member of the ultra-left, and his presence in the government may help to appease the 47% of the country that voted for Humala and have strong left-leaning tendencies. Last I checked García had an approval rate of 14% and falling, so he could use a boost. So you see, Perú’s not that unlike the US after all.

Food

So far the food in Perú is delicious. Any guidebook can tell you about ceviche (raw fish prepared with lime), cuy (guinea pig), or anticucho (beef heart kebabs), but I haven’t actually tried any of that yet. (I do want to- I’ve heard it’s all delicious!). So what do I eat? Every morning for breakfast I have corn flakes with yogurt instead of milk. I also have a sandwich of some kind made on a French bread roll. It’s usually hardboiled egg, avocado, or Greek olives. I highly recommend the Greek olive and French bread roll sandwich; it is delectable, even at 7 in the morning. For lunch and dinner I almost always have the same meal, but it is different each day. All meals start with a healthy portion of white rice, and a heaping pile of potatoes (yes “and,” never “or”). Then there is some kind of meat- fried chicken, boiled chicken, fried beef, or white fish of some kind. There is usually a sauce- I eat a lot of this sauce that looks like pesto and tastes similar, but isn’t quite right. If I’m lucky I can smother the whole thing in ají, which is amazing hot sauce. It is usually yellow, and does not taste like salsa, but many does it have a bite! It’s my favourite part of Peruvian food by far.

Potatoes are probably the most important part of the Peruvian diet. Peruvians are very proud of the fact that the potato originated in the Peruvian Andes, and they are quick to point out that the potato has saved millions of lives around the world and lifted people from poverty (think Ireland). More than 3,000 types of potatoes are grown in Perú. I’ve probably only had about 6 since I’ve been here. Good thing I have another 26 months!

The fruit here is amazing as well. My favourite new fruit is the granadilla, which I recently learned might be a passion fruit. In any case its insides look like fish eggs, but taste like a piece of heaven. There are also a bunch of types of bananas that we eat a lot of. My favourite are these little mini-bananas that are about 3-4 inches long, and nice and sweet. The weirdest look and taste like a banana, but are orange inside. Many of my colleagues would kill for a chirimoya, which is white, slimy, and super sweet on the inside, but I don’t really care for it. Other popular fruits are mandarins (not at all seedless), apples, and mangoes, which are just coming into season :).

What do we drink? My madre often packs Sporade for me, which is a hilarious Gatorade rip-off. Other than that I’ve have fresh-squeezed lemonade, peach juice, orange juice, and lots and lots of Inca Kola. Inca Kola is a bright yellow soft drink that tastes like chewing gum. Not my favourite. I got super-lucky because my host family here doesn’t drink coffee (everyone else drinks instant- there is no “café pasado” or real coffee, as they call it here). So instead, I drink te puro (black tea) for breakfast and dinner. My host family thinks I’m very weird because I don’t add sugar. I also drink a black tea made with cinnamon and cloves, which is delicious.

So, that’s my encyclopedia entry about Perú. I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface, but hopefully if you’re still awake and reading you’ll now have a little more context in which to fit my stories.