The Globalist

Fall 2016 / Vol. 17, Issue 1

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Fall 2016 / Vol. 17, Issue

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GET INVOLVED WITH THE GLOBALIST! To be kept abreast of all the latest opportunities to write, edit, or design for the Globalist, or to get involved with our Business team, email Editors-in-Chief Olivia Burton (olivia.burton@ yale.edu) and Micaela Bullard (micaela. bullard@yale.edu).

Alums and other friends of the Globalist are invited to join our new alumni panlist by emailing Sami Glass (samantha.glass@yale. edu). Let’s stay in touch!

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Editors in Chief Micaela Bullard Olivia Burton

CLARA MOKRI / THE YALE GLOBALIST

Executive Director Samantha Glass Business Director Aaron Tannenbaum Managing Editors Skyler Inman Caroline Kuritzkes Charlotte Lawrence Alex Posner Anna Russo Associate Editors Christina Bartzokis Nicola Haubold Alec Hernandez Nicolas Jimenez Henry Robinson Chief Online Editor Rhea Kumar Online Editors Geny Decker William Ellison Jonathan Ng Creative Director Amrutha Dorai Production & Design Editors Cheryl Mai Clara Mokri Samantha Ng Amy Zheng Find us online: www.tyglobalist.org @yaleglobalist tyglobalist@gmail.com

FROM THE EDITORS When the Spanish chroniclers brought the written word to peru in 1532, the first descriptions of the country were hued with a profound sense of the fantastical. Attempting to describe a reality that differed completely from that of the European world, the chroniclers wrote of a bizarre and mesmeric land that challenged all beliefs. They wrote of jungle tribes that went insane at the foreign sight of their reflections on mirrors, thinking the glass had swallowed their souls; of massive bipedal beasts and warrior women that inhabited the rainforests; of entire armies disappearing in Andean passes overnight, swallowed soundlessly by the mountains. When priests played the bells on the first Peruvian churches, they described how the ringing woke golden bulls from the depths of the highland lakes, how these rose from the waters to bellow on the fields of reeds. Inspired by these stories, hundreds of conquistadores embarked on the search for a city of gold and succumbed to the dangers of the forest. The few survivors returned naked and starved, chewing on the leather straps of their horseless saddles for sustenance.

Tales such as these show how that faraway land has haunted minds and incensed imaginations for almost five centuries. Yet for Peruvians such as myself, the reality of home is very different from its popular understanding. Living in a nation that continues to struggle with underdevelopment, corruption, and a recent history of violence means that many Peruvians will recognize inequality and instability over mysticism and pride as their most prominent countrymen. As slums still cling to the outskirts of cities and about a quarter of the population still lives below the poverty line, it is easy to forget that our ancestors once carved their livelihood out of mountains and that our lands once gilded Europe with their wealth.

This year’s Globalist reporting trip, which I led alongside my coeditor Olivia, was a reminder of that powerful dichotomy. The 17 journalists who embarked on this two-week-long adventure of discovery reconnected Peru the Legend with Peru the Reality. The issue you now hold in your hands contains the crux of this interaction, the combinations of ancient hallucinogenic traditions and tourism, of violence and collective memory, of Inca highway systems and urban traffic, of Andean staple crops and commodity trends, of indigenous communities and foreign corporations, of past folklore and present struggle. We invite you to immerse yourselves in this journey on our first issue of Volume 17 of The Yale Globalist.

Micaela Bullard & Olivia Burton Editors-in-Chief Fall 2016 / Vol. 17, Issue

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FALL 2016 / VOL. 17, ISSUE I / PERU

6 BALADAK Molding Jordanian Identity Through Art

BY ALEC HERNANDEZ

8 THE PURSUIT OF ASYLUM Inside Greece’s Flawed Asylum System

BY DANILO ZAK

12 CONFUSION AND DELAY

The crisis of Lima’s transportation system and what’s being done to mitigate it

BY ANDREW SANDWEISS

15 NOT GUILTY, STILL RESPONSIBLE Peru and the Climate Crisis

BY ALEXANDER POSNER

16 PERU-US FREE TRADE Does it come at a price?

BY CAMILA GÜIZA-CHAVEZ

18 HARVESTING THE SEEDS OF LIFE Quinoa and Humankind’s Partnership

BY GEORGE GEMELAS

20 POLITICAL EARTH

Mining and the social politics that shape the Peruvian Landscape

BY JACKIE SALZINGER

23 FUJIMORI, NEVERMORE

How Peru came close to democratically electing a dictatorial political dynasty

BY MICAELA BULLARD

24 POLITICS, TERRORISM, DRUGS Sendero Luminoso’s Legacy in Peru

BY CHARLOTTE LAWRENCE

26 OLAS PERUANAS

Peruvian Surf Culture and the Dangers of Development

BY CLARA MOKRI

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28 AYAHUASCA

Peru’s Sacred Medicine Blends Tradition and Tourism

BY GABRIELLA BORTER

32 AYAK CHICHIRA The Many Ways to Say Maca

BY MICHELLE SANTOS

34 RESISTANCE SONGS Afroperuvian Music in Peru

BY NAT WYATT

36 LIVING MEMORY

Truth and Reconciliation of the Peruvian Armed Conflict

BY CAROLINE KURITZKES

39 HOME COOKING Chinese-Peruvian food goes global

BY OLIVIA BURTON

40 EN LA TIERRA DE LOS INCAS Three Weeks in the Land of the Incas PHOTOGRAPHS BY CLARA MOKRI

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44 EL PASADO QUE NO PASA The long road to recovering bodies

BY ELIZABETH MILES

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Each year, hundreds of Jordanian graffiti artists participate in Amman’s Baladak project.

RAED ASFOUR / THE YALE GLOBALIST

Baladak

Molding Jordanian Identity Through Art

BY ALEC HERNÁNDEZ Amman’s dusty streets seem to wind on into infinity, stretching through the seven hills upon which the city was built.

Eight traffic circles mold the backbone of the city, simultaneously organizing and clogging its streets with traffic. From the backseat of a taxi, the city’s landscape from the first to the eighth circle shifts from luxurious skyscrapers to steep drops into a valley below. Although the scenery might change, one facet of the city’s personality remains unalterable: the color beige.

From the rectangular hillside buildings to the summer haze that covers the city in the heat of the day, Amman is a monochrome medina.

Until 2013, the only street art one would find on Ammani streets consisted almost entirely of advertisements for apartment rentals and cars-for-sale. Red spray paint outlines the thin lines of the Arabic scrawled on the walls.

Now, taxi patrons absorb an entirely new image – one rich with both color and calligraphy – thanks to Amman’s Baladak project. Translating to “Your City” from Levantine Arabic, Baladak began in 2013 as an experimental street art project by the Al-Balad Theatre in the heart of Amman. Coming down the hill into

the city’s epicenter, giant calligraphy adorns the side of an apartment building, and larger-than-life portraits overlook the city center.

“Back when we started in 2013,” explains Mu’ath Isaeid, one of the project’s leaders, “we only expected around 6 or 7 artists total. We ended up with over 150 instead.” The new project soared, even in a city with essentially no prior exposure to street art.

The initial success prompted another year of the weeklong festival, which – now in its fourth year – continues to flourish.

Over the course of a week, Baladak invites street artists from around the Middle East to partake in back-to-back days of brainstorming, developing, and producing street art in an otherwise beige city. This year, in particular, saw a dramatic increase in the number of participants, with artists coming from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Tunisia, among others, to partake in the creative week.

This project falls in the middle of one of Jordan’s most formative summers. As the Syrian conflict drags into the unforeseeable

The new project soared, especially in a city with essentially no prior exposure to street art.

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future, refugees continue to flow across the country’s northern border, settling both in UN camps and overcrowded cities. Almost entirely dependent on foreign aid, Jordan somehow remains an island of tranquility in a sea of despair. But although on the surface the situation on the ground seems calm, strong undercurrents of tension have begun to ferment as Jordan’s population grows and job opportunities shrink. Talk of this unease will occasionally slip out in a conversation with a taxi driver, but is then immediately retracted or replaced with a different topic.

Likewise, Jordan’s relationship with its artistic history is hardly at the forefront of its national identity. Jordanian painters like Ali Jabri and Mohanna Durra, two forefathers of Near Eastern Modernism, did not emerge until the mid-twentieth century, but even then were largely unrecognized. Most records of early Jordanian art were lost when Jordan was split from Palestine by the British in 1922 and historical archives never made the trip from Jerusalem to Amman. Take, for instance, the Jordanian National Gallery of Fine Arts. It was only opened in 1979 at the hand of Queen Noor, the late King Hussein’s American-born wife. Even today the gallery is rarely visited by locals, and typically features western-centric exhibitions.

Raed Asfour, one of the directors of Baladak, imagines the project’s main purpose as molding a new artistic identity for the city with each year – one that is meant to be seen and shared by the public rather than hidden behind gallery walls. In his opinion, graffiti gives locals a unique opportunity to interact with art without paying a fee, or in some cases, even leaving their homes.

Molding this identity is crucial, he men-

tions as he presents a calendar with Baladak’s most popular pieces. Flipping through the pages, he names the nationality of each artist – Kuwaiti, Saudi, Lebanese – but only comes to a piece by a Jordanian toward the end of the booklet. Though the project is hosted in Jordan, few pieces focus on Jordan, or even feature Jordanian artists. As Raed explains, patriotism in Jordan has never been just about the locals – Jordan is a country for all Arabs.

Jordan has a complicated relationship with patriotism. Major thoroughfares are lined with imposing Jordanian flags, restaurants boast sleekly framed pictures of the royal family, and popular radio stations feature tracks that praise the efforts of King Abdullah II and the country’s armed forces against the Islamic State. In May of 2016 the country celebrated the 100-year anniversary of the Great Arab Revolt, and has since left the movement’s flags flying beside their Jordanian counterparts. Even in Petra, the ancient Nabatean city in the south, portraits of Hashemite kings have been pounded into the deep orange rock faces.

Since the country’s founding in 1946, Jordanians have taken a long path toward developing a collective national identity, complicated by years of welcoming Palistenian, Iraqi, and now Syrian refugees. As the country’s demographgovics continue to shift, e r n state-sponsored ment to patriotism has maintain been one way peace. By profor the moting a non-ethnic patriotism tied to the Hashemite monarchy and the Great Arab Revolt, Jordan has created a modern identity around a collective “Arabness,” avoiding a purely Jordanian take on nationalism. Jordan thus holds strong to its long tradition of hospitality toward guests, especially at a time when it cannot turn away its Arab neighbors in need.

Patriotism in Jordan is flashy, inclusive, and nearly impossible to overlook. For some, however, it is also suffocating. As a country shaped by a long history of immigration and refugee-intake, Jordan’s population is one that represents dozens of different Arab cultures: from Egyptian to Syrian, Palestinian to Bedouin. Naturally, Amman’s neighborhoods reflect this fusion of identities, but Baladak’s project has begun to put their own spin on the collective Arab-Jordanian identity. By bringing artists from across the Arab world, Baladak expands the idea of ethnic inclusivity that Jordan promotes.

Pieces from international artists were among the project’s most popular this year, like the Beirut-based artist Yazan Halwani’s massive portrait of a woman in Lweibdeh, one of Amman’s most artistic neighborhoods.

Likewise, Arabic calligraphy was among the festival’s most popular trends, as seen in Tunisian artist Shoof’s piece, which covered an entire wall in calligraphy. As Mu’ath put it, calligraphy has started trending among Arab

street artists, “because it reflects their culture and their own language and it is beautiful.

They can write a sentence using calligraphy and it stays beautiful. Sometimes it’s just visual – you can’t read it.” The art itself is a cultural phenomenon, straying from the images of mass patriotism that otherwise cover the city’s public space. The question now is whether the government will follow suit.

After a week of developing, preparing, and creating art across the city, Baladak culminates in a block party outside the theatre to which the entire city is invited. Extra trays of paint and bottles of spray paint are left for the community to create their own artwork across the street’s bare walls. Young children rub their painted hands across the limestone, while their parents streak spray paint above them. No rules, just self-expression.

As long as there

is conflict in the region, it seems, Jordan stands strong as a haven for all Arabs. Grinning before finishing our conversation, Raed looks up: “The people feel like, yeah, this is our art.”

Alec Hernández is a junior in Timothy Dwight College and a Political Science major. Contact him at alec.hernandez@yale.edu.

RAED ASFOUR / THE YALE GLOBALIST

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THE PURSUIT OF ASYLUM

Inside Greece’s Flawed Asylum System

BY DANILO ZAK

It’s July, and the Kara Tepe refugee camp is hot and dusty. “34 degrees” blinks in blocky green on a battered neon sign that rises above a ramshackle Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hygiene kiosk. Even here, the dirt claims ownership, invading what is meant to be a sterile safe haven. The small kiosk, which delivers soap, sanitizer, and a few other basic cleaning items, sits at the corner of a large collection of sturdy white tents. Rows of these tents, pressed together and sparsely furnished, provide shelter for the thousand or so refugees that reside in Kara Tepe.

“There are so many problems,” Ghalib tells me. “It’s very hot. The food is bad, and many people get sick. Everywhere there are insects, mice, and snakes.

It is so hard for me to eat or sleep.”

Ghalib is an older Afghani man who arrived on the small Greek island of Lesvos several months earlier, after smuggling himself and his family on a boat from Turkey’s nearby western coast. During his journey from Afghanistan, he suffered a spinal cord injury that has left him partially paralyzed and constantly in pain.

“Every day, we go to UNCHR, and every day, they tell us to wait. They help only the Syrians. Finally, after eighteen days of this, we got a lawyer to represent us.”

Ghalib was eager to speak. He wants the world to know the conditions here for Afghans, the struggle and suffering that he and his people must face as they fight for papers, for safety, for a new life. Greece is not supporting him the way it must to uphold funda-

mental human rights enshrined by the United Nations and the European Convention for Human Rights.

And yet, compared to many asylum seekers from the Middle East, Ghalib and his family have been lucky. They had the means to leave danger in Afghanistan and make it to Turkey. They survived that perilous ten-mile voyage from Turkey to Lesvos, a journey that had claimed four lives just two days before we spoke. After arriving on the island and entering into the asylum procedure, Ghalib was sent to Kara Tepe, the most comfortable and well-run camp on the island. With the infamous Moria detention center (rife with police brutality, ethnic tensions, and cases of tuberculosis) just a few miles down the road, being sent to Kara Tepe seems a blessing.

Finally, unlike the vast majority of asylum seekers in Kara Tepe, and in Greece as a whole, Ghalib and his family had access to individualized legal assistance via a UNHCR lawyer. It is likely, within a month or two, that the family will receive asylum and be able to start a new life in Greece. Ghalib, his wife, and his two daughters, waiting for months in a hot, dirty camp with lingering injuries and poor food, somehow are among the luckiest refugees I met in a month visiting camps across the country.

For most of the millions of refugees attempting to flee dangerous regions in the

IMAGES: DANILO ZAK / THE YALE GLOBALIST

If anything is radicalizing these young men, it is the disgrace of an asylum system they are faced with in Greece.

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Middle East, especially over the past few months, the path to asylum in Europe has been significantly more difficult. In Turkey, asylum seekers are frequently endangered, illegally repatriated, and discriminated against. It is for this reason that so many refugees have used Turkey as a stepping-stone towards more legitimate safety in Europe. Once there, asylum seekers had access to a more capable EU asylum system that is backed up by layers of national and international law, courts, directives, and referendums. Crucially, the right to appeal is explicitly ensured at several stages of the process.

But as more asylum seekers made their way through Greece and into the rest of Europe, the EU asylum system was put under significant pressure. Anti-refugee sentiment and fear of terrorism grew, and many countries began re-instituting internal borders. Asylum seekers who had friends and families in northern Europe were suddenly stuck in camps and detention centers in Greece, a country without the resources to provide for them on its own.

Everywhere in the Aegean, rights guaranteed to asylum seekers under Greek and European law were being almost categorically withheld.

Greece does not have the money, lawyers, or initiative to provide adequate legal information, much less individual legal counsel, to most of the asylum seekers.

Thousands continued to arrive on Aegean shores, and in overcrowded asylum centers tensions flared. Like Ghalib, many asylum seekers in Greece are forced to constantly define themselves based on nationality, as the process is very different depending on each individual’s country of origin. Syrians are often prioritized in the process due to their high chance of receiving asylum, leaving Afghanis, Pakistanis, Iraqis, and others feeling

unfairly treated. This has engendered tension within camps all over the country. In a camp near Athens, an Afghan man died in a brawl related to ethnic tension, one of a number of similar deaths throughout Greece.

The EU-Turkey deal in March was a callous and cowardly attempt by Europe to ease the burden on Greece without requiring other EU countries to accept more refugees. Part of the deal’s mandate was to “return” all of the refugees who arrived irregularly in Greece after March 20 to Turkey, under the premise that Turkey somehow counted as a “safe third country.” Given Turkey’s general inability to provide any meaningful protection to refugees or acceptable access to labor, medicine, and education, the EU-Turkey deal has come under intense criticism for violating the guidelines and codes that were the reason the EU asylum system was so vaunted. Deporting those who arrived after March 20 to Turkey constitutes mass expulsion and contradicts fundamental principles of asylum and human rights.

At first, those deported had the ability to appeal the decision. Frequently, the committees judging those appeals would reject the first instance decisions on the grounds that Turkey is not a safe third country. Here, the asylum system was working the way it should: When Europe and Greece sought to violate the law in order to deport en masse a group of asylum seekers, the right to appeal prevented them from following through.

However, on June 16, Greece passed an

amendment that rearranged the appeals committees to be made up of Greek judges instead of independent representatives from the UNHCR and National Commission for Human Rights. The bill, unabashedly forced through Greek parliament by EU officials, was a gross attempt by Europe to dismantle the checks and balances of their own asylum system. The new committees have yet to judge appeals yet, but it seems likely that they will begin to reverse the old committees’ rulings and uphold first instance decisions of inadmissibility.

According to Greek attorneys, past Committee members, and the NCHR, the new amendment entails an unconstitutional overlapping of judicial and administrative powers, and is an overt political attempt to influence a quasi-judicial body that is required by law to be fully independent and impartial. With so many of their rights already being trodden on in Greece, asylum seekers who have arrived after March 20 have now also lost the right to an effective remedy.

The new amendment violates the right to appeal guaranteed to asylum seekers in the European Convention for Human Rights, and some legal advocates are preparing to take cases against the amendment before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).

With the inefficiencies and backlog in Greece’s higher courts, it could take over five years for an ECtHR case to be brought against the new amendment.

The EU-Turkey deal and the lack of effective appeals is far from the only injustice done

to Greece’s ever-growing refugee population. Provision of information and basic organization at these camps is almost universally poor. With terror attacks igniting even more fear and Islamophobia, alternate routes through Europe may begin to close as well. Many refugees I spoke to were confused by this cause and effect. They are running from the same terrorists, they say. ISIS and the Taliban killed their families as well. “I am here because my school was destroyed by the Taliban,” one young refugee told me in the Piraeus Port camp.

Many of those I spoke to were the same young Muslim men who are so thoroughly demonized by the west. They have given up their lives, their families, and their communities in a desperate and dangerous bid for safety. Many have made this journey only to end up in the brutal conditions of Moria, where military personnel detain them in barb wire and steel bars. If anything is radicalizing these young men, it is the disgrace of an asylum system they are faced with in Greece.

Ghalib shook my hand, grabbed his crutches, and hobbled off to his tent. He must survive the undoubtedly uncomfortable conditions of hot Kara Tepe, and make it another few months to his substantive asylum interview. With the help of his lawyer, he and his family will likely be given asylum. Then, they must work with what little Greece is able to provide for asylees to build a new life. It is an almost insurmountable challenge. And yet, this small Afghani family is among the lucky ones. They are those who might find a way out of this broken asylum system in which so many fall through the cracks.

Danilo Zak is a junior Global Affairs major in Silliman College. Contact him at danilo.zak@yale.edu.

TOP: Pro-refugee graffiti outside the Moria camp. BOTTOM: Islamophobic graffiti in Mytilene, miles away from the Moria and Kara Tepe camps.

OPPOSITE: A UNHCR Iso-Box in Kara Tepe camp.

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Confusion and Delay

The crisis of Lima’s transportation system and what’s being done to mitigate it

BY ANDREW SANDWEISS

“It’s chaos.”

Mr. Araya took a sip of his coffee. His wife, Paola, nodded in agreement. To the right of our table, along Avenida Balta, an assortment of cars and busses crawled angrily. The noise of engines and honking created a low drone that diffused throughout the café.

“Lima is a pandemonium. Here, anything can happen. There are rules and laws here, but they aren’t followed.”

Mr. Araya has been driving his airport van service for the past 25 years. It’s a family business: the only other employees at PeruTaxiVan are his son, wife, and brothers. All work and live within the chaos that is Lima’s transportation nightmare.

“People are very ugly about it,” Mr. Araya began sadly, “people are very, very aggressive. [But] If someone cuts me off, it doesn’t matter to me. It’s not important, because somewhere up ahead there’s a worse driver. And beyond there’s an even worse driver. I’ve learned that you can’t always be stressed.”

To anyone who has experienced intra-city travel in the City of Kings, it is no surprise that Mr. Araya has developed a strategy to combat the constant slew of backed up thoroughfares.

To put it bluntly, Lima’s current transportation system is a confused, corrupted, and chaotically inefficient network of busses and cars: rapid mass transit has only made a quiet debut in a city with over 8 million people.

According to the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, Lima loses $800 million, 1.5% of its GDP, due to Lima’s poor transit system. Six

out of every ten Limeños are unsatisfied with public transit. Every six minutes, a car accident occurs. Every ten minutes, a person is hurt in such an accident. “Problematic”, “chaotic”, and “a crisis.” These are the words most commonly used to describe the situation.

The largest issue is traffic. According to Lima Como Vamos (LCV), a government watchdog and data collection organization, 25% of Limeños spend more than 2 hours a day commuting. Another 10% spend greater than 3 hours a day. New York City’s average commute time, the highest in the US, is 6 hours and 18 minutes, per week (3). Those in Lima spending over 3 hours a day commuting spend at least 15 hours in transit every week.

In 2014, it was reported that there were 1,590,755 vehicles of any sort in Lima, 66% of all vehicles in Peru and double the amount of vehicles in Lima since 2009. There are approximately 1,888,840 vehicles, excluding busses, in New York City (1).

Alfonso Mazzini, general manager of Transitemos, a private transit reform advocacy foundation, laments that “In Lima there are [roughly] 1,700,000 vehicles, so how is it that with 1,700,00 vehicles, we can be in such a crisis?”

The reason for such a crisis lies partly in the city’s design. Mazzini describes Lima “like a sand clock, everything converges in the middle. All economic activities are centralized, and thus, everyone who lives on the

IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

“Lima is a pandemonium. Here, anything can happen.”

Mr. Araya Airport Van Driver

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periphery has to come from all corners.” A LCV report from 2015 confirms this, as 14.5% of the commuters are heading to the Cercado de Lima, or Lima’s historic center, a stretch of land only 21.9 square kilometers. Combining all of “central” districts of Lima together forms a core to which 44% of commuters travel to every day, creating a consistent rush hour and traffic jam throughout Lima. But the vehicles clogging up Lima’s highways are not just cars, but busses as well.

Of the city’s 8 million people, 75.6% use public transportation (LCV). Although it is fantastic that so many use the public transport system, Claudia Bielich, noted sociologist and professor at the Universidad del Pacífico, notes that “the system is problematic in origin.”

Alfonso Mazzini describes, Lima is “set back 80 years in urban public transport.”

Why? There is no real network of mass transit in Lima, save for a single Metro (rail) line finished in 2011 (after 21 years of construction) and a single Bus Rapid Transit line (the Metropolitano) finished in 2010. In 2015, the Metro serviced only 3.4% of Lima’s population, and the Metropolitano only serviced 4.4%. 59.2% of Lima’s population—more than 78% of its public transit-riding population— relies on the confusingly unique private bus system in Lima.

Patricia Seminario, a professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), describes this system, and specifically the actors within it, as “the mafia.”

It’s a complicated system, but in order to understand its inefficiencies, it is essential to understand its inner workings. The network is made up of a series of private bus compa-

nies, operating modern busses, but also decades-old vehicles, called micros (mini-busses) and even smaller vans, called combis.

At the top of the private bus food chain stand the owners and administrators of the company, los transportistas. There are two types of people within this group: accionistas and dirigentes. The first group concerns themselves with decisions for the company or junta (group) of bus businesses teaming up. The dirigentes get paid a salary to carry out decisions made by the accionistas. Oddly enough, these administrators rarely own a single vehicle, and their offices are small, sometimes even just a desk, according to Ms. Bielich. One level beneath these actors are the propietarios, the owners of individual vehicles (combis and micros) who pay a fee to the administrators to affiliate themselves with the company. Oddly enough, these owners rarely drive their own vehicles. That honor is given to the choferes, the drivers, who are hired alongside a cobrador, fare collector, by the propietario. The driver and fare collector do not get paid a salary, but rather a commission. The more passengers the two get, the more money they receive. Of their earnings, they must pay a daily sum to the vehicle’s owner, then pay for gasoline, and finally split the remaining money amongst the two of them: with 60% going to the driver, the rest going to the fare collector.

The competition is not just between company and company, but between every driver in the city. They are all trying to make as much money as possible by carrying as many passengers as possible.

And the choferes and cobradores do just that.

“Drivers speed where they shouldn’t speed, or plant themselves at a stop waiting where they know there are passengers,” states Patricia Seminario, “The system gives the incentive to drive badly.”

Even worse, any accidents that occur with these vehicles become a nightmare for the victim. If someone gets hit by a micro, their logical first step would be to go complain to the company. But the company would respond, according to Ms. Bielich, saying “that vehicle is not mine, and that driver is not my employee”, making it extremely difficult to resolve accidents.

The drivers’ 14 hour work days don’t help.

This competition does have a few benefactors outside the bus company. Although rarely mentioned, there are groups of individuals who profit from the commission system. These people acts as scouts, collecting real time data on the business of stops further up bus routes, and selling this information to choferes and cobradores. Los transportistas also benefit—it’s essentially their system.

Little is required of them to make money.

It wasn’t always like this.

In the 1970s, Lima was a much smaller city, both demographically and geographically, with a government run transit system.

When the city was inundated by mass migration, the migrants purchased small, cheap vehicles to provide transit between homes and

Mr. Araya and his wife with their airport vans.

ANDREW SANDWEISS / THE GLOBALIST

major avenues. “People”, according to Ms. Bielich, “saw this as good business, and bit by bit these services grew, and there were more combis as the system began institutionalizing itself.” The government turned a blind eye. It knew it couldn’t satisfy the demands of Lima’s growing population, so it let these privately run companies expand into chaos.

An official liberalization of transport came with the government of Alberto Fujimori, and although he was well known for other dramatic events in Peru’s political and economic history, he was also responsible for a radical change in Lima’s transit history, with Decreto Legislativo 651, a law that liberalized transport in the early 1990s. He dismantled the publicly owned transit system, firing multitudes of people, but then allowed them to offer transportation service on their own. At the same time, the importation of cars from East Asian countries and a relaxation of import taxes provided an influx of vehicles in the city.

It was, from a theoretical stance, a very democratizing act. As Mr. Araya put it, “everybody was becoming a taxi driver. There were taxi doctors, taxi engineers, taxi laborers, taxi professors, taxi police officers” as for many it provided needed extra income.

Alas, the democratizing D. L. 651 has plagued Lima with congestion.

Patricia Seminario of PUCP stated, “the liberalization of transport was the worst thing for Lima.”

And as the government played a hand in dealing with Lima’s current traffic situation, it also inadvertently (or purposely) works to maintain it.

The government does this primarily PHOTO: ANDREW SANDWEISS/THE YALE GLOBALIST

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through administration changes. When an administration changes hands in Lima, many projects and proposals get left in the dust. Politicians simply want to build infrastructure with their name associated with it. “Everyone goes in for their own political purposes,” says Alfonso Mazzini, from Transitemos. Thus, there is no continuity, which is necessary with transit reform.

Corruption also plays a role. According to Mr. Araya, “The police are very easy to manipulate. You can give them 20 soles and they’ll let you off without paperwork or fines.

So what happens? When you pass a red light, you’re fine.”

Lima is in a dire situation. With an ineffective government, lack of substantial mass transit, an informal and dangerous system of busses and taxis, it’s a network of confusion and delay.

But there is hope. For throughout the city there are individuals and groups proposing, advocating, and developing ideas to help the city travel in the right direction.

There are a myriad of projects underway or proposed for the City of Kings.

Metro’s Line 1 and the Metropolitano have had the most visible impact. Although servicing a small percentage of the population, they are landmark symbols of progress.

Despite these public transit-focused developments, Lima still maintains itself in a car-centric mentality. As Alfonso Mazzini states, “The theme of transportation that we have now is something out of the 20th century: building bypasses, and such”, an unfor-

tunate mentality considering that only 15.5% of Limeños use private automobiles to commute.

Alfonso Mazzini states that “here, everyone goes in for their own political purposes, and long-term plans are inconvenient to these politicians because if they begin a project, they most likely won’t be there to inaugurate it with a political model that avoids the reelection of municipal administrations.

It’s very difficult that such a reform, involving 5 to 6 different administrations and 3 national government agencies, can be carried through.”

The last plan regarding transportation in Lima was released in 2010. Since then, Lima has had no cohesive vision, even though coordination must take place for any real change to happen.

Getting people to obey the law is another story altogether. No reform can happen unless drivers are willing to make changes to their driving patterns. In Lima, such behaviors are further supported via police corruption. But, according to Mr. Araya, there is a place where this issue has been solved.

“In Callao, things are different.”

Callao is an autonomous province located to the northwest of Lima. Although the smallest province in Peru, it is also one of the

The government turned a blind eye. It knew it couldn’t satisfy the demands of Lima’s growing population, so it let these privately run companies expand towards chaos.

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most important, containing Lima (and the country’s) main airport, as well as the largest port and intermodal facilities. It has also succeeded in another transport area: traffic regulation.

In Callao, when a police officer leaves a ticket, he or she gets a percentage from the fine, a rule absent in Lima. Cameras are located throughout the province, catching and recording speed violations, and sendi ng fines either by mail or electronically. There is no room for corruption—Callao has managed to push it out.

The effects of these programs have already been felt. In 2012, the accident death rate in Lima was 67.3 deaths via accident per 1,000,000 people, whereas the accident death rate in Callao was 28.5 deaths via accident per 1,000,000 people, a significant drop. This only makes sense, as speed is one of the biggest factors in these accidents (2).

There’s a unique mentality to going into Callao. Taxi drivers, van drivers, all know to follow the law, because they know there are consequences if they don’t.

Callao has tapped into a wealth of new methods and ideas on how to control traffic patterns around the Lima region.

No matter what type of reform arrives next in the City of Kings, it will have to jump through many, many hurdles. Administrative changes, transit companies, uncoordinated agencies, corruption: avoiding these issues is like one big obstacle course. But, as Patricia Seminario states, “Lima is a city with [nearly] 10 million inhabitants, we’re not here to play games.”

Andrew Sandweiss is a Sophomore and an Architecture major in Trumbull College. Contact him at andrew.sandweiss@yale.edu.

Not Guilty, But Still Responsible Peru and the Climate Crisis

BY ALEXANDER POSNER

PHOTO: CLARA MOKRI/ THE YALE GLOBALIST

The Pastoruri glacier sits at 5,000 meters atop the mountains of Central Peru. Once one of the world’s preeminent tropical glaciers and a bustling hub of tourists, skiers, and the like, Pastoruri is today a shadow of its former self. A full half of the glacier has vanished—a casualty of our warming planet— and, if expert predictions hold true, Pastoruri will cease to exist by the end of the decade.

Sadly, the glacier’s rapid contraction mirrors the melting patterns of other ice formations in the region. Across Peru—historically home to 70% of the world’s topical glaciers— global warming has shrunk glacial surface area by a whopping 39%. Despite the best efforts of government officials and conservationists, no short-term strategies have halted this glacial retreat.

The negative consequences of glacial shrinkage are manifold. First, the receding ice has severely dented the tourism industry. At Pastoruri, for example, while 100,000 visitors trekked to the glacier per year in the 1990s, today the number of annual visitors’ hovers well below 40,000. For the quarter of the nearby population that makes a living from Pastoruri tourism, these developments have been ruinous.

“I used to sell 30-40 plates of food per day,” said Nelisia Tuya, a tourist food vendor, in an interview with Reuters. “Now it’s 2-3, or maybe 5-6 at the most. And that’s with fewer of us selling.”

On the environmental and public health front, glacial retreat is no less injurious. As ice melts, it often overfeeds nearby lakes, which, if breached—can flood neighboring towns. In addition, glacial runoff often prompts mineral leaching and the contamination of desperately needed water supplies. In addition, glacial runoff often prompts mineral leaching and the contamination of desperately needed

water supplies, and the general deterioriation of glaciers threatens to wholly extinguish many vital water sources. Thus, for those who rely on glacial runoff for agriculture, personal consumption, and other key priorities, the swift recession of glaciers poses a grave threat.

Across Peru, similar signs and symptoms of climate change are abundant. In fact, of all the nations on earth, Peru has suffered from some of the most immediate and visible consequences. Forest degradation, a heightened risk of flooding, inconsistent rainfall, farmland deterioration, and a surge in tropical diseases—including dengue, malaria, and bartonellosis—are just some of the many pernicious effects. In fact, according to the UK’s Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, Peru ranks third—behind Bangladesh and Honduras—for nations most at risk due to climate change.

For Peru, the costs of a warming planet have been and will continue to be significant. According to an analysis by the World Bank in 2009, climate change stands poised to deliver a 0.2-year reduction in average life expectancy and a 2.3% decrease in annual income. Less conservative estimates have pegged the cost of climate change to Peru at between 8% and 34%. Regardless of the precise figure, climate change’s toll—financially and otherwise—will be substantial.

However, Peru will bear the brunt of climate change’s consequences having contributed practically nothing to the problem.

Estimates suggest that Peru accounts for just 0.4% of global carbon dioxide emissions, and even less when considered in the context of history. Thus, Peru—like many of its neighboring countries—stands at the receiving end of a great injustice. It is suffering, and will continue to suffer, the full repercussions of a problem it did little to create. Put another

way, Peru may not be guilty of contributing in any meaningful way to climate change, but it will be responsible for reckoning with the consequences.

Notably, these developments come against the backdrop of relatively robust economic growth. Over the past 10 years, Peru’s economy has expanded at an average rate of 5.9 percent, and the associated jumps in employment and income have slashed the poverty rate substantially. All told, according to estimates by the World Bank, the share of Peruvians living in poverty has plunged from 55.6% in 2005 to just 21.8% today. Among those living in extreme poverty, the declines have been even steeper.

These gains are significant and laudable, but they are imperiled by the progression of climate change. The necessary prevention and mitigation efforts will demand substantial societal resources and put a damper on economic growth—at least in the short term.

Despite the outsized contribution of industrialized nations to climate change and their relative immunity to the consequences, Peru stands committed to reducing its own carbon footprint. This summer, its government officially ratified the Paris Accord on Climate Change. However, with only a 0.4% share of the global carbon output, Peru’s efforts must be part of a large whole. The industrialized world has the unique ability—and arguably the moral responsibility—to lead the charge. Only then can we effectively cool our warming planet, limit the damage to the environment, and allow developing nations like Peru to continue to pursue growth and poverty reduction.

Alexander Posner is a junior in Morse majoring in Ethics, Politics, and Economics. Feel free to reach him at alexander.posner@yale.edu.

Fall 2016 / Vol. 17, Issue

15

PERÚ

FREE TRADE BETWEEN PERU AND THE US: Does It Come at a Price?

IMAGES: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

BY CAMILA GÜIZA-CHAVEZ

On a balmy spring day in 2006, within the pristine walls of the White House, two men in starched suits sat down together at a table.

Between them was a thick stack of papers.

Besides a few minutes of forced chatter, the men didn’t delay much in getting to the real objective of their meeting: to sign a document that would secure free trade between their two countries, the U.S. and Peru. With barely repressed eagerness they withdrew their fountain pens and wrote their signatures smoothly across the page. In doing so they solidified the deal, secured huge amounts of money for both their countries, and wrote the fate of millions of people. A few glossy smiles and a firm handshake later, then-presidents George W. Bush and Alejandro Toledo went their separate ways, satisfied and hopeful for the future.

Three years later, dozens of people lay dead on the floor of the Amazon rainforest. It was June 5th, 2009, and for the past 10 days, over 2000 people of the Awajún and Wampi tribes had been occupying a highway known as the “Devil’s Curve” that connects the jungle to the northern coast of Peru. In response, police mobilized into the region, sparking a standoff with indigenous protesters. According to witness testimonies, tear gas and machine gun fire rained down from helicopters overhead, while police on the ground shot AKM rifles into the crowd. 33 people were killed, on both sides, and many more were wounded–the exact number is unclear, but estimates reach into the hundreds.

Why did they die? The answer depends on who you ask, but every version of the story points to one thing: the Peruvian Trade Promotion Agreement (PTPA), signed by Bush and Toledo on that spring day in 2006. Essentially, the PTPA eliminated trade barriers between the U.S. and Peru. Trade skyrocketed as a result, going from $9.1 billion in 2009 to $18.2 billion in 2013. By that point, the U.S. had become Peru’s largest trading partner worldwide.

For those of us in the U.S., this may not seem like a big deal. After all, let’s face it: the biggest change in our day-to-day lives is probably an increase of Peruvian products in our

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grocery stores (quinoa, anyone?).

In Peru, however, it’s a different story. The country erupted in protest the day the Peruvian Congress approved the PTPA in a 79 to 14 vote (June 28, 2006). Who would sit on the negotiating committee, how they would be chosen, what would be the provisions of the agreement–all these were heavy points of contention. Flames of dissent tore across college campuses, as students expressed outrage that Peru was selling out to an “imperial” country like the United States. Farmers in eight different agricultural regions went on strike. The unrest peaked on that fateful day in the Amazon–a day that would go down in

team that negotiated the terms of the PTPA acted with the best interests of the people in mind.  “Today,” he says, “no one is against the PTPA.” Indigenous rights advocates across the country, however, will tell you differently. “The free trade agreement is a threat to the indigenous community,” argues Klaus Quicque Bolívar, president of FENAMAD (Federation of Madre de Dios River Natives and Affluents). A thousand miles away from Bobadilla’s office and the bustling streets of Lima, FENAMAD is located in a small town by the Amazon’s Madre de Dios River. The organization works to protect the rights of the thousands of native people who inhabit the region.

As Bolívar points out, what makes the PTPA such a threat is that there is no law that gives indigenous people the right to their own homeland or its resources. “What happens if oil is found in indigenous territory?” he asks, knowing the answer. With government approval, businesses are allowed to tap into whatever natural resource they are after (usually oil, wood, or mineral stores), even if they’re in a place that native people call home. This has always been the case, but free trade agreements exacerbate the issue. “The PTPA makes the whole nation open its eyes and ears and ask, ‘where do I have space to exploit?’” says Bolívar.

According to a letter issued in 2010 to the Obama administration by interest groups including Amazon Watch and the Washington Office on Latin America, “Amazonian land under concession to U.S. and other oil, gas and mining companies” rose “from around 10% before trade negotiations started in 2003, to an estimated 70% in 2010.”

But it’s not just about land rights and environmental concerns–it’s also about voice.

According to activist Iris Olivera, even though “many [of the provisions in the agreement] directly impacted the indigenous community, they were not consulted with before the agreement was signed.” Olivera works for a Lima-based nonprofit called Law, Environment, and Natural Resources. As she and the other

For indigenous people in the Amazon, the problem with the PTPA isn’t just that it’s being implemented poorly – the whole premise of free trade agreements is an attack on their way of life.

Peruvian history as “El Baguazo.”

Why did a trade agreement, which probably received about 5 seconds of mainstream media coverage in the U.S. when it was signed, spark such an intense response and lead to fatal consequences?

According to Percy Alberto Bobadilla, professor of social sciences at the Pontifical Catholic University of Lima, it all boils down to miscommunication–if the government had explained the PTPA to the indigenous community, they wouldn’t have felt the need to protest. Bobadilla, like much of the urban middle class of Peru, favors the agreement.

He believes it paved the way for Peruvian producers to “equitably enter into the international market,” and that the “top notch”

women who run the NGO will tell you, Peru’s large indigenous community (which makes up 45% of the population) is as vibrant as it is disenfranchised. Just like most native peoples around the world, native Peruvians are underrepresented (at best) in government. So when it came time to negotiate the PTPA with the U.S., it was passed with little to none of their input.

After some pressure from U.S. Congress members, the PTPA was reformed to include the creation of a Ministry of the Environment. However, rural indigenous communities have reason to be skeptical of politicians’ promises, as they have traditionally been the last ones to be accounted for. A 2015 report by the International Fund for Agricultural Development reveals that while Peru has successfully reduced the number of people living below the poverty line (from 59% of the population to 24%) since 2000, reduction has been uneven geographically. According to the report, “in the rural areas of the highlands and the rainforest areas, poverty still affects about 53 and 43 percent of the population respectively, and particularly indigenous communities.”

Peru’s government is in some ways taking steps to address this issue. Sierra Exportadora, an agency created in 2006 by the Department of Agriculture, attempts to translate the language of the global market and the PTPA to the language of farmers, providing technology to

help them compete on a global scale.

However, for indigenous people in the Amazon, the problem with the PTPA isn’t just that they don’t have easy access to the market–the agreement’s whole premise is an attack on their way of life. “Each region of Peru has its own realities,” says Bolívar, explaining why the answer isn’t simply to replicate Si-

It’s not just about land rights and environmental concerns–it’s also about voice. erra Exportadora’s activities in the Amazon.

“For us, ‘developing’ doesn’t mean destroying forests.”

Peru is facing the same question all industrialized countries have faced: how to rise up economically while elevating all sectors of the population. In the U.S. and in too many countries around, it’s that those who get left behind are always those who were poorest in the first place. In the U.S. and in too many countries

around the world, indigenous populations have been left with only two options: abandon their traditional way of life and align themselves with the government’s capitalistic worldview (i.e. collaborate with businesses who come to extract their land’s resources, or start extracting those resources themselves and selling them on the international market), or get left behind economically and become politically invisible.

Since signing the PTPA, Peru has entered into almost a dozen similar agreements with governments around the world, including those of China, Japan, and the European Union. With the recent election of Peru’s new president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, it remains to be seen how the country will be steered.

While it’s in the process of carving its place on the global economic stage, can Peru learn from the mistakes of other countries and stop wealth gaps from widening along all-too predictable lines?

Camila Güiza-Chavez is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College and an Ethnicity, Race, and Migration major. Contact her at camila.guiza-chavez@yale.edu.

ABOVE: Peruvian farmers attend farmer field school on crop husbandry and quality production of quinoa.

ACROSS: Former President Alejandro Toledo, signatory to the PTPA.

Fall 2016 / Vol. 17, Issue

17

PERÚ

HARVESTING THE SEEDS OF LIFE QUINOA’S AND HUMANKIND’S PARTNERSHIP

IMAGE: FLICKR/ BIODIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL

BY GEORGE GEMELAS

“Buen provecho,” the waiter said. Before walking away, he smiled again, leaving me with my first limeño dish. Pisco sours were sipped, bread was broken, and a main course-meat, potatoes, and rice—was devoured. In the heart of Lima’s tourist district, Panchita Restaurant served only the best Peruvian-Creole food. I had wanted to eat quinoa for my first meal, so I skimmed the menu for it. I found no such dish.

I was in Lima, Peru, an oasis on a desert coast, to understand how quinoa production is affecting Peruvian society. In recent years, the demand for quinoa has boomed; quinoa has been deemed a “superfood” in American mainstream culture. But quinoa has been around for much longer; it has been a central food source for the Peruvian people for millennia. It grows best high up on the plateaus of the Andes in Peru and Bolivia, the altiplanos, a place where the atmosphere starts to wisp away, where days are hot and nights freezing cold. Over time, the people in the Andes have adapted to this low-oxygen climate, developing bigger chests and stronger lungs. And, like its people, quinoa has found a way to exist in Peru’s many microclimates.

Some varieties grow in the jungle, some in freezes, some on the coast, some in the mountains. In Peru, the years have cultivated both a superfood and a superpeople.

A grain of quinoa is smaller than an oat and even a grain of rice. But unlike oats or rice, both cereal grains, quinoa is a pseudocereal, known in Peru as a grano andino. Traditional cereal grains, or simply grains, are monocotyledons and come from grasses, while pseudocereals, like quinoa and chia, are dicotyledons, not grasses but relatives of spinach and beets. We eat the seeds of the quinoa plant which are picked from its stalks.

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Although in stores you will find only a few varieties of quinoa, hundreds exist throughout Peru. For generations, quinoa has been planted and picked by the peoples of Peru.

Quinoa’s rapid market growth was boosted when Oprah Winfrey included quinoa on the list of foods in her self-cleanse series. Likewise, in 2013, the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) declared the “Year of the Quinoa,” which recognizes the healthfulness and growing versatility of

Quinoa is more than just a fad; it has the potential to seriously address the growing food needs of the world’s 7 billion people. the crop, which according to the FAO’s website “offers an alternative food source for those countries suffering from food insecurity.” Quinoa is more than just a fad; it has the potential to seriously address the growing food needs of Earth’s 7 billion people.

Rightly so: quinoa has great appeal. It’s healthy. Quinoa has a variety of amino acids, vitamins, and micronutrients which provide for a well-balanced and filling meal. It’s a universal food. It doesn’t have gluten and is widely considered kosher. It’s gastronomically versatile. It can be used plainly or in prepared forms. On Yale Dining plates, it comes as vegetarian burger with sweet potato and quinoa,

in stuffed peppers, and in pilafs with roasted sweet potatoes and walnuts, with sautéed vegetables, or with black beans and corn. These qualities attract countries interested in consuming only the best and healthiest. Western countries consume around 87% of all exported Peruvian quinoa. The U.S. consumes half.

What I found odd was that the superfood was hard to find in Peru, whether at the finest restaurants like Panchita or at the humblest of street vendors. If I did find quinoa, it would be in the salad section. It was easier to find anticuchos, beef hearts on a stick, and blended frog smoothies than it was to find a restaurant with quinoa dishes. Where was this socalled “superfood”?

I turned my attention to the supply chain.

The quinoa eaten in the States is commercialized, high-standard quinoa. This quinoa has to be planted, grown for 5-8 months, certified for organic labeling, cut at its stalk, separated from its stalk, stored, packed, sold to a middleman, transported to a processing center, washed of its saponin coating, sieved for pebbles, analyzed, quality controlled, and then packaged for export (not to mention quality controlled again, branded, transported to stores, and sold in the importing country).

This process is not simple, requiring a slew of specialized people and machinery to slug the seeds along to the moneyed masses.

Before globalization, quinoa was perhaps grown more simply. International consumption requires mass production, standardization, and quality control of product, so demand driven by international markets exacts much from farmers. Consider this: from 2012- 2014, Peruvian quinoa exports multiplied by three times. Before, farmers grew quinoa at a small scale, forming communal fields, called ainokas, that divided up

labor. This form of organization was highly compatible with long-lasting farming, but incompatible with large-scale production. Now, small farmers trying to meet the high standards of the developed world face an uphill battle. If you sell to companies like Kellogg’s, you have to be perfect. Quinoa, once a longterm partner of Peru’s people, is now simply a superfood for the global consumer.

It was surprising that in the country of quinoa production I could only find quinoa dotting salad bars and artisanal markets. The price hikes perhaps are the greatest cause of quinoa’s absence. Quinoa prices have jumped at least three to four times. According to Professor Luis Mujica of the Universidad Católica in Lima, diets in rural areas have started transitioning from quinoa to less rich foods like potatoes and rice. The price of quinoa, driven up by international demand, prevents even Peruvians from eating this once accessible, highly nutritious crop.

The absence of quinoa in Peruvian restaurants also stems from the country’s traditional notion of quinoa. At least from the perspective of many limeños, quinoa is often seen as a food for the rural people, for the poor.

For one abuela, it was “alimento para los animales.” One hostel worker told me how he ate quinoa: Cook the quinoa. Add some sugar. Drink on the way to school. People did not consider quinoa an element of fine dining, but they rather saw it as a filling food.

Global demand is driving up prices for only those who can pay, preventing those who might most need quinoa to benefit from it.

First, there is the problem of scale. 99% of quinoa produced comes from either Peru or Bolivia. Forced to grow elsewhere, quinoa often requires more fertilizers and pesticides to protect the plant against the variability in climate. This, in many instances, disqualifies the product from organic certification. In Peru, we see this with the mass cultivation of quinoa on the desert coast.

There is also the problem of connectivity.

Farmers that can grow quinoa the best lack the connection to international markets.

The government in Peru has responded with programs like Sierra Exportadora, which attempts to connect poor rural areas to international markets. Similarly, NGOs try to improve rural locales to improve quality of life. Each strategy attempts to fit growers of quinoa and their traditional ways to a globalized food supply framework. Plant and pick, plant and pick, plant and pick. We need a new framework for ensuring foods like quinoa last and reach those who need it most.

The long chain of quinoa production is also facing another challenge: our changing climate. PhD student Cecilia Suiero says “the

climate has to be in favor of quinoa.” Sudden weather changes, associated with El Niño and global weather trends, have tampered with the stability of the quinoa production line. This year there was a frost, rendering the seeds of the superfood useless. Above 35 degrees Celsius, the seed does not germinate. When asked about the effect of a warmer and more variable climate, the owner of Quinoa Andina said “[We] can control everything. We can control the water. We can control the fertilizations. We can work in the market. We can work in the factory. We can buy machines. But we cannot [control] the weather.”

There is, however, hope.

Marta Palacios, the head of the kitchen at Panchita, had some perspective on quinoa. She has started experimenting with new quinoa dishes. Cooking quinoa requires care and knowledge of how it works. It’s “bien delicado.” For proper consistency, you have to watch the “clima,” the weather, in order to make sure the moisture doesn’t mess with the consistency of the final product. She, along with other kitchens across Lima, have begun to use their intimate knowledge of this food to make it accessible to those of the 21st century.

Hearing Marta talk about caring for kitchen reminded me of the way those who have cultivated quinoa for generations. Listen to the quinoa. Respond to the quinoa.

Innovate with the quinoa.

In this 21st century world, we have the technologies and knowledge to shift food production to meet the challenges of our growing world. UndWerstanding how the Andean people cultivated quinoa and combining it with today’s knowledge might provide a way to respond to the challenges of our growing, hungry world. The relationship that Peruvian people had with quinoa-- a relationship that resulted in a superfood and a superpeople-- was a partnership between man and nature. In the genetic diversity of quinoa’s DNA and the traditions and mindset of its people is a legacy, a guide. That legacy speaks of respect, patience, and action in order to create a healthier, well-fed, and more resilient human population.

The price of quinoa, driven up by international demand, prevents even Peruvians from eating this once accessible, highly nutritious crop.

George Gemelas is a Junior Ethics, Politics and Economics major in Davenport College.

Contact him at george.gemelas@yale.edu.

Engage Locally Understanding how food comes to the plate is important. Here is how you can get engaged on campus.

Drop in at the Farm Wednesdays (1- 5 pm), Fridays (2-4pm), and Sundays (1-5pm) Volunteer at the Yale Farm Contact sarah.gross@yale.edu.

Contact Science Communication with Impact Contact george.gemelas@yale. edu or visit http://scwin.yale. edu/.

Sit in on Knead2Know Friday pizzas at 4:30 with student TED style talks on food systems topics, which will culminate with music and Friday-afternoon fun.

Join Seed-to-Salad A public school program, which brings second graders to the Yale Farm for a sixweek curriculum. Contact pooja.choksi@yale.edu.

Go to Chewing the Fat Events A series on food and justice with the new Center for Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration.

Fall 2016 / Vol. 17, Issue

19

PERU PERÚ

POLITICAL EARTH Mining and the social politics that shape the Peruvian landscape

BY JACKIE SALZINGER

You are walking across land that you own, maybe land that has been in your community for centuries, surviving conquest by Incans and by Spaniards, but another power lurks deeper still below the surface on which you stand. If you’re going to understand the issue of mining in Peru, you first have to understand the very dirt beneath your feet. The surface belongs to various landowners – a farmer in the Cusco region tends to his crops, an indigenous community in the Amazon possesses its own local land rights. But beyond this topsoil, beyond where any individual shovel alone will penetrate, the interior earth bears the ownership of a greater, more abstract entity -- the Peruvian state itself. Beneath the land that we can actually see lies vast mineral wealth, the financial potential of which dwarfs the collective earnings the communities on top might

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make in a lifetime. This natural resource wealth belongs not to the superficial owners of the land, but the state. The government supposedly represents all Peruvian citizens: from the Amazon to the Andes to the coastal areas. Whether everyone is actually represented is a different story, and the capital city of Lima is closest to power in more ways than one. This is the story of Peruvian mining conflicts – the soil of the campesinos moving one way, while the earthy interior deep within silently tears the opposite direction.

Earthen Wealth

Mining in Peru has nearly always existed. Gold, silver, copper, iron. Rare minerals

abound all across the country’s diverse set of landscapes, and pre-conquest civilizations were extracting minerals long before the Spanish arrived. “The difference [now] is the scale,” Mari Burneo explains. Burneo, an anthropologist at the Institute of Peruvian Studies, specializes in institutional change in rural areas, especially with regards to land rights. The entrance of Peruvian minerals into international markets in this growing era of globalization is perhaps the defining factor in the scaling up of mining over the last several decades. Despite the fact that the surface-level deposits have been largely extracted by this point, the international prices of rare minerals remain high enough to justify much more invasive extraction that reaches deeper into the belly of the earth. Mining companies must go to even greater lengths (at greater costs) to reap their rewards, and both

they and the country await what they hope will be major payouts.

The mining activity in the country certainly adds up. Globally, Peru is 2nd in silver production, 2nd in copper reserves, and 6th in gold production. The mining sector comprises 12% of Peru’s Gross Domestic Product and an even more dramatic 57% of the country’s exports. Billions of dollars of both Peruvian and foreign dollars have been invested into this business. The Las Bambas copper mine, for example, was acquired by an Australian-Chinese firm from an Anglo-Swiss company for a whopping $5.85 billion dollars in 2014. Despite the multinational nature of many of these deals, Peru wins economically by selling the concessions that allow these mines access to the earth in the first place, although individuals and communities themselves still own the layer of land on top of the extractable material. Since the turn of the millennium, the Peruvian state has credited Peruvian citizens’ increased financial well-being (best represented by the 300% increase in GDP per capita since 2000, according to the World Bank) to the payoffs from this sector of the economy. Still, the billions of dollars that go into these projects is astounding. Rafael Roca, who lived and worked at the site of remote mines for years, notes “it is incredible that that amount of money can be invested in places where people don’t have TVs.” The big idea that companies market to Peruvians, however, is that the TVs are coming – so long as the mines move forward. It is impossible in Peru to talk about economic development without talking about mining, and vice versa. Some companies do seem to follow through on these promises of social benefit and work well to compensate the rural communities they are embedded in.

Others operate within a system of perverse incentives and perverted politics that tip the tables in favor of increased mining activities.

In mining towns, local community members’ voices are muted by their position in Peruvian society as indigenous, rural, and economically disadvantaged, and too often they find themselves without recourse for serious concerns that one must have if they are living next to an industrial mining operation.

operation. The local balance of power also shifts given the influx of workers, often including the new presence of armed company guards. The most fraught and most analyzed consequence of a mine, however, is that which is studied by the “Environmental Impact Assessment” that every mining project must undertake in its exploratory phase in order to receive approval from the government.

“The central theme is the future of water,” explains Javier Jahncke, Executive Secretary of the Muqui Network. Mining operations require a staggering amount of water to process the minerals and by-products being pulled deep from the earth’s crust.

Human beings, however, also need water to drink and irrigate their crops.

These needs for water sources are often the root of conflict between mines and communities.

The threat if the company holds all the power is very serious – in Peru nowadays, “we are all consuming heavy metals” Jahncke soberly points out. Cancer is on the rise, and even city-dwellers in the coastal capital of Lima are not immune. These grave concerns are not held just by elite environmental experts, either, as illustrated by the way 2012’s March for the Right to Water and Life made its way across the countryside, gathering supporters from all over Peru and from all walks of life.

By law, companies have to negotiate with community representatives and in some cases each individual landowner to secure the right to begin actually operating in an area.

As environmental consultant Eduardo Bryce put it, local landowners, with their superficial land rights, “have the key to the top of the trunk” of the treasure buried within. This can be an arduous political process for a firm, but is worth undertaking for the company given the huge profits underfoot. “They work like the CIA,” says Roca, describing how they keep tabs on who in the area is “with” them and who isn’t. In an ideal world, a third party might be able to bridge the knowledge and power gaps between local communities and corporate mining officials. But are governmental institutions, the most likely candidates for bridge-building, keeping pace with the spread of this sector?

First the Incas came, then the Spanish, then the landowners.

Alonso Portal, describing the colonized experience of rural indigenous Peruvians

A mountain in Peru. The Peruvian mining industry has brought wealth to the country, but also has negative implications for the environment.

CLARA MOKRI / THE YALE GLOBALIST

The Right to Water and Life

There are a lot of ways that a mine can impact the surrounding area, both human and environmental -- and by no means is that a dichotomy. Mines are potentially a means of employment and therefore economic benefit for a community, though often this potential is overstated given the expertise usually required to work for a specialized mining

Meanwhile in Lima

The Ministry for Energy and Mining (MINEM) has existed since 1968. The Ministry of the Environment (MINAM) was born in 2008. As might be expected, they are seen to be “in permanent tension,” to borrow the phrase of Lenin Valencia of the Peruvian Society for Environmental Rights, though it’s a battle between a toddler and an agency with seasoned political history. Valencia’s claim Fall 2016 / Vol. 17, Issue

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PERÚ was echoed by nearly everyone I spoke to in Peru with regards to governance in the mining sector. Though government agencies exist to regulate this sector, even people in these agencies question whether they have yet to achieve effective operations.

At the Andean Center for Education and Development, Hamilton Auccapure and his coworkers advocate for the rights of rural and indigenous communities affected by mines in the mountains, and he notices other cracks in the institutional apparatus. There is a severe imbalance of knowledge about the facts of a given mining project, and often the biggest problems arise when “the state and the company did not inform” the community of key facts to consider. Land might not get valued properly when sales are conducted, and community members may not be adequately notified if the EIA undergoes modification.

The incentives are just not there. Sometimes, all of this public oversight seems to be a bit of a farce, since step one of any mining operation is to win a lucrative but incredibly expensive concession from the government.

Such concessions are so costly that the firm must stop at almost nothing to move the project forward to pay off the investment.

Furthermore, certified consultants, who are hired by companies themselves to write the EIA for a project, often are not paid unless the study is approved, incentivizing them to underestimate potential pitfalls so the project gets fast-tracked in government agencies.

If you ask folks who are on the ground in these mining towns – usually hundreds of miles of winding dirt roads away from the official state entities in the capital – it does not seem that the government is the answer.

The Peruvian state is seen as too “corrupt” (a word that came up in every single interview for this article) and often too generally “absent” from what actually goes on in these remote areas. Alonso Portal told me about an incident that he and many Peruvians believe established the dynamic between the government and rural, indigenous communities in the modern era. People refer to the crisis simply as “Bagua,” the Amazonian town where it all went down. In 2009, a deadly clash between indigenous people in the Amazon and the state police took place over concessions the Peruvian government sold to another extractive industry (oil). Many Peruvians view what happened as a killing of peace-making police by “savages.” Bagua is just one of the several key incidents that lurks in the subtext of many conversations about land rights and mining still today.

idiom captures the belief held by Garcia and many others that poor, rural Peruvians are biting the hand that feeds them. The “perro del hortelano” perspective sees a paradox in calling for increased well-being while threatening the very means of development that would get Peru there -- mines. What this simple phrase demonstrates is the deep forces beneath the surface-level debate about mining: racism, and the elite, concentrated power that is the capital city of Lima.

Whatever the reality is on the ground in a mining town, Lima tells itself its own stories.

“Limeñens live in a bubble,” I heard often during my time there. “They live with their backs to the mountains and the jungle,” said

Peruvian Mining by the Numbers

Digging Ourselves Out

The mining sector comprises 12 percent of Peru’s GDP

... and 57 percent of Peru’s exports

3x

Dogs and Political Discourse

In a similar way that superficial land rights are overshadowed by deeper layers of Peruvian soil, Peruvian mining politics are all about deeper power structures that often go unspoken. Sometimes, however, there are moments when such structures are openly revealed, such as former President Alan Garcia’s famous “perro del hortelano” speech in 2007.

Literally translating to “dog in a manger,” the

22

the yale globalist

one city resident. According to Mari Burneo at the Institute for Peruvian Studies, the “urban middle classes” in Lima often believe a narrative that rural and indigenous communities are “ignorant savages” and even “terrorists.” Ximena Warnaars at Earth Rights International tells it this way: “If you don’t want the mine, you’re against development, and if you’re against development, you’re against the state, and if you’re against the state, that means you’re a terrorist.” In a country still walking its first few democratic steps after catastrophic civil war in the 1980s, the word “terrorist” plays onto a particularly sensitive nerve in Peruvian social politics, making this accusation a dangerous tool in the arsenal of pro-mining political interests in the country.

When protests against mining projects turn violent, it becomes all too easy for that label to appear in the media and in government responses. Protest is thereby criminalized, and even as government fails to fairly settle negotiations between companies and communities, harsh government crackdown against mining critics becomes justified in the popular imagination. Stalemate.

Mining is partially responsible for the 300 percent increase in GDP per capita since 2000

Basically everyone in Peru wants development, in some form or another. And most people I talked to made it clear that there is a distinction between being critical of mining practices and being “anti-mining.” OEFA’s Micaela Gonzalez, a young Limeña looking ahead to the future of her country, wonders if the status quo is the only possible way. Sure, the companies leave tailings and environmental destruction, but “they could leave opportunities, too.” Individuals within government agencies and NGOs continue to labor tirelessly to work towards a brighter future for Peru with regards to these issues.

That said, the light at the surface seems pretty far away from the foundational layers that must be moved through first. The political might of Lima (a third of Peru’s population) and the tight grasp that the toxic political posturing about “anti-mining” protesters has over Peruvian media make for a desperate situation indeed. I ended every interview for this article with the question of what hope my source had for the future, what change they thought might be the lynchpin in improving the state of these issues. One Limeña said to me bluntly, “I wish there would be a huge mine in Lima. Make it beneath the national cathedral, or in Miraflores or San Isidro [the upper middle class neighborhoods of the city].” In her eyes, only if all Peruvians understood the feeling of digging down could they succeed at reaching across to one another. Without such shared experience, there remain the differences between city and countryside, indigenous and European, media and reality, surface and depth. Divisions. Extraction.

Jackie Salzinger is a junior Anthropology major in Timothy Dwight College. Contact her at jacqueline.salzinger@yale.edu.

Fujimori, Nevermore How Peru came close to democratically electing a dictatorial political dynasty

To the average inhabitant of Lima, San Martin square is the undisputed center of political dissidence. Located just four blocks from the city’s Palace of Government, the square’s beautiful, colonial buildings surround the equestrian statue of José de San Martín, who liberated Peru from the Spanish monarchy in 1821. Yet Peruvians do not visit the square simply to pay homage to Republican heroes. Whenever the country’s political circles give cause for large-scale protesting, Limeños flock to the square with their banners and slogans held high. From there, they walk the Peruvian via crucis of opposition to the House of Congress, the Palace of Justice, and all the other architectural manifestations of government inefficiency found within a few blocks of San Martín’s watchful eye.

The square has held a number of historical protests, including those that took place in the waning days of Alberto Fujimori’s controversial government-turned-pseudo-dictatorship. First elected in an upset during the 1990 elections, Fujimori, a former university rector, became wildly popular for his defeat of the Shining Path guerrilla and his restoration of Peru’s economy after a decade-long recession.

Yet, in the latter years of his government, Fujimori exploited the enduring mass hysteria brought on by years of armed conflict to commit numerous human rights violations and allow corruption to run unchecked; his government was accused of forming death squads, forcibly sterilizing over 2000 women, altering the constitution to permit a third presidential term, and buying off the press and the opposition using funds from the state’s coffers.

Assailed by a massive public scandal after the bribing of opposition congressmen was captured on tape, Fujimori escaped the country and took refuge in Japan, faxing his resignation as president as a ridiculous final

act. Nevertheless, Fujimori was extradited to Peru after visiting Chile in 2005, and in 2008, found guilty of three counts of human rights violations, as well as numerous corruption crimes. He is currently locked behind bars, serving a 25-year sentence in Lima.

Hardly a decade later, on the 5th of April

To the fifty thousand protesters who flocked to San Martin square chanting “for justice and dignity, Fujimori nevermore,” the prospect of a second Fujimori presidency was inconceivable. of 2016, San Martin square became the setting of yet another mass protest, and the Fujimori name was once again to blame. This time, Keiko Fujimori, Alberto’s eldest daughter, had decided to run for president on a platform whose tacit centerpiece was releasing the elder Fujimori from prison. Capitalizing on her father’s victory over the Shining Path to earn votes, Keiko promised to counter violent crime spikes in Peru’s cities by increasing security spending and to rekindle many of her father’s populist policies. At the time of the San Martin square protest, Keiko had already reached the runoff election, capturing 40% of the vote; with elections five days away, polls projected she would sail to a six-point victory

over her opponent Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

To the fifty thousand protesters who flocked to San Martin square chanting “for justice and dignity, Fujimori nevermore,” the prospect of a second Fujimori presidency was inconceivable. Gustavo Gorriti, arguably Peru’s leading investigative reporter, whose kidnapping Fujimori was tried for, broke an entire career’s worth of political neutrality to attend the march, stating that “being here does not mean supporting a particular party, it means being willing to defend democracy.”

“Under Keiko, Peru will become a narco-state,” voiced community leader Olga Veracruz, who also attended the event, “we who march today are the sons and daughters of the peasant women Fujimori failed to forcibly sterilize.”

Ultimately, to the great relief of Gorriti, Veracruz, and every other Fujimori opponent, the march had a surprising and tangible effect on the election. Coupled with a series of drug-related scandals that weakened Keiko’s party leadership, this final show of defiance to what many viewed as a sign of Peru’s lacking collective memory tilted the election’s momentum in Kuczynski’s favor.

In a nail-biting finish, he managed to snatch the presidential seat with 50.12% of the vote.

Despite this triumph, Kuczynski’s government has major challenges ahead; Keiko’s party captured the absolute majority in congress, and is expected to strongly oppose Kuczynski in preparation for the 2021 elections. Yet the protesters can rejoice in that, in an ironic turn of events, the difference in poll results amounted to only 46 000 voters, roughly the same to the number of those who gathered at San Martin square.

Micaela Bullard is a Junior in Calhoun College double majoring in Global Affairs and Latin American Studies. You can contact her at micaela.bullard@yale.edu.

Fall 2016 / Vol. 17, Issue

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PHOTO: ELIZABETH MILES/THE YALE GLOBALIST

BY MICAELA BULLARD

PERÚ

POLITICS, TERRORISM, AND THE DRUG TRADE:

Sendero Luminoso’s Legacy in Peru

IMAGE: GALERIA DEL MINISTERIO DE DEFENSA DE PERU / FLICKR

BY CHARLOTTE LAWRENCE

On May 17, 1980, the eve of presidential elections to end a long period of political turmoil and military rule in Peru, a Maoist political party burned ballot boxes in the town of Chuschi, despite having turned down the chance to be on the ballot themselves. Rather than participate in democracy, the group known as the Shining Path chose armed revolt, which it saw as the only way to overthrow “bourgeois democracy” and achieve a dictatorship of the proletariat. The ensuing guerrilla war and the government reprisals it inspired brought destruction and suffering to Peruvians throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. Starting around 1992, President Fujimori’s government began to make significant progress in quashing the insurgency. By 2003, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission established by the Inter-American Court for Human Rights had released its Final Report on the internal conflict, which listed the death or disappearance toll at more than 62,000.

Thirty-six years after the ballot burning in Chuschi, Shining Path, or Sendero Luminoso in Spanish, is not entirely defeated. Of its violent remnants, two distinct groups endured in and around coca-rich river valleys. The Shining Path group operating in the Upper Huallaga Valley acted like a common criminal organization, using threats to control the civil population and profiting from the drug trade. It was led by a high-ranking member of the original Shining Path named Artemio.

After his capture in 2012, his branch of the organization was more or less broken up. In the Valley of the Apurimac, Ene, and Mantaro Rivers, or “VRAEM,” Sendero is led by Victor and Jose Quispe Palomino, sons of historic Shining Path leaders who embrace the Maoist ideology of their predecessors.

Still, according to Ricardo Soberón, the former Chairman of the National Commission for Development and Life without Drugs, the VRAEM branch’s ideology has become a tool for control, rather than a genuinely held belief system. For example, according to an off-record Foreign Relations official, the Shining Path has phased out many extreme ideological practices - like flogging homosexuals, drug addicts, and prostitutes - as unnec-

24 the yale globalist

essary and unpopular.

Sendero activity in the VRAEM since the Truth and Reconciliation Report in 2003 has been characterized by sporadic clashes with Peruvian military forces, terrorist attacks against polling stations, and most of all, a cash influx from their role as security for the drug trade. The group also has a sizeable captive population of indigenous people and children whose numbers are occasionally diminished by government rescue missions. At this point, Shining Path is too small and weak to count as an insurgency, rather, it is a crim-

unjustly in Latin America, Reagan withheld direct military assistance that might have ended the war. Even today, the Organization of American States’ and the United Nations’ anti-terrorism efforts ignore the ongoing Sendero conflict, focusing instead on louder Islamist terrorism. The politicization of the conflict is even reflected in the recent presidential election, with Keiko Fujimori casting herself as the tough-on terror daughter of the Peruvian president who won the war against Sendero, promoting a dangerous dichotomy that posits harsh retributive policies as the only way to successfully combat criminality. Such politicization forecloses efficient and fact-based solutions with distracting rhetoric and misguided priorities.

Nothing is more politicized in Peru than the drug trade. Sendero’s historic and contemporary location, the VRAEM, is also the leading region in the world’s leading country for cocaine production, producing 200-400 tons of approximately 600 tons produced worldwide annually. Shining Path’s involvement in the drug trade has its roots in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when the American and Peruvian militaries used interdiction to cut the air bridge transporting cocaine out of the country. In 2001, a civilian airplane was destroyed, which ended interdiction over Peru until 2015, when a controversial policy re-authorized the Peruvian military to shoot down airplanes suspected to be carrying drugs.As a result of interdiction, Sendero started to give security to convoys of 40 or 50 people on horses, each carrying 20-25 kilos of cocaine, who transported drugs from the VRAEM valley to mid-sized cities. With its insider knowledge, Sendero was able to offer security and a police-free route to traffickers in return for a steep profit.

Whether on the anti-terrorism side or the anti-drug trafficking side, responses to Sendero fall prey to an excess of politicization and not enough research-based, targeted problem solving. The problem exists at every level.

For example, according to an anonymous OAS official, the OAS will not allow some officials to endorse the Truth and Reconcil-

Without understanding, acknowledging, and studying the causes of Shining Path’s downfall, it is hard to see how the Peruvian government can effectively combat its remnants. inal terrorist organization with a unifying political history.

From start to present, the conflict has been deeply political. Rosa Cardozo, the Director of Amnesty International for Peru, explained the original civil war as a struggle between an emerging capitalist democracy (with some socialist tendencies) and an insurgency fighting for a Maoist vision of Marxist communism. The conflict can be further placed within Latin America’s common political history, with its lengthy period of colonial domination, and more recently the agrarian revolts in the 60s and the military dictatorships of the ‘70s.

But while the conflict can’t be separated from its political nature, aspects of it are politicized in an unnecessary and counterproductive manner. For example, the Reagan Administration offered financial military aid to Peru. However, perhaps out of a fear that the U.S. had interfered too often and

iation Commission Final Report, despite its thorough and unbiased nature, because the Report identified the downfall of Sendero with its own faulty decision-making, rather than as purely a result of government policy.

Without understanding, acknowledging, and studying the causes of Shining Path’s downfall, it is hard to see how the Peruvian government can effectively combat its remnants.

Ricardo Soberón feels strongly about the politicization of drug trafficking and terrorism. In fact, he lost his job as Peru’s drug tsar in 2012 because he suspended a program which eradicated coca fields in the Upper Huallaga valley. Mr. Soberon felt that the program was a failure, and wished to re-evaluate its efficacy before continuing. His successor, a woman who had worked for a U.S.-funded anti-drug charity, continued the program. There is ample evidence that a supply-side approach to cocaine trafficking does not work. Traffickers move their fields elsewhere, and in the meantime they cut their cocaine powder with something cheap and sell it at the same price – so only the consumer loses. Efforts to shut down airstrips fail similarly: traffickers improvise, using trucks to block highways to create makeshift airstrips, for instance. Robert Goldman, a law professor named who served on the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights and was part of an international task force evaluating Fujimori’s response to the Shining Path, echoed Soberón’s thoughts exactly: “The war on drugs has been a massive failure. It operates on a false premise that it’s a supply-side problem only, when the demand in the western countries is so high that the potential for profits is almost unlimited.”

As a result of drug trafficking and sporadic Sendero attacks, a section of the

VRAEM remains under a state of emergency, suspending Peruvians’ civil liberties and maintaining military rule of the region - a policy which is particularly exceptional given the low level of risk in these areas.

Though attacks do occur, they are rare. Yet 10,000 troops are stationed in the area, and the region under a state of emergency keeps expanding. Soberón’s explanation is illuminating, if true. He argues that the government and military exaggerate or

within a single province. Although this would be less politically expedient, as it would shift resources away from the wealthier cities near the VRAEM, it would better direct funding towards the neediest areas affected by the drug trade.

Not every aspect of anti-Sendero efforts is so problematic. For example, a pacification effort currently underway aims to build infrastructure and provide alternate employment to drug traffickers in the VRAEM, a sensible solution given strong profit incentives that keep people in the drug trade. Diverting money away from costly and ineffective supply-destruction programs and directing resources instead towards treating the root cause of the drug trade – poverty – might go far towards cutting off Sendero’s drug-related funding. Another uncontroversial solution is the rescue program mentioned above.

Recovering Sendero’s captives is particularly effective because Sendero’s recruitment base is not large – they are both an unpopular and a very small organization.

The more that Peru can utilize research and avoid false narratives or external interests, the better the VRAEM and the rest of the country will start to do.

Sendero’s historic and contemporary location, the VRAEM, is also the leading region in the world’s leading country for cocaine production, producing 200400 tons of approximately 600 tons produced worldwide annually. emphasize the threat of Shining Path in order to justify the increased power given to them by the emergency state. Former President Humala, who was largely responsible for the militarization of the VRAEM in the 2000s, was a military man himself. Soberón suggests that instead of militarization, the VRAEM, which is currently distributed among 5 provinces, should b e entirely contained

Charlotte Lawrence is a junior Global Affairs and History major in Ezra Stiles college. Contact her at charlotte. lawrence@yale.edu.

Peruvian Ministry of Defense officials inspect arms captured from Sendero in the VRAEM region.

GALERIA DEL MINISTERIO DE DEFENSA DEL PERU / FLICKR

Fall 2016 / Vol. 17, Issue

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PERU PERÚ

Olas Peruanas Peruvian Surf Culture and the Dangers of Development

PHOTO: OLIVIA BURTON/THE YALE GLOBALIST

BY CLARA MOKRI “The swell looks good today—a decent 7-9 feet,” Vania Torres Oliveri told me casually as we pulled up to Punta Hermosa and parked the car in front of Caballeros, one of the most famous surf spots in Peru. “Cool,” I responded, as normally as possible. The surfer in me was about to explode with excitement, but my rational conscience played devil’s advocate— I’d never surfed waves that big, especially on a board like the paper-thin highperformance one that Vania had provided me.

“Oh, and I forgot to tell you,” she said. “It’s nearly a quartermile paddle out from the beach.

That’s okay with you, right?”

Coming from one of the best female professional surfers in South America who regularly surfs some of the most fickle and unforgiving waves with the Peruvian national team, her nonchalance was to be expected.

I would characterize myself as an above average surfer. I’ve been around the sport nearly my entire life—I procrastinate my

schoolwork by watching surf videos and checking Los Angeles’ wave forecasts, and whenever I’m anywhere remotely close to an ocean all I can think about is paddling out. However, this was a new and unsettling experience, even for me.

Peruvian surfers are hardcore.

“Surfing is really unique. It’s more than a sport; it becomes a way of life. I’ve been surfing for over 40 years, and I’ve acquired a really deep connection with the ocean,” says Eduardo Arnillas, a businessman in the textile industry and father of two.

Such connection is not unusual in Peru.

Each surfer that I spoke to described their experience as spiritual and empowering.

“Surfing is part of our entire family’s lifestyle; and I don’t even surf,” Eduardo’s daughter Paula explains.

“On Paula’s 7th birthday, we started a surf competition for the kids called La Copa Paula,” recounts Eduardo. Her friends, nicknamed ‘The Kids of Copa Paula,’ would spend the

“Surfing is really unique. It’s more than a sport; it becomes a way of life. I’ve been surfing for over 40 years, and I’ve acquired a really deep connection with the ocean.”

Eduardo Arnillas

26 the yale globalist

year training for the event throughout the year. “Surfing is really a family connection that brings the community together.”

However, this community is not living in a blissful blue ocean dream. The Peruvian economy is growing at a faster rate than infrastructure can manage, and sustainable development has not been a priority with new projects. As a result, the integrity of the coastlines have been jeopardized. While surfing is the most popular sport in the country, many Peruvians do not realize how privileged they are to have some of the world’s best waves.

“The government and the Peruvians do not understand that we are home to nearly two-dozen world class waves”, professional surf photographer Pepe Romo explains. “Our coast is taken for granted, and I’ve witnessed the degradation of our coastline my whole life. It’s a shame.”

The most controversial developmental plans occurred along the Costa Verde in the heart of the capital. The first was a project to extend the highway right onto the beachfront in order to add more lanes, a bike path, and a walkway. The second project aimed to further develop the commercial fishing industry by building multiple piers that cut directly through some local surf spots. These jetties were built to make the sea calmer for incoming boats, so erecting them changed the topography of the ocean floor and the waves disappeared. One of the best waves in Lima City, called La Herradura, was completely destroyed after the mayor decided to develop the area by flattening part of the cliff. “Now

the beach is just rocks—there’s no more sand at all. In just a few months he destroyed what nature had spent millions of years to create.

It’s a lack of knowledge and infrastructure that allows things like this to happen,” explains Eduardo. It’s not just the surf spots that are at risk; these developments can also endanger entire ecosystems. This raises a handful of environmental speculation.

“Our coast is taken for granted, and I’ve witnessed the degradation of our coastline my whole life. It’s a shame.”

Pepe Romo A number of protests were held in light of these events. Thousands of surfers participated, and ultimately lobbied the government to pass a law allowing surf spots to be registered for protection. However, registration costs a lot of money, and there is no designated person to pay the sum because beaches are public goods. Surfers have used online forums to raise money, but there are so many spots that need protection.

Although Peru’s GDP has nearly tripled in the past decade due to its economic growth and rapid expansion, the country remains a part of the developing world. The uneven distribution of wealth between Peruvians

living in cities versus rural areas is vast, causing growth and investment in many regions to remain stagnant. As a result, there have been countless political disputes and protests against foreign investors, which makes it seem that there are far more pressing economic issues that face the country right now than the integrity of the coastline.

“It seems as if the best solution

to this problem is to elect someone into the municipality who surfs,” jokes Pepe. But he might just be right.

Clara Mokri is a junior political science major in Timothy Dwight College. Contact her at clara.mokri@yale.edu.

Author (right) studying the break outside Caballeros in Punta Hermosa with Peruvian National Team surfer VaniaTorres-Olivieri (left).

From L to R: surf hostel owner Oscar Morante, local surfer Ignacio Cisneros and Torres-Olivieri in Punta Hermosa PHOTOS: GABRIELLA BORTER & CLARA MOKRI/THE YALE GLOBALIST

Fall 2016 / Vol. 17, Issue

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PERÚ

Diego Palma and his daughter, preparing for an ayahuasca ceremony in the Maha Templo

Ayahuasca

Peru’s Sacred Medicine Blends Tradition and Tourism

IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

BY GABRIELLA BORTER In the colored light filtering through the stained-glass window of Maha Templo, eighty mats are laid out in concentric circles, each with a plastic pail sitting next to it. “For the vomiting,” says Diego Palma. He watches his young daughter play with a toy on one of the mats, completely at home in this shrine that her father built in his own backyard.

Palma is expecting a full house for his ceremony tonight–every single mat and pail will be used, most likely by a foreigner, who has come to Peru to drink ayahuasca tea.

28 the yale globalist

Ayahuasca is also a foreigner in the Sacred Valley where Palma and his family live. The vine, formally known as banisteriopsis caapi, grows in the Amazon jungle and is regarded as a sacred medicine. For thousands of years, indigenous peoples of the Amazon have brewed the vine and have drunk the ayahuasca tea to purge themselves of evil spirits.

The western world did not hear of this “miracle brew” until the 1960s, when demand for psychedelic experiences was high. Over the years, perseverant tourists have traveled

to Peru and sought out shamans in the depths of the jungle. Testimonies of incredible hallucinations and spiritual healing have continued to feed the growing global fascination with ayahuasca.

Today, perseverant tourists need not risk their lives trekking the jungle to find an ayahuasca shaman–one must be perseverant to avoid the ubiquitous drug. Once a sanctified aspect of indigenous culture, ayahuasca is now also becoming a fad, a tourist attraction, and a booming industry.

Palma, like many other shamans, sees the benefit of ayahuasca’s accessibility in that it has the power to save lives. He claims it saved his.

“When I first tried ayahuasca, I was in a really unhappy marriage and I was a workaholic. I was really open to drinking whatever,

poison if it was the right medicine, to change my reality,” he said.

Shortly after trying ayahuasca, Palma went to the jungle to learn about the plant at its roots. He has now been operating his company, Ayahuasca-Wasi Retreats, for eighteen years.

Carolina Dowell, who runs Tree of Life Retreats in the Sacred Valley with her business partner Naomi Athena, tells a similar personal story. Born and raised in California, she left everything behind to practice the medicine in Peru after her mother died and her ten-year marriage came to an end. Dowell remembers her first time drinking ayahuasca as

a near-messianic experience.

“I just cried the whole time because I really knew that I had connected finally with this teacher that I had been looking for,” she said. “And I was very surprised that it was going to be a plant.”

An overwhelming emotional response is common in first-time ayahuasca users, since the drug is a purgative in more ways than one; the drinker vomits, and also experiences a resurgence of memories and emotions from their subconscious.

“When you are in this expanded state of awareness, you will see all your reality from a different point of perception, a wider per-

“It’s a confrontation with your own inner darkness, your shadow.”

Diego Palma

ception,” explained Palma. “All your traumas, all your childhood issues, all your wounds, all of your relationship issues with your mother and your father, everything. It’s a confrontation with your own inner darkness, your shadow.”

The result is a sort of high-power spiritual detox. Kelvin Carranza, a 27-year-old from Lima who has been drinking regularly for four years, describes the experience as “20 years of therapy in one night.”

Although the effects sound miraculous, Palma and Dowell emphasize that ayahuasca’s purification of the soul is neither instantaneous nor brought about by the shaman.

The healing requires unwavering determination on the part of the drinkers, before and throughout the ceremony, to rid themselves of negative energy.

In the past, Palma has had to make this clear to tourists who believe that either he or

From left to right: Carolina Dowell, Juana, the author, and friend Amber Banks

Fall 2016 / Vol. 17, Issue

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IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

PERÚ

A walk-in ayahuasca “shaman shop” in Cuzco, Peru

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the ayahuasca will cure them of their woes.

“My work is to hold the space,” he said. “You drink the medicine and you do the work. No one is going to do the work for you.”

Even for people who are committed to healing themselves, the ceremony can be daunting. Palma describes the setting of his ceremonies in the Maha Templo, which take place at night and in almost complete darkness. Those in attendance, anywhere from 40 to 100 people at his ceremonies, drink 50 milliliters of the ayahuasca tea. Palma and his assistant curanderos (facilitators) play musical instruments and sing icaros, the traditional shaman songs. This is the only sound in the room for the next four hours, except for the occasional belch of vomiting and the cries of people facing fears and painful memories that they had formerly suppressed.

But at the end of the four- to five-hour ceremony, there is an air of calm triumph in the room.

“Even in the worst cases, when people are screaming out their lungs and trying to hit everyone in the ceremony and we have to pin them to the ground, after some hours they are going to be telling you about their amazing experience,” Palma said.

Ayahuasca users might describe their experience as amazing at the end, but they take a risk by choosing to drink in the first place.

Ayahuasca remains illegal in most western countries, the U.S. included (although the Supreme Court has made an exception for two religious groups of Brazilian origin that appealed for the right to use ayahuasca in ritual). This is because ayahuasca tea is made with chacruna, a root that contains DMT (dimethyltryptamine). A Schedule 1 drug and the same psychedelic compound found in LSD, DMT is the source of ayahuasca’s hallucinatory properties and occasionally a cause of death for those who abuse it.

Palma proudly states that in his eighteen years of facilitating ayahuasca ceremonies, no one has ever needed to go to the hospital. Like all experienced shamans, he requires that the people who use ayahuasca under his watch abide by a strict diet for a week to ten days prior to drinking. This is essential to avoid dangerous chemical interactions with the psychoactive tea.

The ayahuasca diet varies depending on whom you ask, but most experts agree that people should not eat meat or spicy foods, drink alcohol, have sex or take any sort of medication in the period leading up to a ceremony. People with heart conditions or high blood pressure are also forbidden from drinking.

In recent years, ayahuasca has been implicated in several tourist deaths, garnering media scrutiny and an infamous reputation.

These included the death of a French woman in 2011, who is thought to have had a preexisting heart condition that caused her to go into cardiac arrest while on the drug, and the death of a British man who was stabbed by another tourist at a ceremony in 2015.

Carranza says that ayahuasca is not to blame, but rather the tourists’ carelessness that leads to adverse reactions.

“It’s really frustrating how the news and the media blames ayahuasca for some deaths when the responsibilities of those deaths are on the people themselves,” he said. ”They’re not following instructions, they think it’s just another drug, they don’t do the diet, and they die.”

Peru’s International Center for Ethnobotanical Education Research and Service (ICEERS) states that “the use of ayahuasca by healthy individuals is relatively safe from the physiological health perspective.” One would have to drink many times more than the traditional tea serving to possibly overdose, and there is no evidence that it is an addictive substance.

But the ease of access to the drug in Peru and the eagerness of untrained “shamans” to make money off of tourists can lead to unsafe practices. Practitioners like Palma and Dowell who run well-established retreat companies provide their guests with the proper food, accommodations and all of the safety information prior to the ceremonies. Tourists who do not pay $1200-$6000 for these five- to tenday retreats may not learn the precautionary information, but they can still try ayahuasca for a cheap price at one of the countless kiosk shaman shops in Peru.

To ensure that his clientele is more serious about healing than the tourists who walk into shops off the street, Palma has his guests fill out a form detailing their motivations.

He also does not accept groups at Maha Templo, because the healing process is “a very personal thing.”

Dowell said that she can weed out the serious tourists from those who are looking for a good trip because she exchanges up to fifty emails with the women who come on her all-female retreats.

She admits that she started to see a shift in the clientele at The Temple of the Way of Light, the retreat center in the jungle where she was previously employed.

“It’s one of the biggest ayahuasca centers and one of the first you see on Google,” she said. “There are definitely people coming who are there for the hallucinations, and that’s it.”

Not all retreat centers, or shamans, are dis-

cerning when it comes to taking money from tourists. More and more people are setting up business in the burgeoning ayahuasca tourism industry, lacking the familial healing background of the ancient Amazonian Shipibo and, more alarmingly, the proper training to facilitate ayahuasca ceremonies.

According to Andres Valladolid of Indecopi, the Peruvian government agency for the protection of indigenous intellectual property rights, there is no official registration process to start an ayahuasca business.

Anyone, Peruvian or foreign, can come to the country and earn a living by engaging tourists in the ancient cultural tradition without certification. Consequently, it is almost impossible to distinguish “authentic” healers from untrained drug dealers, and there have been numerous reports of corrupt retreat centers and criminal shamans.

Dowell believes that these instances of crime have contributed to the popularity of her all-female retreats.

“It’s an unfortunate part of this work, but some women have not drunk with good people. There’s been sexual abuse in ceremonies from the shaman, so this [all-female retreat] erases concern of that happening,” she said.

She further notes that the indigenous healers who have customarily been hired to run ceremonies at the large retreat centers in the Amazon jungle are sometimes mistreated by the new, corrupt management.

As a result, some of these healers have accepted employment at smaller, more local retreat centers in the Sacred Valley, hundreds of miles from their home in the jungle where their ancestors practiced the medicine. Juana, an elderly Shipibo woman who facilitates ceremonies for Tree of Life Retreats, is one of them. Dowell met Juana when she began working at The Temple of the Way of Light, and Juana has since followed Dowell to work for her new business.

“Even in the worst cases, when people are screaming out their lungs and trying to hit everyone in the ceremony and we have to pin them to the ground, after some hours they are going to be telling you about their amazing experience.”

Diego Palma

“I just cried the whole time because I really knew that I had connected finally with this teacher that I had been looking for. And I was very surprised that it was going to be a plant.”

Carolina Dowell

“Many of the maestros and maestras [healers] don’t have connections to westerners unless they’re hired by a center, so I know how grateful they are to work with us,” Dowell said. “We’re doing this for the love of the plant.”

For maestras like Juana, whose family has worked with ayahuasca for generations, the increasingly commercialized retreat centers like The Temple of the Way of Light are threatening the sacredness of an ancient practice. Not only do the tourists come with different intentions for the medicine, but they also leave indelible marks of globalization on her community.

According to Dowell, who translated Juana’s Shipibo language, “Now the kids in her culture want iPads, they want to go to college.

They don’t want to follow the path of the plants and the dedication that it takes, so it’s a tradition that could very easily be lost.”

Juana has eight children, none of whom plan to become maestros or maestras.

Dowell adds that there might be a positive side to the growing number of tourists, since the money could provide incentive for traditional healing families like Juana’s to stay in practice. ”It could encourage them to see they can actually support themselves and a family, and they do have big families,” she said.

Still, many Peruvians continue to resist the changing landscape of ayahuasca use. In 2008, the Peruvian National Institute of Culture declared that indigenous ayahuasca rituals were part of the national cultural heritage, distinct from “decontextualized, consumerist and commercial western uses.” Aside from issuing this statement, the institute has not made any legal progress to defend the intellectual property rights of indigenous ritual; the government is still struggling to pass laws that will regulate who can open an ayahuasca business.

If the government cannot make the distinction between the shamans who are in it for the medicine and those who are in it for the money, Dowell believes the plant can.

“I really do believe that the medicine knows the true healers,” she said. “She knows what can come out and what can actually be handled in the space.”

If that’s the case, it may not matter that ayahuasca has taken on a new economic and cultural significance in Peru. The drinker and the shaman’s intentions–not the cost of the ceremony–determine the success of the medicine’s spiritual healing. It seems as though the rapid commercialization of the drug has presented as many safety challenges as it has wondrous healing experiences, but defendants of the medicine are still optimistic about ayahuasca’s potential to continue improving lives.

“This is not a business,” Palma said firmly, surveying the magnificent Maha Templo.

“It’s my way of life.”

Gabriella Borter is a junior in Morse College and an English major. Contact her at gabriella. borter@yale.edu.

Fall 2016 / Vol. 17, Issue

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PERU PERÚ

AYAK CHICHIRA, LEPIDIUM MEYENNI, GINSENG ANDIN: The Many Ways to Say Maca

IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

BY MICHELLE SANTOS

In Peru, little remains of the former Inca Empire other than the remaining indigenous communities, their diverse languages and beliefs, and over 20,000 species of plants that nourish and heal them. One of them, a root called Maca, was a valuable commodity around 1500 AD because it could survive at altitudes of over 10,000 feet in the Andean Mountains. Legend has it that Inca Imperial Warriors devoured the root to acquire strength before battle. Twenty years ago, this root gained international attention for its powerful health benefits. Maca, also referred to as Peruvian Ginseng and Natural Viagra, is one of Peru’s biggest exports and is known for increasing fertility and libido, and curing a variety of health problems.

Unfortunately, Maca’s popularity increased the number of biopiracy incidents.

INDECOPI, a branch of the World Intellectual Property Organization founded in 1992, was established to combat biopiracy and deal with intellectual property rights in Peru. Andrés Valladolid, president of the commission against biopiracy at INDECOPI, explained

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that in 2001, Maca left Peru and was illegally exported to China. “It is impossible to control. I can place the entire genetic diversity of the Maca in the space of an iPhone because the seeds are very small. There is not much genetic diversity,” said Valladolid.

In 2002, Peru formally denounced American patents on the Maca root, which claimed novel health remedies, such as regulation of testosterone levels, when this information was already traditional knowledge for Peruvian indigenous communities. As a result, indigenous farmers could not export Maca extracts to the United States. Many Peruvians protested two US companies that patented Maca, looking to INDECOPI to investigate and prohibit other international patents.

Mr. Valladolid explained, “In the case of the Maca… there are around 1,400 patents. 70% are Chinese and the majority are related to health. In theory, Maca should only be grown in Peru.” However, the privatization of natural resources allows companies to restrict access to and charge users for those resources.

Indigenous communities and Peruvian farm-

Amazon rainforest in Madre de Dios, Peru

CLARA MOKRI / THE YALE GLOBALIST

ers are deprived of compensation for their traditional knowledge and must pay to use natural resources that have been freely available to them for centuries.

Despite the continued threat, INDECOPI’s efforts have made Peru a global leader in protecting indigenous rights to compensation and use of natural resources. INDECOPI’s role includes registering indigenous knowledge and protecting communities from exploitation. For example, if an individual or corporation wishes to commercialize a product using knowledge gathered from an indigenous community, they must first have prior informed consent. This is a legal contract that gives them the right to access and use indigenous knowledge as well as the plant. They must also contribute a minimum of 10% from their earnings on the product to the Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples, established in 2002. This fund compensates

Peru’s indigenous communities for their contributions and makes improvements in their education and health services, infrastructure, and more. Companies that commit biopiracy must also pay a fine, but, despite laws that are meant to prevent illegal exports of Maca, there is no way to hold lawbreakers accountable once they leave Peru. The Peruvian government can only prohibit violating companies from obtaining the plants in the future, forcing big companies to comply with the rules if they wish use Peru’s plants. Peruvian law also establishes indigenous communities’ rights to the knowledge of the plants: for example, no one can patent Maca for its ability

spiritual purposes. Failing to protect indigenous languages and intellectual property rights could mean the loss of Peruvian heritage and national identity, as well as the loss of plant species and plant knowledge that

could help save lives around the world.

Michelle Santos is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College. Contact her at michelle.santos@yale.edu.

To the indigenous communities and their descendants, plants are more than just nutrition and medicine. They are powerful spirits that many indigenous people use to connect with their ancestors and culture through shaman rituals. to increase fertility because this knowledge has been known by the indigenous people for centuries. However, the government has complete rights to the genetic properties of the plant. If a pharmaceutical company or individual requests access to a plant to make a medicine, they only need permission from the government to have the physical plant.

To the indigenous communities and their descendants, plants are more than just nutrition and medicine. They are powerful spirits that many indigenous people use to connect with their ancestors and culture through shaman rituals. Many communities fear that one day, due to urbanization, the Amazon Rainforest will disappear and they will lose their connection to their ancestral spirits. They also risk losing their culture, languages, and knowledge of plants.

Prior to Spanish colonization, over 47 languages were spoken in Peru, according to Agustín Panizo of the Department of Indigenous Languages in the Ministry of Culture.

Since then, 37 have been lost, with devastating consequences for indigenous culture and knowledge of plants. Many indigenous languages are associated with poverty, lack of opportunities, and more negative qualities. Often, parents choose to not teach their children their language to protect them from discrimination. “Language extinction is just a symptom of a social problem. The social problem is the inequity between different groups in society. If you want to revitalize a language, you have to work in more profound problems because people will continue to be discriminated,” explained Mr. Panizo. For generations, indigenous communities have orally passed down traditional knowledge of these plants and their usage for healing and

Scenes from the procession of the “Señor de Quyllurit’i” in Puerto Maldonado CLARA MOKRI / THE YALE GLOBALIST

Fall 2016 / Vol. 17, Issue

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PERU PERÚ

RESISTANCE SONGS Afroperuvian Music in Modern Peru

BY NAT WYATT

Andrés Arevalo plays the cajón, an instrument used in Afroperuvian music.

IMAGE: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

CLARA MOKRI / THE YALE GLOBALIST

Grids of low houses painted with colorful graffiti define the landscape of the Peruvian town of El Carmen. Many are adorned with images of black women holding babies and musical instruments. Located three hours to the south of Lima in the region of Chincha, El Carmen sits in the middle of one of the nation’s most verdant pockets of land.

On the road to and from the city, acres of cotton plantations sprawl out from all sides dotted with bundles of white. It is a vista I cannot help but associate with the American South, and by extension, with slavery. The similarities are hard to avoid.

Much like in the United States, the history of Peru cannot be divorced from the labor and lives of black people. In 1521, enslaved Africans arrived with the Spanish Conquistadors in the land that would become Lima.

Soon after, Conquistador Francisco Pizarro established a trade route for importing slaves that began on the Western Coast of Africa, stopped in Cartagena, and ended in a forced march over the Andes into Peru. Throughout it all, these enslaved Africans resisted the institution of slavery through the creation of a culture that is still recognizable to this day in food, dance, and, most obviously, music.

What makes Afroperuvian music so distinct is its blend of up-tempo, syncopated West African beats with Peruvian instruments like the guitar.

No instrument better captures this music,

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and the history surrounding it, than the caIt was this faint memory that highlights jón. The cajón is a box drum. “Something you the startling erasure of black culture in Peru. would find in the field,” musician and dancer Much of this erasure is intertwined with the Camilo Ballumbrosio explains. Enslaved Af- politics of Peru’s mestizaje culture. As Andres ricans were forbidden from playing music on explains, “We have Andean migrations, Amathe plantations for fear that they would use zonic migration. The Limeños are comprised the sounds to communicate revolt. And so of mestizo people. Yet, we Afroperuvians they created an instrument that looked in- are few.” In part, this community’s minority conspicuous, a box drum that would become status reflects the rise of interracial marryone of their most important creative modes ing and the lightening of skin over time. As of survival. our cab driver in El Carmen explains, “evAndrés Arevalo, a cajón player in Lima, eryone was black thirty or forty years ago in explains to me over coffee that “[Afroperuvi- this town. Now everyone is mixed. No more ans] created, invented things, such as the mu- black.” sic of the cajón, based on their talents, based Unlike in the United States, many people on what they had heard when they were little. of partial African descent are classified as no It was a process or recreation,” one that was longer black, a status generally deemed fapassed along vorable to social mobilifrom genty. Thus, for those eager eration to to preserve and share Much like in the United States, generation cultural artifacts like the history of Peru cannot be of enslaved Afroperuvian music, this Africans in inevitably creates chaldivorced from the labor and Peru. Howevlenges. lives of black people. er, that oral, As Arevalo explains, folkloric tra“we don’t know our andition all but cestral memory. There’s a disappeared after emancipation in the late need to say that we are from Africa and that 19th century. Andres explains that a pains- we have an African past. There is a need to taking reconstruction occurred once more recognized that…and so we assume postures beginning in the 1950s. “There’s a vague to say that we are Africans: we play African memory, a potential memory. A memory of instruments, and we involve them in our mu‘maybe that’s how it was once.’” sic to say that we are black. I put on the tunic

But it was once again the cajón that drew because I am black.”

This pride is evident as well when visit- the band mates into the style. Today, they ing El Carmen’s most famous site, the home embrace a sound that draws from instruof the first family of Afroperuvian music, ments from all corners of the world. Del Sol the Ballumbrosios. Camilo, one of the sons, believes that the power and resurgence of explains that his family’s history “is very Afroperuvian music is in part due to a largconnected to music. When [my father] was er phenomenon, “In the past 15 years, Peru a small child and fell into a river close to El has started looking at its history, its food, its Huanco, his family interpreted it as a sort of music. We’ve started now appreciating what baptism; his mother dedicated him to dance we have….people don’t know that there are Afroperuvian people in the world” after that.”

Ultimately, Del Sol believes passing down This particular style of dance, a mixture of tap dancing and other rhythmic West African these traditions is crucial. “We’ve done a lot styles, has “an ancient history from before the of work in Chincha, in El Carmen. We do a times of slavery to after the first days of free- lot of outreach there and send instruments to dom.” But, as Camilo explains, “The zapateo them, teach them how to play them.” He adds is also a form of protest,” because during slav- with a grin, “And the parties are great. All the ery dance and other forms of artistic creation people go there.” were prohibited.

The Ballumbrosio home has become a sort of cultural space for Afroperuvian music. Stickers “We don’t know our ancestral and graffiti decorate the front of memory. There’s a need to say the house with slogans like, “Black love”, “I am proud to be negro,” that we are from Africa and that and even Camilo Ballumbrosios’s bracelet, which reads in English, “I we have an African past.” love being black.” When I ask him Andrés Arevalo about the bracelet he grins and explains that it is emblematic of how he was raised. Reverence for and participation in the cultural production of his black community was expected.

There is an openness that I did not expect.

The house his family lives in is left unlocked to encourage visitors of all races and nationalities to stop by. He answers my questions thoughtfully, but is quick to ask me about Trayvon Martin and “what is going on in the United States.” Camilo’s conception of his own blackness feels expansive and generous.

He explains, “I do not believe in ‘I am black, and everyone else can go to hell…but instead ‘I am black, you might not be black but we are all standing in this world together.” He adds, “I see that [this opinion] is more advanced in Latin American than in other places.”

That being said, Ballumborsio acknowledges, “When people call me black in the streets they’re not just calling me that because of the color of my skin but also because of the history of my ancestors…I carry all those past woes and sufferings and stories, but I do not carry that resentment.” Instead, through music, he performs and teaches his culture to all audiences—white Peruvians and tourists included.

As musicians have revived and redefined the Afroperuvian genre, they have brought the distinct sounds of the cajón to a global stage. The Grammy-nominated group NovaLima is perhaps the best example of this phenomenon with their electronic Latin rock sound. Guillermo del Sol, the band’s guitarist, attended high school in Peru but spent much of his life abroad. He explained that the band—few of whom are Afroperuvian themselves—“Heard Afroperuvian music all our lives. It was more like party music. Not something on the radio…it’s celebration music. No one initially listened to it really seriously.”

When asked why this particular style of music matters to Peru, and to the world at large, Del Sol remarks that “a lot of those lyrics still make a lot of sense and hold a lot of power.” He adds, “We [Peruvians] want our music to have real roots.”

The roots of Afroperuvian music have been painstakingly retraced and relearned within the past half century. It is a reconstruction that Ballumbrosio is thankful for.

Ultimately, after relaying the challenging history of his family, he explains, “In spite of all this struggle, there is a wonderful thing,” pausing with a smile, “and that is music.”

Nat Wyatt is a junior in Davenport Collegemajoring in African American Studies. Feel free to contact Nat at natalie.wyatt@yale.edu.

Fall 2016 / Vol. 17, Issue

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PERU PERÚ

The LUM & Living Memory Truth, Reconciliation, and Representation of the Peruvian Armed Conflict

PHOTO: CLARA MOKRI/THE YALE GLOBALIST:

BY CAROLINE KURITZKES

Carved into the city’s bedrock, the Lugar de la Memoria, Tolerancia y Inclusión Social lies nested in the mouth of a cliff suspended over Lima’s western coast. This Place of Memory literally emerges from the earth, requesting, if not commanding, that its witnesses participate in a kind of excavation––historical, natural, civilizational. Though some Limeños opt to identify the space by a nickname–– the LUM––over the official title selected by members of Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a single, unmistakable injunction saturates every filament of a site at once exposed to and concealed from the elements: the injunction to remember.

It is no accident that the LUM’s design is almost tomb-like. Its project is one of unearthing, in which memory and architecture collide with full force.

Inaugurated by the Ministry of Culture in December 2015, the LUM is dedicated to memorializing victims of the Peruvian armed conflict, an internal war that persisted for more than twenty years. In 1980, the Shining Path guerrilla organization launched a program of Communist Revolution through the militarized demolition of the Peruvian state. The Peruvian government responded to the group’s ballot burnings, targeted killings of local politicians, and indiscriminate terror with a counterinsurgency effort that was just

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as repressive as it was sloppy. A prolonged military crackdown swept indigenous communities ensnared in Shining Path territory and targeted students suspected of

In the shadow of governmentsanctioned rights violations, the Peruvian state now occupies a precarious position in a debate about collective memory, national security, and victimhood.

Leftist activism––often through detention, torture, and execution. According to the 2003 Truth Commission, the conflict left 70,000 dead or disappeared: 20,000 attributed to state security forces, 31,000 to the Shining Path,

and the remainder to local militias or smaller guerilla groups. In 2009, Alberto Fujimori–– the Peruvian president who presided over the second decade of the conflict––was sentenced to thirty years in prison for ordering two civilian massacres carried out by the Colina Group, a paramilitary death squad. The ruling marked the first time in recent history that a democratically-elected head of state was tried, convicted, and sentenced for human rights violations in his country’s own national court.

Despite this ounce of justice, the memory of brutality is still deeply felt. “The civil conflict was very painful for the indigenous people,” says Hilaria Supa Huamán, a Peruvian politician, former congresswoman, and activist for indigenous and women’s rights who advocated for the LUM’s construction. “When the army came…there was so much terror. The soldiers had no mercy for women or children––not even for women who were pregnant. They made people dig their own graves and then shot them.” The violence she denounces was carried out at the hands of state security forces. “Why was this happening? The state is supposed to be like a family: somos hermanos y hermanas.

I believe it’s an issue of the state’s racial discrimination against indigenous people.”

Today, the stakes of portraying this history are especially high. Peru recently

conflict not as a relic, but as an ongoing, living memory, has vexed the LUM’s architects and critics. “We’re not a museum, but an expository

“Above all, what’s important about the museum is the presence of gender...

This museum plays an important role depicting [women’s] terrorization and persecution, but it also shows that these women – who had other modes of culture and thought – were fighters and organizers.”

Hilaria Supa Huamán

PHOTO: CLARA MOKRI/THE YALE GLOBALIST:

space,” says Diana Lavalle, a museography coordinator at the LUM responsible for curating exhibitions. “We think of ourselves more like a museum for reflection.” Her role with the LUM involves researching the conflict’s history, conceptualizing exhibits, and consolidating images, materials, and testimonies via requests to victims’ family

members. One exhibit that she curated has taken on almost funerary proportions.

Tucked toward the back of the second floor, victims’ possessions dot the façade of a twenty-foot high cubicle divided into a checkerboard pattern of glass boxes. Behind their clothes and blankets, photographs, watches, and identification cards lies a dark interior vacuum, empty apart for three stacks of small paper booklets containing stories and photographs of the disappeared.

“People can leave candles and flowers there.

The space is intended to be spiritual, but not necessarily religious. The idea was to make a space that could be reclaimed by the families of those who suffered.”

The LUM’s ostensible purpose of reclamation implicates not only Peruvian collective memory––namely in honor of the civilians who lost their lives to statesanctioned violence–– but also who the LUM is meant to serve to begin with. According to the Truth Commission, 79% of the conflict’s victims lived in rural Peru, 75% were Quechua speaking, and 56% were subsistence farmers.

The clash of Shining Path and government forces in predominantly rural, indigenous communities seems at odds with the LUM’s location in a metropolis that remained largely insulated from the conflict’s brutality.

Indeed, Lima is a geographic barrier that poses a tradeoff between the site’s dual ritualistic and educational functions. “In my dreams, I would want a museum devoted to female testimonies that is located in the highlands, so that victims and their families can actually see it,” Huamán says. Lavalle notes that the LUM receives as many as 400 visitors per day on weekends, but most of them are students, tourists, and internationals. “How

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PHOTO: CLARA MOKRI/ THE YALE GLOBALIST

wrapped up a contentious election cycle, in which Fujimori’s daughter, Keiko Fujimori, lost a tight runoff race for the Peruvian presidency by only a fraction of a point.

Her narrow loss has opened old wounds and new questions surrounding her father’s perpetuation of rights abuse, committed during the 1990’s. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, 230,000 people out of half a million initially uprooted

by Shining Path and government violence remain displaced, as of December 2013.

Huamán notes that thousands of migrants–– predominantly of indigenous descent––who fled the Andean highlands seeking refuge in Lima’s outskirts have yet to find an adequate life within the capital’s orbit. Fears of the Shining Path’s resurgence are latent, while the material and psychological consequences of displacement have not been resolved.

In this political context, the LUM’s inauguration adopted a contentious face. Julio Cotler, an anthropology and political science researcher at the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP), ties the controversy surrounding the LUM to the disputed nature of the fighting itself. “The interpretation of the conflict has always been polemic, either in favor or against the government,” he says. “The idea of human rights was never an object of consensus.” Gustavo Gorriti, a journalist who was detained during the Fujimori regime as a consequence of his reporting, says that the ultra-right construed the LUM as an attack on the nation and armed forces. In the shadow of government-sanctioned rights violations, the Peruvian state now occupies a precarious position in a debate about collective memory, national security, and victimhood.

The question of how to represent the

PERÚ do we increase our visibility? Practically, there is no physical space that exists to remember the victims apart from Miraflores,” she observes, referring to the upscale commercial district in downtown Lima.

Decentering Lima from the story of the conflict bears political implications, especially when it comes to combating the relegation of Peru’s Andean and Amazonian communities to the peripheries of national concern. For years, public perception of the conflict was filtered through Lima as a prism––both because Lima has historically been the center of the country’s political and economic power, and because the charges that brought down Fujimori pertained to massacres that took place in the country’s capital. Still, the architects of the LUM have attempted to elevate rural and indigenous voices––by displaying narratives of violence and community resistance afflicting Amazonian and highland regions in exhibits closer to the entrance, while burying Lima’s involvement in more modest plaques on the second floor.

Other voices the LUM has sought to promote are those of women, in an effort to destabilize patriarchies surrounding female representation in warfare. “Above all, what’s

important about the museum is the presence of gender,” Huamán says. “So many museums about conflict show the struggle and bravery

“Memory is muscular.

Remembering versus deconstructing memory—that is, noting what’s been forgotten—are two different things.”

Gustavo Gorriti of men, while the voices and fights of women are erased. This museum plays an important role in depicting [their] terrorization and persecution, but it also shows that these women––who had other modes of culture and thought––were fighters and organizers.”

Huamán notes that the leadership of women is diffused throughout the entire museum, rather than sectioned off in a separate exhibit about female participation

specifically––from testimonies reflecting gender parity to the blaring of mothers’ voices from speakers on the second floor, calling after disappeared husbands and sons.

Despite these attempts to recreate dynamic narratives of the conflict, Leftist critics like Gorriti question the LUM’s premise of memorialization to begin with. “What does memory have to do with reconciliation?” he asks, referring to the 2003 Truth and Reconciliation Commission that set the groundwork for the LUM’s construction. “Memory is about history and recovering the truth, but reconciliation is about compromise.” He points out that the marriage of memory and reconciliation has jeopardized efforts to ascertain the truth by depoliticizing debate in the wake of the conflict. “Memory is muscular.

Remembering versus deconstructing memory––that is, noting what’s been forgotten––are two different things.” For the time being, it seems as though the LUM’s project is more concerned with the former.

Caroline Kuritzkes is a junior History major in Ezra Stiles College. Contact her at caroline. kuritzkes@yale.edu.

PHOTO: CLARA MOKRI/ THE YALE GLOBALIST

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A chef at Madam Tusan’s inspects a dish before it is sent to the dining room.

HOME

COOKING

IMAGE: OLIVIA BURTON / THE YALE GLOBALIST

Chinese-Peruvian food goes global “I heard there were about a thousand Chifa restaurants in Lima,” I said to our taxi driver one night.

“Un mil? No, un millón!” responded our driver, laughing (A thousand? No, a million!).

He could be close—Peru’s sprawling capital city covers over 1000 square miles, and there seemed to be a Chifa restaurant on every block.

“Chifa” refers to Chinese-Peruvian fusion food, a blend of Chinese cooking techniques with Chinese and Peruvian ingredients. According to Chef Felix Loo of Madam Tusan’s in the upscale Lima district of San Isidro, the term “Chifa” comes from a Cantonese phrase that literally means “to eat rice,” but is commonly used in the same way one might say “bon appétit.”

In 1849, about 75 indentured Chinese workers arrived in Peru to harvest guano— bird excrement used for fertilizer— and sugarcane from Peru’s Chincha Islands. When slavery was abolished in 1854, additional Chinese workers were brought in as substitutes. By the end of the century, more than 100,000 Chinese laborers had crossed the Pacific Ocean to work in Peru.

In Lima, laborers congregated in what is today known as “El Barrio Chino,” or Chinatown. After their contracts ended, those who had the resources started small businesses, including Chifas—restaurants that served Cantonese food prepared with whatever ingredients were available. Surrounded by monasteries and colonial mansions, Peru’s largest community of Chinese-Peruvians could preserve their traditions, language, and food.

A green archway on four red pillars now marks the entrance to Lima’s Chinatown.

BY OLIVIA BURTON

Small, casual Chifas compete for business alongside food carts and open-air markets.

But beyond el Barrio Chino, upscale Chifas like Madam Tusan’s have pushed Chifa into the international spotlight through sleek marketing and the creativity of celebrity chefs.

Upon entering Madam Tusan’s, whose black and white décor is punctuated by a red acrylic dragon hanging from the ceiling, we were seated at a red leather booth. Chef Loo called for plates of steamed buns with chicken, pickled onions, peppers, and cilantro. Three sauces represented the mixture of Chinese and Peruvian traditions—one is soy based, another ginger based, and another is a Peruvian pepper sauce.

Because Chef Loo moved to Peru from China when he was 16, he speaks Mandarin with his friends and Spanish with kitchen staff. Growing up, he admits, he was a bad student. “My father told me, ‘If you’re not going to study, you have to work,’” Loo said. Since he had been cooking since he was 13, he decided to start cooking for a living. Now, at age 33, he has been working at Madam Tusan’s for seven years.

“Madam Tusan’s isn’t the Chifa you’ll find on the corner,” explained Chef Loo. But while presentation and quality are undoubtedly a notch above the “corner” Chifa restaurants, Madam Tusan’s serves classic Chifa dishes such as chaufa aeropuerto, a mixture of fried rice and noodles commonly believed to be named for the poorer region around Lima’s airport, where restaurants sometimes mix leftover rice and noodles together to sell at a discount the next day.

Lomo saltado, another popular dish, consists of Peruvian ingredients (potatoes, to-

matoes, and chilies) sautéed in a wok with Chinese ingredients (beef, onion, garlic, soy sauce, and vinegar). Served with fries and rice, it can be found even in restaurants that are not specifically Chifa restaurants.

In Puerto Maldonado, a small city on the Tambopata River, a restaurant called El Asadazo serves lomo saltado in sandwich form, the “lomazo.” The stir-fried beef and vegetables, topped with an egg and fried potato sticks and served on a toasted bun, are even more mouthwatering with green pepper sauce.

Madam Tusan’s presents its lomo saltado on a decorative plate, and El Asadazo serves it in a basket with a cold Inka Cola. I had four lomazos when I was in town.

In the past decade Chinese immigrants have opened Chifas in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile. And in 2014, Chef José Andrés opened China Chilcano in Washington, D.C. Like Madam Tusan’s, China Chilcano is an upscale take on Chifa, with club music and specialty cocktails ranging from the classic Peruvian pisco sour to a “Perú Libre.”

But while upscale interpretations of Chifa receive more press, traditional Chifas—like the ones you might find on a Lima street corner—can also be found outside of Peru. In Jackson Heights, Queens, a restaurant simply called “Chifa” serves aeropuerto and lomo saltado with cold Cusqueñas. From its origins as comfort food for laborers far from home, Chifa has gone international.

Olivia Burton is a junior English Major in Morse College. Contact her at olivia.burton@ yale.edu.

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EN LA TIERRA DE LOS INCAS Three Weeks in the Land of the Incas PHOTOGRAPHS BY CLARA MOKRI

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Top Left: Young girl awaiting her turn to compete at the Marinera NorteĂąa Dance Tournament in Lima with her escort.

Bottom Left: Car parked across from Parque Kennedy in the Miraflores District, which is home to hundreds of stray cats.

Meat vendor at the Mercado Central in the Old Lima District sits and waits for a long day of work to come to a close.

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Top: Police patrolling the area near the the Palacio del Gobierno Middle: Boy walks home from school in Pamplona Alta, San Juan de Miraflores District Bottom: Floating down the Tambopata river in the Peruvian Amazon

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Top: Local Cuzco women weaving 100% alpaca wool sweaters Bottom: Daybreak at Machu Picchu

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EL PASADO QUE NO

PASA

For victims’ families, the long road of recovering bodies left by two decades of violence nears an end with an unprecedented national law

BY ELIZABETH MILES

Within Los Cabitos de Ayacucho, a Peruvian military barracks, a forensic team had been searching for corpses, tortured, burned, and buried, for five days when they finally found a shred of cloth.

“Some piece of clothing… it was blue,” remembers Dr. Susana Cori Ascona, seated in her office on a quiet residential street in Lima. Now the technical secretary of the Ministry of Justice’s Council of Reparations, Cori traveled on behalf of Peru’s Defensoría del Pueblo when the existence of fosas, or mass graves, became widely known in the mid 2000s. She served as a supervisor for the first exhumations, of what Peruvian society would realize were thousands.

At Los Cabitos, the army had arrived in 1983 to interrogate suspects, trying to stem the tide of insurgency begun by Sendero Luminoso. Sendero, a Maoist guerrilla group, had begun to terrorize the countryside and take over territory in 1980, burning ballot boxes in a town called Chuschi on May 17th.

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In the midst of the civil conflict that tore Peru apart between 1980 and 2000, Los Cabitos became a place where hundreds were brought, from which almost no one returned. It’s one more case of what is known in Latin America as los desaparecidos — the disappeared.

“When we arrived, we had so much testimony that within the barracks, people were tortured, killed and buried,” Cori recalls. The Ministerio Público, a ministry that unites public prosecution nationally, had dispatched a forensic team to Ayacucho in 2009. “It was like looking for dead people in the patio of your house.” For four days, the team hadn’t found anything. Perhaps the rumors weren’t true.

Then they found the shred of clothing.

“All of us were paralyzed,” Cori says. They

kept excavating and found the complete piece of clothing; they kept excavating, and found a body. Face down, with hands tied, the remains left Cori feeling massively indignant — and impotent. “I thought it was going to be a global headline, it’s going to transcend society, the country won’t be the same…”

As of 2016, Cori still feels powerless. In Peru, an estimated 16,000 people were victims of forced disappearance between 1980 and 2000. This occurred at the hands of Sendero Luminoso, who wished to intimidate the rural population, and of the military, who apprehended and interrogated primarily indigenous people in the countryside who they suspected of ties to the terrorists. A disappearance typically resulted in a rapid extrajudicial killing.

fied, only 1,644 returned to their families.

“There are more than 6,000 sites of burial, more than 4,000 mass graves that have to be exhumed. And there? That’s where we think they are,” said Luis Arones Huallanca, when I asked him about the more than 12,000 bodies left to find. Arones is the national coordinator of Organizations for Those Affected

by Political Violence in Peru (CONAVIP). He remembers the violence too well. On October 16, 1983, Sendero Luminoso came to the village of Raccaya, 7 hours from the capital.

They took more than 40 villagers by force to Umasi, six hours away, and guarded them overnight in a school. “They told them, ‘be careful, don’t leave this place, we’re watching,’” remembers Arones. One of those villagers was his cousin, Benjamin Arones. Arones himself had left Raccaya with his mother for Lima only the week before.

The military, on arriving in Umasi to track the villagers, believed that there were members of Sendero inside the school, ready to launch an armed confrontation. They began to throw grenades. Older men in the community recalled hearing them say, “This is how all the terrorists will die.” Arones told me, “the soldiers should have rescued the civilians who weren’t armed. They killed everyone, everyone, they killed practically everyone without any judicial proceedings.”

Behind the school in Umasi, in four mass graves, 41 were buried. Most of them wore school uniforms.

In 2009, the graves were exhumed, and five years later, the remains were returned to the families of Raccaya. “After more than thirty years, after passing through the process of exhumation, the process of investigation, by matching DNA, we’ve managed to give a dignified burial to the victims,” Arones told me. Without bringing up these bodies, Arones says, the country can never truly leave the conflict behind. He used a phrase I saw on a poster in Susana Cori’s office. “El pasado que no pasa” — this is the past that doesn’t pass.

Activists like Arones hope that this will change with the recent passing of a law in Peru, Ley No. 30470: Ley de búsqueda de personas desaparecidas durante el período de violencia 1980-2000 (Law for the search for persons disappeared during the period of violence, 1980-2000). Heavily promoted by the defensor del pueblo, the head of the national ombudsman office created to enforce constitutional rights at the individual and community level in Peru, it had yet to be approved by then-President Ollanta Humala when I spoke with Arones in May. The law directs the state to take charge of exhuming the known burial sites in the country. More specifically, the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights will coordinate

with relevant public and private organizations to design, implement and execute a national plan to search for los desaparecidos. A central registry of the disappeared and burial sites, will be created, along with a DNA bank to aid identification. The state’s capacity for forensic processes and psychological support for families will be strengthened. “All this,” Arones argues, “no one can deny us, because it has to do with human beings, with men and women and children who were disappeared during that time.”

Shortly after Arones spoke with me, on May 26, 2016, the Congress approved the proposal. A month later, on June 22, President Ollanta Humala made it law.

For many families, this law is unimaginable compared to the long process of finding remains — at best, difficult, at worst, completely unfeasible. Sitting outside of the Palace of the Government, in Lima’s Plaza de Armas, Luis Arones showed me a document dated May 1 of this year. “This is how we’ve worked,” he says, referring to family members in Putis, in the region of Ayacucho. Holding the document, he pointed out the section mandating that 27 people who disappeared near Putis in 1983 will be exhumed.

“All this time that’s gone by, and just now, these 27 people will be found.”

In Peru, family members cannot just go in search of remains, though Arones and others said that in the vast majority of cases, many know exactly where their father, husband, brother, wife, or child might have been buried. The public ministry must receive a complaint, typically lodged with a fiscalía, or district attorney. Specifically, an accusation of a murder must be made, with evidence, launching an investigation. The events of the case will be reconstructed, the victim’s identity and burial site verified as much as possible, before a specialized forensic team is sent to carry out the exhumation.

The low number of bodies successfully recovered is due in part to the length of the process and the difficulty of a successful criminal investigation, but also to the geographic pattern of the violence. The great majority of the disappeared came from rural regions of Peru, often areas in which record-keeping was sporadic in the 1980s, and literacy in Spanish, spoken by the governmental offices in Lima, is still low. Many of the victims spoke Quechua, as do their family members today. What age a victim might have been at the time of death may be an estimate, based on memories of a schoolteacher, or a priest who conducted a baptism, rather than legal certifications.

Then they found the shred of clothing. “All of us were paralyzed,” Cori says. They kept excavating and found the complete piece of clothing; they kept excavating — and they found a body.

Lima’s National Museum, Lugar de la Memoria, hopes to eventually fill this display with personal objects belonging to victims of forced disappearances.

Approximately 16,000 people are estimated to have been disappeared between 1980 and 2000.

ELIZABETH MILES / THE GLOBALIST

The estimate of 16,000 comes from the Comisión de la verdad y Reconciliación, or Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR), whose final report in 2003 largely galvanized efforts in Peru to compensate victims and investigate the matter of los desaparecidos. Between 2002 and 2015, only 3,202 bodies had been recovered. Only 1,833 had been identi-

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IMAGES: LUGAR DE LA MEMORIA, LA TOLERANCIA Y LA INCLUSIÓN SOCIAL

PERÚ

Some families may not have recent photos, or any at all. That creates even more complications on the road to opening a grave. Military forces were even known to interchange the clothes on the bodies, and deceased members of the military themselves were buried with civilians. “It’s been a mix of everything,” says Miluska Rojas, the executive secretary of a national citizens’ movement, “Para Que No Se Repita,” or “So It Never Happens Again” (PQNSR), intended to promote reflection on the violence.

Susana Cori’s office is specifically tasked with verifying additions to the Registro Único de Víctimas, or the official list of victims of torture, murder, forced disappearance, rape, and other war crimes committed during the civil conflict. Her one story office is packed with hundreds of red file boxes, all the way out to the leafy patio. Though the files are digitized, all of the original materials are kept. Over 216,000 cases have been added to the official list. 20,000 are still pending, also due to gaps in official documentation.

“People maybe knew their father as Pedro, or Pedrito, but his birth certificate says Juan,” Cori mentioned. Many victims lived in regions so isolated that the state didn’t issue national identity documents to begin with.

Cori and Arones agree that if action came from the state, as opposed to every case being brought by a family member, more victims

would be found. The state has only opened up new cases in response to the advocacy of individuals like Arones who are willing to find the necessary evidence and push an investigation forward. Cori believes that immediately after the conflict ended, Peru “wasn’t ready as a country, and the authorities weren’t ready,” for a top-down procedure, so instead, protocols were set on exhuming bodies, and training began for district attorneys and judges to specialize in verifying cases of forced disappearance. “That’s where the state began, and they’ve maintained that up to now,” Cori said. “There hasn’t been a state policy to find the disappeared. It’s just been reactions to the existence of mass graves.” Families often don’t want to go through the process of filing a complaint, for different reasons including physical distance from a fiscalía, or a distrust of the authorities. In these cases, the search for a body can’t begin.

In its 2003 final report, Peru’s post-conflict Truth and Reconciliation Commission made two recommendations: reparations for the victims’ families, and a national policy of finding the disappeared. After two years of coordination between state offices like Cori’s and organizations including those led

by Arones and Rojas, a plan exists: the ley de

Many simply don’t want to tell their story anymore. “That’s why many don’t come to us — they told the NGO, they told the defensoría, they told the CVR and didn’t get anything. These are people who say, ya no más (no more).”

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búsqueda.

It’s a massive undertaking. The process of investigation, identification, and return to families will be funded by the state. The registry created by the law would mean that even if a family member dies, their DNA could be compared with a victim found later to determine their identity. If a victim can never be recovered, at least families would know that systematic work has been done to compare all the remains found across the country. The principal objective, as Cori sees it, is to find and return the body of a person, or if they can’t, to tell the family what happened. “It’s not necessarily criminal prosecution or reparation, but rather humanitarian work.” Notably, the opening of a case no longer needs to be tied to a criminal investigation.

When I spoke with Arones in May, the law had a strong national consensus — from civilians, NGOs, and family members, and also from the state. The defensor del pueblo had supported it, and the Ministry of Justice had promoted it. It had yet to be approved by the Congress and the President.

Arones was, at the time, planning a press conference and vigil to appeal to the administration to pass the law before presidential elections took place in June. That election pitted Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, an economist, against Keiko Fujimori, a candidate best known as the daughter of jailed ex-president Alberto Fujimori. It was under his decade-long administration during the second half of the conflict that military death squads committed massacres, forced sterilizations, torture, suspensions of judicial rights, and other human rights abuses. Arones smiled wryly, saying, “We think that maybe if Keiko Fujimori gets it, we’re not confident that she would pass a law to find victims.”

He thought about it, and edited his reply.

“We’re completely not confident.”

In the end, Kuczynski would narrowly edge out Fujimori, with a margin of 50.12% to 49.88%. But on June 22, while ex-president Ollanta Humala was wrapping up his time in office, he chose to pass the law that, for many Peruvians, had been decades in the making.

32 years ago, Jaime Ayala Sulca, a journalist, disappeared. No punitive actions have been taken against the military forces that took, tortured, and killed Ayala.

“The family of victims have been pushing for this law for so many years, to find our family members who were disappeared,” Rosa Luz Pallqui Medina, Ayala’s wife, told me.

Pallqui is president of Anfadet, an organization focused on advancing reparations, from health to infrastructure.“We worked through the press to communicate to society, and to the politicians, that they should pass the law, because we believe that with this law we have hope of finding our family members.” She trusts in the formation of a national department for the disappeared within the Ministry of Justice, charged with finding, exhuming, and analyzing remains, as well as accompanying psychological health initiatives to support families. “I believe for the first time, we have certainty that the search for the disappeared is going to go forward, now that the Ministry of Justice is taking charge of all of the policies, and it’s been supported by Congress, and a consensus.” Family members including Pallqui will also be consulted during the implementation of the law.

According to Miluska Rojas, the law has been received with “so much joy, and hope by organizations of victims, and the movement for human rights in Peru, as well as the ma-

Left Because the Peruvian civil conflict occurred within the last three decades, many victims can be identified by clothing or other personal items that have not yet decayed.

Middle A memorial to victims killed in 1983 lists their names.

Right Forensic teams in Peru must be dispatched by the government to each fosa, or mass grave.

jority of Peruvians, simply because this law obeys, more than anything, a humanitarian demand to give a dignified burial to the disappeared.” However, Cori highlighted an ongoing resistance toward remembering the civil conflict, even in the case of investigation and exhumation, within some sectors of society as well as political parties.

“We’ve always had these criticisms, that we’re attending to terrorists,” Cori said. After two decades of indiscriminate killing, debates still persist over those who hold responsibility. But more often, many say they would simply prefer to close this part of their history.

They ask Cori, “why reopen this?” Why reopen those graves, those thousands of graves?

Even among victims of the violence, that position exists. Many don’t want to tell their story anymore. Cori considers it entirely valid. “That’s why many don’t come to us — they told the NGO, they told the defensoría, they told the CVR and they didn’t get anything.

These are people who say, ya no más (no more).”

Luis Arones agrees that too many years, and too much retelling, have gone by. “There are families from all over Peru who are still looking for their relatives. Some have found them, some of us are still looking.” But fighting for each individual case, in his opinion, is even more painful than a national reckoning. For Arones, bringing up all of the bodies would help reconcile Peruvian society, creating a real peace only “once this is all done with.”

Elizabeth Miles is a senior in Jonathan Edwards College, studying History and Political Science. She was a managing editor of the Globalist during her junior year, and can be reached

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