Hi everybody,
Hope all is running well in your home countries. I decided to publish a circular about my stay in Peru in irregular intervals. I also decided to write it in simple English. So it is not necessary to translate all the stuff in Spanish, Turkish and German respectively. If you do not want to receive this circular, please write a short e-mail to me.
Nearly four weeks went by since we arrived in Lima. On Monday, we will drive to Ayacucho/Huamanga in the Andes, about 600 kilometres from Lima. The trip will take about ten hours and people told me that you hardly met a vehicle when one leaves the coastal areas. Therefore, I am in high expectations about our first trip to Ayacucho by car. We must climb up a mountain pass of about 5000 meters. The day before yesterday I bought some pills against altitude sickness.
Lima and his inhabitants greeted us with some surprises:
Firstly, you have a misty weather with a non-transparent cloud-layer of about nine months within a year. But it never rains. Thanks to the cold Humboldt current. I had the impression that the Limenos are a little bit lethargic and reserved. But imagine: the sun disappears for nine months in Germany. People would walk around like maniacs there. The Incas recommended to the Spanish conquerors to establish the capital in Lima. Their hope was that the colonizers would leave the continent because of the unacceptable weather conditions. As history showed, they went wrong.
Secondly, if it never rains, most of the coastal area of Peru and Chile is a desert, interrupted by some river valleys, where farming is possible. Without doubt, it is holding a particular attraction.
Thirdly, the Limenos do not live with the ocean. Sometimes one gets the impression that the sea does not exist. There is a striking example for this: The Spaniards built the city (now the historic centre of Lima) eight miles away from the shore. In Spain, they did the opposite. In addition, along the shore one will find only a highway and some football pitches. In Istanbul for example, people live with the sea. The sea was essential for the identity of the people in the biggest Turkish city.
In the fourth place, I never saw a metropolitan area, where people are so mixed with each other as Lima. Even in New York, one has just white people, black people or Hispanics but they seldom created something new by mixing over the centuries. It is amazing to look into the faces of the people. Unfortunately there exists still a strong racist attitude towards some ethnic groups.
In the fifth place, Latin America turns away its back from the Atlantic and Europe towards the Pacific and South-East-Asia. Many immigrants came from South-East Asia over the last decades. They will surely help to speed up the process. Perhaps a further building stone of the demise of the European continent.
The security situation in Lima is excellent compared with the situation in Guatemala City. There is a public life on the streets, in the centre of the city; people are walking around and without fear. It is also possible to drink a beer or go to events in the night. I saw many women walking around alone. But you have to know where you walk around. That is the essential question. Two blocs further and it could be that a thief wants to rob your money. I have always my “robber-money” in my pocket. Yesterday I read in the newspaper that someone was stabbed down for 30 soles, about 7 euros. The poverty in Peru is still immense. 13 per cent of the population must get by on 1.25 dollars per day and 40 percent with fewer than 3.75 dollars per day (us-american). Hard to survive. Some discussions about poverty in Germany vanish into thin air if one bears this in mind.
If you want, Lima can be described as a typical city, which grew too fast. From 1 million inhabitants in 1960 to over 8 million nowadays. Poverty and the internal war from 1980 till the year 2000 triggered this development. As a result one can observe the typical symptoms as everywhere in the world: pollution, no public transport system (just taxis and micro-buses) and districts without electricity or/and water (pueblos jovenes). The fight against climate change is senseless if a great part of mankind do not know what to eat the next day. They simply do not care.
I attended for four days a seminar in valle de lurin – south of Lima – about conflict transformation and internal conflict resolution. Peru has many problems relating to the massacres of the shining path at the one hand and the military at the other hand. Now we have the problem that still a sufficient compensation from the state institutions is not under way. The difficulty in Ayacucho for example is obvious: in this city of 160.000 inhabitants and in the surroundings live both door by door: the sacrifice of the military and those by the shining path. One can imagine what tension exists in these regions. 70.000 people died, 85% from them in five departments. To project this number to all of Peru means over 1 million dead people. Peru has 28 million inhabitants. A few days later I could observe these difficulties on a conference in the Peruvian Congress in Lima, where many organizations demanded justice and a dignified reparation process for the sacrifice.
Diverve human rights activists show the dilemma of the country: the decentralization process must make more progress and there is a lot to do towards a civil society after the Fujimori-Era. More economic investments in the provinces of the country are necessary to stabilize the political situation of the departments. And: a great part of the profits of business activities must stay in the country and should not be transformed to the companies of foreign countries.
A further topical theme: the destruction of the environment in the Amazon region. I will travel in the middle of December to Pucallpa in the Amazon to form myself an opinion about this problem. From 80 plots in the Peruvian Amazon 64 were allocated to western and Chinese oil firms. It is ridiculous, isn’t it? On Sunday we hear some stuff about human rights, environmental protection and a just world order from our politicians and on the other hand the same guys approve the destruction of the tropical rainforest for economic purposes. They make nonsense of Development Aid this way. And also of their own ideals and values.
Let me mention in conclusion the wonderful food in Peru. People told me in Germany that Peruvian food is the best in South America. No, it is wrong. It is the best food in the whole of America (sorry Mexican supporters but it is true) and one of the best in the world. I cannot list the meals and specialties (would take too long) but I never saw such diversity. Alone for this, it is worth to visit the country.
As I mentioned above we will travel in December to the Amazon and over Christmas to the north of coastal Peru, near Ecuador or perhaps to Bolivia. But it sounds good, doesn’t it? Probably in the beginning of the next year I will write a new circular.
But until then, I will surely upload some pictures on www.foreignpolicy.de.
Take care and best wishes….
